Eureka!

Clank. Clank.

Inside the moving train, I stared blankly out the window at the clouds drifting lazily past.

My head was stuffed full of storm clouds. Why, then, was the sky out there so unbearably clear?

"Father, what kind of academy material do you take me for?"

That had been the first thing out of my mouth last night, the moment I was summoned out of nowhere and told to go to the academy.

Because Ruel Servent wasn't merely average. He was closer to a dullard.

I am, after all, a man in name if nothing else, and when I first possessed this body in another world I was startled, yes—but the very next thing I did was shout for a status window. An isekai bonus was practically an ironclad rule of the genre. There wasn't one.

Or perhaps there was. If I could speak the language and read and write, maybe that itself was the bonus.

Next I'd hoped for some hidden talent with the sword or with magic. That, too, failed to appear. The expectations that had briefly swelled inside me shattered to pieces, the credits rolling before this world's typical story could even begin.

Ruel had no talent. What was I supposed to do at an academy in a body like this?

"I do not expect much of you either."

Alberic, of course, knew better than anyone that his son was talentless.

"Simply do not fail. Graduate safely, and that will be enough."

He wasn't hoping I would stumble into some fateful encounter at the academy, or that a hidden gift would suddenly bloom. He wasn't hoping I would sweet-talk the daughters of noble houses and spin new ties for the family, either. All he wanted was for me to receive a basic education, graduate without incident, and accumulate just enough learning to stand beside my elder brother Rhon someday and lend a hand when Rhon inherited the house.

While I was still chewing over last night, the train arrived in Luntel, where the academy stood.

"Then again, you never know."

Maybe the instant I enrolled—

—a window like that would float up before my eyes, and an entirely different life would begin. Clutching that vague hope with both hands, I followed the crowd off the train.

"So you didn't run off somewhere after all."

The moment my foot touched the platform, a bewitching voice slid into my ear.

Anyone else would have called it beautiful. Not me. Like one of Pavlov's dogs, the instant I heard it a cold sweat began to run down my spine on reflex.

Slowly, I turned my head toward the sound.

The owner of the voice was a woman with black hair like mine, tied high and left to fall in a ponytail. The slight upward tilt at the corners of her eyes called a cat to mind, though the impression wasn't venomous. If anything, she was closer to a beauty wrapped in a cold, lofty air—lovely enough that a passerby would stop at least once and steal a glance. And that woman was looking straight at me.

"Haha, hey, Sis Ria."

Ria Servent. Second child of House Servent, and this body's older sister by blood.

The first time I met her, I'd assumed this lovely sister would fuss over the youngest the way good-natured Brother Rhon did, pinching my cheeks and cooing, and I'd walked right up to her without a shred of fear. If the me of now could ride a time machine back to that day, I would have yelled at my past self from behind a bookshelf.

Stay! Don't go near her!

"Father sent word. He asked me to look after you."

"Haha... why would Father do that? You're busy enough as it is."

Ria came toward me at a measured pace, dressed in a black uniform trimmed with a gold insignia, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠gold buttons, and gold cords.

Back then, I'd approached her stuffed with happy delusions about our first meeting, and I was beaten to within an inch of my life.

"All you do is gamble!"

"Ria! Calm down and put the sword down!"

If Brother Rhon hadn't stopped her that day, one of my hands might have had a hook on it by now.

"I hear you're still running around gambling."

"......"

For a moment, the temperature around us seemed to plunge.

Huh. So Sis Ria could use magic too? The air felt like it had dropped below freezing. I could even see a white snowfield howling with blizzard behind her.

"Little brother."

Ria opened her mouth quietly.

"While you are here, if ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠I hear even once that you've been in and out of a gambling den..."

Thud.

She set her hand on my right shoulder and squeezed, hard.

"...consider that the day you part ways with this arm."

Sis, I'm not the red-haired one. My hair is black.

Having left a warning far too murderous for an older sister to give her brother, Ria left the station without a backward glance.

Coming out to meet a wastrel of a little brother who barely deserved ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠to be called the stain on the house—to an outsider, it might have looked as if Ria had time to spare. She didn't. She was a knight of the Moonhoundi, one of the three great knight orders of the imperial household. Busy as she was, she had come all this way for a single reason: to make sure I hadn't fled somewhere else.

The moment she vanished, I left the station myself and headed straight for the academy.

I passed through the streets, and before long I was looking up at it—the academy called the finest on the continent, wrapped in towering walls and a blaze of every color. I walked on with my hopes swollen to bursting, certain that the moment I set foot inside, the real otherworld story might finally begin.

A year after I entered the academy, I became a second-year.

When I first enrolled, I'd still expected something.

A window like that would appear, I would meet heroines with hair of every color one after another, and I would bring the bastards who'd looked down on me to their knees. I would cast off my wastrel past, awaken a hidden talent, and be reborn as the protagonist of this world. That sort of development.

Reality was cold. The otherworld bonus—the system window—was, as expected, nowhere to be found. I was still a dullard with no talent for sword or magic, a wastrel slipping in and out of gambling dens just to wring a little dopamine out of this tedious world.

Ah. One thing had changed. I'd picked up a few spells, if only to stay out of Ria's sight.

And now, as a second-year, I had the greatest problem of my life.

"I'm out of money..."

There wasn't a single coin left in my hands. A full month remained before the allowance Ria sent on a regular schedule would arrive. I'd scraped together cash doing every odd job Luntel had to offer, and now the requests I could take inside the city had dried up completely. There was nowhere left to earn.

Going out to hunt monsters, though—that was scary.

Last time I'd strutted off on a goblin-subjugation request and very nearly drew a world map in my trousers. In games, weren't goblins the tutorial monsters they tossed at you so you'd learn the controls? Face to face, they had green skin, eyes far too vicious to ever be called a tutorial, and they drooled at the sight of me besides. Only then did I understand, a little, why so many adventurers lost their lives hunting mere goblins.

Isn't there an armored guy around here who only goes around killing goblins?

Otherwise those things would keep kidnapping women and sowing their seed all over the place.

Wait. Now that I thought about it, those goblin bastards had a better life than I did. They didn't gamble, and they were diligent about their proper duty: breeding. Fuck. If this was how it was going to be, they should've just stuffed me into a goblin.

"What am I supposed to do this month..."

How did ordinary people even live a life without cards?

I was agonizing over how to endure this boring month of forcibly forbidden gambling when—

"Hey, Ruel!"

Some guy whose name I didn't know slung an arm over my shoulder.

"You vote for one too."

"What's this?"

A man who wasn't a woman had dared to put a hand on me. I knocked his arm away and looked down at the paper he held out.

Written there were the names of beautiful girls, from the first-years who had just enrolled up through the third-years—faces that would have been shoo-in heroine candidates if they'd appeared in a novel or a dating sim. Girls a man would know by name even if he were gay, and might fall into one-sided love with from the moment he laid eyes on them.

"So who's your type?"

Ah. So that was it.

They say if you introduce a girl to a teenage boy, the first thing he asks is whether she's pretty. Ask a man in his twenties and he asks if she's pretty too. Thirties, forties, fifties—hand a grandpa in his sixties or seventies a grandma as a companion for his twilight years, and the creature known as man will squeeze out strength he doesn't have just to ask, Is that old lady pretty?

Another world didn't seem to be any different. For teenage boys at the very peak of boiling lust, this might be the most important choice of their lives.

"As you can see, Her Highness Princess Seira is in first right now."

"That so?"

I ran my eyes slowly down the five names and drew a single stroke beneath one of them.

"Huh? Senior Kartisha? Your taste is weird."

"We done? Get lost."

"Hey, Ruel voted for Senior Kartisha!"

"What? That bastard's into getting verbally destroyed?"

Don't go deciding other people's tastes for them, you bastards.

The truth was, there was no special reason I'd picked Kartisha. She'd simply had the fewest votes, and I'd felt bad for her, so I marked her name.

I watched them pathetically inventing my preferences among themselves, and then a question occurred to me.

How on earth did those guys deal with their sex drive?

Did they go to a brothel? Or was it erotic fiction? The adult content in this world amounted to clumsily written smut that didn't even get a reaction. Rich kids, then—maybe the brothel was the faster route.

"Hmm..."

I was sunk in profound contemplation of other men's sex lives when lightning struck my brain.

"Eureka!"

As if Brother Archimedes himself—the one who'd grasped the principle of buoyancy in a bath and run out naked—had possessed me, I slammed the desk and shot to my feet.

Every eye in the lecture hall turned on me as if I were a madman. I didn't care about their stares in the slightest. Because inside my head, the following propositions were converging on a single answer.

The adult industry always makes money. And in this academy, there were goddesses who pulled popularity the way an idol group did. In a mind that had done nothing but haunt gambling dens and finger cards—

Something that made money. Something that was popular. And cards.

Those ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠three keywords locked together perfectly.

"Hey! Ruel, where are you going? The professor's almost here!"

I ignored the shout from that same guy behind me, bolted out of the lecture hall, and made straight for the lobby on the academy's first floor.

I'm sure I saw it around here.

My eyes swept quickly over the various paintings hung in the lobby and stopped dead in one place.

"Found it..."

Where I was looking, a portrait of the academy's headmaster hung on the wall. Ash-gray hair and beard that belonged in a film about a war fought over a single ring. A kindly face like the strongest being in a story where a boy with a lightning scar saves the world. In a word, a portrait of an extremely old man.

To be in the middle of thinking about men's sex drives and then suddenly flee a lecture hall to go looking for a painting of an old grandpa—anyone who heard about this situation would assume I was a gay man with a taste that made them want to vomit. But it wasn't the painting itself I was after.

The painting mattered too, of course. It wasn't a simple portrait. Like a moving picture, it breathed, the image on the canvas shifting from moment to moment.

Beneath the painting were the artist's name and affiliation, and I had come here specifically to confirm that name: Willy Deneb.

"Willy Deneb."

This painting had definitely been hung last year. Which meant this Willy was a second-year, the same as me.

Name and department confirmed, I returned to the lecture hall and waited only for class to end. The moment it did, I ran straight for the Magic Department.

"Which one of you is Willy?"

I went around the Magic Department classrooms asking after him, learned he was in a private studio, and headed there. A private studio of his own—his talent had to be something else.

In a corner room on the first floor of the building where the club rooms gathered, I found him in the middle of painting.

Bang!

I threw the closed door open as if I meant to break it.

"W-who are you!?"

Startled by the sudden intruder, the boy seated at the easel flinched and turned his head. Brown hair, an ordinary face, and a height that was clearly nothing impressive even while he was sitting down.

"Found you."

The talent who was going to make me my gambling money. I cheered inwardly and stepped inside without hesitation, striding right up to him.

"U-um, this is my private studio..."

I ignored the timid attempt to chase me out, closed the distance, and set both hands on his shoulders.

"Friend. How about you and I sell some photo cards?"

He looked up at me with the eyes of a frightened rabbit caught in a snare.