A Well-Decorated Prison
"A good thing is a good thing. Let's see…"
Having the goal fixed, at least, was a mercy. Ask whether the situation itself was good, though, and the honest answer was that it was hard to say.
Because—
"'I' failed. At the simplest thing there is. Making a single friend."
I didn't know what Part 2 contained, but that much was certain.
Why had Part 1 gone out of its way to lay out Pino's miserable life from the very beginning? This wasn't a public-service ad. Were they really just angling to ask, "Does this child even know what love is…?"
Yeah, right. As if.
"It was to build a justification."
A justification for the sudden swerve in the final chapter. That was what they'd been stacking, piece by piece.
"…"
Honestly, I found the whole maneuver revolting.
Holding up a popular character as a shield to paper over a ruined ending? And with my favorite, no less. Unforgivable.
Tack a sad past onto a popular character, croon something like, "This child has been through so much, boo-hoo!" and did they really think the readers would weep and say, "Oh, I see… our Pino can do whatever she wants!"?
People can call us dogs and pigs all they like. That doesn't mean we actually become dogs and pigs. I have no idea what they were thinking.
If that was the plan, they should have looked after the author's mental health properly from the start. Wasn't this thing written by browbeating an author who'd already failed at suicide into finishing it? Vicious. Truly vicious.
And yet why were there so many media-mix projects? Because money matters? …Reality really does outstrip imagination.
A collectible gacha game, a live-action adaptation, a setting compendium, an anime… the list never ends. Those lunatic bastards at the magazine went around singing we're crazy, we're crazy, but were they actually insane? I was getting genuinely worked up—
"Hold on. Deep breath."
Huuup. Hoo. I let out a small breath, and the anger sitting in my body seemed to ease, just a little.
Changing bodies appeared to have gentled my temper as well.
I'd taken one look at the generous heart affixed to my chest and thought, maybe—and sure enough, it was a truly merciful disposition.
Set beside the insane rage I'd felt right up until the moment of possession, what I felt now was negligible. If before had been a California wildfire, this was a low, patient flame. I half wondered whether I was the Holy Mother reborn. A generous bosom really was science.
"A transformation really is a transformation. This is fun."
Anyway. Back to the point.
'I' had failed. Failed at the simple work of becoming someone's friend.
So it was fair to assume something had happened that I didn't know about. Or else that simple thing had been genuinely difficult.
"Even so, I don't think I'm the problem… Who could possibly dislike someone like this?"
My eyes turned once more to the figure in the mirror.
I'd looked the first time without much thought, and looking again changed nothing. A goddess of beauty stood in the glass. The skin was an unusual color, but calling that a flaw didn't feel right either.
Beauty may be subjective, but even subjectivity has a floor. Beauty that transcends the human might point in different directions, yet in the end it is only natural that everyone praises it. If anything, there was a languid allure to her that could bewitch even other women. Had a woman like this existed in the real world, she could have toppled anyone she set her mind on.
"And it isn't as if the personality is bad, either."
Even the voice was unreal.
I wasn't muttering to myself like a madwoman for nothing. It was my own voice, but if I'd set this as my phone alarm, I never would have overslept. What a waste.
"Hm?"
Tok. Tok. Tok.
A knock, cutting through the thread of my thoughts. At the voice that followed, a laugh slipped out of me before I knew it.
"Young lady. Did you cough?"
A rather typical opening. Given the material, I'd expected something more.
"Come in."
Watching the door creak open, I picked the broken thought back up.
Even so, the me standing here now was plainly far better off than the 'me' who appeared in the work. I had a past life's memories, and unlike the newborn Lust Hope, my personality was already fully formed. Wouldn't that make the problem easier to solve?
I probably don't need to worry too much…? I'm not even the original protagonist. If something happens around me, then something happens.
A striking beauty in glasses came through the door, and I offered her a light nod. She bowed in turn and gestured, and more than ten women filed in after her.
They bowed to me as well, then moved as if each had a section assigned to her. Cleaning, by the look of it. A room this size would certainly take a great many people. I was thinking that lazily when a memory surfaced.
It was a comment.
One of the comments I'd seen the first time I went into the community. I couldn't remember the exact context, or the full text… but right. It seemed 'I' had killed herself.
Suicide…
The thought occurred to me—just a little, the tiniest bit—that this life might not be all that pleasant.
As far as 'I,' Lust Hope, knew:
The Hope family was a count's house in the Yume Kingdom, set in a corner of the continent, with a history of nearly two hundred years. Under the family head, Count Hope (name unknown), and Countess Hope (name unknown), there was their golden child—me, Lust Hope—and Lust Hope had come of age only yesterday.
The family's strength was absurdly high for a mere countship. More than a thousand knights among the retainers, and ten thousand servants if you added them all together: a family so insane it wouldn't even show up in a novel.
That was the Hope family's spec sheet, planted in my head.
"…If you're going to write a setting, at least make it plausible."
"Yes? Is something uncomfortable, my lady?"
"No. I'm fine. Thank you."
I lifted the corners of my mouth and smiled.
More precisely, I smiled for them. That was the better way to put it.
Morning routine: bath time. Beautiful women who looked like maids bustled about for the sole purpose of washing me, and staring blankly at the scene left me with a strange feeling. Strangers I didn't know were tending my body with such care. It ought to have been awkward, and yet part of me accepted it as perfectly natural.
This, too, was probably one of the false memories planted in me, like my knowledge of the Hope family. It did make adapting easier. How ugly would it have been if I'd frozen and stammered? And considering how insanely ticklish I'd been in my past life, this was a mercy. Flinching every time someone touched me would have been strange in its own right. Given the air I was giving off now, even a trivial gesture could flip the genre without warning. If they all went red in the face while their hands kept moving… well. That would be something.
But wait.
Taking it as natural…
This is a little dangerous.
I'd let it pass lightly until now, but objectively my situation was clearly wrong. Possession was too enormous to dwell on, fine. Even so, I'd shown my naked body in front of dozens of strangers, and even now women were waiting on me hand and foot.
One of them was working some liquid—shampoo or scented oil, I couldn't tell—into my hair, and four more were massaging and washing my body from either side. Five people, attached to the simple task of giving me a bath.
A situation I could never have imagined in the past.
And yet I take this as a matter of course…
Maybe the planted memories were so strong that I'd been ignoring the abnormalities around me, the way no one doubts that one plus one equals two.
Was something utterly natural to 'me' actually natural at all? Hard to say…
"Come to think of it, my room is quite large."
"Is it? It is certainly the largest room in the mansion, but… I wouldn't say it's that large. They say the royal palace is several times bigger."
"Really? I see. How curious."
A room the size of a soccer field isn't that large, apparently… and the ceiling is obscenely high… and this is supposed to be normal?
"Interesting."
The moment I moved to rise, two of the maids helping with my bath carefully stopped. Watching that, I couldn't help but admire them. Reading their master's mood from a movement that small… so this is what professionals look like? Impressive.
"Sorry, but I'd like a moment to think in quiet. Would you all step out? I can dry myself, so just hang a towel and go."
"Yes. If you need anything, please call at once."
"All right. Thank you."
At a glance from the head maid, the people who had been cleaning moved as one toward a small side door. Watching them, I thought of troops on parade. How did they match their steps so elegantly, and on such short notice? Professionals really are something.
"They're so coordinated it's like one person is controlling them all. Ah. Maybe they actually are? More than that, this feels nice."
I sank deep into the bath and opened my eyes. Sunlight shattered across the water, and it was beautiful. Things like this really were lovely. And still, I felt uneasy.
Isn't the design of this room a little strange? It's like…
A well-decorated prison, isn't it?
Then were those people jailers, watching a prisoner? And if so—why?
Even as the thought went on, my heart kept a leisurely beat.
Thump. Thump. Thump. Unhurried.
"There's more tension here than I thought."