To be honest, it wasn’t as if I’d never imagined going to another world, but my life wasn’t one where I felt any particular need to.
I had an average-looking face, a not-so-short height, and a mind that was a little better than average, so I’d been living a truly ordinary life.
Of course, I made plenty of mistakes and went through plenty of hard times, but because I kept working steadily, I could at least live as normally as everyone else.
If there was anything that set me apart from others, it was that I liked a game called Magica Academy Legacy. Because of that, I called myself a “Mabung” and spent time with other people who liked the game. That was about the only thing that made me different.
And then I entered the world of that game.
It wasn’t as if I got hit by a truck or crushed under a refrigerator falling from the sky.
I had simply finished an ordinary day’s schedule and was on my way to the gym when my vision suddenly blurred. When I opened my eyes again, I was looking at a familiar sight I had seen countless times beyond the monitor.
Tall spires came into view, along with birds gliding between them.
When I lowered my gaze, I saw students in uniforms with cloaks draped over them, hurrying busily toward the main gate. The sound of bells ringing in the distance explained to me at once that this was the world inside the game.
If so, then that was a relief.
As befitted a self-proclaimed Mabung, I at least wasn’t ignorant about this game.
The protagonist of this game, “Rowen Paul Adrian,” had been nicknamed the Plausibility Generator in the community. Not only did he have looks that justified everything, he was also born with the talent of the strongest being in the setting, someone who had almost no rival within the world.
In a word, if I had to describe this character, he was a “munchkin.”
On top of that, as one could tell from his name, he wasn’t some ordinary commoner but the son of a noble family.
Because of that, the community had selected him as an all-time great Plausibility Generator, a character who possessed looks, ability, and talent all at once, and as one of the greatest examples of a character made to deceive users.
Since even the game company had officially stated that the game’s difficulty was so high that he had to be set up this way for the story to make sense, my life from now on was as good as having a red carpet already rolled out before me.
“Ugh...!”
I had been so absorbed in imagining the flower-strewn path ahead that I didn’t notice someone bump into me from behind.
It seemed I really had possessed Lowell von Adrian.
At the start of the game, there was a scene where a female student bumped into the protagonist’s back, saw his face, blushed, and then ran off again.
“I’m sorry! I’m late for class...!”
Because it was the game’s prologue, I remembered it vividly despite it being nothing more than an extra’s line.
Then what was the protagonist’s line back then again...
“Ah, f*ck.”
“...?”
A curse suddenly rang out.
The student, who was supposed to blush after seeing the protagonist’s face, apologize, and run off again, spat out a curse before running away.
And she didn’t just curse. She scrunched up her face as if she’d truly seen something she shouldn’t have.
No, she was the one who ran into me, so why was she cursing? Just as I thought that, I heard snickering from a distance.
“Hey, your boyfriend’s walking by over there.”
“Ah, f*ck, you wanna die?”
Wondering if they were really talking to me, I looked in the direction of the voices, and it seemed they probably were.
Something felt strangely off.
An unpleasant feeling rose in me, as if the students passing nearby were subtly mocking me, and before long, I realized it.
It wasn’t that it felt like they were mocking me.
They really were mocking me.
“F*ck.”
After the morning schedule ended and I returned to the dormitory, I finally learned the cause of all the unpleasant things that had happened today.
First of all, judging by the student ID and the objects in the room, there was no doubt that I had possessed Lowell von Adrian, the protagonist of this game.
But he wasn’t the protagonist I knew.
His tall, striking height and handsome appearance were nowhere to be found. Instead, he had a small body that barely seemed to reach average height.
He had a fat body, to the point that even a grandmother he met during the holidays would have said, “Daughter-in-law, stop feeding the boy so much.” On top of that, his greasy, matted hair made it impossible to tell when he had last washed, and his clothes, left unlaundered, gave off a musty stench...
Rather, it would have been stranger if he hadn’t been looked down on. He possessed every unpleasant trait imaginable.
And it didn’t take long to learn the reason he had ended up this way.
“I can no longer tolerate your tyranny. From this moment onward, I will cut off all support.”
The half-written letter on the desk and the crumpled letter in the trash can seemed almost as if they had been prepared for this exact situation.
To summarize, the current Lowell was, in a word, a spoiled brat.
Born as the son of a wealthy noble family, he was the sort who couldn’t be satisfied unless he got everything he wanted to eat and everything he wanted to own.
He had absolutely no talent for magic, but it seemed he had pestered his parents again and again until they got him admitted into Magica Academy through irregular means.
Of course, he may have worked hard at first, but attending a magic school wasn’t going to make talent appear where none existed.
There had been friends who pitied him at first, but the guy, consumed by inferiority, apparently failed to control his emotions. As a result, he became a target of ostracism and avoidance.
In the end, it seemed he stopped attending class altogether and relieved his accumulated stress through binge eating and tyrannizing the people around him.
The plausibility was more than sufficient—overflowing, even—for how much effort must have gone into turning the protagonist I knew into this.
It was entirely possible.
It was true that I had been interested in this game, but all I had done was play it a few times after release, so the setting might have changed.
Even so, this seemed a bit much...
The situation was already despairing enough, but what was even more despairing was that I could no longer predict any of the developments from here on out.
The protagonist in the early stages wasn’t outstandingly capable.
That was why he needed powerful helpers, and there were scenes showing most of those helpers easily taking a liking to him. In the community, the reason the protagonist was especially well-liked by supporting characters was said to be his looks, which were plausibility itself.
Of course, the game company had officially acknowledged it too...
In other words, I would not be able to borrow the strength of those helpers during the various incidents and accidents that would happen at the academy from now on.
No, looking at this appearance, wouldn’t I be lucky if they didn’t turn into enemies in the first place?
Then would the problem be solved if I went home?
Unfortunately, judging by the contents of the letter, going home didn’t seem like a particularly good option either.
The letter said that if Lowell returned home, his father would send him to the religious order. What that meant was that I would have to live celibate until the day I died.
It wasn’t that there was anything wrong with that, but I did not want to spend my whole life suppressing my desires for the sake of a god inside a game while following a murderous schedule like some madman.
I sighed as I looked at the despairing situation and choices before me, but sitting around like this wasn’t going to change anything.
First, I needed to sort out what I could and couldn’t do, then start doing the things I could.
It wasn’t perfectly identical to my current situation, but I had experienced similar things before.
Conveniently, I had paper and a pen to organize my thoughts, as well as a desk and chair where I could sit comfortably.
“...Should I wash first?”
The moment I thought about washing, perhaps because of the habits this body had lived with until now, a wave of laziness pushed into my mind. But I simply couldn’t endure this itchy, matted hair and the grease running over my body.
###
The winter sun sets early.
Of course, by the season, it was spring, but winter had not completely passed yet, so even during the day, it was fairly chilly when the wind blew. At night, one would quite literally shiver from the cold.
Fortunately, the academy understood such circumstances well, and the bathhouse was considerate enough to let students bathe in warm water twenty-four hours a day.
With the sole exception of Lowell von Adrian.
I had no idea what this guy had done, but there were almost no academy facilities he was allowed to enter.
Of course, because he was the son of a noble family, no matter how violently he had caused trouble, he probably wasn’t banned forever. Still, it seemed he was forbidden from entering most facilities until the department head approved it.
“F*ck, do I really have to go this far just to wash...?”
The conclusion I had no choice but to reach was to wash at the lakeside near the academy.
The lake water was as cold as ice, and in fact, quite a few places were still frozen, not yet melted.
I didn’t know what sin I had committed to deserve doing this, but I felt so grimy and uncomfortable that I couldn’t bear it anymore.
My skin turned red enough to be visible even in the darkness of night, so that said it all, but whatever the case, escaping the itchiness and filth came first.
Of course, there was a clear price to pay for doing something that had never once happened in the history of the academy.
“My goodness, is that kid washing himself at the lake right now?”
There were onlookers watching Lowell from a distance.
Of course, they hadn’t been following Lowell or paying attention to him from the beginning, but it was enough to draw their gaze.
“He’s seriously the worst. He has no talent, and he got in relying on nothing but his noble status, so I don’t know why he doesn’t just leave instead of clinging on. Right, Tia?”
It was probably the same as usual.
Lowell was already a being hated by almost every student in the academy.
That was why conversations like this were a fairly familiar pattern.
However, Cerestia stared at Lowell for a long while. Unlike usual, when she would give an awkward smile whenever her friends spoke ill of someone, she spoke in a small voice.
“......I’m not sure.”