The Most Foolish Way to Throw Away Your Life
"Could you stop following me already?"
"I—I can't."
How on earth had she managed to shout with such confidence earlier?
Lucia tracked May's back with her eyes, muttering to herself about how stupid she was being—and still she didn't stop trailing after the short-haired girl.
She had believed that reforming the delinquents of Aeos Academy was the mission Helios Himself had bestowed upon her. But once the heat of the moment cooled, it took her all of ten minutes to start second-guessing the word of God.
Had she gotten too carried away in her excitement?
No—more than that. Had Helios truly called her here to reform these people?
The faithful were told to listen carefully to the words of the gods and follow Their will. The irony was that Those Above never actually said a single clear word. If you had to give religious people a different name, you might call them professional mind-readers—forced to divine the intentions of silent deities through nothing but their own judgment and gut instinct.
"Just smack her a few times and let's go."
"She's kinda cute, though. Think I should try hitting on her?"
"I've been thinking the same thing. That innocent look of hers—she'd be perfect to mess around with."
"Don't. I'm serious. Her face is exactly my type. Chest's a little modest, but still."
The crude talk from the boys beside her made May clench her fist and glare.
"Hey. What did you just say?"
These bastards. I've been going easy on them lately, so the old habits are crawling back out, huh?
She was about to reassert her authority and make it crystal clear that things were different now—when one of the boys, Bedelment, stepped in to stop her.
"I'll talk to the guys. Don't get mad over nothing."
Back in Class D, Bedelment had been famous for his fists and had led a little crew of his own. Now he was practically her right hand—attentive, loyal, and eager to please.
"Fine. Give them a warning."
She could trust Bedelment at least. May sighed and pulled a piece of candy from her pocket.
Learning how hard it was to stand above other people—May was figuring that out at a much younger age than most.
"I'm telling you, he likes you."
"I overheard the boys talking. Bedelment's not a bad catch, you know."
The girls beside her drifted over, trying to cheer her up, and the conversation naturally turned to Bedelment. May found it a little uncomfortable.
"Still thinking about that guy? Just drop it already."
"Yeah, honestly, Daniel's kind of scary."
"And the rumors about him lately are pure garbage. He drags every girl into his room—ugh, so creepy."
"Why do Rin and Elise even like him? I genuinely don't get it."
"……"
Hearing them trash Daniel made May's temper flare for a second—but she had nothing she could actually say.
Setting aside what kind of man Daniel McLane truly was, his notoriety inside Aeos Academy was climbing higher by the day, with no ceiling in sight.
Not that he cares in the slightest.
She remembered him saying that as long as he didn't get expelled, nothing else was a real problem. The thought made her suddenly want to see him.
Maybe I shouldn't have come.
Here she was, getting tangled up with Bedelment because of these kids, and it wasn't even fun. But not wanting to come and being able to skip it were two different things.
May sighed, shoved her hands in her pockets, and rolled the candy around in her mouth. Then she glanced back at Lucia, who was still trailing after them without a word.
"I'm gonna go shake this one off. You guys go on ahead."
"Huh?"
Without waiting for an answer, May spun on her heel and started walking back the way they'd come—the opposite direction from the group.
Her hangers-on were startled, and so was Lucia, but no one could stop her.
"What are you doing? Aren't you coming?"
May's question as she passed by left Lucia glancing around uncertainly before she fell into step behind her.
I just didn't want to keep listening to them trash Daniel.
What girl wanted to sit there and hear people badmouth the guy she liked?
Speaking up would only sour the mood, and defending him would just hang another false charge around his neck. So she simply left.
"Um—excuse me! Wait up!"
"Hurry up, then."
May figured she might as well kill some time with this country girl she'd only just met—she seemed sweet enough. Right on cue, her shoelace came undone.
"Ugh. Of course. My luck's absolute trash today."
She'd thought a field trip would be exciting. Nothing was going right, and her mood was only getting worse.
As May crouched to retie her lace, still thinking she shouldn't have come, Lucia hesitated for a long moment behind her—then finally worked up the courage to ask.
"You like that person named Daniel, don't you?"
"Wh—what?"
May finished the knot and stood, covering her suddenly burning face with her wrist at the sudden ambush.
Watching her take a half-step back, Lucia smiled for the first time—a sly little smile.
"Could you tell me about it? I've never heard a love story before!"
"W-what?"
May had no idea what this girl was suddenly on about. But to Lucia, the May standing in front of her was no longer a delinquent queen—she was simply the heroine of a romance novel.
She was eighteen, an age when interest in love came naturally. But Lucia had grown up in a monastery, where love meant only the sacred bond between God and humankind.
Relationships between men and women?
Out of the question.
It was a dangerously reckless act that could get you expelled from the monastery. So even when the monks quietly showed interest, she had no choice but to ignore them.
One nun, desperate to experience even secondhand what she couldn't live herself, had brought a romance novel into the convent—and spent a full month scrubbing toilets and serving meals as punishment.
Even so, that nun had said she didn't regret it.
Lucia had been too afraid to try anything herself. That didn't mean she wasn't curious.
And the girl standing in front of her right now was a walking storybook.
Lucia's eyes sparkled with a pounding heart, and May found herself starting to buckle under the sheer force of that earnest gaze.
"Haa. I asked you to tell me something interesting, didn't I?"
Should I hit her?
No—should I kill her?
I felt the pen in my grip about to snap if I squeezed any harder, so I took a deep breath and reined myself in.
Every other student had left on the field trip, leaving me alone in the lecture hall like a dog left to guard the house, trying to study.
The headmaster had mentioned it, though.
One fourth-year would also be staying behind.
At first I hadn't cared at all—figured we wouldn't cross paths much. But then someone decided that since we were both self-studying anyway, there was no point putting us in separate rooms, and dumped us in the same lecture hall.
So I ended up meeting the fourth-year who was supposedly a menace to public morals. And it was someone I already knew.
More precisely—a female upperclassman with whom I'd had a rather complicated misunderstanding.
Fourth-year Seria Deloa.
An unfamiliar name, sure. But there was a reason it was burned into my memory with particular intensity.
Female Ares.
That was it.
She'd played the role of "Eris" in the school play. When I said I wanted to see Eris, she'd completely misunderstood and decided I had a crush on her.
Ares seems to have finally gotten his head on straight, but this senior is still at it.
Studying in the same lecture hall was fine. The problem was that she kept sliding over next to me and chattering away in what she clearly believed was a seductive voice.
"Hmm? Come on, tell me something fun."
She seemed to think she was toying with some naive underclassman.
I should say something a little stronger.
Something along the lines of Get the hell away from me, you bitch ought to do it.
Too harsh?
But if I didn't say at least that much, my mood wasn't going to improve. I was about to just spit it out without overthinking it when the door opened and a girl walked in.
"Daniel!"
"Noona?"
Enter Dyna McLane—fifth-year, taking only the bare minimum of classes, and my older sister.
Thanks to the medicine the Great Witch had given her, every trace of her Dragonian features was cleanly hidden.
"I figured you'd be bored all alone, so I came by. Oh—Seria's here too?"
"Ah—S-Senior…"
Seria Deloa clearly knew my sister and looked deeply uncomfortable. Dyna casually clenched a fist and raised it in her direction.
"You start wagging that tail at my little brother again and I'll rip the whole thing off, you bitch."
So this was what siblings were for.
My sister said exactly what I'd been wanting to say. Seria wilted under that pressure, edged away from me, and forced an awkward smile.
"S-Senior. I stopped doing that a long time ago."
"Good. Keep it that way."
"O-Of course. After the guidance you gave me back then, I'm a completely different person."
"Stay careful from now on. Daniel—you're coming with me."
She hauled me to my feet and linked her arm through mine. Having Seria there made it a little embarrassing, but my sister didn't care in the slightest.
"Where are we going?"
"No real plan. You're usually surrounded by girls, and they've all been gone for a while, so I came to monopolize you."
"……Isn't Belin-sunbae going to get mad?"
"Didn't I tell you not to bring him up or I'd get mad?"
She pinched my side on the spot.
She meant it, too—it actually hurt—but I still couldn't keep the grin from slipping out.
Fifth-year Belin Meias.
The heir of the Meias family—Tana's main house, one of the most prestigious lineages around—had fallen for my sister.
They'd originally been rivals. Then the Dragonian incident put her in the hospital, and somewhere in the middle of that he'd realized his feelings and confessed.
Unfortunately, she rejected him on the spot.
I'd been right there when she shut him down without a second of hesitation. Part of me felt sorry for Belin. Part of me just wanted my sister to date someone.
Maybe then she'd break this habit of always hanging around me.
From what I'd heard, he had a bit of a troublemaker streak and caused his share of incidents, but he was decent-looking and had a straightforward personality that made him popular with friends.
And yet every chance she got, she came looking for me to hang out.
Well—it's not like I hate it.
Still, the worry kept piling up. What if she never got married at this rate?
"That bitch."
After the McLane siblings left, Seria Deloa chewed her nails to shreds, unable to contain the stress boiling up inside her.
There had been a time when she'd toyed with a group of boys until a full-blown brawl broke out—guys fighting each other over who got to have her.
She'd never felt a satisfaction that strong before or since. Out loud she'd told them to stop; inside, she'd been smiling and egging them on.
The one who'd cleaned up that mess was Dyna McLane.
Complaining that they were too loud, she'd beaten every last boy into the ground with her sword—and finished by thrashing Seria Deloa like a dog on the hottest day of summer.
Don't ever play games with men again, you hear me?
The words Dyna had spoken to her were still vivid. They still showed up in her dreams.
A thoroughly vicious nightmare.
"Huu. So annoying."
Nothing she did could shake the irritation—until the door quietly opened and a few students peeked their heads in to check the room.
Second-years?
Second-year boys. The same ones she'd noticed hanging around her a few times recently.
Ha. My popularity is insane.
Seria immediately settled into her diligent-studying-beauty pose, picked up her pen, and offered them a gentle smile once she confirmed who they were.
"What is it?"
The second-years looked embarrassed at being caught, then mustered their courage, approached Seria, and held out a letter.
"S-Seria-sunbae! This is how I feel!"
Zero points.
His looks weren't terrible. Just average. But the confession itself was a complete disaster.
Even a virgin who'd never held a girl's hand could have done better than this.
It was far too sudden. The letter was crumpled in places from how hard he'd been shaking. The envelope had zero sense of style. And no gift at all—pathetic.
She didn't even know his name. A self-introduction would have been the bare minimum.
The satisfaction she'd been feeling a moment ago went ice-cold. Reeling in a fry this small wasn't nearly enough to fill her.
She was an angler.
A true fisherwoman who used herself as bait to land the big ones.
Catching a single minnow was just a waste of good bait—enough to make anyone irritated.
But even a minnow could serve as garnish in a soup.
A use for this nameless second-year flickered through Seria's mind.
"I'm sorry. I already have someone I'm seeing."
"S-Someone you're seeing?"
"Mm. I'm waiting for him right now, actually."
She casually pointed two seats over. She'd shifted one seat away because of Dyna McLane, so it looked a little awkward—but it worked.
The boy stared at her in shock. She covered her face with her hands as if shy.
Among the third- and fourth-years still left on campus, there was only one real candidate, wasn't there?
"It's a secret."
She winked, and Seria Deloa let a wicked little smile bloom inside. Tell someone something is a secret, and human nature makes them want to talk about it even more.
And this was gossip about the Madonna of the fourth year. It would spread like wildfire.
Daniel McLane liked her anyway. Hearing the rumor would only make him happy.
Just imagining his sister crying and throwing a fit because I stole her little brother—I'm already getting excited!
Daniel, of course, had zero interest in her. She was just another ornamental fish in the tank.
But she was extremely interested in his sister.
Go ahead and choke on it!
How furious would she be, watching her precious little brother get stolen away?
Seria Deloa, floating on a cloud of anticipation and grinning to herself, had no idea yet.
In the nineteen short years of her life so far—
she had just made the single biggest mistake of them all.