?Rin?

  Four years have passed.

  Before we even knew it, we've been in this world for that long of a time without ever finding a way back to our home world. It makes us wonder what exactly was the reason why Gin and I were sent back to our home world the first time we were here, and why we got transported here again.

  But alas, I've watched so many average isekai anime that just never answered the why's, and it just sounds like a cop out.

  But while the loneliness creeps up from time to time for being dimensions apart from our family, we became preoccupied with the work given to us by the generous kingdom of Avarco who has graciously accepted us all this time.

  In that span of time, I continued to be a court culinarian despite my meager experience in high school and a short stint I had in CCI before I disappeared and went here. But apart from that, I've been given the privilege of also being the princess's aide, much like Gin is an aide to the crown prince.

  But before I continue yapping too much, I feel like I owe you a recap, as it has been… uhh… 68 chapters since you last saw us.

  Basically, this country of Avarco has a crown prince named Nero that looks exactly like Nacchi, while a neighboring kingdom named Varia has a princess named Sera that, as you've guessed, looks like Shiro. Meanwhile, we Orions from Earth are acting under the pretense that we are citizens of the fallen country of "Orio" as it turns out Orio also exists here. Well, existed before a war, and we were given a honorary title, rather than refugees because of the prince's influence.

  Romance ensued, and the two royalties became betrothed and Princess Sera decided to move to Avarco a few years back, additionally tightening the friendship between their countries. Mind you, Gin and I acted as wingmen for those two when we were first sent here.

  We came back in Orio, got sent here again, and we somehow got Nacchi and Shiro with us this time, which caused quite a large issue because they looked exactly like the royalty of this country, and they almost got executed for being labeled impostors. With what little power we have, we managed to prevent their execution and they are now out of plain sight from the public, while the inner palace is the only place that knows of their existence. And even then, just a handful of people are privy of it.

  Well, that's pretty much the gist of it.

  ? ? ?

  In a large pavilion found within the inner royal palace, clacks of wood loudly reverberated around the immediate vicinity.

  Under that roof, I found myself lazily sitting on an artisanal tea table, slouched, and my chin almost slipping off my palm watching the loud clamors while the princess opposite me has her dexterous hands busy knitting something that she only started a few moments ago.

  "You are fine with this coral color right, Raiha?"

  Oh, also, my identity in this world is not Rin or Ringo, but Raiha Azelt. On the other hand, Gin would be called Gram Sancht here.

  "It's a nice color, but why ask me, Miss Sera?"

  "I want to give this scarf to you, especially now that winter is approaching soon."

  "I-I'm grateful, but why all of a sudden?"

  "Look here, I have not had a vacation in a while away from work, so I want to go back to the hobbies I have spent time less and less. There are times where I just want to quit being a princess, but that is simply irresponsible for such a pleasant country like this.

  But well, I would not hesitate to just disappear if my beliefs and values did not align with the kingdom's. I might have even left Nero and returned to my country if it turned out he became an abusive ruler."

  "You do realize those are really heavy words, don't you? If other retainers heard that, they will probably pass out with their mouths foaming."

  "I did not need that image in my mind…

  Anyway, are you planning to cut your hair, Raiha? It has gotten long again."

  In the scope of this story, me being in this isekai is probably one big sacrilege so to speak because it's probably the only time you'll see me with my hair extending around chest level.

  "Hmm, maybe not this time if the scarf you're making me is going to look good on me."

  "You silly. Of course it will."

  Another refresher: If you're wondering how I, a lowly commoner, is able to casually talk with a literal princess, we're friends outside of our official positions. The one thing that separates us from nobility however is how they carry themselves with conviction and impartiality when it comes to the country, and that's something admirable with Sera, considering that she handles minority duties in a land where she did not originate from. Needless to say, she has been attracting opposition ever since she moved here, but she has been doing a great job at proving them that she deserves to be in Avarco.

  The thought and narration interrupted; we heard a small thud coming from the middle of the pavilion where Gin stands looking down at the man he felled. Immediately, he lent a hand and the man got up.

  "Geez, I'll never get a hit on you at this point, Gin."

  And yes, that was Nacchi.

  "For someone who doesn't regularly carry a sword, you've been keeping up."

  "Well, it doesn't help that all I can do here is draw and paint so I need to move my body or I'll die from boredom. All these years I still miss carrying a filming camera more than a sword."

  At the utterance of unfamiliar words, Sera's knitting stopped.

  "I have always been curious about it. I refrained from asking about it until now, but how does a 'filming camera' differ from our camera?"

  The three of us looked at each other, locked in reluctance for a moment. But with the tension between us faded, our thoughts of "How can we avoid explaining things?" moved to "How do we even start explaining things?"

  Four years and all, we've generally kept to ourselves talking about our home world, but inevitably, the separation from the world we were used to made us slip quite a handful of times.

  Thus, I suggested, "Maybe this is better discussed in your office."

  …

  With Gin and Nacchi rested, we regrouped in Sera's office after an hour and joined with us is Shiro while the prince is still away on a trip.

  The fragrance of freshly brewed tea quickly enveloped the room while the men rolled a chalkboard in front of Sera's reception area.

  "To be very honest, we really can't figure out how are we going to condense all of this information if we are going to let it all out. It could even take us days just explaining things, not unless we focus on your main inquiry and we don't get sidetracked."

  "Since Gin- sorry. Since Gram and Raiha usually has a lot more work, Shiro and I took it upon ourselves to think about the differences in technology of this world to ours," keeping a generous distance, Nacchi started.

  Mutually in the past four years, it has been agreed upon that the look-alikes are to keep their significant other's counterparts at an arm length, so that any kind of conflict would be avoided regarding them sharing the same physical identities.

  "What we basically found out was that we can't pinpoint an exact equivalent time period, but at most, we can identify that the time of Avarco equates to the 20th century at best."

  "Twenty centuries…? Our calendar is just at the 736th year…"

  "Well, regarding the cameras, I would say that the capabilities of this world's photography are around late-1800s."

  "Before the use of film rolls," Shiro chimed in.

  This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

  "Please don't be surprised, Princess Sera. We may have mentioned this in passing, but we came from the year 2020."

  Said and all, but we did not expect the princess to take it calmly… or perhaps she just could not illustrate in her mind the scale of what we are dumping on her.

  "To put it into perspective, the images captured here are monochromatic. The quality of the images is good enough and can be printed in paper. Meanwhile, our filming cameras…

  Can you give me a hand here, Gin?"

  Gin then stood in front of a blackboard and prompted Sera to give her full concentration on what he is about to do. Then, he drew his bladeless sword and walked from one end of the blackboard into another.

  "Now, can you close your eyes and remember what I just did, Miss Sera?"

  And so the princess did as told.

  "Okay."

  "What did you see, Miss Sera?"

  "I couldn't quite catch how you drew your sword, but I can confidently say that you took five small steps starting from the left foot."

  "Gosh, we may look alike but no way I have a memory that precise spontaneously," our poor Shiro sighed.

  "Then, can you relive that scene in your mind as best as you can?"

  Without her eyes closed this time, Sera's eyes wandered staring at blank space and then returning to where the blackboard is while she stayed silent for a few moments.

  "I surmise it is common that fragments of memories disappear in favor of reliving the most important parts?" she raised an educated guess.

  "Then… I guess you could say that what the modern Earth's camera could do is capture my movement of drawing my blade and walking around, all the while being able to capture even the fragments that we omit, almost in the same quality that our eyes can see.

  …And that they are probably 150 years more advanced than what we currently have here."

  Sera's eyes blinked in slow motion as her back regressed into a hunch now that our expositions are finally baring its scale in her mind.

  In utter awe, she stuttered, "Excuse me, did you just say a hundred and fifty years…?"

  Nacchi then stood up and picked up a chalk so as to quickly draw three illustrations in the board with the first being how the cameras of Avarco look like, a camera much similar to a handheld or a DSLR camera, and the last being a literal rectangle that's the size of an entire hand.

  "Well… I know that this is all hard to take in, but the second and third drawings are what Earth's technology currently have where the entire device has been fit to a small form factor and can easily be carried anywhere… while the last one is as thick as a wood plank, and can do much more than capturing a photo."

  It felt as if stars akin to that of the night sky have started gathering around Sera's head as she listened to the sudden lecture.

  "Do tell me more."

  With the erasure of the sketches in the board less the rectangle, Gin took his turn to draw poles that carry electrical wires with them.

  "It isn't like this world doesn't know of electricity since the fundamentals of it are essentially utilized. Filament bulbs are used everywhere and I'm much more surprised that renewable energy is so much more prevalent here with wind and hydroelectric means of generating electricity at the forefront.

  What Nagi meant with not being able to pinpoint an equivalent time period is that some aspects have advanced, while some hasn't, and it's transportation. The only way really to travel is through a horse and a carriage, when I do believe that this world is already primed for development of what we call cars."

  "Please expound…"

  "Much like a carriage, cars travel with wheels, but the difference is that they don't need horses, but fuel using gas extracted from natural resources. With an engine, it can basically power a carriage and can travel faster than a horse and even steer at the rider's control."

  Without her prompting me, Sera herself grabbed the teapot and poured her cup again, albeit rather aggressively.

  "Going back to the electricity… what's probably the most feasible that this country can do right now is the telephone."

  "Telephone…?"

  "The main way of communication in this world is through letters by mail and carrier birds for a faster sending of a message. Now then, let's say that Nero is on a diplomatic trip in a different kingdom and one day, you just really, really want to hear his voice as you miss him."

  An oddly specific example, but how cute that it made Sera flushed.

  "A telephone lets you do that—hear Nero's voice even if he is from afar. The concept of the telephone is that it converts sound into electricity and convert it back into sound on the other end. In this case, the electrical energy will travel through the wires found on the utility poles.

  The same way that the slab that Nagi drew can capture images, Earth can also communicate with it all in the same device without the need for wires, and we can talk to people from several thousands of kilometers away from us."

  Hearing all this, the stars over Sera's head seems to propagate even more, and yet she still wanted to know more.

  ~ ~ ~

  "The only problem with all of this is that none of us possess the knowledge and expertise to create them. All we can do is impart a rough concept to you at this point."

  Losing count of the advancements that we enumerated, we ended our lecture with those words as one look at the window revealed that the sun has begun setting. Thus, we adjourned and cleaned up Sera's office before going our own ways. Our own ways, I say, when I'm the princess' aide.

  "Raiha?"

  "Yes?"

  Looking at her crestfallen face while sitting on her desk, a figurative galaxy has completely spawned around Sera's head as though she just ran a marathon.

  "You do not have any kitchen duties tonight, do you?"

  "Seems like you need my help for something."

  "I would like to write a highly confidential report to Nero about all that we've talked about today. I really should have wrote along when all of you were explaining so many things…

  Just tell the kitchen to bring us food in here for the time being."

  "Understood."

  Sometimes, an aide's job also requires secretarial work.

  ~ ~ ~

  "I'm back…"

  "Good work today."

  Upon returning to our room, the first thing that I saw was Gin lying down on the couch with a book in front of his face.

  Yeah, I said our room. Nero got our rooms remodeled, took down some walls, and made it look like our room is a condo unit with a living area and separate bedrooms. Needless to say, it went the same way for Shiro and Nacchi.

  With the fatigue catching up to me, I somehow mistook Gin's stomach for a pillow.

  "Sera really worked me to the bone… what about you, what did you do tonight with your master away?"

  "I just finished a night patrol a bit ago."

  "You smell like you've already gotten out of bath, though."

  "You go in too then I'll dry your hair."

  "Oh, I will…"

  So much for a princess' vacation, I ended up working until late nonetheless.

  Even so, it's not something to seriously complain about when for one, there is a warm bath waiting for me when I get home. If anything, this life is not bad at all.

  Just a few moments of dipping into the hot water has immediately swept the fatigue away and cleaned my mind into a blank slate for a very brief moment until new ones have sprouted, or rather returned.

  Once again, it has been four years. But despite that length of time, I didn't really get a lot of chances to reflect on the things that have happened until my worked has eased as my boss' also did.

  As much as I wish I could, I couldn't cook that much anymore with the additional work of being Sera's assistant, which involved a lot of administrative and field work for the parts of the country that she has undertaken.

  It takes the edge off the longing, but when it hits, it hits. And it's not as if I was the only one suffering from the separation anxiety, which is why it is most important that we have each other's company.

  More than anything, I've gotten significantly closer to Gin because it has come to the point where he is the only one in this world I can truly lean on when it gets difficult. Now that I am looking back at the boundaries we've set in our old world, it somehow felt foreign. We've grown enough to not be on our tiptoes especially now that we are living together, like, living together.

  And when I said difficult times, it is not as if we're suffering from the things we experienced back home that could have seriously endangered our lives, especially for Gin. The problems we used to face are now nowhere to be found at the expense of losing so many convenient things from the old world that we admittedly still miss.

  But when it comes down to it, what we don't have is the people we knew. Parents and friends alike, none of them are here, which is why it still felt like the four of us are the odd ones out because it was difficult for us to establish meaningful connections with the people of this world.

  Thus, despite the pleasant life that we have here, times come where we are reminded of the woes we have. We've created our place in this world and we could say that we now belong here, and yet at the same time it is as if we are still unconsciously erecting an invisible wall from this world itself.

  Because at the back of our minds, we are still wishing we could somehow return to our home by some shot of a miracle.

  …

  Not knowing how long has it been and whether it is the water from the bath or tears on my eyes, I came out to get dressed on comfortable clothes and meekly sat just by the couch where Gin is still leisurely reading.

  With his book shut and a bookmark in between the pages, he took the towel off my neck and gently shuffled it around my head.

  "Would you say… it was a good idea that we told Sera all sorts of things about Earth?" asked I, making Gin stop for a moment, and then resumed.

  "We've told her that everything we let out must be treated as highly sensitive and confidential information. By now, I believe we already trust Sera that she would keep her word."

  "Well, yeah. I did just help her out on writing a report about it. Sera and I saw it myself that the documents were stamped with the seal of confidentiality.

  But… aren't we just projecting the things that we want to see… or what we wanted back from our past life?"

  This time he stopped completely, but instead lifted me from under my arms and made me sit with him on the couch.

  "Maybe I got too engrossed with all the explaining earlier. And it didn't help that Nagi spoke about it, then the princess ultimately got curious.

  It is what it is, but… no matter how painful my origins are, that's still where I came from and you made it so that it would be less painful for me. Yet here, I just can't seem to grow a special attachment."

  "I do feel the same way, honestly. But if there really is no way for us to return, maybe it's time we find our own ways to connect us to this world?"

  "You have any ideas?"

  "Like pushing forward the plans we've talked about of getting married."

  "Pff… That reminds me of how we talked about that but refused to think about it seriously when we were younger, and now we're one foot away from it when since we started living here.

  Should we?"

  "That's why I'm asking you."

  "But when you think about it, what if we find a way to return? Would we still be officially wedded there?"

  "We just hold another ceremony, duh. Although, I wonder if we can convert the gold coin from here to cash? That could easily fund it and it's probably enough to buy three houses."

  "I'm not leaving that house, okay? Well, it might as well be yours too."

  But then, I promptly began to look around while Gin has moved on to comb my hair.

  "For now, this room will have to make do, yeah?"

  "I couldn't ask for more.

  Anyway, when should we talk about it with King Nevan? He's most likely going to be the officiant since the monarchy requires civil studies and that from this country's church."

  "Somehow… the process might be simpler here because we're acquainted to significantly less people.

  You know, if alternate timelines really do exist, I wonder if we got them beat in this case."

  "Why are you competing with your counterparts now? Let them have it the way they wanted it."

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