The Golden Sun Grabs My Hand Without Permission
Our train will be arriving at Campbell Academy shortly. Please prepare in advance. Thank you.
The announcement from the novel that I had already seen once in its description. It must have played this announcement at least several times right before arriving at the academy.
Why didn’t I hear a single one?
After taking Lucia’s wind punch square on, something inside me must have broken. When I came to my senses, all the students had already gotten off. The only ones left inside the train were me and Lucia. It felt like a chunk of time had been sliced clean out of my memory.
“Hey, your eyes are focusing again. Back with us?”
Seeing Lucia right in front of me brought the earlier situation rushing back, and my face flushed red. I really had to be crazy. No matter how touch-starved I was, getting excited over the Golden Sun of all people?
“Hehe, your face is all red now.”
I was so embarrassed I wanted to die. This girl knew exactly what she was doing and was deliberately poking at my nerves. Maybe I should flick her forehead one more time later. While I was seriously contemplating how to handle this bewitching little menace—
“Up we go!”
Lucia, still sitting beside me, held out a candy. This time it wasn’t one of the stringed ones. It was a proper lollipop with a stick at the bottom. Naturally, the scent drifting from it was lemon.
Had I died without ever eating a lemon in my previous life? Why on earth did she like lemons so much?
“Here, say ‘ah.’”
Who was she treating like a toddler? My pride stung, so I snatched the lollipop from Lucia’s hand and popped it into my mouth.
…Come to think of it, why was I naturally eating this? I considered spitting it out for a second, but it tasted too good to actually do it. It seemed I really did like lemons.
“Good, right? From the first time I saw you, I knew you’d like lemons.”
Still, hearing it come from Lucia’s own mouth was an entirely different matter. As I sat there pouting, she scooted closer and opened her mouth again. Oh sure, now she was linking arms with me too.
“…”
I quickly pulled my arm free, but she simply added, as if it didn’t matter at all,
“The line over there is going to be long anyway. It’ll take forever to sort everyone out. Want to play around for a bit before we get off?”
It was true. Since the station was right in front of the academy, the excited students were hard to control. With three hundred people on the train, I’d heard it took about twenty minutes just to organize and disembark.
“No. It’d be a nuisance if we stay behind. Let’s head out first.”
Besides, if we kept sticking together like this, I had no idea what this girl might try next. After what happened earlier, the atmosphere felt strange, and being alone with Lucia was honestly burdensome.
“Okay, then let’s go quick!”
Having heard my answer, Lucia grabbed my hand and dragged my completely stiffened body along behind her. Grabbing someone’s hand without permission like that was basically a crime… Because my body had frozen up, I couldn’t even shake her off properly, and I hated myself for it.
Am I really this easy?
Thinking back on it, it made no sense. To be shaken this badly by nothing more than a shallow flirtation that hadn’t even reached a kiss.
This vile woman…
She must have used an aphrodisiac or some kind of drug. Otherwise there was no way I would be this soft and flustered. What kind of idiot would get excited just because a woman he didn’t even like brought her face close? It was nonsense. She definitely used something. She had to have.
“You’re not even resisting anymore. How obedient…!”
Now this arrogant Golden Sun was even petting my head. I wasn’t a dog. Even if I somehow tolerated the hand-holding, there was no way I could allow this. When I roughly shook my head and brushed her hand away, she laughed and gripped my hand even tighter, pulling me out of the train.
…It seemed the aphrodisiac this girl used had a lemon scent. Every time the smell of lemon hit me, I couldn’t resist properly. It had to be that.
“See you later!”
Let’s never see each other again, you aspiring drug-training Golden Sun bitch. Whether she knew I was making a face like I’d bitten into shit or not, Lucia skipped away brightly and soon disappeared from my sight.
As I let out a deep sigh at the sorry state I’d been thoroughly toyed with, another familiar face caught my eye.
“Jack!”
“…Heidi? Why are you here?”
“You looked lonely without any friends, so I came?”
This kid had probably just come because she was bored. Perfect timing. Thanks to Lucia, my mood had been a mess anyway.
“Did you draw a number?”
What we had to do now was the class assignment exam. The number tag was naturally a kind of queue ticket for it.
“I drew mine forever ago! You’re just about to draw yours?”
“Well… yeah.”
I didn’t bother mentioning that someone had clung to me and made me late. If Heidi ever found out I’d done that kind of thing with Lucia this morning, it definitely wouldn’t end well.
Fortunately, Heidi seemed completely unaware of what we’d done that morning. She grinned and said,
“Ah, I hope my opponent is Lucia. I’ll beat her up good.”
The academy’s class assignment test was one-on-one duels. There were no special rules or particular requirements. You simply had to show as much of your skill as possible. The examiners would then grade the displayed ability and assign classes accordingly.
I have to get into the A-class where Heidi will be, no matter what.
The male leads had pushed him aside, but Heidi’s talent was nearly the strongest in the entire novel. If she hadn’t been exceptionally skilled, she never would have met those male leads in the first place.
But in the original story, Jack was placed in the lower B-class.
Because of that, his importance in the story had been drastically reduced, and his opportunities to interact with Heidi had decreased as well. Some might say it was better that way since he wouldn’t get tangled up with the protagonist.
That’s complete bullshit…
Did they know how Jack died in the original? In the mid-to-late sections of the story, he suddenly dies under mysterious circumstances.
And the only person who could make someone disappear so easily is the Crown Prince.
Ethics aside, the others at least kept an appropriate distance as Heidi’s childhood friends and checked each other. But this insane Crown Prince removed people simply because he had been close to Heidi when they were young, all for his own satisfaction, even knowing how sad it would make her.
Therefore, if nothing else, I absolutely have to prevent the Crown Prince from making contact with Heidi.
For me to survive, the Crown Prince must never develop any interest in Heidi. But if I ended up in B-class, actually interacting with her would be practically impossible. The exams were conducted strictly on an individual basis, so sabotaging Heidi’s class assignment was also out of the question.
That left only one method.
No matter what it takes, I have to get into A-class where the finest students gather and completely block the male leads from developing any interest in her…
If I could shut down all those lunatics and just graduate quietly, the rest of my life would be smooth and worry-free. There would be no more guys checking me just because I was her childhood friend. It was only natural.
So what I was doing right now should have been the first step toward a happy retirement, yet…
When I think about it, it’s absurd…
There were a total of seven male leads I needed to keep away from Heidi. One of them had already been sent off to pseudo-America to find his wife, so six remained. And unfortunately, most of them were irredeemable trash.
At this point, one question naturally arose.
If all the male leads are obsessive garbage, how is this even a romance?
That was correct. I hadn’t explained it properly. This story was only romance in the early parts. The latter half was practically a misery novel. The male leads grew increasingly obsessed with her, and what had seemed like a sweet reverse-harem romance gradually turned darker and darker. There was even a male lead who eventually tried to kidnap and imprison the protagonist.
And that’s where I dropped it.
It wasn’t that it stopped being fun. Another web novel had caught my eye and I simply forgot about it while reading… If I had known, I should have finished it to the end.
“I wonder if we can end up in the same class…”
Heidi answered with a light laugh.
“You’re still a long way from catching up to this big sis, you know?”
Even though she said that, she gave me a thumbs-up, which seemed to mean she believed I could do it. It put my mind at ease. Objectively speaking, after training without rest for several years, my grades would probably be quite high even among the new students. Top-tier level. I had worked like a dog every single day, both in theory and practicals, just to survive.
Though the words sounded grandiose, such worries were largely meaningless. Unless I met an opponent far too strong in the duel and got knocked out in one blow, getting into A-class was practically guaranteed. Among the six hundred new students, there were only about five people stronger than me. There was no way I would run into any of them, right?
There was a time when I thought that.
No, I never imagined I would meet one of the five people stronger than me. And of all people, the strongest among them.
…Fuck.
Watching the person standing across from me radiate a ferocious aura while holding dual swords, I immediately wanted to run away. Even though I knew the duel arena’s special facilities would prevent any real injury, my body trembled on instinct.
“Now then, come at me.”
It couldn’t be helped. The opponent I had drawn for this duel was the man who killed Jack in the novel, the next ruler of the empire. The incarnation of possessiveness, the obsessive madman known as Crown Prince Teo Calyx.