Even if Kim Haneul and Lee Seora slipped away to talk, where could they go in broad daylight? No matter where they went, the city streets were crowded enough that people were bound to overhear them, so in the end they had no choice but to talk in a corner of the café parking lot.
The boy studied Lee Seora, who had looked at him and silently signaled for him to follow. No matter how he looked at her, she seemed furious. She must have called him out like this to scold him, but he could not begin to guess why.
“So, why did you call me out here separately? You wouldn’t have called me for no reason.”
The student council president and he were not close enough for her to summon him here and there over something pointless.
Most likely, the reason she was so angry had nothing to do with concern for him, and everything to do with Erika, whom the student council president cherished and loved most.
The student council president usually seemed kind, though it was closer to being blunt, but when Erika was involved, her emotions ran high. Her smiles, and her anger.
“Are you in your right mind?!”
Just as Kim Haneul had expected, Lee Seora began with anger. Her voice was so loud that he wondered if Erika, who was on the second floor looking out the window, might hear it across the parking lot.
Looking nothing like the student council president who usually maintained a calm line, she confronted Kim Haneul.
“Why were you with Erika even on the holiday? I know that you stay by her side because you are doing me a favor. But if you are with her even when you do not need to be, Yu Inna will grow jealous of you and take action. Do you understand how much danger that brings to Erika?”
It was not as though he had been with her only because of the favor. Kim Haneul had, in his own way, enjoyed spending time with her, so he wore a briefly awkward expression. But that only made the student council president even angrier.
“Are you smiling right now...? Her ability affects not just people, but the world itself. Fate, luck, variables—one of the greatest psychic powers, capable of turning all of them to her side. That is the true nature of her power. No matter how strong you are, you cannot win against Yu Inna. No matter how strong you may be, there is no way you can defeat someone who draws the world itself onto her side.”
“I know about her psychic power, and it’s very different from what you think. If she had an ability that powerful, I’d have no choice but to know. And you’re not stupid enough to keep getting angry and keeping someone in check if they’re an opponent you can’t stand against.”
Kim Haneul stared into empty air for a moment before speaking. The student council president knew that, whenever he spoke, his gaze sometimes drifted briefly to a strange place, but she did not bother pointing it out.
That peculiar habit of his was probably related to the ability he possessed. Mentioning it would be no different from provoking him by revealing that she knew about his ability.
But that did not mean she could stop being angry. If Yu Inna’s ability was to make the world her ally, then Kim Haneul was someone who already had the world as his ally and moved accordingly.
One of the few people capable of opposing Yu Inna. He seemed not to have known it until now, but the reason she had asked for his cooperation was also because he had the power to oppose Yu Inna.
No matter how immune her ability was to influence, she did not possess the direct power to defeat influence.
One of the reasons she had joined the student council and become president was to obtain that direct power, but apart from the fact that they all possessed quite powerful abilities, they were difficult to control separately.
In that sense, Kim Haneul, who possessed both the power and character needed to protect Erika, was someone she could not give up on. This incident, too, was surely nothing more than him having acted with enthusiasm because she had asked him to protect Erika.
[?]
Lee Seora’s ability displayed doubt, but paying little attention to the ability that had seemed to be malfunctioning more and more lately, Lee Seora spoke passionately.
“You trusted my wisdom and tried to find someone, yet you will not trust what I say? I already know that you possess an ability related to information. If you were searching for a specific person through your memories or information you knew with certainty, then when I said Erika seemed to be the person you were looking for, you should have at least considered it. Yet you were always certain that it was not Erika.”
Hearing those words, the boy felt as if he had been struck by lightning. The main heroine of his “genre” was Lee Seora.
He had thought the reason she was the main heroine was that she was the most essential piece for defeating the queen of the school, or because she would be helpful in finding the true heroine.
But what if there was one more reason? What if she was the main heroine because she was the only one who could be wary of and recognize someone loved by the world enough to deceive even the “system” he saw as absolute—?
Yu Inna might not be some sub-heroine, but a woman carrying out an entirely different role altogether. He simply had not figured it out yet.
Only when nearly a full year had passed did the boy discover that fact, and he trembled.
How many things had he missed and passed by like this? And when he thought of how the things he had missed might come back to him later, he could not help but be afraid.
Even as his thoughts grew complicated for a moment, the student council president’s words, worried for Erika’s safety, showed no sign of stopping.
“But before Yu Inna’s power, all of it is useless, so—”
“I understand what you’re saying. I honestly never expected there would actually be someone even my power wouldn’t work on.”
The authority he possessed because he was the protagonist. The carelessness born from not thinking there might be one more person besides the queen who could deceive the benefit he had gained in exchange for being trapped in this world.
Thinking about it now, the queen may have been a sort of prologue. A prologue monster that informed him that someone like Yu Inna, who could likewise deceive the system, might appear as an enemy later.
As the boy checked through his memories with Yu Inna, wondering where they had gone wrong and how far, he suddenly brought up something he had heard before.
“Then when she said before that her ability doesn’t work on Erika, was that a lie too? Honestly, I thought she was weak partly because that statement seemed sincere.”
She had said she could not pierce Erika’s ability. Yet Erika had no ability that seemed special.
She had only possessed abilities close to those of an ordinary girl, someone who could only be bullied as the queen of the school bullied her.
Contrary to his expectation that Lee Seora would immediately shake her head, she hesitated for a moment before nodding.
“...That is true. Even if she can make the world view her favorably, she must be unable to use that ability on Erika, who is protected by some unknown blessing. There may also be the fact that she despises me, but if she cannot even pierce my ability and control me, then there is no way that ability could pierce Erika’s power, which is specialized solely in protection.”
Erika’s ability.
If he wanted to confirm it in detail...
The boy’s eyes momentarily tried to turn toward one place, but he soon closed them. If he tried to uncover the ability of a girl liked by someone who could deceive the system, there was a high chance the result would be manipulated.
He had checked once before, too.
People usually knew roughly what their own abilities were, so the best method would be to ask Erika directly.
“But then, are you planning to hand Erika over to Yu Inna? Listening to you, I can’t help but think that.”
No matter how he thought about it, if they could not defeat a girl who received the world’s favor, then not provoking her was also one of the best options.
But if that were the case, it was strange for the student council president to continue making hostile remarks about Inna in such an open place.
Since this was a parking lot where people, however rarely, passed by, someone who might relay their conversation to Inna could happen to pass. If the world truly was favorable to Yu Inna, speaking like this would be odd.
“Inna cannot move recklessly. Not because the world’s love is that powerful a psychic power, but because if she earns Erika’s hatred before winning her heart, she must be prepared never to see Erika again for the rest of her life.”
The reason a psychic with such powerful strength was restraining her own actions was love.
If one wanted to call it romantic, it was romantic. But when he thought about why she had so easily spent time with him, when she perceived him as having stolen her lover, it was nothing short of chilling.
Because she could not win in a psychic battle, she was taking away the parts that person could rely on through external factors, slowly making her come to depend on her instead.
If Erika, while being bullied by others and having the people around her disappear, were to lose even her lover in the end...
The boy concluded that was the reason the Erika he had known had changed. After all, that was far easier to understand than assuming she was another person who had possessed a body in this world.
“That is why there is plenty of time. As long as you do not get close to her, we should be able to prepare enough to fight back. It is not as though she is a perfect superhuman in every respect. Well, unless someone were to enter her home and sleep there, there would be no reason for her to move in haste.”
“...Hm?”
Someone entering her home and sleeping there?
Of course, she must have been talking about something adult, but just as the boy’s face hardened at the thought of what he had done yesterday, a trilling ringtone rang from the student council president’s pocket.
“It seems she somehow heard that we were speaking behind her back. In any case, she already knows that I will pick a fight with her when the time comes, so things will not escalate too badly. ...Hello?”
After reassuring the boy that nothing would happen, she brought the phone to her ear. Feeling as though he knew what was about to happen now even without any special power, the boy quietly closed his eyes.
“...What? Who went into her house? They came out together in the morning? How do you know that? ...Though I suppose that is not the important part. If you are going to move in your own way, do as you please. I cannot tolerate this either.”
Even with his eyes closed, he could feel her stinging gaze as her call continued. Intense, negative emotions such as hatred, resentment, and anger were all contained in that gaze.
The woman ended the call and placed a hand on the back of her head, as if her blood pressure were rising.
“Are you in your, your right mind...! No, more importantly, you went into Erika’s house with her? And you did not even tell me?! You have finally gone insane. There is no need to even go as far as Inna. For breaking our ‘promise,’ you and I will settle this here and now...!”
Even though she did not possess a psychic power related to combat, the woman rolled up her sleeves as if her anger could not possibly be relieved unless she hit him at least once. Seeing that, the boy hurriedly pointed at the change taking place on the second floor.
“Wait, look over there.”
“Do you think such a cheap lie will work in this situation? I trusted you and left her to you, and you used that trust to enter Erika’s house...?”
The woman, who had turned her gaze along the boy’s finger intending to sneer at his lie once more, stiffened at the sight visible through the window.
A woman with hair curling like seaweed and a face as pale as a dead corpse was clinging to Erika. A woman who was said to have been severely bullied.
Around that woman, stories of uncertain truth—perhaps only rumors—had spread, saying that those who had bullied her all ended up showing ugly sides of themselves before having their lives come to an end.
Since something far more important had appeared than taking her anger out on the boy who had ruined her plan, the woman began running toward the place where Erika was.
‘Whew, I’m saved.’
Having naturally slipped past the crisis, the boy followed Lee Seora up to the second floor of the café. Since no dangerous person could have come to this ordinary outing as if it were nothing, this was nothing more than a perfectly appropriate little happening.