In my arms, Teru mumbled, half-asleep. I gently stroked her back as I stood silently in the lobby. Now I had seen firsthand the absurd interest rate concocted by these actors who played innocents. Meanwhile, in my mind’s eye, I saw an unattractive middle-aged man devoted to his family. He cried tears of happiness as he thought he might have finally obtained the money to pay for the medicine for his sick wife and daughter.
I looked up in a daze at the gorgeous interior of the office. This beautiful building was built on the sorrowful tears of naïve and kindhearted men like Mr. Chotos. A terrible haze weighed down on my chest, smothering me.
All this while, Mr. Chotos proceeded reading and signing the contract. One glimpse of the contents had disgusted me, but at least he would be freed of it today.
Only something was bothering me. That dashing, bespectacled man sitting opposite the reception desk wasn’t looking at Mr. Chotos—rather, he was looking straight at me where I stood behind my merchant companion. In fact, ever since he’d greeted us, his gaze had been fixed on me.
As for my old man, he hadn’t realized this at all; he was far too nervous. An old man can only be an old man, after all.
The genteel middle-aged man studied me intently from behind that single monocle lens, assessing every part of me, and truthfully, it didn’t feel very comfortable.
Hey, stop that. Don’t look at my body with such lewd eyes! Sorry for you, but I don’t swing that way! I was unnecessarily frightened by the dashing man’s gaze, but another thing was actually bothering me even more: Gol.
Gol had moved strangely ever since we entered the office building. She stuck close behind me as if snuggling me like usual, except for some reason, she occasionally fidgeted as if ready to move in front of me.
Now Gol was looking toward the back of the lobby. Weird. She mostly only looked away from me when she discovered a monkey, and she only moved in front of me to fight or protect me. But I couldn’t imagine a monkey, dinosaur, or punk inside this elegant office building.
Near as I could tell, Gol was looking at a space that operated like a waiting room. Even though it was early in the morning, plenty of people sat there. I followed her line of sight until I locked eyes with another man. He was young, with a handsome face, and he wore an eye patch over his left eye. He too was quite the beauty. The moment our eyes met, the man was clearly shaken.
What’s up with this guy?
Just when I was getting suspicious, Mr. Chotos finished the procedure and stood. “Sorry for making you wait, Nemaki. I’ve safely repaid the debt.”
“Oh, did you? That’s fantastic.”
I casually turned to respond to Mr. Chotos, but when I looked back toward the waiting area, the eye-patched man was no longer there. I scanned the lobby, but he was nowhere to be seen. It was almost like he had disappeared into thin air.
“Huh, that’s strange. I’m sure he was there a moment ago…”
“What’s wrong, Nemaki?” Mr. Chotos had noticed my restless stare.
“No, it’s just, there was a man sitting over there…” I was about to point to the waiting area when I realized something. Ah. No pointing for me, not when I was holding Teru.
With our business done, we left the Company building. As we exited, we passed other personnel. Each and every one was an unbelievable beauty. Actually, everyone here was unspeakably gorgeous, including the staff members I’d met during the repayment.
In fact, something felt kind of…off. Ever since reaching human civilization, I’d seen all sorts of folks. Many looked like Westerners, and some sported unusual hair colors, but everyone was pretty much ordinary. This was a wondrous world with a beautiful tapestry of many cultures, but it definitely wasn’t a world straight out of a fairy tale filled with people of unusual loveliness.
To be fair, I had yet to grasp this world’s beauty standard. Culture has a dramatic effect on how people assess appearances. Even within the same cultural sphere, time can greatly change these criteria. Historically, what determines whether a person’s face is considered beautiful or ugly is a fleeting thing. For example, see the Heian period, where women with round faces and narrow eyes were preferred. However, during the Warring States period, fat, bearded men were the most popular.
In the restaurant where I enjoyed a baked sempiol, Pizzaman had complimented Gol by calling her an absolute beauty, so I could at least say with certainty that Gol was considered lovely according to this world’s standards. Based on this, it was possible that this world’s aesthetic sensibility resembled that of my original world.
Even so, it was possible that for a work of art as charming as Gol, changes in culture and time made no difference. For example, when modern folks like me look at the Pietà in St. Peter’s Basilica, we’re still taken aback by its unbearable beauty. It was frankly weird of me to assume the people in this office were beautiful just because they aligned with my sense of beauty as a modern Japanese person.
Additionally, when it came to my Gol, she was a golem, not a human. Maybe golems had their own separate standard of aesthetics, like dogs in a dog show. It was possible Pizzaman had complimented her on that basis.
Ah, I think I might have digressed a bit too far… In other words, the crux of this story was what again?
Right: “It was difficult to say whether this world’s beauty standard was exactly the same as that of my original world.” At the very least, it would have been normal to see some slight deviation.
However, each and every one of the personnel of this Paisley Company was beautiful in every imaginable way by my standards as a modern Japanese citizen. There was not a single exception.
Of course, it was possible this was all pure coincidence. Say, if the Company’s personnel were chosen solely based on the Company’s preferred facial type, it might explain their negligence in other areas—though it would make whoever was in charge of human resources one of the most incompetent people ever. If this beauty standard were only for selecting receptionists, it could be excused, but it looked like practically all the staff were hired this way. If I were the manager, I’d fire that HR bozo in two seconds.
Besides, I wasn’t really concerned with what was going on in the human resources department at the Paisley Company. I would never need to deal with them, especially not after this.
Usually, I would ignore this kind of discomfort. But a little—really just a little—at that moment, I had an incomprehensibly bad premonition.
I’m going to change topics for a bit here. As I explained before, this world’s standard of external beauty was still wrapped in mystery. Do you understand where I’m heading?
In short, at that moment, it was still possible that I was living the dream—you know, the one where I was an outstandingly handsome man to the women of this world. That’s right. This was still a very real possibility, my friends!
But you know… Well, I’d experienced something disheartening during my shopping trip in Tibar. Neither the female merchants nor the women on the street would have any real contact with me. When they first spoke to me, the young women of this world wore bright, flowery smiles, but after exchanging a few friendly words, they would inevitably start to pale. In the end, they would run off. No exceptions.
Right before each of these women fled, they’d stopped looking at my face. Their eyes were averted, as if they couldn’t even bear to behold the shape of my head. Instead, for some reason, they all stared at the space just behind me, their faces frozen in fear.
Yeah… The probability that I was considered an outstandingly unattractive man was devastatingly high. As such, I feared anything that might force me to face the reality of this world’s beauty standards.
I’m starting to feel depressed, so let’s stop talking about it.