Why Are You Here?
"What are you doing out here?"
Charlotte just stood there, back pressed against the corridor wall, staring blankly into space.
What on earth had she been fretting over so hard?
She asked herself the question, but no answer came.
Just then, someone opened the door and stepped out of the restroom.
"Whew! If it hadn't been for you, Lady Cervantes, I'd be hovering between life and death right about now. Allow me to thank you once again."
Shion emerged from the bathroom looking perfectly composed—a stark contrast to the grim expression he'd worn five minutes earlier.
"Ah. Right. Yeah. Glad you're okay."
Charlotte gave a halfhearted nod at his breezy reaction and let out a long sigh.
Just what was going on here?
Had Shion genuinely been wandering around because he couldn't find the bathroom? Or had that whole flustered act been a clumsy performance to wriggle out of an awkward situation? Maybe it was neither.
"Incidentally, you gave me quite a fright. Lady Cervantes, I was too embarrassed to admit I needed the restroom, so I made up some excuse—and the next thing I know, you're casting a spell that looked downright sinister. Don't you think that's a little excessive?"
"Ah, sorry about that. I haven't been sleeping well lately. Guess I was more on edge than I realized."
"Hmm. For someone who hasn't slept, you don't have a single dark circle."
"No way. Look at my hair. It's a total mess."
"It looks as glossy as ever, actually… Perhaps my eyesight is failing?"
Twitch.
Could she not just let it go for once? Charlotte's upper lip tightened ever so slightly.
"Well, if you say so yourself, it would be strange of me to judge by appearances alone. Understood. Please try to stay a little more alert next time. A brilliant mind like Lady Cervantes can surely manage that, I'm certain."
Twitch.
It was clearly meant as advice—so why did it grate on her so much?
If it had come from anyone else, she would have nodded along and accepted it. But coming from Shion, with that airy little attitude of his, it just got under her skin.
"Sss… haah. Fine. I'll be more careful next time."
"Mm-hmm, excellent. In that case, shall we head back to class? Lessons will be starting soon."
"Yeah. We should. But hey—there's something I'm a little curious about."
"And what might that be?"
Shion asked, smiling brightly as he looked at her.
"You. Did something happen over break?"
"Pardon? Over break, you say?"
"Yeah. Your whole vibe feels totally different from before vacation."
The Shion she'd last seen a month ago hadn't carried this light, breezy air about him.
He'd always cracked jokes, sure—but the melancholy never left his face. He'd walked around radiating this bone-deep exhaustion.
But now… he seemed a little brighter, somehow—
"Haha, to think Lady Cervantes was taking such an interest in me. I'm quite flattered—I hardly know where to put myself."
"........"
Yeah, never mind. He'd gotten worse, just in a different way.
"Ara? If you just stare at me with that serious face and give me nothing, I'm the one who ends up embarrassed… Don't tell me it's true?"
"Shut up before I hit you."
"Hahaha, just kidding. Kidding. A lady like you is clearly meant for a far more impressive gentleman than me."
Where once simply talking to him had been enough to catch his gloom secondhand, now simply talking to him was enough to make her raise her voice.
"That aside—yes, something did happen."
"What happened?"
Had his personality flipped because of the demonization? Charlotte leaned in to listen.
And then came the bombshell.
"Curious, are you?"
Shion asked with a sly little grin.
"......"
.....Should I just kill him? As long as I clean up the evidence, it should be fine.
The moment she wordlessly began arranging her mana, Shion waved both hands frantically and rushed to continue.
"Eheh! Joke! It was a joke!"
"Answer."
"Of course, of course. I'll tell you right now. Three days ago, you see, I lost most of my memories."
Lost his memories? In the middle of break?
"....You lost your memories?"
"Yes. Aside from the most basic common knowledge, I've forgotten nearly everything. I couldn't even recognize Lady Chloe—my own half-sister—so that should tell you everything."
It was hard to believe, honestly. But if it were true, it would explain all the suspicious behavior from earlier. Someone who couldn't remember his own family could hardly be expected to remember where the school bathrooms were.
"Then how did you remember my name?"
"Hmm, that I don't quite know myself. Perhaps Lady Cervantes left such a strong impression on me in the past?"
So Shion hadn't been demonized after all? No—it was too early to decide that.
The demonization could have caused the memory loss. Or he could be faking amnesia to build himself an alibi.
"For real?"
"For real."
"For real for real?"
"For real for real. Please trust me."
Shion nodded vigorously with an expression of pure sincerity. Looking at that earnest face, Charlotte almost found herself thinking that maybe he really had simply lost his memories for some reason.
Which one was the truth? She couldn't decide so easily.
While she was still wavering, Shion let out a snickering little laugh.
"Though, to be fair, I probably wouldn't believe it either if I were you."
Facing that snickering mug head-on, Charlotte felt a slow ache blooming at the base of her skull.
"Of~ course! I'm not lying, so please believe me!"
"Just shut up already."
One thing was certain: this guy was getting on her nerves.
"Miss Astorius, do you have a moment?"
After fifth period ended, Charlotte approached Shina, whose hair fell in a cascade of blue. Having only ever imagined her from written descriptions, seeing her in person was almost absurdly beautiful.
"Yes?"
Shina turned at Charlotte's call and hesitated for a beat. Ah—right. She wouldn't know Charlotte's name yet.
"Charlotte Cervantes."
"Ah, Lady Cervantes. What business do you have with me?"
Her speech was perfectly composed, refined to the point of elegance.
A way of speaking that drew a clear line between herself and the other person, exchanging nothing but the necessary words. Whether Shina intended it that way or not, that was certainly how it came across to anyone talking to her.
Charlotte suddenly understood why every classmate who'd tried approaching her had peeled off after barely a few sentences.
"You don't have to call me 'Lady.' We're all just students here. Anyway, I had a few things I wanted to ask you."
"Is that so? If it's something I can answer, I'll do my best."
"I heard you stayed at the Frelia family estate for about three days recently. There was a guy there named Shion Frelia, right?"
"There was. Might you be… a friend of Shion's?"
Shion? Not even "Lord," but calling him by name with that casual "Shion"? Whatever scheme that brat had pulled, he'd clearly built up a considerable rapport with Shina.
"Yeah, you can think of it that way if it helps."
Shina's face brightened a little. She was probably feeling a sense of kinship at the idea of them both being Shion's friends. Too bad for her—Charlotte did not think of him as a friend.
To her, he was more like an old bomb that might or might not go off at any moment.
"While you were staying there, did he do anything weird? Creepy smiles, muttering in some language you couldn't understand—anything like that?"
"Hmm……. Shion always has a smile on his face, so I'm not sure about the first one. As for the second, I can say with certainty that he did not."
Shina wasn't the type to lie. Which meant Charlotte's expression could only harden.
Is he seriously not a demonized person?
Had he really just lost his memories? But if that were true, why had the future changed? She couldn't get a handle on it at all.
Then someone slipped right between Shina and Charlotte. A male student with a snickering air about him—Shion.
"My dear ladies, chatting so cozily together! I simply couldn't contain my curiosity. Forgive the intrusion. Kind Miss Shina will surely forgive me, and as for Lady Cervantes……. You'll forgive me too, won't you?"
Still a master at getting under people's skin. As if her mind weren't already a mess.
"Whatever. I had somewhere to be anyway. Thanks for your time, Miss Astorius."
"Of course. I'll see you in the next class."
Shina gave Charlotte a slight bow, then immediately launched into chatter with Shion. It was a completely different reaction from how she spoke with other students.
Charlotte watched their friendly little chat for a moment, then turned away and started walking again. She sorted through her thoughts and began planning what to do next.
"It's a pain, but I'd better confirm it for certain."
She'd set a trap. One he wouldn't be able to escape.
Going back to school is harder than I expected. Classes are barely over and I'm already wiped out.
I cracked my mouth open in a yawn and trudged toward the dorms.
Maybe it was from using my brain more than I had in ages, but I deliberately took a secluded alley—I just wanted to walk in a daze for a while.
Thanks to years of game knowledge hammered into me, the layout of Luin Academy was fully mapped in my head, so I wasn't particularly worried about getting lost.
Still, Charlotte's reactions this morning had been delicious. All I'd had to do was pretend to be lost, and she'd played right along.
Mind and body both exhausted—but just remembering that conversation with Charlotte this morning, a smile slipped out on its own.
Yeah. This much distance is just right.
Originally, Shion Frelia was a character who was supposed to thrash around a little and then vanish into the footnotes of history.
Getting too close to Charlotte—this world's protagonist—could lead to who knows what.
It was a little disappointing, but it couldn't be helped.
The fact that I had to deliberately keep my distance from the only other person from Earth felt a touch cruel. But for everyone's safety, there was no other way.
Teasing her a little here and there should still be fine, though, right?
That was when it happened.
— Thud!
"Ara?"
Somewhere nearby, something collided with a dull impact.
No—listening again, it sounded more like someone hitting someone else. I thought I could hear faint voices, too.
"This is supposed to be a place people barely walk through…. I wonder if something's going on?"
An uneasy feeling swept over my entire body. I slowly approached the source of the sound.
And there—
"Junior. That's your answer after thinking it over all break? Think again. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for you. What commoner gets to keep company with a marquis house like ours?"
"....."
"Still not going to submit easily, huh? Fine. I don't mind that look on you."
A black-haired girl was being restrained by one male student while another gripped her chin and smirked down at her.
Even a glance was enough to paint the whole picture in my head.
This kind of thing never got implemented in the game.
Thinking about it for a second, that made perfect sense. No matter how much freedom Grand Fantasia offered, there was no way it could recreate every single event happening across the entire world.
In other words, this was an incident that never appeared in the game—the novel equivalent of a behind-the-scenes story.
Part of me really didn't want to get involved…….
It felt like the kind of annoying mess that would suck me in—but something about walking away so easily didn't sit right. Why?
Because the male student gripping the girl's chin had a vivid tear mark stamped on his cheek.
Yeah. The same tear mark you could find on my face—and on Chloe's.
Among the Frelia family's children, the only male besides Shion was…… Pascal Frelia.
That delinquent over there was almost certainly Pascal Frelia—my half-brother.
Pascal Frelia, the peerless genius produced by House Frelia and a named NPC, was two years older than Shion.
He'd reached the dazzling height of 5-Star at the age of twenty, but his nature was so rotten that in the original game he was always a thorn in the player's side.
Ordinarily I'd avoid a guy like that the way you'd dodge a pile of dog crap. But now that we were actually brothers, there was more than one or two things about him that I couldn't ignore.
If he caused some massive incident and it blew back on House Frelia, I'd get dragged into the headache too.
Getting stuck dealing with fallout because of that guy? Hard pass.
I was still standing there debating whether to intervene when—
— Smack!
Fed up with the girl's continued silence, Pascal struck her hard across the cheek.
Her black hair flew, and the pale nape of her neck—previously hidden—was laid bare.
".....!"
A familiar tattoo was etched into that nape.
The moment I recognized it, my eyes were forced wide open.
Uh.... so....
"Why are you coming out from there…?"