WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

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◈ Omniscient First-Person's Viewpoint

Chapter 338

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Sleep Well

Maybe it was because we were inside the Geraut, but time slipped past without us noticing. We finished a quick dinner and tidied up, and by then night had already crept in. On that rattling Cataphract, I used to wonder why time refused to move, but inside the Geraut, night fell before I could blink. Seems even time prefers to travel by vehicle.

The Geraut ran without rest the whole while. Whenever it started to slow, Perru would haul black steel out of the hold and toss it into the blast furnace, and every time, the Geraut surged forward like something had cracked a whip across its back.

A question came to me, and I asked.

"I heard the Geraut runs on the lord's power. Does it keep moving at night?"

"...If enough fuel goes in."

How that worked was a mystery, but Perru didn't know the mechanism either. The one who built it was the Golden Mirror. All you could do was accept it.

After filling our stomachs and finally getting a proper wash for the first time in a while, I went looking for somewhere to sleep. Perru spoke up.

"...Room. There."

Perru pointed at the room they had been using as a storeroom. Inside, two beds sat in sparse, plain arrangement. It looked narrow enough that maintaining any kind of privacy, let alone comfort, would be a real struggle.

I scrunched my face and grumbled.

"Look. I don't want to be overly picky as a guest, but why exactly do I have to sleep in that cramped little corner? Unlike Azzy or Tyr, I'm a human being who actually needs a living space."

"...No other option."

'...There's not enough room for two beds anywhere else. Two men go in the storeroom.'

If I had it all to myself, I could have lived with that. But that wasn't even the case. And of all people, my roommate had to be...

"Wait, why am I sharing a room with her?"

A regressor disguised as a man. Genuinely dangerous.

If I happened to drift too close in my sleep... I might catch a Heavenly Mirror counterattack and never wake up at all.

"Why is Mr. Shei the one making a fuss? If anything, my life is the one in danger sharing a room with him!"

"What danger could you possibly be in!"

'Sharing a room puts me in far more danger! I can't even rest easy without worrying my identity will slip out! Tch. How long do I have to keep being treated like a man...!'

What danger? We're not children. Sleeping in the same room as someone of the opposite sex isn't a crisis. The same bed would be another story, but a room? That's a stretch. If this was going to be a problem, she shouldn't have disguised herself as a man in the first place.

"I have no way to defend myself if Mr. Shei gets any funny ideas! You'd lock two people in a room together and think nothing of what might happen to me!"

"What funny ideas?! I've never thought anything like that about you! For starters, I'm a..."

"You're a what?"

'...I could just come out and tell him I'm a woman...! Huu. Calm down. Not yet. Staying male until the Duchy business is settled is the better play. It won't happen, but if someone mistakes me for the Holy Maiden even by accident... the Duchy and Tyrkanzyaka might turn against us.'

The regressor pushed the rising impulse back down.

The power to know the future belonged to the Holy Maiden. So the regressor had apparently been mistaken for the Holy Maiden more than once. In many situations that worked in her favor, but not right now, not while Tyr was with us.

The regressor had her own plan. Though honestly, whether it truly counted as being "mistaken" for the Holy Maiden was debatable.

"Last time, I tried to wake you up nicely and you nearly took my head off! And then you had the nerve to say, don't touch me while I'm sleeping. Unbelievable. The gall."

"I, I can't help it! A traveler needs some way to protect himself when he sleeps!"

"If it stopped at protecting yourself, I wouldn't say a word! The problem is that you aimed right for the neck of the person trying to wake you up kindly!"

"I didn't actually cut you!"

"If you had, you'd be a murderer! Don't act smug about not cutting me, be grateful I didn't get cut!"

We were bickering loudly when a boy with a short bob walked in through the doorway. He had a face pretty enough to be mistaken for a girl's, and he snickered as he spoke.

"My, my. Shei doesn't know how precious this is. Do you have any idea how rare an opportunity it is to sleep next to Father?"

The regressor looked at Hilde and tilted her head.

Hilde did look like the regressor right now, to be sure. The sharp eyes visible beneath that short bob, with the whole neck exposed, were exactly like the regressor's.

But not quite right. Every transformation Hilde had done up until now had been perfect enough to startle even the originals, but this one looked like anyone could tell them apart at a glance. The skill was there, but something about it sat wrong next to the real thing.

"What's this? A transformation? For one, it..."

The halfway-there "Shei" let out a long sigh and waved a hand.

"Not alike at all, is it? Yeah. A failure. Your character is just too hard to interpret, so it ended up half-baked like this. When I can't get immersed, the acting falls flat too."

The regressor looked quietly pleased that Hilde hadn't managed to become her. Maybe it was pride in her own singularity. You'd expect her to lash out at a copy of her own face, but her manner stayed relaxed.

"Hmph. Obviously. Not everything in the world goes the way you want it."

"'I' learned that today too. Both hands up, all four limbs surrendered. I think I'm misreading something somewhere, but I can't figure out what."

No wonder. Without knowing the premise of regression, how would you make sense of that inner world? Even I with mind reading couldn't fully understand her.

Hilde raised both hands in surrender, then pulled a mischievous face and flung herself at me.

"Anyway! If you hate sharing a room with Father that much, swap with 'me'! 'I' have absolutely no problem sleeping next to Father! No, actually, I'd prefer it!"

"Hah?"

"Are you asking if it's fine for a man and a woman to sleep in the same room? It's fine. 'I' am currently disguised as a man! Not just the same room, same bed would be perfectly safe too!"

No. I was the one saying no to that. It was already annoying enough to share a narrow bed, and why would my roommate have to be a man? That wasn't safe for me. If anything, could she at least do it in her actual female form.

The regressor gave Hilde's offer serious consideration. But only for a moment, then she caught sight of her own face pressed up against mine and felt a wave of repulsion.

"Forget it. I'd rather skip it than watch my own face clinging to him like that."

"Oh? Are you jealous?"

"Jealous of what! It's just unpleasant! You'd feel the same if you saw your own face doing ridiculous things, walking around like that!"

"Not especially? 'I' can do all manner of ridiculous things in 'my' own face, no problem. I wonder what kind I should do~?"

Saying that, Hilde sidled casually toward the storeroom. Then darkness swelled up behind her and lunged without warning, coiling around her arms and legs.

"Oh my? Tyrkanzyaka?"

『A grown young woman waltzing straight into a men's room. Come back here.』

"It's that old-fashioned thinking that slows progress, you know~."

And with that, Hilde was dragged off into the darkness. Perru watched a person get swallowed by shadows and bolted, terrified all over again.

In the end, only the regressor and I were left in front of the storeroom. She swept a hand through her hair, clicked her tongue, and waved dismissively.

"Fine. I'll hang a cloth down the middle, so stay on your side."

"I don't understand why you're the one acting defensive. If anyone should be screaming, it's me. Unlike you, I am a perfectly harmless person with not a shred of aggression!"

"It's not you specifically I'm guarding against. It would be the same with anyone. When there's someone else's presence in the same space, I can't sleep."

'As long as no one's nearby, it isn't dangerous. Not for me, and not for them. Everyone...'

The regressor pulled out a wide sheet of cloth and divided the room down the middle. The space had been cramped enough already and now felt suffocating, but from the other side of the cloth came a noticeably easier feeling. Alone in her own space, the regressor let her tension go.

Whatever. Hang it or don't. I was actually more comfortable with it up. No more worrying I might accidentally brush against something and lose my head.

Moving carefully so as not to touch the cloth, I lay down on the cot.

"Privacy secured, at least. Good night, Mr. Shei."

"...You too."

The answer came a beat late.

-------

Elik, king of the Gold State, gave an order to her disciples.

"Fill this room using a single gold coin. The one who fills it most wisely will earn the right to receive my teaching."

It was a question so worn down it had reached the marrow, and the disciples each laid out what they had come up with. Sound, light, fragrance. They packed the room with all manner of invisible things, then stood there with satisfied smiles, waiting for Elik's verdict.

But Elik's test held one more meaning, hidden beneath the first.

"Water that flows to the sea becomes cloud and falls again as rain. A broken tool is melted down and made steel once more. Those who seek wisdom must think not only of spending, but of how to refill. That is far harder."

The first question was famous, but the disciples had never heard the rest of the story. As they stood looking blankly at one another, Elik gave another command.

"Turn what you filled the room with back into gold."

The disciples scrambled to gather what remained and convert it back.

But what is spent tends to lose its value. Not a single disciple managed to bring back one whole coin.

...Until the Golden Mirror appeared.

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