Someone At The Academy Who Isn't A Student (2)
Someone once said that even if they died tomorrow, they'd want tteokbokki as their last meal.
I feel the same way. Even if my heart's about to give out from this bullshit, a man's got to eat lunch before he dies.
"Meal ticket."
"Here you go."
"Hm."
The cafeteria ajumma, who'd held her hand out brusquely, dipped her head politely.
*Beep.*
I pressed my ring against the payment magic circle engraved into the counter, and—
*Whirrr.*
—a meal ticket came sliding out.
What is this, if not a kiosk.
"Steak and shrimp fried rice, please."
"How about some lakeside eel with garlic? Great for a man's stamina."
"Gross."
Why on earth would I want lakeside eel, when I've eaten the stuff grilled and raw until I was sick of it for a whole year?
"Oh, it's ever so good for a man~"
"Forget it. Just drown the steak in sauce."
"Doubles your hardness, you know~"
"Then I'll burst, damn it. Just give me rice, please."
After all this back-and-forth, I finally wrestled my food away, passed the student tables, and made it to the outsiders' section.
"—Is that him? The one from the rumors..."
"—No title, no background, nothing—and yet he snagged the engagement slot? Got to be packing something enormous, obviously."
The moment I sat down, eyes from every direction bored into me.
Some leered as they scanned my body; others glared, clearly disgusted at the commoner who'd stolen a duke's daughter's fiancé position.
*A flick of my middle finger.*
Consider this my heartfelt thanks for all the attention. Screw you. Screw you very much.
"Ah, right~ And you, eat extra."
"—What is he doing?"
—"??"
To the nobles puzzling over my behavior, I sprang up from my seat and explained, with an elegant bow.
"Back in the village I'm from, we'd greet our elders with a hand gesture like this before a meal? I'm a commoner and haven't been knighted yet, so... it was my way of showing respect~"
"—I see..."
—"Oh my, how humble."
—"Country customs certainly are odd. So *low-class*~"
Having thoroughly mocked the idiots slurping it all up in my head, I scooped up a huge spoonful of fried rice and shoved it into my mouth.
The fluffy, perfectly cooked rice paired exquisitely with the steak, still bleeding pink.
I'd assumed the kitchen ajumma was all talk and no skill, given how insufferable she'd been.
But apparently there was a reason she single-handedly ran the kitchen of the Empire's most prestigious academy.
"Huh. This beats even what I had at Carla's place."
With that thought, I loaded up another big spoonful and filled my mouth again.
Chew as I might, I couldn't get enough of it. Maybe one more...
*Chomp.*
"?!"
But between the fluffy grains of rice, something familiarly greasy rolled across the tip of my tongue.
I dug through the fried rice and found a few pieces of finely sliced grilled eel hiding among the grains.
*Gogogogogogo—*
A strange aroma wafted up from the eel sauce—something I'd never tasted in my life—and stung my nose.
And it wasn't just the smell. My body heated up on the spot, and blood began pooling, bit by bit, in my lower half.
'Hold on... don't tell me this is *that*?'
Lilium Crown was an eroge.
In-game, eating the 'Eel Rice Bowl' item during an H-scene increased your... output by one.
"So it wasn't the eel, it was the sauce that was the main body. And they sell this at the cafeteria...? Insane."
Terror seized me. I picked out every piece of eel, piled them in a corner of the bowl—then realized the sauce was the culprit and shoved the whole bowl away to the edge of the table.
"—Kyaaa!!"
"Hm?"
"There you are."
While I was debating whether to order something else or just fill up on snacks, Carla sat down beside me with her tray.
"Shrimp fried rice and steak... and eel?"
Carla's eyes widened slightly, then narrowed just as fast.
"Ahem."
"..."
"Ah—spend freely and eat whatever you like, from now on! Buy whatever you want!"
"Oh, uh, sure."
"However..."
"However?"
"If—if you keep wasting food like *this*, leaving it half-eaten... I'll—I'll punish you!! At night..."
Carla barked awkwardly and, quite naturally, pulled my plate toward herself. Then she delicately speared a piece of eel with her fork and brought it to my lips.
Oh, *shit*.
Carla, you sly little fox.
Once I've properly made you mine, I'm going to devour you like a dog.
"The Lord said he doesn't wish to eat it. Don't force him."
*Chomp.*
Leah Harben bit the fork—eel and all—straight out of Carla's hand.
"What do you think you're doing?! Spit it out!"
"Yes, my Lord. *Ptui.*"
And Leah actually spat the fork out.
Carla glared at her as if she were something unclean and dumped the eel, fork and all, into the trash.
"You're here too, Leah."
"Yes, my Lord! I couldn't stand at your side this morning due to class, so for the lunch hour I intend to guard you without so much as a heartbeat's absence! Such is the duty of one who has been knighted!"
I was about to tune out the deranged knight's rant as usual, but 'the duty of one who has been knighted' somehow caught on my heart.
"Leah."
"Yes, my Lord!"
"No, never mind. I should discuss important matters with my *wife*."
"*Why!*"
Carla smiled sweetly and twirled her forkful of pasta toward my mouth. I chewed it down, then lowered my hand and rested it gently over Carla's on the table.
"E–Evan... people will see."
"I have a worry, Carla."
"What is it?"
"Save one person in front of you, and everyone else might die later."
"That one person would obviously be precious to me, wouldn't they?"
"Precious or not, it's a situation I can't just ignore."
"Likely a child, or a lover, or a parent, then."
Sharp, aren't you?
"In any case—if you hold out to save everyone, the one you *could* save right now definitely dies. What would you do, Carla?"
"What an interesting question, Evan."
Carla wiped the corner of my mouth with a napkin.
"—Kyaaa~! I want Carla to wipe my mouth too!!"
"—What's that bastard got that he gets pampered like that..."
"I would save the one person, without question."
"Why? Everyone else could be endangered because of it."
"Because that person is precious to—"
Carla glanced briefly at my face.
A moment later, the resolve in her unshaking eyes hardened even further, and she slowly turned my hand over where it lay on hers, clasping it tight in both of hers.
"Even if I sacrifice everything I am to save everyone, what would be left for me?"
"What?"
"I'd take a few fingers pointing at me, maybe. But people who'd curse me while my soul remains unstained—who gives a damn what they think?"
...I nodded quietly.
Spoken like the madwoman who once threw away her entire life for Princess Iris.
"I, too, would protect the one precious person!"
"Not listening. Your answer's too predictable."
"P–Please listen, my Lord!"
Leah lunged over and stole my hand right out of Carla's tender grip, hugging it to her chest.
"If that one person were you, my Lord, I would choose you without a moment's hesitation... but—"
The flush on Leah's face settled into calm, and a firm resolve rose in both her eyes.
"—someone who cannot save even one person in need before his eyes—how could he save everyone? It would be laughable."
"...Oh ho."
Hearing Carla's and Leah's answers, my tangled thoughts began to loosen.
Come to think of it, the answers to my dilemma had been sitting on either side of me all along.
The day I saved Carla, did the Empire collapse? Leah nearly drowned, and did the Demon King invade the next morning because of it?
Things always went sideways—but every time, there was a way to clean it up after.
'If it goes wrong, I'll fix it when it does. I've already derailed how many events by now? No point fretting at this stage.'
My mind made up, I offered Leah and Carla a brief word of thanks and left the cafeteria.
I resolved, and resolved again: I *would* save Elysia.
Clenching my jaw, I sprinted full tilt toward the research tower of the annex beside the main building, where Professor Montel's lab was.
But then—
—"Aahhhn...♡"
—"Ahh...!"
"Oh my."
My sprint came to a dead stop.
I turned my head toward the source of the sounds, and there it was—the legendary backyard storage shed I'd grown sick of reading about in notes all morning, right beside me.
The door was shut tight, but from inside, without the slightest attempt at discretion, suggestive sounds came leaking out in a steady stream.
—"Aahhhn...♡"
—"Ahh...!"
'...'
I tried to just walk past.
I really did.
—"Nooooo!! I don't want to gooo!!"
—"Mister Confessor... nngh... Headmaster... nngh. Homeroom teacher... Student Affairs teacher... nngh."
—"Kyoooooot! Kyoot!! Ogogotgogokgok!"
'Ah, for fuck's sake. What kind of act produces *that* sound?'
I don't know about the rest, but I felt like I'd die today unless I got to the bottom of that Five-Grain-Cheerios girl.
Is she having sex with a pterodactyl or what, goddamn.
Curiosity won out in the end. I angled my body slightly and brought my eye to the half-open window of the backyard shed.
—"Uheeheeeck... ogogok!! Gogokgokgok!!!"
'Wow. Holy shit.'
The visual was so much more intense than I'd imagined that I fell flat on my back.
Good grief... it looked fine as an H-scene, but in person it's kind of horrifying.
—"Ogogok... g... eh?! S-someone just... I just felt someone watching...!"
Then what the hell were you moaning *that* for, hoping nobody would see?
Crazy woman, absolute crazy woman...
Soon I heard a woman frantically scrambling into her clothes inside, and before long, a man came striding out, huffing and kicking the door open.
"Fucking hell, in the prime of life and all that..."
"Well, well."
Blond hair a shade darker than it appeared on the game screen.
An aura of nobility that practically dripped off him just standing still.
And a face so obscenely handsome it put ordinary humans to shame.
'No wonder the heroines fall for him, looking like that. Bastard.'
The man I'd just crossed paths with was the Princess's fiancé—and the 'Player' character of Lilium Crown.
Adrian Belloc.