Chapter 18
“I’ve got chills.”
“What? Is a ghost clinging to you because we’re going to the library?”
“I feel like someone’s watching me.”
“Actually, they’re looking at me. I’m a pretty charming guy, you know?”
“…?”
Before they entered the library, Seonghyeon’s sudden self-praise left Suyeon so dumbfounded she couldn’t say a word.
Fortunately, the creepy gaze that seemed to be following Suyeon disappeared the moment they passed through the library doors.
Instead, near the entrance, a bespectacled librarian was moving books when she noticed the two of them.
“Hello~ Oh my, Cleric Raine!”
“Haha, yes. I’m Raine.”
“It’s been a while, hasn’t it? Well… you must have read all the books worth borrowing here by now.”
“Well, reading is food for the soul, after all. So here I am.”
The bespectacled librarian looked at Seonghyeon and smiled brightly.
Suyeon stared at Seonghyeon in disbelief.
Unlike her ordinary memories of him from high school, in this other world he’d become a total Casanova, getting involved with all sorts of women…
“E-v-e-r-y woman looks at you with that kind of gaze~ I’m jealous~”
“What? Jealous?”
“Oh, come on. What? Me? Of whom?”
“Did becoming a woman make your girlish heart start bubbling over? Sure, my Charm stat isn’t bad. So what? Are you swooning?”
“What? Me? Jealous of a woman? You crazy bastard! Stop talking nonsense.”
Despite her rough words, Suyeon sulked and stalked off into the library, where the books were shelved.
But she couldn’t go any farther. The librarian stopped her and started speaking to her.
Unable to move forward or understand what the librarian was saying, Suyeon could only look at Seonghyeon.
“…What’d she say?”
“Only librarians can go in there. She’s telling you not to enter.”
“Then… how are we supposed to borrow a book?”
“If there’s a book you need, you have to ask about it. We couldn’t find anything without an index anyway.”
“Why don’t they have one? It’s a library.”
“Library indexes are a system that developed along with modern libraries. Of course they don’t exist in a world like this.”
“Oh… So can we pull off a modern-knowledge power fantasy? ‘Ah, this is called soap.’”
“You used soap when you washed yourself, didn’t you?”
“Ah… right.”
“Some things just aren’t possible.”
“So you’ve tried it before.”
……
When Suyeon gave him a knowing grin, Seonghyeon brushed it off.
He couldn’t give his childhood friend, who knew almost everything about him, ammunition. He never knew when or where she’d strike back.
The librarian, who had been watching the two of them talk with curiosity, tilted her head and asked them a question.
“You seem close with the elf beside you.”
“Yes… We’ve been friends for a long time. We’re from the Eastern Labyrinth.”
“But that elf looks like she belongs to the Lacia race.”
“Ah, that’s why we came. This friend has lost her memory, so she doesn’t know anything about elves, either. Yesterday, Mouraguga scattered some powder, and she started acting strangely. It was quite a nuisance.”
“Aah… I see. But if she really is of the Lacia race, it would be better to return her to her own people. They’re an incredibly fearsome race. So… you’re looking for a book about elves, right?”
“Yes, if you have one, I’d appreciate it.”
As Seonghyeon made his request politely, Suyeon stared at him.
“What’d she say?”
“What do you mean? I asked for an encyclopedia of elves, and she said she’d get one.”
“Then why did you talk for so long? That was flirting.”
“What kind of word is that?”
“You don’t know what flirting is?”
“That word didn’t exist before I died.”
“What? When did you die?”
“When I was twenty-one.”
“Wait, are we a year apart? Was that slang that became popular in that one-year gap?”
“I guess so.”
“Anyway, I mean you’re seducing that woman.”
“How would you know that?”
“I don’t.”
“Then… am I seducing you by talking to you like this?”
Seonghyeon deliberately gave Suyeon a sleazy look and met her eyes. Her hand came up of its own accord.
A moment later, a sharp slap rang out, and a red handprint appeared on Seonghyeon’s face.
“Oh… that hurt.”
“Are you a gay bastard? Why are you acting like that with me?”
“Look at yourself objectively. Want me to buy you a mirror?”
“Are you crazy? Why would I look in a mirror? Do I have princess syndrome?”
“You don’t have princess syndrome, since you actually are a princess…”
Unlike Suyeon, who was huffing angrily, Seonghyeon looked perfectly at ease despite having just been slapped.
The librarian, who had found the book inside, approached the crouching Seonghyeon and the standing, angry Suyeon.
“Oh my… Is something the matter?”
“Haha, no. I was teasing her.”
<You bastard, try saying something weird again.>
<I’m not saying anything weird.>
“Anyway, here’s the Elf Encyclopedia… I’ll get back to it. I hope you two make up!”
“Yes, understood. And we weren’t fighting.”
<What’s with that expression? Did you say something weird again?>
<Oh, just be quiet for a second.>
With Suyeon poking him in the side and the librarian walking away in front of them with a faint blush…
Seonghyeon was caught between the two of them, having to reply in different languages.
When the librarian went back toward the stacks and disappeared from sight, only the two of them remained in the reading room.
“She’s gone… She was pretty.”
“Is that your type?”
“Yeah.”
“She’s pretty, all right. You two would look good together. What a lovely yuri couple.”
“Yuri? What’d you say? If I dated that librarian, it’d be yuri?”
“A yuri romance between a TS girl and a girl librarian would suit them perfectly, don’t you think?”
“Hey! Yuri with TS in the mix isn’t yuri!”
“A TS character is a girl now, so two girls together makes it yuri, right?”
“If the mind’s male, then it’s straight, not yuri!”
Yuri-purist Suyeon and yuri-inclusive Seonghyeon spent all their time at the library entrance debating whether yuri with a TS character counted as real yuri.
By the time they got back, it was late in the evening.
**
“You wash first.”
“Why? You usually go in first.”
“I’m tired. I want to lie down.”
“Go ahead, then. I’ll wash first.”
“Okay.”
Suyeon didn’t feel like washing up, since she hadn’t been to the Labyrinth.
In the Labyrinth, she walked through filthy dust and mud and sometimes got covered in blood, so she always felt like washing up. But today, they’d just been walking around town without anything happening.
The grueling march over the past three days (by Suyeon’s standards) had also played a big part.
Her whole body ached, and her head felt hot.
In the end, the two of them launched into a heated debate, but never reached a conclusion.
How could TS turn her into a woman...? Wasn’t she plainly still a man on the inside...?
From where Suyeon lay, she could see a full-length mirror reflecting the room.
In the mirror, a fixture you’d expect to find in a hotel-like place like this, a cute-faced girl was looking back at her.
That girl moved as Suyeon wanted her to, and Suyeon knew the body was her own.
“Phew… I’m a man.”
She couldn’t remember exactly how many days it had been, but she’d repeated those words over and over.
Whenever she went to the bathroom, woke up, got her long hair caught, accidentally bumped into things, or felt her skirt flutter in the breeze… whenever she ran into some annoying hassle, she wondered if maybe she wasn’t a man after all.
Even so, she was a man.
She would be a man to the very end.
“Hey, are you asleep?”
“Gah! I’m not asleep!”
“If you’re going to sleep, wash up first. You’ve been sweating.”
“Ah… right, I should.”
“And you didn’t do the laundry yesterday.”
“Sorry.”
“You think saying sorry is enough?”
“I really am sorry. I was so tired yesterday.”
“I know. I won’t blame you any more. With a body like that, you must get tired easily.”
Suyeon, who’d dozed off, wiped the drool from the bedsheet and got up.
As Seonghyeon had said, whether or not she felt like washing, she should at least wash up before going to sleep.
Suyeon hastily took off her clothes and went into the bathroom.
After watching her go in, Seonghyeon opened the Elf Encyclopedia.
The Elf Encyclopedia was a book compiled from the observation journals of a male adventurer who had won the elves’ favor and lived among them.
That wasn’t something Seonghyeon already knew; it was written in the preface.
That was why the Elf Encyclopedia was written in Human, too.
Mouraguga powder aside, the first thing Seonghyeon looked up was the Lacia race.
He found the race in the index and opened right to the page on the Lacia.
[The most noble race in this world. Their haughty eyes, which look down even on other elves as an inferior race, are justified. A long-eared people with silver hair and violet eyes, the Lacia are like the progenitors of the elves. And so, though their tribes are made up of mixed-bloods, only the royal family consists of true-blooded members.]
“Wow… So she’s a pure-blooded High Elf.”
[They are desperate to preserve their bloodline, for their blood contains tremendous power. That power is so great that the elves born to a few defectors and members of other races have each become the progenitors of their own peoples. Thus, all elves hold the Lacia in reverence, while the Lacia live out their own reclusive lives.]
“That’s what I heard, all right…”
[This is as much as I can write in this observation journal. Even among the elves, little is known about the Lacia. Unfortunately, even I, the observer, have never met one.]
That was what the very short, one-page description said.
This thick Elf Encyclopedia devoted only a single page to the Lacia.
They were so reclusive that little was known about them, and everyone seemed to agree they were dangerous.
Even that entry was the most substantial one in the Elf Encyclopedia.
“Should I… tell her about this?”
The friend showering in the bathroom was a princess from the kingdom of the elves—the most fearsome of all elves.
And now she wore iron chains around her neck like a slave.
“I’ve already run into a few elves… Are they going to come after me?”
While Seonghyeon wondered what he should do, Suyeon calmly hummed as she washed.