Only those who have eaten milmyeon can know. The refreshing sensation akin to naengmyeon, the braised meat or sashimi piled on top, even the broth served instead of water.
On hot days, it is the optimal food. Since it was quite literally a place where you stood in line to eat, even slightly past the lunch rush for office workers, we had to wait a short while before we could eat.
And that taste was, without a doubt, a delicacy. Contrary to what I had thought—that it was a flavor so engrossing a boy could drop dead beside you while eating with others without anyone noticing—that taste saved something within me.
[I will show you the sections where changes have occurred.]
System.
The system, dormant and ignored, as if reacting to the taste of the milmyeon, enlarged its window and asserted its existence to me.
Since there was no reason to keep ignoring it, I slurped up the milmyeon while checking the window the system had popped up on one side.
[Awakening rate 1%.]
Perhaps because I had been with the protagonist, the awakening rate had already reached 1%.
Just because it had become 1% didn't mean I had learned how to control my abilities yet.
[Ability breakdown: Nameless Blessing, Blood Curse.]
Perhaps as a result of hitting 1%, the system informed me of other things.
That unlike others, I had two abilities.
If it was a 'curse' of blood, it was surely something dangerous and ill-omened. I didn't know why it was listed as an ability, but since it was an ability, something special must be dwelling within me.
The system window didn't end with simply saying that my estimated supernatural awakening rate had risen and that I had two superpowers.
[You have met the one who will serve as the final boss in the heroine Erika's scenario. For now, if you commit any offense against her, it will only create a bad ending. Perhaps it might even create a 'bed' ending where you live on top of her bed.]
[If you wish to see the happy ending, minimize your encounters with her as much as possible. Reduce the requests you accept from her. When her desire for you grows greater than the faint guilt she feels toward you, you will meet destruction.]
The message stating that I had met the final boss of the scenario I would proceed with from now on.
Since there was one woman who left a deep impression while harboring guilt toward me, I could easily tell who she was.
The one harboring guilt wouldn't have thrown superpowers at me with the intent to kill, so it must be the one claiming to be my older sister.
The woman who had uttered such foul words: "I ate your parents."
But in a world as developed as this, there was no way she had actually eaten my parents as she said and felt guilty about it.
Usually, people resort to cannibalism only in extreme hunger. Why would someone presumed to earn good money resort to eating human flesh?
Most likely, she had wronged me for some other reason and had not been forgiven.
Though even my genius-level mind couldn't begin to guess what that reason was.
I thought while chewing on the cream cheese that came out as dessert.
Speaking of which, there were times when the notation 'bad ending' appeared as 'bed ending.' So was it, as I had suspected, talking about an ending where I ended up living on someone's bed?
In a world designated as a school slice-of-life story, perhaps I could avoid lewd acts if I was careful about the paths leading to bad endings and battles with others.
It was only because the system kept threatening me that I absolutely had to engage in battles that progressed in lewd ways to avoid bad endings.
Only after lifting the milmyeon broth and drinking it all did I notice the gazes of the two people looking at me.
One gaze looking at me as if I were cute, and one gaze staring at me while saying, "You really are a pig."
I didn't know about the rest, but I definitely had to rough up the latter.
Thinking so, I deliberately ignored the system window floating in a corner of my vision.
[Kim Haneul's favorability is rising tremendously. While it is stuck at the upper 'limits' and cannot rise above -100, if you wish to return home safely, please do not recklessly give your heart away.]
...Though wanting to ignore it didn't mean I could.
In the end, my eyes checked every window the system showed, and I harbored dissatisfaction inwardly.
Who is it to tell me not to give my heart away? Anyway, since I don't feel any romantic desire toward men, I wouldn't give my heart at the level of love even without being told.
While thinking this, since falling for someone else is a traditional cliché, I ought to keep my distance so as not to fall for him beyond a certain level, but...
The side I need to worry about isn't the boy, but another.
"I'll pay."
Because the student council president who stood up from her seat was so beautiful that I couldn't look at her properly.
Even while shielding my eyes with my hand as if blocking sunlight, I was looking at her, when the boy who had been drinking a cup of warm broth looked at me and spoke with his eyes like this: "You're making a fuss."
Then I too replied with my eyes like this.
"I can't hear the words of a rhythm game loser."
"...How many times are you going to say that? Surely you're not going to keep it up forever? No, and I only said it with my eyes to be irritating, so why are you saying it out loud?"
Had it unconsciously come out of my mouth instead of my eyes? And indeed, I wouldn't keep it up forever. It wasn't like I'd be seeing that guy for life.
But every time I did see him, I would keep saying it. The humiliation of losing at everything except rhythm games. I had to pay back all of that humiliation.
If I lost in skill, I had no choice but to pay it back with my mouth...
Our battle of speaking with our eyes continued until Lee Seora, who had finished paying, looked at us as if we were pathetic.
Even though I was the one who just voiced it.
*
Perhaps they had never intended to end things after just a meal from the start, as they went to a cafe and even grabbed seats.
After ordering coffee, perhaps intending to talk just the two of them, they asked for my understanding and went outside.
Well, waiting and then bringing the coffee was something I could do alone, so I sent them off willingly.
Even if they stayed with me, they were a couple, so it would only be awkward for me anyway.
After bringing the coffee, I fell into renewed sentimentality while looking out the window. The sister presumed to be the final boss, and the queen who would still be expanding her influence outside even now.
These two alone were enough of a headache, but thinking that I had to worry about protagonists from other genres as well made my head feel like it would burst.
Next time I met them, there would be the fantasy battle genre protagonist who was presumed to put my life in danger, and the protagonist of a rape-genre work about whom I had to worry not about my life, but about whether I would be forced into lewd acts.
If I thought about the heroines clinging to those protagonists, what I had to accomplish from now on in the future that would unfold was simple.
Recruit comrades. Rather than heroines already captured by protagonists or heroines harboring strange obsessions toward me, I would capture those who could truly help me.
If I could control the system where I had to feel affection to learn about the other party, I could capture them without giving my heart, but the system was not something I could easily control.
Afraid someone might see me, I checked my surroundings once before cautiously opening my mouth.
"Hey, answer me. You stupid system. Do you think it's fine just because you one-sidedly talk and run away?"
Not to mention how it completely ignores you when you talk to yourself.
Like this, the system only approached when it wanted to, so I couldn't expect much from it.
If I threatened to kill myself, it would probably react since I was one of the important heroines, but if the system threatened me with a bed ending, I would have nothing to say.
Since my family had all died both 'outside' and within here, if I died, there would be no one left to remember my family, so I absolutely must not die.
I would survive and remember everyone.
There was probably no one else who would think of departed family to this extent.
'This is what you call a filial child.'
As I was drinking the hot chocolate while waiting for them to return, someone approached me.
Her hair, wavy like seaweed, looked like someone could step on it while walking without it being strange, and her sunken eyes looked as though she had stayed up all night.
It wouldn't be an exaggeration to call her a corpse with no cheek fat whatsoever. Yet that woman was approaching me with precise steps despite staggering.
I looked around once more wondering if she was going to someone else, but she was coming to the only table with just me.
Until before I came to this world, society had been filled with terror due to indiscriminate murders and random stabbings.
If this dating sim had been created during that period, a sudden stabbing would be entirely possible.
"E-excuse me. That is..."
To me, who was tensed up so I could activate my superpower at any moment, she took something out from inside her clothes.
In that moment, I squeezed my eyes shut, but the white lightning I expected didn't strike, nor did I feel the anticipated pain.
Opening my eyes with a bewildered expression, what she held in her hand was a sketchbook with the words 'Long time no see! Hiya!' written on it.
Not a dagger sharpened to hurt people.
I hadn't expected to run into someone connected to this body by chance in a cafe, so I had gotten scared.
In a dating sim, it was only natural for chance encounters to happen when you went outside.
"Want a sip?"
To break this awkwardness, I pulled out the straw I had been sipping from until just now and asked.
I had done so thinking they could just bring another straw, but the woman nodded and put the straw I had pulled out back in, drinking the hot chocolate.
Since I was being treated to it anyway, I didn't feel it was much of a loss, but—
'Does this place operate on different common sense from what I know?'
Was it not dirty? There was a new straw right next to us, yet she didn't use it and used this one instead—this was beyond my understanding of common sense.
I already knew that in dating sims, there were scenes where heroines fondled each other's breasts and played around, so same-sex intimacy was different from the common sense of the world I knew, but—
[Unsan...]
Just as the system was about to show something, my gaze was drawn there, but...
[Unsanitary.]
It was merely a phrase saying it was unclean to drink from that again.
I looked above the woman's head to identify what kind of heroine she was.
[Kana]
[Role: Uncapturable Heroine]
[Ability: Momentary Enhancement]
Uncapturable.
The woman who held the role of the ideal type I was meant to become slurped up my hot chocolate through the straw with loud sips.
...Wasn't she only going to have a sip?