The day after the second wave of transmigrants arrived in this world.

　I was up earlier than anyone else, getting breakfast ready.

　I bought ingredients at the market early in the morning and prepared them in the kitchen at home.

　The effort involved in cooking isn't much different from what it was back in Japan.

　While there's no faucet that simply delivers water when turned, fresh water is supplied throughout the city from the aqueduct, and clean water and wastewater are properly separated.

　This water is continuously produced every day by the Great Spirit, and it's said to be blessed by the spirit, so drinking it doesn't cause stomach upset. In fact, we've been using it without boiling or any other treatment, and so far there have been no issues. It's possible that our poison resistance is simply doing its job, though.

Fire is a spirit item, like a stove. Spirit items that produce only simple effects are affordable compared to magic devices, so we've picked up a couple for our home.

In Meltya, the spirit stones commonly available are four: darkness, earth, wind, and water. Fire and light spirit stones are somewhat more expensive. However, spirit items are designed so that as long as a colored core furnace is installed, they can operate even with colorless stones, making them surprisingly economical.

At least for us, there's no need to buy colorless stones.

"Today I got some good vegetables, so let's make soup. I'll boil the corn first..."

The kitchen is spacious—actually, the whole house is spacious, probably more than three times the size of the kitchen in the house I lived in back on Earth. It feels less like a private home kitchen and more like a dormitory kitchen.

Probably because this house is designed with explorers in mind.

After all, humans who've risen in rank consume a lot.

And naturally, since both Reflair and I are also rising in rank, our appetites have increased.

Jeanne is strong because she's using cheat points to boost her stamina, but her rank isn't particularly high yet, so her food intake is still reasonable.

Anyway, Jeanne will probably start eating a lot too, eventually.

"Bread with cheese, bacon on the salad, scrambled eggs...?"

Personally, I'd prefer Japanese food for breakfast, but unless I use Crystal, I can't get rice or miso. Since we have cheese, maybe I could even make miso myself—fermented like cheese—but unfortunately, I don't know how.

There's probably something similar somewhere in the world, but if it's not here, it doesn't exist.

Well, in this town cheese is fairly cheap, so that’s good. High-quality vegetable oil is also easily affordable, truly making this a world blessed with abundant food. According to

Jeanne, even the way this world is structured reveals the will of the

"God," who presumably designed it simply to let transmigrants enjoy themselves. From her perspective, this world is too easy—anyone who just wants to live normally could probably survive with minimal effort, and still enjoy themselves. The fact that people still die, she says, is ultimately due to personal choices: picking random transfer, obsessing over initial point allocation for "romance," and so on—purely self-inflicted consequences.

She’s right, really. I myself could probably just stick to being an explorer focused on the second layer and be safe for life.

It's not that living a life like a role-playing game character or wanting to grow stronger and stronger makes things harder or leads to death—it's just that aiming for such an "unordinary" lifestyle increases the difficulty. Simply living, though, might even be easier here than on Earth.

"Alright... I'll go wake her up."

With preparations nearly complete, I head off to wake Jeanne.

Reflair has already been up for a while, as her daily routine is to exercise in the garden and then take a morning bath. She hasn't returned yet.

"Hey, it's morning already!"

I knock on the door to wake her, but Jeanne usually doesn't stir from that.

It's seven o'clock in the morning.

In this world, where there's not much to do once it gets dark, people tend to go to bed early. I usually go to sleep by eight and wake up around five.

Jeanne probably hasn't adjusted her daily habits yet. I don't know how late she stays up, but she's definitely weak in the mornings.

I knock several times, but there's no response.

I open the door and enter the room.

"Breakfast is ready."

Even though Jeanne hasn't been here long, her room is quite messy, with all sorts of unfamiliar objects scattered around, making it easy to accidentally step on or kick them and get hurt.

On her desk is a book she hasn't finished reading. She must have studied Ringpil language late into the night yesterday.

Light spirit artifacts, which contain spirit magic, are fairly common and reasonably priced.

Studying the Ringpil language has truly begun, little by little, with Reflair as my teacher. At present, I'm only at the vocabulary level, but I'm certain I'll eventually be able to speak it.

Automatic translation is convenient, but it only works for Ringpil. If I actually end up going to that huge labyrinth, the Grand Arismalis, as I heard yesterday, I might need to learn languages from other regions too. I should definitely master the foundational language of this world.

"……But she's not waking up at all."

I called out several times, but there was no sign of her stirring.

Jeanne lies asleep, wearing only a baggy T-shirt, hugging a large pillow tightly.

Looking at her like this, she doesn't seem strong at all, yet she's a warrior capable of withstanding troll attacks in the labyrinth—truly remarkable.

I opened the wooden window, letting in the outside light.

Unfortunately, there are no windows.

I've heard temples often have stained glass, and glass itself certainly exists, but it must be expensive.

Incidentally, the request to come in and wake her up was specifically asked for by Jeanne herself beforehand, so this isn't an unauthorized intrusion at all.

At first, I thought it was a bit too much to enter her room just to wake her, so I left her be—but she ended up not waking up until noon. Until she can get up on her own, someone needs to wake her up.

"Mmm... already morning?"

Reacting to the light from the window, Jeanne finally stirs, muttering drowsily.

"It's morning. Time to wake up!"

Saying that, I lay out her clothes on the table.

I'm used to it—my younger sister was the same way.

Jeanne seems to still be attached to her blanket, rolling around on the bed and struggling to get up. She must have stayed up very late.

"How long were you awake yesterday? It's dangerous to explore the labyrinth while sleep-deprived—feel free to take today off if you want."

"Uuu... I'm getting up... I'll get up..."

In her sleepy state, Jeanne has lost her usual dignified composure, becoming instead just a typical girl her age.

Or perhaps this is the real Jeanne, without pretense.

After rolling around on the queen-sized bed for a while, Jeanne suddenly murmured, "Ah, right," and fell silent.

I looked over and caught her gaze—her expression strained, as if she was holding back a smile.

"Clo～, pick me up."

"Hm?"

"Pick me up."

Jeanne says, stretching her hands out toward me while lying on her back.

I thought she’d woken up, but she seems still half-asleep.

"That kind of joke isn’t good."

"Carry me~"

Jeanne stares straight at me, repeating the same words over and over. She doesn’t seem ready to give in.

I had a good idea why Jeanne was doing this.

Not long ago, when family matters came up, I’d mentioned my sisters a bit.

The older sister, Celica, who’s excellent at everything and never makes a mistake.

The younger sister, Karen, who lacks practical skills but stands out in whatever she’s good at.

I’d struggled quite a bit with her, especially since she absolutely hated mornings—most days, I’d had to use every trick in the book to get her out of bed.

As long as I don't wake her up, Karen will just stay in bed skipping school and sleep until noon, and then calls or messages from school will come through, and somehow I end up getting scolded by my parents. The only way to avoid that is to somehow manage to wake her up—but that never happens. She's always sneaking out late at night, so she's fundamentally sleep-deprived.

In the end, I have to forcibly pick her up, get her dressed, and feed her breakfast—only then does she finally wake up. It was that much of a struggle.

When I mentioned this briefly, I didn't miss Jeanne quietly muttering, "That sounds nice. I envy that kind of life."

I never thought she'd actually do it, though.

Is Jeanne just naturally the type to act like a younger sister?

"Ah~ I'm so sleepy. I might fall asleep any second. I could still wake up now, though."

"Alright, alright. The viewers are getting restless..."

"Viewers don't matter anyway."

Even if you say they don't matter, viewers are actually watching, you know.

　

"Yeah, yeah. Well then, I'm going to wake them up. Here we go."

"Whoa... This isn't what I imagined."

"What exactly did you imagine?"

To me, picking up someone who's sleeping feels kind of like caregiving.

Come to think of it, Karen, will I be doing okay if I'm not around? I'm worried.

Anyway, I successfully woke them up, told them to come down right away, and went back downstairs.

I heated water and made scrambled eggs.

The corn has cooled down nicely—perfect.

No coffee, so I brewed tea made from those leafy things I bought at the market, kind of like catnip.

"I'm home~"

"Reflia, welcome back."

"Is Jeanne still asleep?"

"I just woke her up, so she should be coming down soon."

As they were talking, Jeanne descended the stairs, and once all three were together, they had breakfast.

"Hikaru, thank you for breakfast every morning. I'll prepare it tomorrow."

"……No, it's fine. I do it because I want to. Besides, morning training is more important. Especially for the front line. I think putting effort into that would benefit the whole party's operations. Yeah."

"Is that so? If you say so, then I'll take advantage of it a little…"

That was close.

The creations made by Refreia were quite original—bordering on dangerous.

This world is nothing like Earth; there are no recipe websites, no videos to guide you. If you can't do something, you're utterly incapable, and you have no knowledge to fall back on.

I could just teach them, and at first I did consider doing that.

But I thought... they're quite convinced they're already capable, making it hard to bring up the truth, and in the end I ended up sticking to not interfering at all.

I suppose I'm not particularly fond of letting others handle things at home, since I've done a fair amount of housework myself.

Besides, I don't particularly dislike household chores in general, so there's no real issue.