Going to School
"Mmm..."
This was delicious.
Jia's cooking skills far exceeded anything I had imagined. It was ordinary food, sure, but he had somehow elevated it with his own personal touch.
Eating until I'm full... how long has it been?
For anyone setting out on an adventure, stuffing yourself just because the food tasted good was about the dumbest thing you could do. You never knew when or where an attack might come, and a bloated stomach that slowed your reaction time was something no member of a Demon King–slaying party could afford.
"..."
Clatter, clatter.
And yet here I was—someone who had lived that way for so long—eating until I was full. Even after I was stuffed, the food had been so good that watching Jia clear the table felt like a waste. I was too full to take another bite, and still I felt that way.
Jia was packing the leftovers into empty containers and stacking the dishes.
Just sitting here is kind of awkward...
Leaving the dishwashing entirely to him felt a little embarrassing. While Jia wiped down the table with a wet wipe, I walked over to the sink. I made a show of rolling up sleeves I didn't have and planted myself in front of it.
"I'll do the dishes."
Look at me, so considerate. A man who knew how to split the housework. That was me—Kang Seonghyeon. Jia might not have been my wife (yet?), but our goddess had screwed up and dragged him into this mess, so the least I could do was treat him with a little consideration.
Whoosh—!
I turned on the water, ready to start scrubbing.
That was when it happened.
"Don't. I'll do the dishes. You go change your clothes."
"...?"
I had no idea when he had gotten there, but Jia was suddenly beside me, shoving me away from the sink so I couldn't wash a single plate.
Was he underestimating me? Did he not trust me—me?
Ah... that actually stung my pride a little.
Not that I was bragging, but the story was sad enough to make me tear up: back in the hero's party, I had handled every single chore. The hero and the two party members who used to torment me were all nobles. Not one of those bastards knew how to wash their own underwear. Naturally, every odd job piled onto the one person who could actually do them, which meant that while everyone else rested, I was stuck scrubbing their yellowed undergarments.
Wait, fuck. Thinking about it now just pisses me off... Why the hell did I do that like an idiot?
The anger surged up all over again. Not swinging my war hammer at the hero and those two party bastards before I left was starting to feel like one of the great regrets of my life.
Anyway, with all that experience, dishwashing was well within my abilities.
"Just go change already!"
"Hey, why are you so strong?! Did the strength reversal not apply to you or something?!"
Jia's strength forced me all the way to the bedroom door. For someone who had never trained, it was easily top-tier. Of course, that was only by untrained standards. It couldn't compare to someone like me, who had popped the Demon King's head open like a bottle cap. The reason I was still getting pushed around was simple: if I shoved back carelessly, Jia wouldn't be able to take the force and might end up as a smear on the floor. I couldn't risk using my real strength.
Forced into the room, I demanded an explanation.
"I already changed. What am I supposed to change into?"
"Aren't we going to school? Yesterday was the entrance ceremony!"
"...What?"
High school? What was he talking about?
I graduated from that ages ago...
Wait. No. I never finished high school.
I had been about to start my second year when I got transferred to go kill the Demon King. The hero had bitched endlessly about my lack of education, so I did end up graduating from the Imperial Academy—but that was basically buying a diploma with donation money. My real last graduation was middle school.
Having middle school as my final academic record is a little dizzying, but even so—high school at this age?
If you added up my age from the other world, I was well past thirty. And now I was supposed to walk into a place full of fresh-faced teenagers and take lessons from people younger than me?
Thud.
Jia shoved me fully into the room and headed back to the living room. The door closed. Faint water sounds started up almost immediately—he had gone straight to the dishes.
I grabbed the cross and called the goddess.
"Goddess! Help!! Heeeelp!"
There was no way I could attend school with those hormone-soaked kids at my age. I did not have the confidence to handle young blood that burned like a nuclear reactor. I would rather fight another Demon King. My body might be young, but my mind was already old.
"Sniff... What is it...?"
She didn't descend; she just answered in my head.
"...? Are you crying?"
In that short time, something had clearly happened—the goddess sounded like she was on the verge of tears.
"I'm not crying... It's spring, so pollen got in my eyes..."
"There's pollen in the divine realm too?"
"Of course. It's spring."
Judging by the whole "enrollment" thing, it really was spring here. Did the divine realm have seasons? Not like I would know—I had never been.
None of that mattered right now. Whether the divine realm had spring or pollen was beside the point.
"Goddess. High school? What is this about?!"
"Hm? Why?"
"Don't 'why' me! Why is my high school enrollment already decided?!"
"You didn't know?"
"Of course I didn't!"
If Jia hadn't said anything just now, I never would have known I was supposed to go to school at all. I would have finished the dishes, gone to my room, and slept.
"I thought you already knew..."
"How was I supposed to know that?"
"I told you, didn't I? When we were talking about the harem, I asked if you liked the 'school senior' attribute."
"Ah...?"
"You said you liked it, so I assumed you were planning to attend and prepared everything."
"..."
My mouth snapped shut. Among the three harem members the goddess had promised to arrange, there had definitely been a school senior. Thinking about it, of course you needed to go to school to have a school senior. I just hadn't made that obvious connection. In other words, this was also my fault for agreeing without thinking it through.
This is all the Demon King's fault.
Everything was that Demon King bastard's fault. The hero was secondarily at fault. I had made the wish while exhausted from the fight with the Demon King and hadn't thought it through properly, and the hero was the one who had forced me to fight alone and made me that tired in the first place. Neither the hero nor the Demon King had ever been useful, right up to the end.
"There's university too... Why high school..."
That was the full extent of my rebellion.
And even that got shut down.
"Someone who never even finished high school talking about university? There's an order to these things."
"..."
"Start by graduating high school."
"...Yes."
The goddess's logic—no, her perfectly reasonable statement—crushed me flat.
"Shiiit..."
In the end, I had to change into the school uniform.
"Hmm-hmm~♪"
Jia hummed as he headed to school.
"Haa..."
Trailing behind him, I couldn't stop the sighs from leaking out.
"Why are you walking so far back?"
"Women are supposed to walk three steps behind."
"What are you talking about?"
"I don't know. Some anime I watched a long time ago said that."
"What even..."
Jia looked at me like I was genuinely weird.
In this Japan, maybe it was the men who were supposed to walk three steps behind? Who knew.
Either way, I just couldn't walk side by side with Jia. Even if he had a pretty face and an androgynous look, he was still a guy. Walking next to a guy in a school skirt was hard. We were going to be stuck together for a while, so I would have to get used to it eventually, but right now the sheer wrongness of a man in a skirt made walking together impossible.
"Haa... Seriously..."
Jia suddenly sighed, stopped in the middle of the road, and turned around.
"Really... I can't live because of you, you know that?"
He gave me the kind of smile a mother gives a slightly slow child, then came up beside me.
"If you keep crawling along like a slug, you'll lose me and never even find the school, so I'll specially match your pace."
"No need. You go first."
"Consider having me next to you a privilege!"
"I said go first..."
Whether he was ignoring me or just couldn't hear, Jia completely disregarded my request and kept walking right beside me.
"Don't fall behind. We'll be late."
Whenever I deliberately slowed down to drop back, he noticed like a ghost and grabbed my sleeve to drag me along.
That was how he pulled me out of the alley and onto the main road—where I saw something horrific.
"We're late, we're late!"
"Oh no! Oh no!"
Two male students in the same uniform as Jia. Right in the middle of the street, the two of them were holding hands, bouncing up and down with tears in their eyes, wailing about how late they were.
"Urgh!"
"W-what's wrong?"
My stomach flipped the instant I saw something I should never have seen. If they had been guys who looked good in girls' clothes like Jia, I would have just sighed and moved on. But these were ordinary, everyday male students you could find anywhere—tightly holding hands, faces caked white with makeup. Their tops didn't fit, so a bit of belly fat peeked out, and their short skirts left their legs completely bare.
It was like staring at Cthulhu. My brain was melting. Literally.
"Urgh... my stomach..."
"Y-your stomach hurts? Wait, where did I put the medicine..."
"Jia..."
"Y-yeah! I'll find the medicine right away—"
"I'm so glad it's you... really..."
"W-w-what are you saying!!"
Jia's face went red as he shouted. The way he got flustered and shy—if I had seen it before those nuclear bombs, I would have thought, "What the hell is this guy's problem?" But right now, he looked like an angel.
"Ugh... Jia, Papa..."
"What's wrong with you?! Are you actually sick? Sh-should we go to the hospital?"
"Please stand in front of me... please..."
The me who, just moments ago, had refused to walk next to Jia because he was wearing a skirt no longer existed.
Thud-thud-thud-thud!
Ahh...
They were coming.
Jia was blocking my view, so I could only see them out of the corner of my eye—blurry shapes—but they were the same kind of people I had just witnessed, skirts fluttering as they sprinted to avoid being late. If I saw them clearly, my mind would definitely shatter.
"Please stand in front of me! Please!"
"O-okay, okay! Just calm down!"
Trembling, I kept my eyes locked on Jia's back and carefully followed him.