Chapter 2: Sylvia Sarubia (1)
The guy I’d possessed—Jack Slave—wasn’t anyone important in the original story. An extra, basically. The kind of character you’d miss entirely if you weren’t reading carefully.
I hadn’t paid him any attention either. Just some occasional, unpleasant pushover who showed up now and then. So I didn’t know much about him.
Then something strange happened.
“…Is this my house?”
Knowledge I had no business knowing was flowing into my head like it had always been there. Jack Slave’s memories seeping into me, settling in as if they belonged. It was incredibly convenient. Without even the basics, pretending to be him would’ve been a nightmare. Oddly enough, all the little details the novel never mentioned were already inside me.
Like his address, for instance.
“…This bastard’s dirt poor.”
Most Academy students lived in the dorms. The ridiculously rich or the ones with overprotective parents sometimes rented places nearby, but dorms were the default. Of course, dorms cost money. Most of the students—nobles, the lot of them—could afford it without blinking. Jack, apparently, could not.
“Seriously, this guy was broke as hell.”
A ramshackle cabin slapped together on the Academy Back Mountain. He’d clearly built it himself. No—wait. I had built it. The memory was vivid: chopping down nearby trees with an axe, putting the whole thing together with more effort than skill.
“Well… look on the bright side. Nice and quiet. Private space, too. Haha… whatever. Doesn’t matter where I live.”
I stepped inside. A crude bed sat in the corner. I lay down on it, staring up at the ceiling, and let my thoughts wander.
“Man… how the hell did I end up possessed in this third-rate novel… Still, this is weird. My original memories and Jack’s are all tangled together, but they fit perfectly. No confusion, no dizziness. Yeah… I’ve really become Jack. So what’s the original me doing right now? And what happened to the real Jack?”
“…………”
“Eh… thinking about it won’t give me answers. Might as well live the life I’ve been handed.”
“I can’t die, after all.”
Yeah.
I couldn’t die.
No matter what.
Maybe dying here would wake me up back in my original world… but there was zero guarantee of that. I could just cease to exist. No thanks.
I had to live.
“That’s right! I can’t die!”
Lying around on the bed wasn’t going to cut it. I sat up. I was an extra. Extra Jack. And for extras like us, a brutal event was waiting just around the corner.
In six months—Walpurgis Night would arrive.
That night… the Academy would suffer the worst tragedy in its history. Countless students would die, and Jack would be among them. At least, if my memory was right, he never appeared again after Walpurgis Night.
“I can’t die… Fuck, I have to survive no matter what.”
Exactly.
Getting possessed into a novel was already unfair enough. I sure as hell wasn’t going to get swept up in some event and die for the plot.
“Alright! Pull yourself together! I need to do something before Walpurgis Night hits!”
Surviving Walpurgis Night took either insane luck or overwhelming strength.
One or the other.
I had zero intention of leaving my life to luck. To survive, I needed to get stronger.
…That said, Extra Jack wasn’t suddenly going to sprout some hidden genius talent, and six months of grinding would only get me so far.
In other words… the normal route wasn’t going to keep me alive.
“…So then?”
I’d have to cheat.
I had a weapon, after all.
Something the original Jack never possessed—a weapon called information.
I was basically sitting in the omniscient reader’s seat for this world, wasn’t I?
“The runes.”
Runes.
Yes.
This world had artifacts that could make you strong without grinding your life away. And among them, the runes stood at the absolute peak. Six runes left behind by the First Hero when he died. Get your hands on even one, and you’d instantly rank among the strongest.
Originally they were prepared for the protagonist… but who cared?
I was the one about to die here.
Besides, even in the original, the protagonist never collected every single rune.
Of course, if I derailed the plot too hard, predicting the future would get messy, so I had to be careful. But my own survival came first.
So I decided to go after a rune.
Specifically, the one I wanted was the Rune of Swordsmanship. The First Hero had been the greatest swordsman of his age, and the fragment of that talent was sealed inside this artifact. Coincidentally, the Rune of Swordsmanship was hidden somewhere on the Academy Back Mountain… right where I was living.
“It’s like this item was waiting just for me… Only an idiot wouldn’t pick it up.”
I wasn’t planning to snatch every rune. That would leave the protagonist too weak, and who knew how the story would twist after that.
Just the Rune of Swordsmanship. One. That should be enough to scrape through Walpurgis Night somehow.
“Good. Decision made—time to move.”
No reason to waste another second. I left the cabin to search for the rune. But someone was already waiting for me outside.
“So this is where you were. I’ve been looking everywhere.”
“…Huh?”
Sylvia.
Sylvia Sarubia.
One of my former party members—the swordswoman Sylvia.
Oh no.
Of all the people I least wanted to run into.
This woman would drink poison if it made her swordsmanship stronger. If she found out about the Rune of Swordsmanship, she’d try to take it for herself. I had to keep that quiet.
More importantly…
Why the hell had she come looking for me?
From her perspective, me disappearing should’ve been a blessing.
“Uh… Sylvia? What are you doing here?”
“I should be the one asking that.”
Jack’s stored memories flashed before my eyes—all those years I’d spent clinging to her. Ever since enrolling at the Academy, I’d confessed to her once a day, gotten rejected, and repeated the cycle. I’d acted like her personal slave, doing everything she asked, going hungry just to buy her gifts.
Ha.
What a complete doormat.
Of course, I had zero intention of living like Jack.
I didn’t even like Sylvia particularly.
She was pretty, sure, but that was it.
“Why did you lie about having a girlfriend?”
“Huh?”
Sylvia cut straight to the point.
I was a little thrown.
How did she know it was a lie?
Maybe play dumb for now.
“Lie? I have no idea what you’re talking about. Why are you so sure?”
“There’s no way you have a girlfriend.”
“Okay, but why are you so certain I don’t?”
“Because you like me.”
“…………”
Well.
How to put this.
I’d—no, Jack had—confessed to Sylvia over a hundred times. Her saying that wasn’t exactly unreasonable. In a way, it was the natural conclusion.
Best not to poke that particular bruise.
“Ah… well… I did like you… or rather, I said I liked you… but that doesn’t mean I can’t get another girlfriend, right?”
“Liar.”
Sylvia declared it again, flat and final.
“You said you’d die without me. You even pretended to kill yourself right in front of me. And now you’re suddenly claiming you have a girlfriend and quitting the party to leave my side? I’m not falling for that. Tell me what you’re really after. What’s your scheme?”
“……..”
Scheme? I just didn’t want to play the doormat anymore.
Well.
It wasn’t even me who’d done all that.
“Spit it out, Jack. Be honest and I’ll let you back into the party.”
“Yeah, no… I don’t particularly want to go back to that party.”
“Why? Don’t you want to see me?”
“Hmm… not really.”
Nothing to do even if we met.
Besides, I was busy hunting for a rune, lady.
Could you move?
“I knew it… so that’s how it is.”
“?”
“Now I understand your real plan, Jack.”
“…Which is?”
I was genuinely curious what secret motive she thought I had that even I didn’t know about.
Sylvia’s face lit up with triumphant certainty.
“You’re trying to get my attention, aren’t you?”
“…Huh?”
“I’ve heard of this. It’s called playing hard to get, right? You’re trying to make me anxious so I’ll start paying attention to you. Well, I’m not falling for such a childish trick! Snap out of it and come back to the party right now! Or I really will start hating you!”
“…Honestly?”
I decided to just be completely honest.
“I don’t care if you hate me or not.”
Smack!
My cheek stung.
It was so fast I barely saw it, but she’d definitely slapped me.
“You bastard!! Then what about that confession you made back then!!”
“…Huh?”
“Back then”… I’d confessed so many times I had no idea which one she meant.
“You bastard! Idiot! Moron! Sea cucumber! Sea anemone! Just die!”
Sylvia hurled insults through tears, then spun around and sprinted away.
“What the hell is wrong with her… why is she crying?”
I couldn’t understand it at all.