Soft Adaptation (1)
Blink. Blink.
How long had I been asleep? My eyelids were stuck fast, dried out and refusing to part. I forced myself to rub at them and peered through the blur at the ceiling beyond.
"Hah…"
This wasn't my room.
I hadn't made it back to reality. Just like that familiar cliché — a ceiling that was nothing but strange. I had no choice but to accept it now. Somehow, for reasons I couldn't begin to understand, I had been transmigrated into the game world of Four Crowns.
"Pretending not to notice isn't going to change anything…"
Well, if things had come to this, why not just live inside the game I'd loved so much and enjoy myself? Huh. That was a better idea than I'd expected. Still, there were a few things I needed to check first.
Priority number one.
"Why does my voice sound like this…?"
Old habits from recording game walkthroughs had me muttering to myself without thinking. The strange part was that what came out wasn't my usual rock-bottom baritone — it was a sweet, delicate voice I'd never heard in my life.
"Ahh—"
Just in case.
"Red leather, yellow leather—"
I tried again and again, but every time the same lovely, high voice came back to me.
…This was looking more and more like that.
I carefully sat up and looked into the full-length mirror by the infirmary entrance, and the cause of my voice became immediately clear.
A cute girl with harmless-looking pink bobbed hair and green eyes.
"Bleh-bleh—"
That was the body I'd been transmigrated into. Watching those bright red lips move every time I spoke felt so alien it bordered on grotesque.
Well, becoming a girl wasn't actually that big a deal. Four Crowns let you choose the protagonist's gender, and across hundreds of playthroughs I'd always picked the female character. Maybe all that experience had been preparation for this exact moment.
The real snag was that the person I'd possessed wasn't one of the main cast. If she'd had an ending route of her own, I would have cleared it at least once and remembered her face. But this face was one I'd never seen — a supporting character among supporting characters. The kind of deforme'd blur that existed solely to fill out the background.
Which brought me to problem number two.
With the protagonist, Lutera, already dead — at what point in the story had I arrived?
If it was after the ending, I could enjoy academy life without a care in the world. If it was before, I'd have to experience those nightmarish storylines firsthand, which meant gritting my teeth and finding a way to deal with them.
"Heh."
Still, it wasn't bad. No — it was actually great. Whatever else happened, it meant I could meet the characters who'd filled my harem one by one, in the flesh. If I could see their endings myself — if I could reach those happy endings with them — how wonderful would that be?
It was an adult game, after all, so there were plenty of service scenes that bordered on bed scenes. And I'd get to experience those for real! Plus, unlike the game where you could only romance one person at a time, this was reality — which meant a harem was actually possible!
My fretting didn't last long.
Tick, tock, tick, tock, tick, tock.
Beneath the quietly ticking clock hung a wall calendar. The Academy schedule was marked out in neat circles, so it had clearly been made by the Academy itself. And the year and date looked painfully familiar.
March 12th, 1444 — the start of the first episode of Four Crowns, the tutorial. The moment when an unidentified terrorist group launched an attack targeting the newly enrolled main cast, and the protagonists had to stop them.
"…There's no way she should be dead, though?"
A crisis of that level shouldn't have been enough to kill a near-omnipotent protagonist. The enemies had just been a handful of terrorists strapped with mana bombs and some back-alley thugs armed with fire extinguishers.
What was going on? What was I missing…?
"Ah. Don't tell me—"
…There was one thing I'd overlooked.
After clearing every ending on every route, a new difficulty unlocked: Lunatic. Lunatic difficulty was a nightmare that tolerated zero player error. Choices that would normally end in injury could kill a character outright. Once one character died, others would have mental breakdowns, leave the party, or make extreme decisions of their own. And unlike normal difficulty, where you could save and load freely to any point you wanted, the save points were fixed — and you only got three slots.
Right. I'd been so used to it that I'd completely missed it. The three save slots that had appeared for me.
In other words, the world of Four Crowns I'd been dropped into was right at the start of the game — and it was Lunatic difficulty, where the protagonist had already died in the worst possible outcome.
"Ah."
The moment that realization hit, my mind went blank white and my heart started hammering like mad.
…This was no time to sit around.
The protagonist had been the one who mediated between students who saw each other as nothing but enemies and brought them together. With her dead after the mysterious terrorist attack, there was no one left to stop the students from turning on each other. I'd never seen this situation in the game, but from experience — from memory — there was only one thing that happened in moments like this.
"No…!"
They would be tearing into each other right now, casting blame and suspicion in the worst kind of fight. I had to stop it. Every single one of them was someone I loved. People I couldn't abandon — kind, decent kids who each carried their own problems, ordinary students through and through. I couldn't let them get swept up in this and do something unforgivable.
That was my wish, and it was also the practical choice. With the protagonist gone, I was going to need everyone's strength to handle whatever came next.
Having made up my mind, I burst out of the infirmary and started thinking about where the students would be gathered.
A classroom? No — even this Academy wasn't deranged enough to keep holding lectures right after a terrorist attack. The cafeteria? They were all highborn nobles; I couldn't picture them picking a fight over lunch. Which left…
The Meeting Plaza, where students from every class came and went and naturally ran into each other. That was the only place it could be.
The Meeting Plaza, with its massive fountain and the statue of the first headmaster commemorating the Academy's founding. Under normal circumstances it would have been a diplomatic stage for fresh, awkward conversations between newly enrolled students. Right now, the atmosphere was nothing short of murderous.
While I'd been out cold, a fight had clearly broken out — the students packed into the plaza weren't just a handful. Most were unrecognizable extras, but the ones leading the charge were almost all main-cast characters I'd loved so dearly.
"Ah."
A sigh slipped out on its own. This was no time for fighting. These were people who'd received elite educations in their own countries, and here they were, completely swept up in their emotions.
The protagonist's murder hadn't been an accident — which meant there was a culprit or an accomplice inside the Academy who'd colluded with the terrorists. With a psycho who killed without hesitation lurking among them, of course that psycho wasn't going to sit quietly while everyone started fighting each other.
For now it was just verbal sparring, posturing and staring each other down. But if someone pulled the trigger? A horrific free-for-all of mutual slaughter would erupt, a miniature war inside the Academy that wouldn't end until only one faction was left standing.
As if to prove the point, a suspicious-looking student caught my eye at the edge of my vision. He kept glancing around anxiously, fiddling with something blunt in his pocket. Nobody would be out here jerking off in the middle of a situation like this, so that blunt thing had to be a weapon…
There was no way the main cast, with all their talent, wouldn't notice killing intent like that. So why wasn't anyone doing anything?
Even I could tell something was off, and the sum total of my combat experience was getting shaken down and beaten up by delinquent upperclassmen in middle school.
I had to stop this. I couldn't just stand by and watch the women I knew — the ones who'd become real in this world — die here.
There was no hesitation in my movement. Then again, the worst pain I'd ever felt was scraping my skin in a fall or cutting myself on a knife or a piece of paper, so charging in without fear was only natural.
The result, of course, was equally natural.
—Bang!
"……!!!"
I threw myself forward, desperate to subdue him before it was too late — and the man, panicking, swung his gun toward me. Something punched straight through my chest. The searing heat hit so hard I couldn't even scream; all I could do was let something thick and wet spill from my mouth.
A bright red stream of blood ran down. It hurt.
"Wh-what the hell?!"
"It's an ambush!!"
It hurt it hurt it hurt it hurt it hurt it hurt it hurt it hurt it hurt!!!!!!
Students rushed over as I collapsed. The one who'd fired was quickly pinned and forced to his knees on the ground.
It hurts, it fucking hurts!!
"You crazy bastard! Is there anyone who can use healing magic?!"
"…Wait. Isn't that…?"
"F-fuck!! Is there a healing mage or not?!"
Even through the haze and the unbearable agony, I thought: at least this world can bring back people who just died. A wound that only punched through the chest should heal without any side effects. I was content knowing that this unspeakable pain had bought the lives of the people I loved.
But something was wrong.
Even with one student screaming for a healing mage, the others just eyed each other warily. Not a single person stepped forward to treat me.
—Shhk!
"Might as well take advantage. Let's find the ringleader right here."
Instead, a horrific slaughter erupted — students killing each other without warning. Blood and scraps of what had once been living flesh rained down onto my face where I lay on the ground. The smell was metallic and raw. I wanted to vomit at the sight of it, but all that came out of my mouth was more blood.
Ah.
I'd failed. And horribly, at that.
I'd go back and try again. I must have done something wrong for it to fall apart like this. A different approach would change the outcome — I was sure of it.
Would you like to load a save file?
→ [Auto Save 1]
Again.
Right. And just like that, I opened my eyes lying in the infirmary once more.
This time there was no wasting time on pointless checks. I immediately threw myself out of bed and sprinted for the central plaza where the slaughter had broken out — ignoring everyone's expressions and behavior, focused solely on subduing the student who'd fired first.
I pulled out a small handgun that I assumed had belonged to this body's original owner, aimed it at the bastard who'd put a hole in my chest, and pulled the trigger.
—Bang!
As a former Korean reservist, my aim wasn't going to miss. I thought I'd neutralized the mastermind behind the incident and was just starting to relax when—
"…So that's how you're playing it?"
A clear miscalculation. They launched into that horrific bloodbath all over again, and the second person to get attacked and die was simply me.
Ahh.
Again.
Would you like to load a save file?
→ [Auto Save 1]
Fine. I admit it. Getting shot for the first time in my life had made me so angry and worked up that I'd made the wrong call. So this time, I decided to talk to the mastermind properly — just the two of us.
But…
"…Cough."
He never had any intention of talking to me in the first place. The moment I put some distance between us and turned around to start a conversation, a blade sank into my chest without fail. Honestly, the guy had a real fetish for chests.
And just like that, I died again.
Again.
This time I tried warning the students about the mastermind's attack, hoping they could respond somehow — but they didn't believe me, and all I managed to do was set off the fighting even faster.
Again.
And again.
Again, again.
Keep going. Again.
"…Ah."
…Should I just stop?
Even with save-and-load available, this wasn't a virtual world on the other side of a monitor. This was reality. I had to personally endure every bit of stress, every agony, every nightmare of a situation just to work through it — and for that, I was nothing more than an ordinary office worker who couldn't do a single thing right.
What was I even putting myself through all this pain for?
At least I was stubborn. That much was a blessing. Yeah — after everything I'd already done, I couldn't quit after a mere dozen or so attempts.
Yeah.
Besides, if I gave up — if the main characters died — there would be no future. Saving the people I loved was wonderful, but this was also for my own future. And if, along the way, I could spend a happy life with them, that would be more than I could ask for.
So I didn't want to give up.
Which meant this time…
I'd stop trying to act like someone from this world. I'd move with the understanding that this situation was a game.