My Relationships with the Girls
"Hey, come on. Time to get up, don't you think?"
Smack!
Mm…?
What was this stinging sensation?
My head was ringing.
"Was that not enough? Maybe I need to hit you harder."
Smack! Smack!
…Is someone hitting me?
A burning heat spread across my cheek. The hazier my consciousness, the sharper the pain became as it cleared—no, the clearer my mind got, the more the pain swelled.
"If you don't get up, I'm leaving you here. You'll die like that. Fine by you?"
"Uh…"
A familiar voice echoed by my ear. With Herculean effort, I pried open eyelids weighed down as if someone had poured molten lead over them.
"Finally decided to rejoin the living. You really are a high-maintenance guy, you know that?"
"Ter?"
"Yep, yep. Ter Citrine, savior of your precious life, reporting for duty."
A beautiful girl with swaying platinum-blonde hair looked down at me, sapphire eyes gleaming with her trademark crooked smile.
"…Where's Marin?"
"Marin? You mean that friend of yours—all flowy atmosphere on the outside, but stiff as a board underneath?"
"She's the one who knocked me out. Slugged me right in the head."
"Yeah, I watched the whole thing. Right up until you went storming out of the room."
She left?
While I lay sprawled on this freezing floor?
Cold, Marin. Real cold.
"Where did she go?"
"No idea. Probably headed home, I'd say~"
"Thanks for the info."
Wincing, I managed to gather my aching body and push myself up off the ground.
"What? Off to get your revenge on her?"
"No, I just wanted to make sure she got home safe."
"Oh my, how sweet of you. Worried about the girl who just cracked you across the back of the head? Seriously?"
"She's Marin. I'm sure she had her reasons."
I had read Academy Yuri Princess dozens of times, front to back, until I'd memorized the whole thing. Every character, every protagonist driving the story—their faces, their values, their personalities. I knew them all inside and out, without missing a single detail.
The Marin I knew wasn't the type to beat someone senseless for no reason at all. Either there'd been a misunderstanding, or I'd done something to deserve it without realizing.
One of the two, surely. Next time we met, I'd have to ask her what exactly that was about.
"You changed your clothes too, huh."
"It's already the middle of the night. I'm heading home to wash up and sleep."
Ter stretched her arms high with a yawn and rubbed her drowsy, half-lidded eyes. There was no one at home to answer to, yet she'd waited all this time for me to wake up.
"Thanks for waking me. Though couldn't you have picked a gentler method?"
I mean, look at my cheek. Just grazing it made my brow furrow with pain, like a dozen needles pricking me all at once.
This was supposedly a world where even fatal wounds—mana depletion, organs spilling out—could be healed in minutes. Wasn't this going a bit far?
"That's what you get for not knowing the situation, I guess~? Take one look at that and you'd be bowing at my feet, groveling. And it still wouldn't be enough."
"That… what?"
"SOLISUUUUU!"
A scream that filled the entire space. A roar so thunderous it made the air itself tremble slammed into my eardrums without mercy. In that voice—soaked not just in killing intent but in something beyond it, pure terror—I instinctively swallowed.
Oh, right.
How could I have forgotten.
The Helper's hypnosis—harbor no resentment toward the King's commands—had worked perfectly. When I'd given Chloe the thigh job, at least in that moment, I hadn't gotten beaten to a pulp for it.
But holding no grudge against the King's command was one thing. Did that mean she'd enjoyed what I did to her?
During the act itself, maybe. Pleasure is pleasure, after all. She was a woman's body, that's how it worked—just like how even a forced assault feels awful, yet the body still reacts whether you want it to or not.
But once it was over?
The party ended, the drunken haze wore off, and everyone got their heads back on straight. And then her eyes landed on the white liquid trickling down her leg.
Did I honestly think she'd let that slide?
"Ch-Chloe! I get how you feel, but let's calm down—"
"This is dangerous! Put the sword down first, then we can talk!"
"GRAAAAAAGH!"
"You see that? Between me, the one who gave the order, and you, the one who did the deed—one of us is definitely not making it out alive. Probably both, actually~"
"Running. Running right now seems like the better option."
My aching cheek, the party ending too soon—none of that mattered anymore. What mattered was finding a way to survive, and fast.
Right now, with Arlan and Eva desperately throwing their bodies in the way, was my first and last chance.
"RUN!"
Without so much as a backward glance, I bolted out of the party hall.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
And so, the aptly-named "sub-event"—the skill evaluation—came to an end. I'd earned good marks, celebrated with the party, and had a genuinely great time. There'd been an incident in the middle of it all, sure, but it got resolved… smoothly (?) enough. A day spent faithfully fulfilling the duties of a Purity Academy student, and I was back to my ordinary daily life.
Fortunately, the commotion at the party was written off as a drunken mishap. No one would be held responsible. A new legend did spring up, though—about how Chloe, venting her frustrations, beat the training room's sandbags so badly they had to be replaced in bulk. Not my problem, so I filed it away and moved on.
Anyway, small changes started cropping up one after another after that night. And the most noticeable ones had to do with the relationships of the people around me.
"Morning, Arlan. Good morning."
"Good morning, Solis."
The most meaningful—and positive—change by far was Arlan. Whenever she saw me, she'd break into a bright smile and greet me first.
"Are you heading to the Academy? Walk with me!"
Perhaps because I'd given her the courage to approach Eva's side, Arlan had grown especially attached to me. She'd come right up without a hint of hesitation, even asking me about Eva's habits and moods. She said they were getting closer through their text messages, but her checking in with me like this was her way of being considerate of Eva, who was still awkward around strangers. I understood that feeling all too well myself, so I answered each of her questions patiently, one by one.
After all, someday, she would be the one standing at Eva's side.
"Hey, so, about this. I literally cannot figure out how Divine Relics work. You're gonna help me, right? Right?"
Ter and I had also grown far closer than before. Not so much that we were sharing secrets, but I'd promised to help her learn to handle her Divine Relic properly, so I lent her a hand whenever she asked.
"Oh my god, something hilarious happened yesterday. Eva came all the way to my dorm and begged me to return the panties I wore last time. I'm dying. What even is she?"
After the party, compared to our old stiffly businesslike arrangement, things had genuinely progressed. Sometimes we'd chat about everyday nothing, laugh together, banter back and forth.
"E-Eva!"
"Ah… hello…"
"You look like you're headed to the Academy too. Want to walk together?"
"I-uh… yes."
As for Eva, the protagonist herself, I made sure to stay on her radar whenever the opportunity arose. Maybe not quite as much as with Chloe, but it was fair to say she and I had gotten fairly close by now. Not friends, exactly—but not a suspicious stranger either. A familiar acquaintance. The fact that I could now walk beside her said as much.
And so, little by little, I was building bridges with the novel's protagonist and her heroines—a relationship forming steadily, step by step. Overall, things were proceeding smoothly.
With one exception. Of course it was her.
"Ahem. Hey, Chloe."
"…Hey."
Lately, Chloe hadn't exchanged more than a couple of words with me at a time. Whenever I sent a silent glance her way, she was too busy dodging it, burying herself in her lessons. She'd been cool toward me from the start, but these days, talking to her felt like walking barefoot across thin ice.
You know that feeling in a dating sim when you push a heroine too hard and her affection meter tanks? This was exactly that. Was this cold war going to drag on even longer than I'd expected?
"Solis."
"Mm? Oh—hey. What's up, Chloe?"
"What do you think. Walk back to the dorm with me."
"Uh… are you sure that's okay?"
"Yeah, it's fine. It's not like you actually put it in, did you?"
"That's… not what I meant."
"You didn't put it in, right? You didn't just fumble around and misfire by accident, did you?"
"I swear on the heavens—it was only against your thighs."
"Good enough. Let's go."
If there was any hope to be found, it was that she was showing faint, barely perceptible signs of wanting to patch things up. Misery loves company, as they say—and we'd be seeing each other's faces for the next three years at the Academy. Even if we weren't going to be close, we needed to stay on decent terms.
From what I could tell, she chalked the whole incident up to the alcohol anyway. Given time, this awkward distance between us was bound to mend itself.
Up to here? Fine. I'd anticipated all of this.
But then—why you?
"Uh, Marin?"
"Pffh!!"
"About why you're mad—could you at least explain it to me?"
"PFFHHH!!"
Marin Light. I had absolutely zero clue what this girl was sulking about. No matter how much I begged for an explanation, she refused to open her mouth.
Since Marin couldn't express emotion through her face, she conveyed her feelings through her trademark over-the-top gestures instead—puffing her cheeks out like an offended pufferfish, radiating pure discontent in my direction.
I'd bought her heaps of delicious sweets, thrown myself on the floor in a full unconditional surrender—whatever I did, I'm sorry!—and the massively inflated cheeks had slowly begun to deflate. Things were looking up. Slightly.
"Solis!"
"Yupi. Good to see you."
"PFFFFHHH!!"
The moment I turned around, there she was, cheeks puffed to maximum capacity, glaring daggers at me.
Come to think of it, every single time I talked to another girl, her cheeks would puff right back up. No way.
Is Marin… jealous?
Over other women?
Nah, come on. That's a stretch.
It hadn't even been that long since we'd met, and "close" for us meant barely scratching the surface of friendship. Sure, I'd seen her naked, and we'd slept together, but—
…Hm.
Now that I actually thought about it, that argument kind of fell apart, didn't it.
Anyway, moving on.
More importantly, the skill evaluation was over. It was time to move on to the next stage.
"Starting next week, we're entering the dungeon. Everyone had better come prepared."
The flower of Academy Yuri Princess—the dungeon exploration that marked the true beginning of Part One's main story.
The moment that momentous chapter opened its doors was drawing near.