I’m glad my sisters are smart.
Usually, in situations like this, clichés arise where people from another world misunderstand those who originally lived here, leading to accidents. At least Alice and Claire didn’t do that.
From the start, there was no way I could let them use public transportation, like subways or buses. Of course, if they did, I would join them, but weekday mornings are usually crowded. If we ended up in a situation where we all couldn’t board because the doors closed, that would be a disaster.
That said, I couldn’t just keep having them wear my old clothes. I mean, I was born this way, and the clothes I wore as a guy were way too big for the three of us. Alice and Claire seemed to recognize that, and thankfully didn’t ask me why. Still, we desperately needed new clothes.
And just in case anything happened, I had to at least tell them a bit about the geography around where we live. We couldn’t afford to get lost out there.
…There were many other things to sort out, but for now, we decided to focus on getting clothes first.
Both Alice and Claire come from noble families. To be precise, Alice is from the royal family, while Claire is from Baron Grace’s Estate. The gap in their backgrounds is quite significant, but at the very least, they needed to have some common sense to survive in this world.
Both of them, following my advice, avoided unnecessary comments. Claire, of course, but even Alice seemed to have a lot of questions she wanted to ask while looking at the world with curious eyes. However, they didn’t ask anything that would make them look suspicious about what they should naturally know.
Of course, once we returned to the room, all those pent-up questions burst out.
“Why are these pants so short? If I wear a long top, it looks like I’m not wearing anything at all! Do people here dress like this?”
“Not everyone dresses this way, but there are definitely people who do it on purpose. I’m not entirely sure why. Maybe they think it looks pretty.”
And honestly, it does look pretty to me too.
Honestly, there would have been short skirts in the world we lived in before, right? The academy uniforms had pretty short skirts. We could adjust it a bit if we wanted to, but there were still limits.
Is it the difference between skirts and pants? Thinking about it, in that world, women wearing skirts was quite normal.
“What on earth is this made of? Is it thin rubber… no, that doesn’t seem right.”
“It’s probably made from something extracted from petroleum… I can’t say for sure, though, because I don’t know the details. It’s too specialized of a topic for me.”
I answered Alice as she fiddled with her windbreaker.
Okay, at least the clothes and shoes were taken care of. Thankfully, the underwear didn’t differ much from what we had in our world. Of course, the underwear worn by commoners looked much puffier than what we think of, but the ones worn by nobles or wealthier commoners were quite similar to what we’re used to.
It seems the price is based on how much effort goes into making it and how much leftover fabric there is.
Anyway, thanks to that fact, I didn’t have to teach these kids how to wear underwear. …If the types of underwear were different, I probably wouldn’t know how to wear them either. After all, I’ve never lived as a woman in this world before.
“So what do we do now, sister?”
Claire asked with sparkling eyes.
Her eyes, which have been shining bright since we first met yesterday, are almost mesmerizing.
Alice’s eyes sparkle too, but not as intensely as Claire’s.
“For now, it seems best if we study this world for a few days. Our knowledge of this world is quite lacking, but at the very least, you should be able to walk around alone when it’s urgent.”
“Are you going to explain it to us?”
I shook my head.
Even I think I’m not good at teaching someone. The reason I’ve hidden so much until now is because it’s ‘hard to explain and ambiguous’ so…
But thankfully, in this world, there are plenty of means to learn without knowing the letters.
Alice and Claire can’t read the letters of this world, but they can understand spoken language, just like I could when I crossed over to the other world.
Whether that would work for videos viewed on a computer, I’m not sure.
*
Fortunately, both Alice and Claire could understand the spoken words in the videos.
One more thing we realized was that the three of us—Alice, Claire, and I—could understand ‘all the languages included in the videos.’
The common language in that world was the Empire Language. There were also Velbur and some other country’s languages, but if someone were of a high enough status to talk to me, it seemed that using the Empire Language was a form of ‘cultured disposition.’
Thinking back, I had been able to interact naturally with people from all over the world in the previous world. Even when I ran into someone who spoke a different language, I could communicate naturally while recognizing that it was another language. Nobles from foreign lands would naturally converse with me in the Empire Language, but with shopkeepers or people in the streets who wouldn’t know such things, I could still talk to them if I set my mind to it.
Having crossed over to another world yet still being able to communicate seemed so normal to me that I hadn’t realized just how amazing that ability was.
“…So, this means that the foreign language skills you’ve had until now are the abilities you gained?”
I thought Alice was just naturally able to chat with foreigners as if it were an everyday occurrence.
Besides, there were plenty of instances where the word orders and vocabulary were similar too.
But like how Korean and Japanese have many similar sounds and word orders, it still wasn’t easy to learn the other languages properly.
“It’s still okay because I could talk with you, right?”
Claire said. Alice shut her mouth tight in response.
“You fell into the orphanage. If we hadn’t been able to communicate back then—well, if it were you, I think you would’ve saved me anyway.”
Claire smiled brightly at me after saying that, making me feel a bit guilty, even though I hadn’t done anything wrong.
“…Well, it seems having this ability is why we can communicate with someone here.”
Eventually, Alice nodded in agreement.
Fortunately, there were several videos explaining how to use subways and buses, and even how to transfer public transport in Seoul. It seemed targeted more towards people who were not foreigners but were using public transport for the first time in Seoul.
First, there were videos about traffic, and then there were videos about conversation methods between Koreans. Videos explaining basic etiquette were plentiful on -Tube, more than I could ever imagine.
With those videos set for us to study one by one, I started preparing dinner.
…It’s been so long since I last cooked, so I wouldn’t be surprised if I couldn’t do it properly, but still, I couldn’t just feed them instant food.
Before earning a decent income, I had to save money by cooking.
Taking out a cookbook I impulsively bought long ago at a bookstore, I found it sitting on the kitchen table where I’d left it, covered in a thick layer of dust.
Even after wiping off the dust, there were still some specks on the sticky notes I had attached throughout.
Those were marks for dishes I found delicious, ones that were okay to make when I was too lazy, or even ones that tasted reasonable even if I messed it up. Later on, I’d gotten so lazy about cooking that I ended up drawing the conclusion that rather than making one serving of a dish, I’d rather just order food because that was easier, but I suppose I used that book quite a bit for the first year after I started living alone.
In any case, there weren’t any particularly difficult secrets, and since I’ll be making three servings from now on, this is probably a better option than just ordering food every day.
Thinking like that, I grabbed some random sticky note and opened the book.
I spotted a recipe for spicy gochujang stew. Recalling the ingredients I had in the fridge, I decided that this would be dinner for today.
*
While I was cooking, I didn’t bother to keep an eye on Alice and Claire. I was a bit nervous since it had been a while since I’d cooked.
I focused intently on the recipe to avoid any mistakes and after finishing the cooking, I turned around to call the two—
“……”
“……”
I realized both of them were intensely watching a video.
The content of the video was a common gaming broadcast.
However, they were playing the Chronicles of Aetherna, and it had scenes with the companions we knew from that game.
Wait, how many people out there are watching this game as a stream??
Besides, it was a broadcast from a pretty woman, even if I didn’t know her name.
They seemed to barely understand the content of the game since they couldn’t read the text, but Claire and Alice’s eyes sparkled at the screen.
…Actually, I don’t know why Alice’s eyes are sparkling too.
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