Why Already? (1)
It was a ridiculously appealing game.
By day, you played the part of the kind, gentle soul — every fake smile and soft word carefully deployed. Then, once you'd banked enough affection points, you spent the nights conquering the heroines one by one.
I Became the Submissive by Day, Dominant by Night Protagonist
Submissive by day. Dominant by night!
How cool does that sound?
Which means I should have become the Submissive by Day, Dominant by Night protagonist of this game. Obviously. That's how these things work.
If you're going to throw a notification window reading Enter the Hidden Route? in front of someone who just wants to romance every heroine and see the ending, the least you could do is warn them they might not even be the protagonist.
If you're going to drop someone into I Became the Submissive by Day, Dominant by Night Protagonist, common sense says you drop them in as the protagonist, right?
"Becoming a heroine is a little much, don't you think?"
Lying on the bed and staring at the ceiling, I reached up and touched my chest, as if denying reality might make it go away.
Something that hadn't been there before was there now.
And something that had been there was… gone, I assumed.
The phantom of a message reading Ready for conquest seemed to float in front of my eyes, and my mood soured even further.
"What a goddamn situation."
With grim resolve, I heaved myself upright and off the bed.
Seven o'clock. Academy classes started at nine. Plenty of time to pull myself together and figure out what the hell was going on.
I headed straight for the bathroom and checked the mirror first. Depending on which character I'd landed in, the whole route would play out differently.
"Shit."
The curse slipped out the second I looked. Because—
A beautiful girl. Of course she was beautiful. That wasn't why I'd sworn. It wasn't just that I'd become a woman.
It was what sat above that shoulder-length, dark red hair of ambiguous length.
A horn.
"Why the hell did it have to be…!"
Ashley Philin.
She never appeared in the original game. She was a character bolted on when the expansion dropped — a heroine slapped together to deliver the service scenes players had been begging for. Her conquest route was absurdly short, and reaching those service scenes took almost no time at all, which made her beloved for all sorts of reasons.
And what exactly were those service scenes?
Among every character in this game, she was the only one with a horn. The reason for the horn could be whatever they wanted — some half-baked setting about being a half-demon, half-human hybrid that was there and not there at the same time. Players never cared about that part.
Anyway. If things followed the game's route without interference…
"Ugh…!"
Just imagining it made me want to throw up.
I still carried the trauma from right after I'd transferred to my unit, when the seniors had closed my eyes in the shower and shoved a Big Farm sausage into my mouth. My heart still jumped at the sight of those pink old-fashioned sausages.
And now it wouldn't even be a sausage — it'd be the real thing? I'd rather bite my tongue and die than debase myself in front of that kind of absurdity.
I raked a hand through my hair under the mounting stress, then froze as my fingers snagged on an awkward obstacle.
The horn. This goddamn horn!
You think I'm just going to sit there and become the protagonist's handle? Not a chance in hell.
I bit my lip and stared into the mirror for a long time, then turned on the cold water and splashed my face a couple of times.
My head cleared a little.
How did this character's opening route go again? If memory served, she showed up at the Academy, bumped into the protagonist somewhere, sniped at him with that prim little attitude — and then, one flag after another, she got conquered without a fight and reduced to handle status.
"So I just don't run into that bastard."
That would solve everything. Possibly the fastest, surest plan available.
They say even if you walk into a tiger's den, you survive as long as you keep your wits about you. Before I set foot in the Academy, I needed to focus and—
Ding-dong.
"…What."
A cold, ominous feeling crept up my spine.
I hurried to the door on short, quick steps and carefully peered through the peephole.
They say a bad feeling is never wrong.
"Philin! I'm here! Aren't you ready yet?"
Yeom Junhyuk!
The protagonist of this game. Kind features paired with a package that was anything but — the hero who existed to satisfy every player's desire!
…Except right now, he was nothing but a villain to me.
And the fact that this guy was standing at my door meant—
"On the first day…?"
Apparently the tiger's den wasn't the Academy. It was this house.
Ding-dong. Ding-dong.
Junhyuk kept ringing the bell. I fretted over what to do, then decided to at least say something.
"What are you doing here at this hour?"
"What are you talking about? We walked together yesterday too."
"I did? Why?"
From the other side of the door came a couple of coughs thick with bewilderment. Then the words that left Junhyuk's mouth were:
"Why? Well… isn't it normal for a guy to walk to and from school with his girlfriend?"
Shit!
I wanted to scream.
We weren't even at the stage of building affection points. We were already dating!