When I woke again, I only felt that my whole body was wrapped in something very soft, very soft.
My face was pressed against an object as soft as water.
As I woke, I caught in my breath a faint, slightly salty smell of sweat.
“Nn…”
A voice came pressed against my ear, a little muffled.
A strand of fine gold hung at the tip of my nose.
I brushed it off my nose by reflex, and right after that a “Yah~” came pressed against my ear.
Nn…?
Blurred sleep-heavy eyes gradually grew clear.
The crimson that had dyed the sky had also dyed the entire desert red.
As the soft thing pressed against my body moved, a thread of fine gauze slipped down from a scrap of cover above my head and fell against my neck.
“You’re awake?”
The gentle voice came the moment my body left that softness.
I looked up toward the direction of the voice.
Those eyes, azure as the sky, were slightly narrowed as they looked down at me.
On faintly reddened cheeks—Alice was smiling.
“Alice.”
A layer of fine gauze floated on her white robe.
As she opened the arms that had been holding me, that layer of gauze slid from her body with a fine rustle.
If she had not been wearing a hood, sleeping outdoors in an environment like this would have left even the inside of her hair full of sand.
Looking at her gently smiling face, I reached out and patted the dust from her shoulder.
“Th-thank you,” I said weakly.
“Hm?”
Alice did not even understand why I would say thank you.
To her, she seemed to think it was only natural.
But no matter how you looked at it, she was still just an ordinary girl.
On a cold desert night, she had warmed me with her own body and blocked the wind and sand with her own body.
I…
I actually felt a little ache in my heart.
If I were truly an angel, I would surely be able to do something for her.
I might not be able to change her fate as a fallen noble, or change the poor life she had grown up with in a barren desert oasis.
At least next time, let me be the one to block the wind and sand for you…
“Thank you.”
Ah…
I was this fragile.
When I opened my eyes and looked at the sun giving off crimson light at the peak of the sky, when I opened my eyes and faced the uninhabited desert, I, who seemed only a moment ago to have been sleeping comfortably on a warm bed at home, deeply realized I was in a cruel reality.
What other world…
It was all a lie.
Crossing into another world was not fun at all.
There was no starter perk, no one-versus-a-thousand, no founding a nation and farming.
There was only.
Only.
Only two ordinary girls in the desert, lost, not knowing where the future lay.
Alice shook the sand off herself, took off her hood, and stood up from sand that had already piled into a clear mound.
It was another piece of bread.
She handed it to me, then faced the lake that had nearly drowned us last night.
“We’re lucky. At least we don’t have to worry about water now.”
“…Mm.”
At least there was water.
The sky brightened bit by bit.
The faint red of morning was gradually replaced by the azure of the sky.
I wanted to check the time by the [Heavenly Ring], but the [Heavenly Ring] had already sunk beyond the horizon, vague, drowned in the haze of dust in the air.
Very far, very far.
The sun, as expected, sat motionless in the exact center of the sky.
In my original world, the sun rising in the east and setting in the west was something ordinary beyond ordinary.
I had no mood left to wonder why the sun here would not set.
I broke the hard bread in my hand and walked closer to Alice at the lakeside.
She was washing her hair in the lake and looked back at me behind her.
Her eyes were always so bright.
Water droplets soaked through her thin dress, revealing skin that was a little yellowish.
She did not seem to mind that even her little stomach showed clearly through the white dress for me to see, but I still turned my head and held out that half loaf to her.
“Ah, thank you. But Yulin-chan will get hungry eating only half a loaf, won’t you?”
That goes for you too…
Last night you still carried sleeping me for so long.
“I-I’m not hungry,” I said.
As the feeling of the bread sliding from my hand arrived, the sound of splashing water came from behind me again.
Alice, bread in her mouth, spoke a little muffled.
“Isn’t Yulin-chan going to take a bath? You’re covered in sand, right?”
Eh…
“No!”
“Eh…?…”
Th-this…
Taking off clothes in broad daylight under the open sky—n-no…
“Then…”
The splash-splash of water drew closer to me.
Alice’s voice always sounded so soft, so warm.
Then she gently lifted my hair.
“Then shall I wash Yulin-chan’s hair for you?”
F-fine.
When the icy water brushed through my strands, I felt at least a little lighter.
Just as Alice had said, under sunlight hot as fire the temperature rose quickly.
In the distance, something like a mirror on the ground wavered and flashed with silver-white light.
Even I understood that refraction unique to high heat.
What you saw was only a drifting illusion.
Wind magic blew through my hair.
The faint fresh scent of leaves could make a person forget for a moment that they were deep in a barren desert.
As my hair grew dry and fluffy, Alice’s fingers gently worked apart the tangles in it.
“Yulin-chan’s hair is very soft,” Alice said.
“I-is it?”
With my back to Alice, I had forgotten how long it had been since anyone other than a barber had handled my hair like this.
Alice then laughed softly and went on.
“I had thought Lord Angel was such a distant existence, but unexpectedly, you’re very approachable.”
Does this count as approachable?
From start to finish I felt I had been treated like a little sister.
The kind of little sister who was deeply cherished, at that.
“Nn…”
“That’s right, has Yulin-chan tried alkali paste? I heard washing your hair with that gets it very clean, and it smells nice too.”
Alkali paste?
A word I had never heard, but from Alice’s description it should be something like shampoo.
I nodded.
“I-I’ve used something like it, I guess…”
“No wonder Yulin-chan’s hair is so clean. But it’s so unexpected. Do angels and humans use the same things?”
Alice kept talking as she tended my hair.
“Lord Angel’s everyday life should be about the same as the imperial family’s, right?”
“I… I don’t know.”
I really did not know how to answer that.
After all, I did not know how angels lived, or how the imperial family lived.
“But why would you say that?” I asked, lifting my eyes to look at Alice above my head.
“Poor people like us can’t afford something like alkali paste. And water is scarce in the desert to begin with. That stuff makes the water unusable.”
After tying my braid back up for me at last, Alice stretched lightly and started moving her body as she spoke.
“In all the time I’ve been growing up, I’ve only used it once. After washing my hair with that it really did feel nice.”
Hearing you say that, I really do miss shampoo a little…
And.
If I could, I really wanted a hot bath.
“The clothes on Yulin-chan’s body, you can tell with one touch they’re a very, very fine fabric. I don’t know what it is exactly, but cloth this smooth is probably only equal in value to the silk the church uses to wrap holy relics.”
Alice said this.
“So the lives of you Lord Angels must be very good, like the imperial family.”
“Coming down to the ground must be really hard, Yulin-chan.”
She probably did not mean anything by it.
But her words did strike my heart.
I did not know how the imperial family of this world lived, or how angels lived.
But suddenly taking a NEET who at home did nothing but draw and play games, who could live comfortably without stepping out the door, and throwing her into this desert where even one step was exhausting.
…
“I…”
I took a deep breath.
Looking at Alice, who was doing stretching exercises, I somehow smiled.
“I don’t know…”
“But looking at Alice, I feel.”
“It isn’t hard.”
“Eh?”
“Maybe saying it this way sounds a little condescending, or has a bit of a ‘self-superior’ meaning.”
“But the reason I say it is because Alice is beside me.”
“Eh… eh-eh…”
Somehow Alice, who had been stretching quite naturally, crouched all the way down on the ground.
So she had times when she got this embarrassed too?
I walked to her side and crouched down.
“Really. Thank you very much.”
“If it weren’t for you, I think I wouldn’t have made it.”
“Yulin-chan~~~”
Before I could react, the next instant Alice hugged me tight.
“My Lord Angel~~”
“Super! Invincible! Cute!~”
…
…
I-I’m going to suffocate.
…