Chapter 2. Encounters and Opportunities (1)
Chapter 2. Encounters and Opportunities (1)
Chapter 2. Encounters and Opportunities
Something felt off.
In other words, I had the feeling I'd gotten myself into something I shouldn't have.
Okay, to be honest, I'd read that novel pretty enjoyably. If I hadn't found it entertaining, I wouldn't have bothered keeping up with it all the way to the latest chapter.
I'd had my own share of affection for each of the characters, and I'd been curious about which of them would end up with the protagonist. I'd exchanged all sorts of opinions with other readers and had in-depth discussions about which character ought to end up with him.
Of course, by my rational and reasonable judgment, there wasn't really any character who could end up with him other than the childhood friend.
Among the many, many theories of literature, there is the Russian literary giant Anton Chekhov's "Chekhov's gun."
To put it simply, if a gun appears in the first scene of a novel, then a scene of that gun being fired must also appear.
Films, which are made by shooting scenes with a camera and stitching them together, often capture unintended things in the frame. Things like another camera, the production crew reflected in a mirror, or the random behavior of passersby. Depending on production conditions, there are many cases where such things simply can't be cut.
But a novel is judged entirely by the author's intent. If there are a lot of passersby, you can just describe it as "there were a lot of passersby"—there's no need to describe each of those people's appearances one by one.
If the author goes out of their way to describe a person in depth, there has to be a reason for it. Whether it's to depict the atmosphere in a single stroke, or whether that character's appearance is actually foreshadowing for the story to come, or whether it's symbolically hinting at something.
Especially in a web novel with a somewhat limited word count, it's something that needs to be thought through even more carefully.
That's right. The "childhood friend heroine" is Chekhov's gun. She's a loaded gun that has to be fired someday.
She's usually the first to appear, sweet memories with the protagonist keep coming up at every turn, and whether she's a tsundere or not, the story goes that she's actually liked the protagonist since childhood—so all that mountain of foreshadowing obviously has to be used in the novel, doesn't it?
1. Rationally speaking, the heroine with the longest screen time and the most foreshadowing of ending up with the protagonist is usually bound to be the childhood friend.
2. Thinking about it logically, the heroine who appears first is bound to have more fans.
How could the childhood friend heroine possibly be eliminated?
How the Saintess could push aside the childhood friend who'd had all that buildup stacked up piece by piece and get that close to him, I simply couldn't understand. In the first place, the Saintess's combat ability was, at best, "a mace-spinning machine," and the only part of her that could be of practical help was the Holy Power she wielded.
Developing feelings just because you got healed a few times—what is this, some kind of suspension bridge effect?
Unless the tags include NTR, the protagonist is obviously supposed to end up with the childhood friend.
I'd already written about this topic in detail and sent it to the author. This was before I sent the important message about atheism.
"......."
"What's wrong?"
And maybe that was why.
I was now considerably confused about whether the situation I found myself in was also intended by that author—that is, by this world's God—or not.
"Hey."
Poke.
"Eek!?"
A finger suddenly dug into my side—no, of all places, between my ribs—and that sound escaped me before I could stop it. Once again, I barely managed to clamp my mouth shut with transcendent willpower, so the sound didn't turn into a full "Kyaaak!?" shriek, but—
I hurriedly looked around.
Among the people sweeping the convent courtyard, no one was looking our way.
Several nuns were already nowhere to be seen. They'd probably already undergone Laicization, or left their posts to prepare for Laicization.
The really young nuns—that is, the ones around five years old or younger, the age I was when I first came here—didn't have much occasion to interact with us directly. The childcare facilities for infants and toddlers like that were located in a separate section of the Church.
"What's the big idea, all of a sudden?"
I glared at Ria while rubbing my throbbing ribs. Ria, who was holding a bamboo broom handle just like mine, was giving me a baffled look—which was, quite absurdly, a baffled look directed at me.
"I've been calling you for a while and you weren't answering. You were just moving your broom around with a blank expression. Look."
At Ria's words, I looked down at the ground.
I must have been sweeping one spot too mechanically, because a little sand had been pushed to the side. Well, the ground was packed hard enough that it hadn't actually been dug out, but since the broom was made of stiff twigs, lines had been drawn across it as if it had been scratched.
I frowned slightly and erased the marks by rubbing them with the tip of my foot.
"Why? Can't stop thinking about that guy's face from earlier?"
"What?"
"No, you know, that guy. The one they said was our age."
"Hah."
The absurdity of it made that sound come out of me.
I'm a rational person, but I do have some understanding of irrational human emotions.
Of course there can be women who see a handsome man and "fall for him at first sight." A person's first impression inevitably has no basis for judgment other than appearance.
The opposite sex can obviously do the same, and of course it can happen between people of the same sex too. Though the probability is naturally lower than between opposite sexes.
And the "protagonist" did have the setting of being handsome, of course, but—
"Why would I?"
I answered with another hollow laugh.
As I moved the broom a little roughly, a sharp scraping sound came from the ground. Even though I was making it that obvious that I disliked the idea, Ria's expression somehow looked like she didn't believe a word I said.
"No, I mean, normally you don't really give much of an answer whenever guys talk to you, right? Last time you actually hid behind the nuns, didn't you?"
It was the season when it seemed like it wouldn't snow anymore. But that didn't mean it wasn't cold—a morning of such a season.
While sweeping, I thought for a moment about why I had to be having this conversation.
"Ria."
And my rational brain reached a conclusion very quickly.
"Did you develop some interest in that man?"
"What?"
Hmm, as expected.
The way Ria answered my question with a slightly exaggerated reaction was, according to the decades of life experience I'd accumulated in my Past Life, exactly how women sounded when they didn't dislike something but were a little embarrassed to show that they liked it.
Unfortunately, I hadn't had a lot of women around me, but I'd seen it often in dramas with a lot of female writers. Usually in those, when the female lead hears a question like "Hey, you like him, don't you?", she answers with "Whaaat~~~?"
"Well, it's understandable. Objectively speaking, he does have a handsome face."
Not just his face—his body was good too. That was unavoidable, really. If you're going to keep working as a Hunter, maintaining your physical fitness is essential.
Unfortunately, I hadn't recognized the protagonist as the protagonist just from seeing that face. Web novel illustrations are usually two-dimensional, and Novelpia's illustrations in particular are often in a Japanese manga style.
No, actually, there wasn't even an illustration of the male lead in the first place. Illustrations that go into the main story often have to be selected by the author personally, and if that's the case, it's far more efficient to pick illustrations that depict the heroines' appearances rather than the protagonist's.
So the only face of the protagonist I actually knew was the face of the SD character from the released emoticons.
No wonder I didn't recognize him.
I'd just been surprised that he was better-looking than I expected after pouring Holy Power into his blood-soaked face and washing it clean, and I'd just been horrified, seeing the body visible through the clothes torn open at the scene to check his wounds, thinking, "Just how much of a gym rat do you have to be to maintain that?"
On the other hand, if it was Ria, who was one of the heroines from the start, it was only natural for her to react like this.
"No, I haven't even exchanged a single word with him."
"Once you become a nun, your fantasies about the opposite sex tend to grow. I know."
One of the nuns I'd shared a room with hadn't fought with me purely over the issue of God.
She'd done nothing but talk about men day in and day out, so I'd been the one to get fed up first and request a room change.
And while not all nuns are like that, some of the nuns going through puberty tend to show those signs especially strongly. Some even brag about meeting a man during volunteer work, and I can't understand how they supposedly met a guy their age—especially during such a short outing.
Unless the guy was a severe premature ejaculator who could finish everything in a few dozen seconds to a minute, it would be nearly impossible, wouldn't it?
......No, that's not what I was trying to say.
"......I've only been here for a little over a month now, you know?"
"If you were always popular, then even a little over a month would be enough to feel that way."
"Huh? I'm popular? Me?"
"Wouldn't you have to be? There are way more men in the Hunter profession, aren't there? Besides, you're young, Ria, and in many ways you have the kind of looks men would find attractive."
"Uh......"
What, as if that's news.
I take some pride in my own figure, but Ria's is even better. It's a subtle difference, but if she wore the same body-hugging clothes as me, I think the comparison would be immediately obvious.
It wouldn't be strange if she'd had a boyfriend or two her own age.
Well, nothing like that happened in the novel, but still, there were probably at least some men who approached her while secretly liking her, weren't there?
"......."
Leaving Ria, who had fallen silent in thought for some reason, I was finally able to enjoy a bit of peaceful morning contemplation.
So, what was I thinking about again?
Ah, right. I was in the middle of going through the logical argument for why the childhood friend should end up with the protagonist. Right.
Let me continue that thought a little.