The Consequences of Aggro (1)
Monday morning.
Leaving the aftermath of the raid behind them, lectures were about to begin. Novena sat alone in the empty classroom, rubbing her throbbing eye sockets raw from exhaustion as she leaned back against the chair.
"...I really can't figure out her true identity."
Adel.
That suspicious classmate of hers. On the crown prince's orders, she had spent the entire weekend tailing the girl to get a read on what she was really thinking.
"Haa..."
Novena let out a hollow sigh. She simply couldn't tidy her thoughts into anything neat and clean. How could she?
At first she had steeled herself, determined not to drop her guard just because of that pink-haired, petite, and adorable appearance. Yet Adel had gone right on acting so naturally dense it was almost pure, as if she truly knew nothing at all.
Take the way she had wandered the streets all weekend like someone who had completely lost her mind. Novena had briefly suspected she was trying to shake a tail so she could meet a contact somewhere—but that doubt lasted only a moment.
"Eh, this wasn't the place?"
Watching Adel rummage through trash bins and carefully pocket unidentifiable scraps, then—
"Ugh, so gross!!"
—at dawn, glancing around furtively before using the fountain water to scrub her grimy face and hands, Novena had no choice but to abandon her suspicions.
"Ehehe! I won't have to go hungry tomorrow!"
She had even dunked her whole head into the fountain to wash her hair, then scooped up a fistful of coins from the bottom and beamed with pure joy. It was so much like something a stray alley cat would do that a small smile had slipped onto Novena's face before she could stop it.
Why on earth was she acting like that? That part still remained a mystery.
Anyone who had managed to enroll at the Academy should at least have secured a place to stay inside the city. If not, they could simply apply for a dormitory through the Academy itself. There weren't many reasons left for her to be sleeping rough like that.
Wait.
A sudden realization struck Novena.
Adel had been the first to notice and subdue the student who had tried to open fire in the plaza—faster than anyone else. That meant she either already knew about the people who had attacked the Academy, or she was somehow connected to them.
Just as His Highness had begun to find her suspicious, the other factions would inevitably reach the same conclusion. There might well be others watching Adel's every move the same way Novena was tailing her right now. In that case, of course she couldn't let her guard down and rest alone.
"Ha, shit, seriously."
It left a bad taste in her mouth. Should she have shown herself sooner and offered help?
As exhausted as Novena felt, Adel—who had been wandering all day—must have been feeling an even heavier fatigue. The image of Adel collapsing without warning in the infirmary, as if her body had already been failing her, rose unbidden in Novena's mind.
...Was she all right?
She had been forced to abandon the tail in the early hours of Sunday just so she could make it to class. Vague worry surged up—had something happened in the meantime?
She wasn't collapsed somewhere, was she? She hadn't been attacked, had she?
Adel wasn't a friend. She wasn't even a fellow student from the same kingdom. She was a complete third party with no connection to the prosperity of the kingdom or the family. And yet—
...I just feel like I have to help her somehow.
Novena's instincts were screaming at her. Keep watching that classmate. After a terrorist attack that had left an Academy professor dead, it was only a matter of time before something else exploded. And somehow, she had the vague sense that Adel would end up right in the middle of it.
While Novena continued turning these thoughts over with her eyes half-closed in a half-asleep daze, time slowly passed and other students began filtering into the empty lecture hall, filling the seats.
Naturally, the students clustered by faction, creating a subtle atmosphere of rivalry. In the middle of that tense air, a blond young man approached Novena's side and spoke to her as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
"You look pretty worn out."
"...Your Highness."
It was the crown prince of her homeland, the Bellaros Kingdom. Novena slowly opened her eyes, gave a lazy nod of greeting, then squeezed them shut again.
"Heh... that tired, are you?"
"All thanks to a certain someone's bothersome orders."
Spiderweb veins stood out clearly in her eyes, and the crown prince couldn't hide the playful look that crossed his face at her utterly exhausted appearance.
He dropped into the seat beside her with a soft thud and cast a meaningful glance around the room.
"What, I just told you to dig a little into her background and you went and tailed her all day?"
"..."
"Did she catch your fancy that much? Enough to pull an all-nighter?"
Novena's brow twitched and tightened. Anyone looking would have seen pure cold fury, but the crown prince refused to stop needling her.
"But it seems the little bird who nestled so snugly into our dear Novena's heart isn't going to make it to class."
Bang!
She had already been fretting over Adel's safety; hearing that from the crown prince was the final straw. Novena could no longer sit still and endure it.
She shot to her feet in irritation, confirmed that a few minutes still remained before the lecture began, and wordlessly stormed out of the classroom.
Watching her retreating back, the crown prince's face twisted into a smirk whose meaning no one could read.
On the road to the Academy.
Thud!
"Student! Watch where you're going!!"
"Eek... I-I'm so sorry!"
I can't see a thing!
After two straight nights without sleep, my vision was hazy and the sky and ground looked ready to kiss each other as they swayed up and down. How was I supposed to walk straight like this?
But I was still a perfectly ordinary, common-sense modern person, so when you mess up you apologize properly. That made this the seventeenth time I had bowed my head in apology on the way to the Academy.
So... the seventeenth citizen?
...Or was it a student?
Fortunately this one was kind as well; after my repeated apologies they simply clicked their tongue and walked off without another word.
Ugh.
I would have killed for an energy drink like Monster right about now, but of course nothing like that existed in this world. Even a single cup of strong coffee would have been nice, but the only money I had was a handful of copper coins I'd fished out of the plaza fountain yesterday, so buying anything was out of the question.
...Café coffee in this world was ridiculously expensive too.
The one silver lining was that while I was loitering in front of a café I spotted other students heading to class. If I hadn't, I might have kept wandering the streets without even realizing today was a school day.
Hmm...
My clothes were pretty filthy. I wasn't sure I should even show up at the Academy looking like this. I looked like a ragamuffin, but at least the various items I'd worked so hard to collect were still perfectly intact.
Ten items total by today.
Four stat-boosting elixirs—one each for strength, agility, intelligence, and magic power. Then a disposable bomb, a magic bullet, and three potions that cured status ailments, restored health, and restored mana—five more. And finally, the Rainbow Flower, the affection-boosting item they handed out one per episode!
Aside from the rewards you only got from tough quests, I had basically found everything there was to find. That made the all-nighters feel pretty worthwhile, didn't it?
The only real regret was that I hadn't managed to get another Growth Powder after eating the one in the infirmary. The other stat-boosting items just couldn't match its efficiency. If Growth Powder raised every stat by five, something like Strength Powder only raised strength by a random three to six.
"...Huh. Wait a second."
Back when I was just playing the game I never paid it any mind, but this was reality now. What would happen if I mixed the four powders—strength, agility, intelligence, and magic—and took them all at once?
Maybe I could create an all-stat powder even better than Growth Powder?
Whoa.
I was clearly a genius.
I had to try it myself. Just thinking about it made the pouch stuffed with items feel even heavier and more promising!
"Hehe!"
I had a plan for everything!
Pop the stat items, learn the basic skills at the Academy, and the side quests in Episode 1 would be a breeze. Imagining that bright, chaotic future made my heavy footsteps feel lighter all on their own.
"Isn't that the one from Saturday?"
"...Yeah, that crazy bitch."
But of course.
Reality never flowed the way I wanted it to.
"Oh my, look at that state. Looks like some beggar wandered in."
"..."
While I had been roaming the city, the Academy uniform had served as a kind of ID; no one had bothered picking fights. To ordinary citizens, the Academy's authority was as lofty as the imperial family itself.
"Did she get raped somewhere on the way in or what?"
"Who knows—she's a commoner bitch, maybe she sold herself. Looking at that face, it's exactly the kind of thing she'd do."
"Pfft. How did trash like that even get into the Academy?"
The moment I stepped onto Academy grounds, the stares pouring in from every direction changed. Curiosity, disgust, contempt, anger, indifference. The reactions aimed at me were so openly hostile I could barely understand why.
The heart that had been racing with excitement over the possibility of growth now began pounding for an entirely different, ominous reason. Even through the fog of sleep deprivation, it was hard to just brush off that clear hostility like it was nothing.
Little by little, my head dropped toward the floor.
...Why?
Why did I have to be treated like this?
Wasn't this game supposed to be a happy world centered on the protagonists, led by the protagonists?
I had died dozens of times to keep them alive—taken bullet holes through my body, spilled bright red blood, writhed in agony, done every insane thing imaginable—and this was the result?
Why? Because I was just some commoner who couldn't even find a place to live and showed up to school looking like a mess after sleeping on the streets?
But the truly ridiculous part was that the hostility wasn't coming only from the noble-born students. The commoners from the Republic were right there with them.
It felt like a man who had walked into the women's restroom. Like a Black person stuck among whites. I had become the zoo monkey—isolated, alone, reduced to a spectacle for them to gawk at.
...Ignore it.
Just ignore them and it'll be fine.
I already knew. People who glared and badmouthed like that almost never actually stepped forward and did anything. All they ever did was petty jealousy and pathetic gossip behind your back.
If I could just make it into the classroom like this...
Ah, haha.
Someone blocked my path.
In my downward field of vision, a pair of feet roughly twice the size of mine appeared.
I tried to sidestep as if I hadn't noticed, but the unknown someone refused to move out of the way no matter what.
...Yeah. Of course.
If most of them were the type who only talked trash behind your back, then one of them was bound to be the kind who actually stepped up like this.
The feet drew closer, step by step.
I squeezed my eyes shut tight.