Carrying the little medicine box, Ella went back to her own room.
Stepping inside, she looked up. The lamp overhead gave off a soft white light.
There was no electricity in this world, she thought. So the lamp must run on mana?
"Magic, huh. I should be able to learn it, right?"
Her discount dad's household hadn't been well off, so Ella had never studied magic.
Come to think of it, she still didn't know why she had turned into a girl.
"I'll go ask that bastard tomorrow."
Sitting on the bed, Ella set the box on her lap.
She opened it. Inside were a roll of gauze and two bottles of unfamiliar potion. Ella had no idea whether the stuff was meant to be drunk or applied, and there were no instructions in the box.
Lifting her sleeve again, hesitating, Ella picked up one of the bottles.
She twisted the cap off, and a strange smell of eggshell came out. Frowning slightly, she rinsed the wound with it.
"Sss..."
It hurt when the potion touched the wound. Fortunately the clothes had been clean and there was little dirt in it.
After the rinse, she wet the gauze with the potion and wound it carefully around her forearm.
Doing it alone was genuinely awkward. All she could manage was to hold one end in her teeth and grip the other in her hand.
"That reminds me. Come find me tomorrow morning."
The door swung open and Elos barged in, and the first thing she saw was the girl bandaging her own wound.
Something in her stirred slightly. She looked very like a small beast licking its injuries alone. Rather pitiful.
Of course, Elos only thought she looked good like that. She did not actually pity her.
"Fine."
With something clamped in her teeth, Ella's voice came out muffled.
Elos didn't much care. She hurried out again, pulling the door shut behind her.
"...Phew. Done at last."
After Elos left, it took Ella considerable effort, but she finally got an ugly knot tied in the gauze and the job was finished.
"So hungry. This is awful."
Lying on the unfamiliar bed, in no mood for the moment to clear away the bottles and the leftover gauze, Ella stared at the ceiling.
Being hungry was a terrible feeling.
The room was large, which only made it feel emptier. In these unfamiliar surroundings Ella was profoundly ill at ease and felt no safety at all. God knew how that demon would torment her tomorrow.
"Hoo. Calm down. Soldiers come, you meet them with generals; floods come, you dam them with earth. Nothing serious is going to happen. Tomorrow I'll ask her whether I can write a letter, and while I'm at it, why she turned me into this, and whether I can turn back."
Ella reflected that her two lives added up to thirty years. She might never have seen anything grand, but she oughtn't to behave like a child.
"Sleep. Just sleep..."
Muttering, she pulled the blanket over herself and closed her eyes.
***
She didn't sleep.
Perhaps she was too uneasy in her heart, or perhaps she was simply too hungry. Either way, Ella tossed and turned and never once dropped off.
The lamp had gone out at some point, and the room was dim.
The sky at the horizon turned fish-belly white, and faint light came in through the window.
"Tsk... It's dawn."
Ella got out of bed.
A day of hunger and no rest, and her legs were unsteady.
Head down. However much she still wanted to be the protagonist, she couldn't summon any confidence just now.
"Right. Goal... Let's provisionally set the short-term goal at getting out of this castle."
Listless, Ella still remembered what Elos had said the night before.
She wasn't sure this counted as morning yet, but she meant to go find Elos anyway.
She was so terribly hungry. Why did she have to suffer like this?
She came to Elos's door and knocked.
"It isn't even shut? She's really not worried about burglars."
The door had been left ajar, and Ella's knock pushed it open.
She hesitated in the doorway a moment, then went in.
Elos's room was about the same size as her own, but the furniture looked more luxurious, and several paintings she didn't recognize hung on the wall.
The lamp was out. Ella walked up to the absurdly large canopy bed and, by the weak morning light, looked at the girl in it.
Elos's eyes were closed. She lay on her side, and that exquisite face looked peaceful now. Her hands were pressed together in front of it, her lips slightly parted, her breathing even.
"She really is pretty. Her personality's just vile."
After a few looks, Ella wearily knocked on the headboard.
At the crisp sound of it, Elos slowly opened her eyes.
"Nn... Who?! Who's standing there?"
Through her blurred vision all she could see was a figure by the bed, and Elos sat bolt upright.
She spread her hands, meaning to use magic on reflex, and only then recognized the person beside the bed as her so-called wife.
"Why have you come running over this early? And who gave you permission to walk in?"
Waking to find someone standing beside her bed, Elos was rather angry.
"I was too hungry to sleep."
Ella said it plainly.
"Besides, didn't you tell me last night to come find you this morning?"
"Haaawn. This is far too early."
Elos sat up and yawned, two tears squeezing out at the corners of her eyes. She rubbed at them. Newly woken, she had none of her daytime aggression.
"..."
Ella said nothing, only stared at her.
"Clean my room, then go to the canteen and eat."
Elos snapped her fingers, and the mana-driven lamp came on.
"Huh? Oh."
Pulling a face, Ella went reluctantly out into the corridor, found a broom, and came back to sweep the floor.
For a meal, however unwilling she was, she could manage a small thing like this.
"How are your arms?"
"Haven't looked."
"They should be more or less healed. That medicine was fairly expensive."
Elos sat on the bed, staring into space.
A little way off, Ella's mouth twisted. Tch. Willing to hand over expensive medicine, and not willing to part with one piece of bread?
She knew Elos had no reason to lie, but Ella was displeased all the same, and swept harder for it.
The rasp of the broom put a little life into the cold, silent morning.
"So why am I doing the cleaning? Isn't this a maid's job?"
"This is a wife's self-cultivation."
Elos said it without thinking. In truth she simply disliked the sight of Ella and didn't want her resting.
"Boring. Who the hell wants to be a wife."
"Wound healed and the pain forgotten already?"
Elos tilted her head and gave Ella a look that was almost, but not quite, a smile.
Ella's hands slowed a beat.
"Sorry."
She apologized unwillingly.
How had this one turned back into her awful daytime self so fast?
Unable to work it out and not intending to keep trying, Ella swept the room over carelessly.
Elos waved a hand, signaling Ella to get out.
"Right. Remember to come back once you've eaten, so I can arrange something else for you. And bring me a breakfast while you're at it."
Elos gave the orders the way one gives orders to a servant.
Ella hated that contemptuous manner.
"Haah. Horrible child."
Leaving the room, Ella sighed and complained under her breath.
Still, look on the bright side. At least she was finally going to eat.