A Pleasant Lunch Break (2)
Dangerous.
Dangerous dangerous dangerous. I just spoke normally with a girl for the first time. Was there anything weird? Did my breath smell? What if I came off like some total outcast weirdo?
“…Haa.”
Drawing in a breath, I felt the hair that had gone a little pure white settling back toward normal. Anyway—I managed a normal conversation just now, right?
Until now I had only ever spoken with women either far above or far below me in station. Never with someone my own age. And for her to flag a person down out of nowhere just to apologize—it was refreshing and surprising all at once. I had half expected something like, “A message from Lady So-and-so! Don’t get full of yourself! Ohoho!”
Maybe I hadn’t made as terrible an impression as I thought. Seeing a kid come apologize so politely made me wonder whether my image was really that wrecked after all.
The thought that I might be able to live academy life the way I had in high school—quietly present, almost invisible—put me a little more at ease.
Anyway, Iris, was it? She was a cute kid. More than anything, I was jealous of that violet hair. Every morning when I got ready, the black strands mixed into the white like gray hairs made the color far too eye-catching for my taste.
Sorry to my parents, but if it had been pure black like Father’s, I wouldn’t have stood out so much. Of course the tail and the animal ears would still have drawn stares, but people naturally want to hide themselves even a little more.
At least I do. Even in my past life, when Mother bought me colorful clothes, I would wear them once or twice and then go right back to black tees.
Anyway—maybe because I had bolted in a panic earlier—I had ended up somewhere unfamiliar. Checking a nearby clock, I saw more than thirty minutes of lunch still remained. It had been a buffet, so a little regret about not eating more lingered, but I couldn’t recall any food whose flavor had been strong enough to hit the nose at once.
Vowing to take more time next time and fill my plate with something that actually suited my palate, I looked around and found myself in a strangely crowded spot.
…Where’s the store? I can barely breathe.
Even if I wanted to ask someone nearby, approaching them was not really an option. Everyone parted like the Red Sea the moment they saw me, and I had neither the face nor the courage to grab someone who was already avoiding me and ask directions.
This was troublesome. I was just thinking I should request an academy map from a teacher after class when I spotted someone. White hair similar to mine yet different, sapphire-clear blue eyes. And most of all, those two words stamped on the official profile: Outcast Nerd.
Among academy students who were all social butterflies skilled at wet bullying and hiding their feelings, she shone brilliantly as the pure outcast weirdo. Anastasiya, daughter of the Northern Grand Duchess. The setting was that she had joined the fights against the northern barbarians from age thirteen and built six full years of real combat experience before coming to the academy… or whatever.
In the early story she had shown her outcast side and gotten casually ignored, so I had related to her more than the protagonist. Because she was closer to monsters than people, to weapons than folding fans, she didn’t know noble speech and simply threw straight pitches—watching that had been fun.
Whether she hadn’t heard the news about me or was simply uninterested, that attitude put me more at ease. With her, I could ask without it feeling like a burden.
Still, maybe because it was someone I at least knew of, my tail couldn’t help standing straight up.
“…Who are you?”
Different from what I had imagined, but a voice steeped in that characteristic outcast awkwardness. Somehow the thought that my prediction had been right made me happy.
“I am called Baek Hoyeon. Well met.”
“…Ah, yes. I am Anastasiya.”
“…”
“…”
Silence. I had only possessed the will to ask; I had never thought of what to actually say, so I had nothing. What could I say to make it less awkward?
“…Dost thou know where the store is?”
“…The store?”
A nod. Her wary attitude did not fully relax, but I felt the will to answer at least. By the way, she was really pretty. I had only ever read “pretty, pretty” in text and never quite grasped it, but now nothing but “really pretty” came out.
But in the end she gets socialized by the fake-outcast protagonist. I don’t know the exact timeline, but having skimmed only the side stories of volume 19, I know. Don’t remember the content, though. Nineteen years is more than enough to forget information from a novel that became the world.
Thinking about it pissed me off. Someone lost his dick, while that guy can still play with his as he pleases. I soothed the souring mood by looking at her face.
A tiny bit of mischief—wanting to throw a small wrench into the plot—nestled in my chest.
“If you turn left at the dormitory you can see over there, the student hall will come into view. It’s on the first floor.”
“My thanks.”
I would have liked to talk a little more, but she had no reason to know me, so holding her any longer felt wrong. After a light bow of greeting, I headed straight for the bread waiting at the store.
By the way, she had seemed to be heading toward the store as well. After I asked, her direction somehow changed. Don’t tell me she turned away because she didn’t even want to go the same way. That would really hurt. Forcing the ominous imagination down, I arrived at the student hall.
True to the buildings of Amauros Academy, it was both flashy and huge. If scoring on flashiness alone, maybe one hundred fifty out of a hundred. Looking at a size that could dismiss most city halls as trifles, I even thought it was about the size of a small palace.
The thought that it didn’t need to be this big flitted past, but I simply accepted it. A place for the children of great houses who saw flashiness as a virtue—this much was probably appropriate.
Thinking about it, Mother and Father had been on the frugal side. Father, who even while seated on the imperial throne scorned luxury enough not to take more than necessary, and Mother, who had always been far removed from the secular world—so I too had grown up distant from flashiness.
Even as I gawked like a country bumpkin at the splendid scenery, finding the store was not hard. It had practically hung out a sign saying “I am the store,” so it stood out at once.
A gold coin for one loaf of bread—surely not. Hiding a little anxiety, I entered the shop. Thankfully it was not that expensive. Of course, the air around me froze the moment I walked in, so I could not leisurely browse.
It felt as though my presence was robbing the resting people of their sanctuary. Knowing how precious alone time is, I felt all the more sorry for everyone here.
I scanned the display but nothing special caught my eye. The shapes were different from what I remembered, yet the smells were the breads I knew. Grabbing a few and a bottle of milk, the total did not even come to one gold coin.
Even rich people don’t gouge that much, huh—settling that minor question, I stepped outside and felt a different gaze. One I had never received in my past life, yet had experienced several times in this one.
Something was following me.
Who on earth was trailing me, I wondered for a moment—but soon the gaze vanished, leaving an uncomfortable feeling I could not erase. The slimy claws of noble society? Yet no real hostility could be felt either.
Perhaps because of the non-human blood mixed in, living as Baek Hoyeon let me sense things I never could in my past life. The movements of insects in the grass, the intent carried in gazes from afar, the stirrings of the heart mixed into breathing, and so on.
Of course it was not all good. When I had nothing to do I would expand my senses and find joy even in quiet nature, but my personality combined with those sensitive senses meant that crowded places almost always brought panic—a thoroughly negative synergy.
Anyway. The gaze watching me had vanished at some point and held no particular hostility, so I shoved it to the back of my mind.
There was no real need to figure out who it had been, and kids who had finished eating were starting to flock toward the store, so I hurried my steps elsewhere.
My breath was getting tight again.
Having had Exipri essentially snatched away right in front of me by Camilla and her gang, and even getting scolded for a man daring to hold Exi’s hand, I managed to match their moods appropriately and slip away.
At first she had been the one to demonstrate just how much of assholes the nobles could be, so she hadn’t been especially popular—but she contributed a fair bit to overcoming the crises of part one, so there was no reason to make an enemy of her.
Let’s see—now that I’ve made acquaintance with Exipri and Camilla, next is Anastasiya, huh. A heroine popular enough to keep a solid fanbase even in the later parts.
A fighting heroine, and a cool-dere. But one who genuinely believed that if a man and woman held hands, a real baby would be born. And that character was living and breathing right before my eyes? I couldn’t hold back.
Her heroine event took place at the store. The protagonist pays for the items of the girl who forgot her wallet and can’t check out, and that is their first meeting. Being in the next class over they met often, and around chapter one hundred there was a sex scene, I think.
The gap then. The author was definitely an educated man. Of course he fucked up the ending, but didn’t someone say that fucking it up in the final chapter is the condition for a masterpiece? Because of that he wrote the forbidden five thousand seven hundred characters—but thanks to that I’m here, so I’m actually grateful.
Considering the time spent dealing with Camilla’s group, I judged there was no time left to eat and was heading straight for the store, imagining what her voice would sound like in real life.
Then there was a place with a strangely unusual atmosphere, so I checked whether something like this had happened in the original—nothing came to mind.
Since this was reality now rather than a novel, I thought, Oh, things like this must have been going on outside the protagonist’s viewpoint, yet curiosity still pulled me over. And there were Baek Hoyeon and Anastasiya facing each other.
…Why?