‘Who would’ve thought the protagonist was approaching while I was talking? Lucky me.’
No matter what, I had to get close to the protagonist. After all, the game revolved around the protagonist.
Unless I stayed by the protagonist’s side, seeing the True Ending—speculated to be the condition for escaping this world—was nigh impossible.
The rule was to get close to the protagonist without being captured.
The bell rang right as I said it, making for a slightly awkward moment, but I managed to secure a chance to return to the hallway with the protagonist.
This was exactly what luck looked like.
In that sense, the Queen I had found was someone to keep at a distance even aside from the fact that she had tried to torment me.
Considering the message that had popped up when I found her, it wasn’t an exaggeration to say I absolutely had to.
[You have found the Queen. You may enter the Queen Subjugation immediately. Would you like to begin the S-Battle? If you remove your clothes, the opponent will respond immediately.]
The core of getting close to the protagonist was the line where I wouldn’t be captured. To think the battle I had to fight to overthrow the Queen would turn out to be lewd acts with her, exactly as I had feared.
I ended up glaring at the system window as if it were disgusting, at its attempt to force me into doing lewd things while telling me not to get captured.
Whether the system window was pretending not to know my thoughts despite understanding them, it didn’t display a window responding to my glare. Instead, it told me the consequences of my choice.
[If you refuse the battle, the affection increase will be canceled. Furthermore, by refusing the battle, Scenario 1: School Queen Subjugation will collapse, and the probability of you seeing a Bad Ending in the future will rise drastically.]
If it were fighting with fists, I would have at least tried to avoid a Bad Ending, but since it meant doing lewd things, I simply refused out of embarrassment.
If either way led to a Bad Ending, I would rather not do it with a woman I didn’t even like of my own volition.
No, and besides, how do girls even do it with each other…?
I had never bothered looking into how girls did lewd things with each other because I wasn’t particularly interested, so being told to do it all of a sudden filled me with revulsion; I simply couldn’t.
“It’s been a while since we walked the hallway together like this.”
Perhaps bored of simply walking down the hallway, the boy spoke to me first.
It had been a while…
Wondering whether I should claim to have no memories at this point or continue pretending I did, I slowly walked beside the boy.
The effect of minus-100 affection points wasn’t visible on the outside, so while I had the impulse to kick or beat the boy on a whim, it wasn’t as severe as when we first met.
That was surely due to my own will, existing independently of affection points. My will to get out of this dating sim by getting moderately entangled with the protagonist and moving forward.
“The bell already rang. Shouldn’t you be running?”
“I skip class often anyway, so it doesn’t matter, and you already skipped three days before this, so it doesn’t matter for you either. If you want to run, go run by yourself.”
His words laced with a slight smile made me feel that I didn’t really need to run down the hallway either.
There was a chance I would continue living in this world, so it would be better to keep studying, but if I had to choose between studying and finding a way to escape this world, choosing the escape route would be the right call.
I just hated listening because it was him speaking. Perhaps sensing the urge welling up inside my body, the boy stopped his nonsense and began a serious conversation.
“…First, let me give you one warning. Don’t meet the Queen alone. Everything about the Queen is a lie. The name Seo Yuri, whatever name she’s going by at school—all of it. That’s why I’m telling you to never meet anyone alone except for the few you know. Because anyone could be the Queen in disguise.”
It didn’t matter to me since names identifying everyone popped up over their heads.
I even knew her real name was Gang Yuri, not Seo Yuri.
There was no need to give the protagonist information about me, so I conveyed that he didn’t need to worry about me using different words.
“Even if the Queen bothers me, I won’t pay her any mind, so I’m fine.”
At that, the boy looked at me with a gaze that treated me like a child.
It was true my body had gotten younger, but perhaps because the boy was taller than me now, that gaze was quite irritating.
“The reason Seo Yuri is called the Queen is because the more people serve her, the stronger her psychic ability becomes. After we joined forces and brought her down once, she too held back from creating retainers and subjects while watching our moves, but if she stops watching our moves and grows stronger, building a force greater than before, she’ll turn the reality we live in into a lie and make the reality she wants become the truth. To put it in game terms, leaving her alone is a straight path to the Bad Ending.”
“…What the hell. What a cheat ability.”
So this was the reason the system kept warning me about the Queen? It certainly seemed like failing to defeat her would result in a Bad Ending.
‘If it was like this, you could’ve told me beforehand.’
Even if I didn’t do the lewd things it wanted, I could have beaten her down with this body. The psychic ability this body possessed seemed powerful enough to be unmatched in terms of defense. Though the fact that I couldn’t control it was the problem.
Feeling deep regret, I listened to the boy add further explanations to my face.
“Of course, that’s if we leave her alone; right now, she isn’t that powerful yet. No matter how many subjects she gathers and how much stronger she gets, she can’t defeat your friend. You could say their abilities have a compatibility relationship. And while I said that, within the range she tries to manipulate, most people have to believe in her, so it’s hard to use it in a truly omnipotent form.”
Your friend?
I didn’t know exactly who he was talking about, but it was probably either Yu Inna or the student council president.
Since there were few people by my side, I could narrow down the suspects quickly even with such a vague reference.
…I wasn’t sure if I should be happy about this, though.
“She reminds me of a cult leader. The only difference from a cult leader is that she has the ability to make those words a reality.”
It was when I had unconsciously blurted out the thought that came to mind about her.
Multiple system windows popped up in front of me.
[The heroine’s sharp intuition has pierced through the future. The Queen of the School has realized her own immaturity. A chick awakened from its egg must fly in a wider sky. The Queen of the School will now begin building her influence not just within the school, but outside it as well.]
[The religion she will create from now on is a religion where she becomes God, and also a nation. A nation where everything the followers wish to see removed becomes false and disappears. If her number of followers exceeds one million, you personally will be forced into a Bad Ending regardless of your ability release rate or True Ending arrival rate. As your current ability release rate is 0.2, the opponent’s ability will begin to affect you once her follower count exceeds two thousand, so please be cautious.]
[Her heart is a seed that has only just begun to sprout. If you wish to prevent a personal Bad Ending rather than a global Bad Ending, proceed with an S-Battle against her. However, the later it gets, the higher the probability that her obsession will not disappear even if you perform an S-Battle. On the contrary, by that time, it might increase even more?]
[You have encountered the first villain in this world. As a special exception, regardless of your affection points, we will provide, just this once, the method by which the opponent will attempt to capture you.]
[The opponent’s disposition is Queen and Sadist. She is the type to feel exhilaration whenever the target engaging in the act with her displays a submissive attitude or negative behaviors such as crying. Even when the target willingly gives her exhilaration through submission, she may be pleased, but less because she enjoys the pleasure of the act itself and more because of the humiliating expression her partner wears as a result.]
[The opponent’s primary capture method is to approach through her subjects, lower your guard, and then dig a trap you cannot escape. Her capture method may change as she learns more about you. The secondary option is taking hostages, so please be cautious.]
[The countermeasure is to be on guard without holding positive feelings such as affection, love, or friendship toward anything in this world. As Falsehood is an ability that works on even psychics depending on those who believe in her, you, as the holder of divine protection, may also have her ability overcome you depending on the number of believers. Therefore, as long as you are marked by her, please always remain vigilant.]
Why so detailed? The sheer amount of information, far more than when I met the protagonist or the first heroine, was telling me about one possibility.
The danger of the woman called the Queen of the School. That it was far higher than I had thought. Our steps arrived at the classroom as I took in the possibility that a single misstep might not end with just one heroine seeing a Bad Ending, but the world itself becoming one.
Even if she was dangerous, there was no way to deal with her right now. I didn’t even know where she had disappeared to. I could only find her once she had built up her forces a bit.
This too was just like a game.
It wouldn’t be a game if you could crush the seed of the problem early on, would it?
‘I guess I have to raise it first after all.’
My one and only psychic ability.
The system had warned me that if the opponent fully exerted her power, it would break through, but if it was the power of tens of millions gathered together, it would be stranger if it didn’t break through.
So I had to grow my psychic ability to the point where she’d need to gather hundreds of thousands of subjects to break through, but the important thing was that I had no idea how to raise it.
Normally, I’d assume repeatedly using the ability was the way, but I didn’t even know how to use mine, so that was impossible.
The awakening rate, which seemed related to my psychic ability, had risen recently, but I didn’t know how to raise it again.
It was then.
[Your protection reacts to the protagonist’s radiance. Awakening rate increases by 0.2. Current awakening rate: 0.4.]
The system displayed a strange message as if reacting to my thoughts.
The protagonist’s radiance?
I turned toward the protagonist, and the boy’s expression looked slightly surprised.
What was he surprised at? I looked at where the boy had been staring, and there was only the door leading into the classroom.
Had he been surprised by the sounds coming from inside the classroom? As someone still unaccustomed to life here, I couldn’t tell what was surprising about the sounds of class even if I heard them.
More than that, I was bothered by the words “protagonist’s radiance.” Yu Inna, who was showing me goodwill but had many suspicious points, and Gang Yuri, whom the system kept warning me about and labeling as a villain.
If these two tried anything, I would need to grow my psychic ability to respond properly, and for that, I had to be connected to this thing called “radiance,” which supposedly made my ability grow.
‘To get stronger, I have to stay by the protagonist’s side…’
I didn’t know the true nature of the radiance, but I had a rough idea of how this dating sim’s story progressed. And how the protagonist drew the heroines in.
A heroine who was stuck helplessly by the side of the protagonist, who was practically her nemesis, in order to grow stronger. I simultaneously realized that this was likely the easiest story laid out before me.
“Aren’t you going in?”
“Yeah, go in first.”
When I expressed my puzzlement to the boy, who was blocking the doorway and staring seriously at the door, he immediately stepped aside.
“Huh?”
“I’m obviously going to get scolded by the teacher, so I figured I’d just go in during break. Don’t be so nervous about being with me next time we meet. Something bad happened, but we’re still people who share a secret, right?”
I had expected him to open the door, enter, and play the tank role, blocking the teacher’s wrath before me, but he keenly avoided that, waving at me as he slowly distanced himself from our classroom.
…So what secret did we even share?
You should’ve told me that before leaving, you bastard.
Watching with dissatisfaction toward the boy who had already hidden himself in the hallway, I hesitated over whether to enter, then simply began walking slowly in the opposite direction from where the protagonist had disappeared.