It was an unfamiliar ceiling. At long last, I muttered the line people who get possessed into other worlds always say, and sat up.
Perhaps yesterday’s overexertion had paid off, because windows were flooding my vision.
Though there weren’t many windows with good news.
[Your current abilities are in a state of overload. The application of your blessing will be解除 for 10 days.]
[Your resistance to mental-type effects such as brainwashing or charm has become extremely vulnerable. While your blessing is解除, it is advised that you suspend all tasks as much as possible and avoid contact with all mental-type ability users.]
[You have succeeded in解除ing the Stage 3 affection cap for the first time. However, this was not achieved by your feelings alone. In exchange for not receiving the reward for解除ing the cap, the abnormal portion within Lee Seora’s affection will disappear.]
[Lee Seora Affection: 40(90)]
When I thought of the girl who had made me meals, even 40 was a lot.
It was almost one and a half times more, after all. The abnormal portion probably referred to the affection the owner of this body had held for Lee Seora.
I couldn’t know whether that affection score was entirely the affection I myself had toward Lee Seora. The system said that was how it was, so I could only think, I guess that’s how it is.
More important than that was the red-haired woman who was waking up, perhaps because she had heard me sit up.
I had thought she would absolutely never wear it, but the sight of her sitting up in pink pajamas was cute no matter who saw it.
[You are falling for Lee Seora’s cuteness. Affection has increased by 1. 41(90)]
...It wasn’t like I’d fallen for her cuteness. Who said it could raise my affection on its own?
Grumbling at the system window, I looked at the woman beside me rubbing her eyes.
“...I’m up.”
“If you want to sleep more, you can.”
Unlike the composed image she had shown before, she looked very tired. I was flustered by this unfamiliar room, but I didn’t particularly want to wake a tired Lee Seora just to do something more. It seemed like a single bed, but if we pressed close together, we could keep sleeping like we had until a moment ago.
But perhaps reacting to my words, Lee Seora stubbornly got out of bed even while staggering. If nothing else, she had extraordinary willpower.
“Uh, um. Good morning.”
“Good morning.”
I was weak to sleep myself, but Lee Seora seemed especially bad with mornings; even greeting me looked difficult for her.
Considering she must have moved me here after I’d fallen asleep in the street yesterday, then gone to sleep herself, I understood why she was tired.
Watching her sit on the bed and try to wake up reminded me of myself, so I stared intently at Lee Seora’s face.
Her figure yesterday, fighting so unbelievably well.
It wasn’t to the point of falling for her, but she had been cool.
If Wisdom was the sort of ability I thought it was, she had no reason to risk her purity to protect me.
Because she must have known.
That I didn’t remember any of the memories I shared with her.
What meaning was there in risking everything to protect someone who had forgotten every memory with you?
I did not know, and I did not understand.
And so I had no choice but to look even more deeply into her face, wondering if some part I couldn’t understand might be visible there.
“...Idiot.”
Leaving behind my impression of last night’s actions for the woman who seemed to have fallen asleep again while sitting on the bed, I got up.
Thanks to Inna’s goodwill, I had temporarily left chores and things like that to her, but it wasn’t as if I couldn’t do housework at all. If that were the case, I couldn’t have lived alone in the first place.
I had only left it to Inna for a while because she said she’d take care of the bothersome things for me. I was originally a max-level live-alone student who was good at housework too.
“I’ll use the fridge on my own.”
“No... don’t. Save...”
Whether she was talking in her sleep or not, the president suddenly flailed her hands, but my feet were already stepping over the threshold. Had she hidden something in the fridge, or was she having a nightmare?
Either way, I could manage just fine on my own. I came out into the hallway and was heading toward the kitchen when I stopped in the familiar corridor.
‘No way...’
I had thought Lee Seora had brought me to her house.
The fact that she had changed into pajamas also suggested that.
But maybe, because we were lovers, she had simply left her pajamas here.
If this house was actually the space where I lived?
Then what was the place where Lee Seora and I had slept and woken up?
Perhaps the place where Lee Seora and I slept wasn’t that room plastered in white like it was trying to give someone a mental illness, but Erika’s real room.
Instead of going back to wake Lee Seora, I went up to the second floor to check.
The room on the second floor was, sure enough, the room where I had first woken up.
*
I am a genius of cooking.
What is a genius of cooking? Is a genius someone who cooks delicious food like Yu Inna? No.
If one has instinctively mastered the recipes for every dish so that no matter what is in the fridge, people can eat it without getting sick, that too can be called a kind of genius.
“...It’s delicious. As expected of you, Erika. A genius flavor.”
“If it tastes bad, don’t eat it. It’s not like your stomach is a trash can.”
Which meant that while I was a genius of cooking, it couldn’t be helped that my cooking wasn’t particularly tasty to other people.
I immediately dumped what had been in the bowl in front of Seora into the food waste bin, then flopped down onto a kitchen chair.
“So the place we woke up was really my room?”
“Yes. You told me not to go up to the second floor, Erika, so I don’t know much about it either. This is the first time I heard there were CCTVs installed as well.”
I didn’t know just how bad my fried rice had tasted, but seeing Seora bring water over and keep drinking it made me feel a little hurt.
I had thought I could cook decently enough, since I had always considered myself a domestic sort of man, but maybe I shouldn’t have said I’d cook.
I hadn’t realized that when Lee Seora said “don’t” from the bed, she was telling me not to cook.
Of course, it made more sense to say this body’s cooking touch was terrible rather than that my own cooking skills were lacking.
“Shall I observe it properly for you?”
“...No, that’s fine. More importantly, you must have known I lost my memories for a while now, so why haven’t you mentioned it?”
Just from the fact that I was asking Inna about this house, the place I should have known best, she should have been able to tell. And yet she said nothing, which was a little frustrating.
Was it because it felt like I was keeping a secret from someone who could sacrifice herself for this body without hesitation? I ended up revealing with my own mouth something I had intended to hide unless we were appropriately close.
“Um, it feels a bit awkward to say this, but I knew from the first time you came to school after that incident.”
“How? Was my acting that bad?”
I had wondered whether she knew about my memories.
I had thought the insight possessed by the psychic ability called Wisdom, which even the system had warned me about, wouldn’t be that incompetent.
Unlike what Kim Haneul had said, Lee Seora’s words—“Please endure just a little longer, if you still think of me as your lover”—had felt as though she were testing my reaction at the same time.
“Rather than saying your acting was bad, it was because we had been with you for that long, Erika. Yu Inna must have noticed at once too, didn’t she?”
“Yeah, that’s right.”
I had already judged that it would be difficult for me to imitate the unique disposition the original Erika had.
The original I had encountered, whether she was an illusion or not, had given off a strangely mysterious atmosphere.
Whether that had been real, I would only be able to know for certain later, once I could check my appearance through a mirror. But in a different sense, I felt that the girl with an atmosphere strangely detached from reality resembled me, who had fallen into this dating sim, quite a lot.
To the point that I thought if I had seriously set my mind to acting, perhaps no one would have discovered I had lost my memories.
It was already in the past, so I didn’t regret or reflect on it that deeply.
To the woman sitting in the chair and waiting for me to speak, I wondered what to say before opening my mouth.
“I thought no one would come, but you naturally came over to cook. That was probably when you realized.”
—Ding-dong ding-dong ding-dong ding-dong.
No sooner had I finished speaking than the doorbell rang incessantly, almost ominously. Speak of the tiger and it appears, as they say. The first thought that came to mind was that I had a pretty good idea who was waiting outside the front door.
“Should I open it?”
And also that this woman didn’t get along with her. The woman, still wearing those pink pajamas, looked over her own body once, then went back into my room where she had entered earlier.
Taking that to mean she would be changing out of her pajamas, so it was fine to receive Inna roughly, I ran to the front door and opened it at once.
“Long time no see?”
“We met two days ago. What do you mean?”
A green sweater and a brown skirt. Inna, wearing a fairly fresh outfit, waved her hand at me. Though her eyes were directed not at me, but at the sneakers the president had been wearing.
Had she come today, or had she come yesterday too? Yesterday, I had basically been out all day, so even if she had come, I wouldn’t have known.
In the first place, it might not be that she came to check whether I was here or not, but that she only came after confirming I had gone up to the second floor and come back down.
Or were there hidden surveillance cameras in this house besides the obvious one on the second floor? Since I couldn’t leave her standing at the entrance forever, I was about to pull her into the house when a system window appeared in my vision.
[You have encountered the Master of Influence. Please take care in managing affection.]
Along with the regret that, come to think of it, I wasn’t supposed to meet Yu Inna for the time being.