I’m More Sorry
Two days had passed since the duel, and it had become clear that the rest of the class was avoiding me in a wide, careful circle.
That was only natural for the thugs I’d personally knocked flat, but Lapis in the seat beside me, as well as Jinhyun and Yeonhwa in front of me, all seemed to hesitate, unsure of how they were supposed to act around me.
Minho, meanwhile, kept giving me the same suspicious look he’d worn when he first latched onto me.
“G-good, uh… good morning, Blanca…!”
I’d done it because I wanted to become the kind of presence no one in class could simply ignore.
Still, maybe I’d gone too far, just like Yustitia said.
“Good morning, Lapis. Yeonhwa too, Jinhyun.”
“O-oh?! R-right. Good morning, Blanca!”
I accepted Lapis’s greeting, which had clearly been squeezed out with all the courage she could muster, and returned the greeting to Jinhyun and Yeonhwa as well while recalling my conversation with Yustitia that day.
Conversation was putting it generously. It had been closer to a lecture.
She’d sharply told me that what I’d done in that duel, no matter how generously you tried to interpret it, had been utterly unheroic and far too much.
Considering that she’d made it clear there’d be no favoritism from her right up until the day before entrance, I couldn’t say I’d been surprised by the scolding.
Still, it had hurt a little.
He was the one who’d started with me first, so all I’d really done was grumble inwardly that she could at least have said one or two nice things.
On the other hand, I also thought she was right. I had gone too far.
If I wanted to make my strength sink in, I could’ve just sprayed some sedatives and called it a day. Instead, I’d let my emotions get the better of me and bought myself an unnecessary helping of fear on top of everything else.
Frankly, I didn’t mind scaring the extras.
Whether they backed off because they felt a wall in front of them or because they were afraid, it made no real difference to me.
But if it started interfering with my meetings with the main characters, that was a different matter entirely.
If they began to avoid me, that would be painful, sure, but it would also create problems for my plan.
I needed to stay close to them if I wanted to keep an eye on them or suppress their growth, but if they shunned me, there was nothing I could do.
If I kept following them while they were actively avoiding me, it would only make them suspicious and resentful.
In other words, I had to fix my image somehow—but I had absolutely no idea how.
I knew how to terrify people. I had no clue how to reassure them.
And it wasn’t like I could just go around spraying calm-down chemicals in everyone’s face, either.
What was I supposed to do? I tapped the classroom wall with my tail and thought about it long and hard.
By lunchtime, I still hadn’t come up with a single thing.
Not even after I sat down at the table with Yeonhwa, Jinhyun, and Lapis.
“B-Blanca… did you maybe hear something bad from a teacher yesterday? Or did something else bad happen…?”
Partway through the meal, Yeonhwa asked if something unpleasant had happened to me.
Just as I was about to brush it off and say it was nothing, a thought flashed through my mind.
If Yeonhwa was good at dealing with people, maybe she’d know what I should do.
“Yeah. There’s something on my mind. But how did you know?”
“Well, your ears were flattened.”
…Huh?
Is that… racism?
I stared at Yeonhwa in utter disbelief, and she must have realized how it sounded, because she hurriedly started to explain herself.
“I-I mean! My family has a cat, and when it’s upset, its ears go flat like that! Besides, Blanca always looks like that, so I guess I just have to read your ears and tail…”
She looked so flustered that I figured she really had said it without thinking.
“...I see. Then please be a little more careful from now on.”
Even though beast-kin had officially been granted human status more than thirty years ago, discrimination against them still lingered in society.
Of course, no one with any sense would discriminate against a strong person for being a different race.
Most of that kind of prejudice was aimed at the weak.
That was probably why so many of the lab’s test subjects had been beast-kin in the first place.
...I don’t know whether this body kept any of its original personality or memories, but it probably dealt with plenty of that kind of discrimination too.
Maybe that was why it reacted so sensitively now.
Was it something like Pavlov’s dog?
Whatever. Not my problem.
Yeonhwa, having narrowly escaped stepping on a land mine, let out a breath of relief and immediately started firing off questions.
“So what’s this thing that’s been bothering you?”
It was obvious she was trying to smooth the atmosphere over.
Seeing that made me snort, and I played along the way she wanted.
“Ah, so that’s it. I was surprised when you suddenly started fighting. I thought maybe you were trying to cut off that bad blood from the entrance exam…”
“So the problem is that you went too far.”
Jinhyun, who’d kept his mouth shut until now, suddenly cut in and pointed out my mistake.
It irritated me all of a sudden, but he wasn’t wrong, so I didn’t really have anything to say back.
“...Yeah. That’s why I think the others are avoiding me a little, so I wanted to do something about it. Do you have any good ideas?”
“Wouldn’t apologizing be enough?”
Apologizing would be enough? As if.
Of course I’d thought about apologizing.
I’d even imagined saying, with genuine feeling, I’m sorry, and the other side responding with a relieved, breezy yeah, sure.
But there was no way that would happen.
Sorry and that’s it?
They’d probably just use the apology as an opening to try and squeeze more out of me.
Judging by their thug-like personalities, that was still entirely possible.
When I let that implication show, Yeonhwa shook her head back and forth and gave me earnest advice.
“Maybe. But, Blanca, if you receive something, then you have to give something back too.”
If you want to receive goodwill, then offer goodwill first.
Yeonhwa laid that sort of carefree wisdom on me.
It sounded exactly like the kind of advice that got people walked all over.
Still, Yeonhwa apparently read what I was thinking from my expression, because she smiled brightly and said, “Come on, don’t be like that. Just try it once! It’s better than doing nothing at all, isn’t it? It’s at least worth trying something!”
“I-I think… Yeonhwa’s right too… If you don’t do anything, nothing can change…”
And then even Lapis, who usually could barely get a sentence out, hesitantly told me to give it a try.
“For now… okay. Thanks for the advice.”
Ugh. Should I really just grit my teeth and try it?
If experts were recommending it that strongly, then it probably had some effect.
Since time waits for no one, I went looking for the victims-turned-loser-gang who’d been camped out in a corner near the end of lunch.
They’d seemed absolutely full of energy the day of the entrance ceremony and even the day after.
Mostly because they’d been holding heated debates about how exactly they were going to teach me a lesson.
Now the whole group looked so deflated they might as well have suffered a mass death in the family.
If they weren’t going to speak, then why were they even huddled together?
“...What do you think you’re doing, coming here…”
The moment Agahwa saw me, she cowered like she’d run into a first-rate monster, while the thug wore an expression that said the day had finally come.
I’d come to apologize, but actually standing in front of them made this a lot harder than I’d expected.
I was perfectly capable of saying things I didn’t mean, but for some reason, an apology just wouldn’t come out.
As I stared down at them, Agahwa seemed to bristle, like a worm that had been stepped on, and snapped at me.
“W-what is it, anyway?! Did you come here to make fun of us?! Say something, then!”
I couldn’t tell whether the tears welling in her eyes were from fear or indignation.
But whatever. I wasn’t here to mock them.
I forced my stubborn mouth to move and bowed to the thug.
“...I’m sorry. I hurt you way too much then. I was too harsh.”
I’d rehearsed it hundreds of times in my head, but when it actually came out of my mouth, it was awkward as hell.
It was such a clumsy apology that if someone had hit me over the head with a book and asked if I really meant that as an apology, I wouldn’t have had a comeback.
More than that, when was I supposed to lift my head?
Not even knowing that, I kept sneaking glances around until the thug, who’d stayed silent up to this point, finally spoke.
“No, there’s no need for you to apologize. Just like you said back then, I was the stupid and arrogant one.”
“Y-Yamaguchi-kun…?”
“I’m the one who should be sorry. Weak as I am, I still got arrogant and assumed I was stronger than you. I never even thought about improving my own skill—I just envied yours.”
The thug—no, Fukukin—knelt down and lowered himself even more than I had.
W-what?
Was this really the same guy?
Why was he acting like this all of a sudden?
I’d known he was a strength-obsessed bastard, sure. But had I really left him that shattered?
The other students from the class seemed just as flustered as I was, whispering among themselves while staring at Fukukin and me.
“W-wait, wait, Yamaguchi-kun! We still haven’t received an apology for the entrance exam—”
“That too could have been avoided if our skills had been sufficient. It was our lack of ability that caused it.”
After being completely crushed by me, had he undergone some kind of personality shift, too? There wasn’t a shred of that old roguish swagger left in him.
Well, he did turn into this sort of guy later in the story after the midgame hero completely trashed him.
...Looks like he’s come to his senses way too early because of me.
What a pain.
Still, he wasn’t exactly meddling in the plot, and he was just the guy who got dragged out whenever a troublemaker was needed so he could act up and get smacked down...
So maybe it didn’t matter.
I’d come here planning to salvage my image by apologizing for the duel in front of everyone, but somehow this had turned into a mutual self-criticism convention where we were all apologizing for doing worse.
Fine. Might as well ride the mood.
“No, when I think about it, I was pretty out of line too. Sorry. I’ll apologize.”
Even as I said it, I couldn’t help thinking that, wow, this actually works.
Come to think of it, even if their personalities were a little rough, they were still the sort of kids who took being a hero seriously enough to get into Class A.
They might still be immature, but they weren’t rotten to the core.
As the atmosphere flowed that way, Agahwa also seemed to lose any further ammunition, muttering an apology in a tiny voice without even bothering to specify what it was for.
So apologizing first wasn’t actually a bad thing, huh.
Watching the mood turn warm and mellow, I thought that to myself.
“I’m not really sure what just happened, but… I’m glad it worked out, Blanca. Right?”
When I returned to my seat, Yeonhwa said that, in any case, it looked like things had gone well.
“Yeah.”
Though to be honest, the only one who’d genuinely changed was Fukukin; the rest had probably just been swept up in the atmosphere and gone along with it by accident.
Still, my image should have recovered some.
“Please take your seats. Today, before ability training begins, we’ll be having a brief club introduction session.”
In other words, I’d finally be able to follow the main characters around without restraint.
Thinking that, I met the eyes of Minho, who was already looking at me.
And I smiled faintly, because I was looking forward to it.