From Bad to Worse
Purity Academy was on temporary closure for the time being, and there was no sign of things returning to normal.
Still, by principle, the curriculum had to keep pace until the next aptitude evaluation and midterms, so the academy was running video lectures instead. The original story had used the same method to check attendance and push the coursework along.
The only thing that had changed was how cheerful the instructors filming those lectures looked. In the writer's narration, they'd been dragged back and forth for the dungeon practical incident, then ordered to record lectures on top of it all, until even these superhumans buckled under the workload and developed dark circles under their eyes. Eventually there was an instructor who burst into tears halfway through a broadcast because it had all become too much.
Well, none of that will happen now.
Ah — right, I still need to have sex with Yupi. If she gets too busy to see me, who's supposed to take care of my needs? As her lover, and as the first man to ever hold her in his arms, letting such a catastrophe come to pass was simply unacceptable.
And so I changed the future. By my own will, no less.
Once a story starts tangling up, there's no end to the mess — but once it starts unraveling properly, it resolves at a gallop. It was only inevitable that a regressor who knew the original would steer the current toward a better future. Granted, none of this would have been possible if Marin hadn't joined the party so early on, but that's beside the point.
Anyway — the academy was shut down, but time and daily life flew past like an arrow shot from a bow. Sitting together in the cafe's private room over coffee, trading idle chatter, had settled into one of the group's established routines. We even had our own assigned seats by now.
From what I heard, the moment Eva mentioned she liked this particular room, Chloe caught it and slipped the cafe a small fortune in cash. So whenever a message dropped in the group chat — let's all meet up, we have something to say, everyone gather — this was where we convened, location rules be damned.
This time, Chloe had summoned us all claiming she had something to tell us, so I came rushing over, and then—
"We're dating now."
"..."
Well. That was certainly a shock.
Arlan, who'd been listening alongside me, couldn't keep her mouth closed either, and the two of us just stared at the couple, riveted.
"Oh. Congratulations."
Only Marin, unique as ever, sipped her coffee through a straw and offered the pair her blessing.
So the day has finally come.
I'd been expecting this ever since Eva brought up Chloe during the dungeon practical — since the moment I realized she would soon confess her feelings to Chloe. It was far faster than I'd anticipated, but it was bound to come out eventually either way.
All I had to do was take my time and slowly pry this couple apart before Part 3. Plan B. If I couldn't stop their burning love from igniting, then I would make my move once that love burned itself out. The whole scheme was already sketched out in my head — the version where I split them up from the very start, that is. If Chloe had become student council president before the two of them got together, I could have pulled them apart with ease. But as it stood, this was merely a regret, not an emergency that demanded I gamble on a super move right now.
I'll plot my next move in due time.
I dabbed the drink from my lips with a napkin.
The Writer hadn't been able to connect to the chat window since the aptitude evaluation, so she hadn't known — and her sheer bewilderment came through to me loud and clear.
"Take one look and you'll figure it out. Chloe and Eva confessed their feelings to each other and started dating. That's the outcome."
Red lights were flashing across the chat window, declaring a state of emergency. The relentless storm of exclamation marks pouring in one after another spoke volumes about exactly how the Writer felt.
RUMBLE!
"What the—?"
"Was that an earthquake?"
Hold on. This is genuinely dangerous, isn't it?
The sudden, bone-deep tremor threw our whole group into a panic. Arlan dove under the table in a heartbeat, while Eva and Chloe gripped each other's hands tight and huddled together, straining to hold on until the quake passed. Marin simply held her glass steady with one hand so the drink in her straw wouldn't spill.
While everyone else fought to survive the earthquake, I hurriedly reached out to the chat window.
"Hey! Writer! Get a grip on yourself!"
No good. Not a word of it got through.
Fine, then. When it comes to snapping someone out of their own private little mental world, nothing works better than this.
"HEY!!"
I roared with everything I had, loud enough to blow the walls off the room — and when I laced the shout with mana, a bellow burst out of me that rivaled a lion's roar.
CRASH!
"Solis!?"
"Wh-what, what was that!?"
The shockwave shattered the windows and the glass cups on our table. Every eye in the group snapped toward me, but I couldn't have cared less. The only thing that mattered was the woman hammering away at that chat window coming back to her senses.
Had my scream with everything I had actually worked? The trembling... was dying down.
"Wait — the earthquake?"
"It stopped."
"Th-thank goodness!"
The rumbling of the earth, which had seemed ready to shake heaven and earth apart at any moment, fell eerily still as if it had all been a lie. The group, which had been quaking with fear, finally let the tension drain out of them and heaved sighs of relief.
"You finally came back to your senses, huh? Your mind broke, so I screamed my lungs out to snap you out of it."
Depression radiated off the chat window. That gloom was so heavy it dragged my own mood down with it — plain evidence of just how despondent she had become.
So this is what being a god is like, huh?
The moment she loses her composure, a world-class disaster erupts. Thank goodness I'd reached out fast; otherwise something truly catastrophic could have happened.
"An earthquake, huh. So when your mental state goes, you can actually pull off something like this."
"I know. I'm not blaming you. It's my fault for never warning you it could happen."
I'd known all along she would be in for a shock. I simply hadn't said anything because I couldn't predict when Eva and Chloe's relationship would reach this point. If I'd had any idea the fallout would be this enormous, I would have given her a heads-up well in advance.
"There's a plan in place, so just trust me. I will pull those two apart before the curtain falls on Part 3 — before the ending arrives."
Was she always this kind of character?
Suffering a mental breakdown as if she'd caught a case of the madness itself, sinking into despondency, then mumbling feebly like this...
"By the way, are you okay? You couldn't access the chat window for days just to cut off one body part of a person."
"Huh. Interesting. So you can pull this off without even touching mana."
"Ah. Right. Sure."
There she was — back to the Writer I knew. Scaring people half to death for absolutely no reason.
"Hey, Writer — do you remember who I am? The transmigrator who read and memorized every setting bible from the novels you hand-picked and curated."
Good grief — one more shock like that and the world really would end. What kind of god is this cowardly and thin-skinned?
"Don't worry about a thing. Just trust me and follow along. The ending you want — I'll write it for you, no matter what it takes."
Gratitude seeped through from the other side of the chat window. Without another word, she laid bare the trust she placed in me.
Phew. What a relief.
With that, the chat window took its breather — which meant it was their turn next.
"Solis! Why on earth did you scream like that all of a sudden!?"
I had thrown the whole group into chaos with my out-of-nowhere, mana-laced bellow, so I owed them all an apology.
"Ah, sorry about that. I have this habit of screaming whenever an earthquake hits."
"I pegged you as a reckless brute who couldn't care less about consequences, but you're more of a scaredy-cat than I thought?"
"Think whatever you like. Anyway — let's get to the point. Why were you telling us this, exactly?"
"Because we want to ask you a favor. The fact that we're dating — you won't tell anyone, will you?"
Ah, so that's what this was.
Only now did I understand why they'd announced their confession so proudly right in front of us, flaunting it like this.
This world ran on a rigid caste system. People without identification weren't treated as human beings, yet if you were a noble, practically anything you did was forgiven — discrimination like that was rampant everywhere. Whether you loved the opposite sex or mingled bodies with your own didn't matter one bit, but the higher-ups held certain things sacred: the prosperity of their descendants. Heirs to carry on the bloodline. Bearing children to guarantee the family line would flourish for generations was all but mandatory.
Those born with innate gifts, like Chloe or Eva, had a high probability of passing that talent down to their children. It was the reason such airtight hereditary succession was possible — and the reason the nobles' grip on power stayed so ironclad.
All of this bred its share of conflict, but stripping off the shackle of gender and grinding against each other like there was no tomorrow was exactly what the web novel Academy Yuri Princess had been about.
When two people spend that much time together, something is bound to happen — you know how it goes. And for those of us watching from the closest possible distance, there was no way we'd miss the warning signs. This little confession was their way of tipping us off in advance and keeping us all in line, presumably.
"Don't worry. I won't breathe a word of it to anyone."
"Congratulations to you both."
"Applause."
"Thank you, everyone."
With the agreement of everyone gathered here, Chloe and Eva's faces lit up. The looks they traded with each other dripped honey from every angle — and they squeezed their clasped hands even tighter, as if refusing to ever let go.
Ugh, this is unbearable.
A queasy nausea welled up from somewhere deep in my gut, and I turned my head away. The words get a room climbed all the way up my throat, but I barely managed to swallow them back down.
RING! RING!
Just then, my phone rang.
"Yes? What's this?"
"It's my phone."
A call arriving at the most suspicious possible timing. A number I recognized, at that. I swiped the screen and answered.
"Heya, heya~"
A flippant little greeting came trilling through the receiver.
Ter Citrine.
It was her voice.
"What is it, Ter? Why'd you call?"
Having confirmed who I was dealing with, I cut straight to business. utterly unbothered by my brusque response, she drawled on as lazily as ever.
"I was just about to tell you — that condition you've been wanting? It's finally been met."
"The condition — don't tell me...!"
My voice trembled, ever so slightly, as I asked back. That was how stunned I was. I had been certain it was impossible.
"The Divine Artifact. We finally succeeded in giving it a physical form."
At the absolute conviction in her voice, I pressed a hand to my forehead.
Good grief. Today was turning into an unbroken string of surprises.