Enjoyable Lunch Break (3)
The atmosphere was so hostile a fight seemed ready to erupt at any moment.
Even dense Anastasiya could sense it at once: Baek Hoyeon stood before her radiating an aura so murderous it was impossible to miss. Anastasiya glared back as if refusing to yield an inch, yet Hoyeon regarded her with an air of complete indifference.
“…Who are you?”
Anastasiya was the one who broke the deadlock. Baek Hoyeon answered in kind, but her words gave nothing away.
“I am called Baek Hoyeon. It is a pleasure to meet you.”
Her tail stood rigidly upright in open threat, her expression so thoroughly unwelcoming that even at a distance no one could mistake it for friendliness. Even Anya, poor as she was at reading emotions, would have no trouble catching the naked displeasure in that bearing. Facing Hoyeon, who made no effort to hide her hostility, Anya still seemed determined to talk her way out of the situation.
“…Ah, yes. I am Anastasiya.”
As if Anya’s efforts meant nothing at all, Baek Hoyeon simply lapsed back into silence. Just as the suffocating stalemate was about to settle in again—
“…Do you know where the school store is?”
“…The school store?”
Quite apart from the completely unreadable intent of the question, a chill ran down my spine. Anya’s early events all revolved around the school store; if Hoyeon sent the plot off the rails, there would be no way to build any affinity with her until the mid-game.
Sure enough, after obediently telling Hoyeon the location of the store, Anya headed somewhere else entirely.
This can’t be happening.
I considered following her and at least trying to strike up a conversation, but she was the Northern Grand Duchess’s daughter while I was a mere commoner—it would be no different from suicide. Even if the academy treated every student as equal on paper, invisible hierarchies still existed.
Vertically: worthless frontier nobles, central nobles, royalty. Horizontally: the Empire, the Papacy, and the rabble. Commoners weren’t even part of the equation. If I so much as spoke to Anya, a central noble, even if she herself forgave me her followers would not.
My insides burned. Of course I could still raise her affection later, but an early event that built what little affinity there was had effectively vanished.
Then another ominous thought flashed through my mind. What if Hoyeon crushed the other heroines’ events as well?
What then?
The moment that thought struck, I found myself trailing after her as if possessed. Fortunately nothing special happened until we reached the school store, but I could not erase the unease. Even if not now, she could still derail events later.
Once my thoughts reached that point, I arrived at a single conclusion: I had to accelerate the events. Before the plot twisted any further, I would advance them and firmly build affection with the heroines. That was my only goal for now.
After narrowing the candidates for who to start with, only one heroine remained. Cecilia. The half-elf said to be loved by spirits. As an elf she had a fixed fanbase, but nothing that compared to Anastasiya.
Her heroine event went like this. For reasons unknown the spirit she had contracted with began to weaken; she tried everything out of worry, yet the spirit only grew feebler, and Cecilia fell into terror that the spirit who had protected her since birth might vanish.
Then the protagonist brings her a fruit of the World Tree, miraculously restores the spirit, and she falls in love on the spot, becoming one of the protagonist’s harem.
Originally the spirit only began weakening from the second semester onward, so the World Tree fruit was not something she needed immediately. But for a half-elf like her, the World Tree held special meaning. Delivering such a precious item should raise her affection. Elves lived by the World Tree, so it would not be too strange.
Something on the level of a World Tree fruit would not rot even if left sitting after being picked, and when her spirit later weakened and she used the fruit she might think of me—so it was not a bad idea at all.
And conveniently, inside this academy there stood one young World Tree that still bore an old fruit. The rest area tucked into a secluded corner of the academy—that tree was the one.
Dodging and weaving through the countless gazes that followed me, I arrived at a rest area dominated by one enormous tree.
I briefly wondered why a place like this existed in the academy, but the pure air that flooded my lungs swept those idle thoughts cleanly away.
I had never shown it, yet from the moment I first set foot on this continent I had noticed something.
The air was stifling, sticky, and unpleasant. More precisely, the mana was. It did not take long to understand why. The ley lines that should have flowed properly deep underground were being controlled by twisted mana.
The people here seemed to worship that something as Divine Power, but to my eyes it looked like nothing but endlessly distorted and polluted mana.
Not only the earth veins. Even the sky veins were under the control of Divine Power. And it was not Divine Power alone—the energy the humans here called “Mana,” mana twisted in a different fashion from Divine Power, was more than enough to disgust me.
In the original the protagonist’s party got along just fine, so the reason I felt this level of revulsion was probably Mother’s blood. That was when I began to truly feel this was a real world, not a novel.
Anyway. Among themselves they split into factions, calling each other blind fools and lawless unbelievers and bickering endlessly, but to my eyes the two sides were not all that different.
Both were disgusting. Disrupting the laws of the stars and rewriting them however they pleased, then grabbing each other’s pant legs and squabbling over who was superior or inferior—it was so ugly I could hardly stand it.
At least near the coast the ley lines still flowed, however slowly, but the further inland one went the more the twisted mana clenched those veins in a stranglehold. And places like the Magic Towers and the Church were extracting mana from the ley lines and polluting them—
“…Haa.”
Not my business. Once I graduated from the academy there would be no reason to remain on this continent. I was only here to learn; even if I could not help this place, I at least should not cause havoc. Drawing in the refreshing air seemed to calm my anger.
To be honest, the moment I heard the academy lay in the deepest part of the continent I considered turning back. Even in the coastal regions it was so stifling I thought I would die, and now I had to go even deeper—just thinking about it made me dizzy. But I was also excited at the thought of adventure and curious what would happen at the academy, so I pushed ahead.
And this was the result. Yet looking at this tree, I felt as though I could breathe a little easier. If it ever became unbearable, I could simply come here.
With light steps I sat on a nearby bench, took a cream bread from the paper bag, and bit into it deeply.
The taste was incredibly consistent.
It was exactly the same as the cream bread from the bakery near school that I used to buy every break. A little emotion welled up and I nearly hummed a tune, but I still had milk left so I put the feeling on hold.
Not being in a paper carton still felt unfamiliar, yet the glass bottle had its own charm. The lid was sealed so tightly it gave me a moment of trouble, but the fresh taste was worth that much effort.
For some reason it was contaminated with mana, so the aftertaste was a bit off, but eaten together with the cream bread it was good. Perhaps it was because the air was clean. Ever since entering the academy it had felt like constantly breathing hot, humid, filthy air; now it was like standing in a cool breeze.
Yes. The reason I went to such a remote place to avoid people was not because I feared them. It was because the mana and Divine Power accumulated in them were disgusting.
I am absolutely not avoiding conversation because I am scared of people.
Growl…
Who is that. Right in the middle of enjoying my private healing time, what ruthless villain is interrupting. Expanding my senses, I found some boy clumsily hiding up in the tree.
Who, why, how, and when he had climbed it, how I had failed to notice someone so obviously hiding, and what on earth he was doing up there—countless questions flashed through my mind, but my mouth kept chewing the cream bread.
…No. Looking closer, it was the protagonist. I was curious what he was doing up a tree instead of chasing girls, but the sound that came again shattered those thoughts.
Growl…
A rumbling so loud it was hard to ignore was coming from that guy’s stomach.
Whether he realized he had been found or not, the way he kept watching me all nervous and alone was rather amusing, and I considered teasing him a little. But if he fell it would be a disaster, so I simply gestured for him to come down.
I had wondered how he climbed up, but he came down that way—skillfully stepping on branches and hollows until he reached the ground, looking extremely tense.
I wanted to ask what the hell a pervert was doing up there, but there was something I had to do first. I took another cream bread from the bag and held it out to him.
He looked from the bread to me and back again with an expression that, if this had been a comic, would have had a giant question mark floating above his head.
Putting a little jealousy and irritation toward the guy who would one day form a harem into the motion, I tossed it over; he caught the bread in surprise. He still looked completely lost, so I could not help speaking out of sheer frustration.
“Even from down here the growling of thy stomach was loud enough to hear. Eat. I have no foul habit of dining before a starving man.”
Whether because the air was clean or because he was the protagonist, speaking with him carried no sense of distance. It was strange for a total loner to act so freely around a popular guy, but when else would I get this kind of experience.
“…Ah, yes. Thank you.”
Watching him carefully unwrap it as if he had committed a crime, one question flashed through my mind.
What was that guy’s name again?
“Come to think of it, I have never heard thy name. Wilt thou not tell me thy name in exchange for the bread?”
When Father spent months correcting my speech I resented him, but actually speaking this way felt rather good.
It really felt as though I had become a proper princess. The protagonist would later be treated as a savior, yet thinking I stood above him now made my chest tingle.
“…I’m Han Dogeon.”
“Han Dogeon, is it. Art thou perchance from the Eastern Continent?”
If my memory was correct it was not an Eastern-style name. In the original I remembered Western names like James or Chris.
“No, I’m not from the Eastern Continent. But both my parents were from the Eastern Continent.”
Was there a setting like that? Not much had ever been said about the protagonist’s family. No—there had been none to begin with. They were not important characters, so there was no reason for them to appear. More than that, the protagonist’s own setting was that someone who knew the original had possessed the body of a commoner in this world.
Thinking about it, the whole thing was a mess. So I had reincarnated into a novel about possessing into an academy story.
And with a gender-bender on top of that.
Then that guy had been dragged from the Korea inside the novel into the novel inside the novel? The more I thought about it the more my head seemed to break.
Maybe that name was simply the original name he had before being pulled into this novel.
Strike while the iron is hot—I was about to ask everything I could when the bell rang, signaling that lunchtime was almost over.
“Already time, is it. Thou mayest go. Ah, and be sure to eat the bread.”
From past-life experience, being late to PE never ended well. Latecomers always received punishments like push-ups or a lap around the field. Running in that unpleasant air was something I wanted to avoid at all costs.
By the way, ever since I caught him he had seemed to be hiding something behind his back. Leaving the question aside, I headed toward the gymnasium.