The Protagonist's Party is Too Diligent

After Claire and Alice learned Hangul, I allowed them to touch anything they wanted in this room.

There weren’t that many things, but there were some books, and since I liked watching movies, I had a decent collection of Blu-ray discs, along with a console that could play them. 𝗳𝚛𝚎𝚎𝘄𝕖𝕓𝕟𝕠𝚟𝚎𝕝.𝗰𝕠𝐦

Honestly, when it came to foreign languages, English wasn’t too hard for them to understand even without formal study. They had to memorize some irregular words, but overall, it seemed to them more like a dialect than a true foreign language.

Anyway, there was no real need to turn on subtitles. Since spoken language wasn’t processed through text, it naturally got translated into our ears.

And now, both of them had smartphones.

Just like my ID, their resident registration cards were genuine, so getting the phones activated wasn’t hard. With Wi-Fi installed in the room, internet costs weren’t a burden either. Besides, the three of us were almost always moving together anyway.

The only real problem was the device cost.

I didn’t want to buy them some low-end, barely-usable phones just because they were beginners. You know how people criticize companies for selling "parent phones" — ridiculously low-performance smartphones marketed toward older adults?

"Parents want good devices too," they say.

Even though Claire and Alice were just starting to use electronic devices, I didn’t want to hand them something terrible. But on the other hand, buying brand-new, top-of-the-line phones felt a bit too much. Our stream was doing well, and we were getting donations steadily, so our living situation was a lot more stable, but dropping several hundred thousand won at once for two high-end phones, or getting locked into expensive plans, wasn’t something I wanted either.

In the end, I chose secondhand deals.

There were some awkward moments where the sellers stumbled over their words, surprised by my appearance, but I still managed to find two very well-maintained, two-year-old smartphones at a good price.

"If the stream goes even better, maybe I’ll replace these with brand-new ones for you."

"Huh? No, this is already more than enough."

"Yeah. You don’t have to push yourself. We're the ones receiving the favor after all."

Hearing Claire and Alice say that, I felt a bit like the eldest child of a poor family... Not a bad feeling though.

Normally, they’d always been interested in smartphones, sometimes borrowing mine to play with it. Honestly, I was worried that once they got their own, they’d just get glued to their screens all day—

"But even if I have a phone, I don’t want to stop talking to you, sis."

"There’s still a lot of stuff to learn here, too. Besides... spending all day just watching videos feels kind of like a waste of time."

After about three days of total smartphone immersion, that’s the impression they gave.

How admirable.

Well... Claire did start staying up late more often, and Alice seemed pretty interested in mobile games, but overall, it was still admirable. At least they weren’t like me as a kid, refusing to eat because I wanted to watch TV.

Speaking of food, they were gradually adapting to the tastes here too.

As expected of a country inspired by England, they really loved 3-minute curry.

......I got so sick of it back when I was a student because I ate it too much, but still, it was lucky they were satisfied with cheap 3-minute °• N 𝑜 v 𝑒 l i g h t •° curry and not demanding real, expensive curry.

As long as it wasn’t too spicy, they ate everything happily.

Thankfully.

Among the three of us, I was still the one with the best cooking skills, so I usually cooked.

But no matter how much I wanted to feed them healthy food, there were still times when I got way too lazy to cook. That’s when we’d fall back on cup ramen and prepackaged foods.

Yeah.

Even though I was now living with them, my meals hadn’t changed much from the typical solo-living student diet.

Still, it was fortunate that I even remembered how to cook at all. I thought I’d forgotten everything from not cooking for so long.

*

Claire brought up the idea of a movie on a morning when we had the day off from streaming.

We had just gone to a hotel last week — it hadn’t cost as much as I feared, but it’s not like we could afford to go to hotels every week either. So this week, we decided to stay home and figure out something else to do.

"Hey, sis."

Claire spoke to me just as I was considering heading to the Han River again around lunchtime. I lifted my head to look at her.

Since I still had food in my mouth, I didn’t reply verbally, but Claire didn’t seem hesitant because of that.

"I, uh... I have a favor to ask. Is that okay?"

Claire?

Asking for a favor?

That was a little unusual, considering how our daily routine had been settling into a rhythm.

Thinking about it, Claire had never really asked me for anything like that before. Well, we hadn’t lived together before either, so maybe that was natural. Even though she called me her sister, and I thought of her as a kind of little sister, our family names were different after all.

Plus, I was a royal princess, and Claire was a noble. Normally, if she needed anything, she would just ask the Grace family, not me. If anyone were to make requests, it would more naturally be Alice.

And yet—

Strangely, I felt happy about it.

I didn’t know how exactly to describe the feeling. If I had to, it was like the feeling of an adopted daughter coming to her father and saying,

"Dad, I have something I want to ask..."

But, of course, Claire wasn’t my daughter.

Besides, Claire already called me "sister" without hesitation, so maybe it didn’t matter.

"If you have a wish, please tell me. As long as it’s something I can do, I’ll do it for you anytime."

But even after I said that, Claire didn’t immediately look happy. Instead, she hesitated even more.

"......"

Seeing Claire’s serious expression, Alice also set down her chopsticks, her face becoming serious too, as if she thought Claire’s request was something really important.

But what Claire actually said turned out to be much lighter than I expected.

"I, um... I want to watch a movie..."

Ah, I see.

Claire and Alice both liked movies. Not the movies of Azerna — but the movies of Earth.

In Azerna, the film industry was only just beginning. There were finally some things coming out that could be called real movies, but it was still at the level of silent black-and-white films.

Of course, even among those early films, there were many masterpieces. Even in the 21st century, with all the advancements in movie technology, there were black-and-white silent films that still stood unmatched in terms of presence.

But still, when it came to entertainment value, nothing beat modern films.

And I had a decent Blu-ray collection in my room, plus I had a subscription to an OTT service. So Claire probably wasn’t talking about watching on a small monitor.

"You want to go to the movie theater, right?"

"Yeah!"

At Claire’s bright answer, Alice let out a sigh of relief and picked her chopsticks back up.

......Come to think of it, even though they’d only been here a few weeks, their chopstick skills had improved a lot. Was that the result of effort too?

While having that idle thought, I answered Claire.

"If that's the case, there’s a way to watch for free."

4DX and premium screenings would take a bit more effort, but regular movies — I’d already done this a few times back in college.

"Really?"

"Yes. Though it takes a little time. And it might hurt a bit."

At my words, Claire looked surprised, and Alice froze mid-motion, staring at me in shock.

"If you’re worried I'm talking about something weird, don't be. It’s completely legal, and not sexual or anything like that."

That seemed to reassure them a little, though now they looked puzzled instead.

"It’s run by a public institution, so there’s nothing shady about it."

Even with my reassurance, they still tilted their heads, confused.

*

"Oh, I see."

Only when I brought them to the blood donation center did Alice finally nod in understanding.

That’s right. If you donate blood, you get free movie tickets.

And all three of us were over sixteen.

(Our IDs said eighteen.)

"Blood donation?"

Seeing Claire tilt her head, Alice explained:

"It’s when you give your blood to people who lose blood in accidents or during surgery. So they don’t die from blood loss. But if they just asked for blood for free, not many people would donate, so they give you little rewards like this."

"Can’t they just buy blood with money?"

"That would probably cause all sorts of problems."

Alice must have read that online somewhere.

After finishing her explanation, Alice thought for a moment, then looked at me and asked:

"But... we’re from another world. Is it okay to give our blood to someone here?"

......Huh?