—So much had changed in three days. Had she been that heartbroken?
The woman, having stored all the leftovers in the refrigerator and completely finished washing the dishes, lightly shook the water from her hands.
The droplets falling to the floor were reminiscent of blood spatter from the suicide commotion that someone on the second floor had caused at school.
Her classmates thought she had caused the commotion because the boy she liked had been stolen away by another girl, but the truth was the exact opposite.
Yoo Inna, her childhood friend, knew the truth—that she had caused the commotion because the “other girl” had been stolen from her by the boy. Having finished her business in the kitchen, Yoo Inna did not head straight out but looked at the full-length mirror in the living room.
*Wouldn’t I be considered pretty?*
A face that had ranked as high as fifth in the school popularity poll. At a normal school, fifth place might be considered relatively low, but since this was a school attended by idols and actively working actors, it was decidedly upper-tier.
She was not the type to care about others’ evaluations, yet she harbored the modest hope that even a tenth of the affection others showed her might be reciprocated by the beloved she cherished.
The woman struck various poses as if walking a fashion show, only stopping when she was huffing and puffing, completely out of breath.
Because the girl, who would usually drift to her side like a fairy whenever she cooked and washed the dishes, had not approached her today despite her desperate, wordless plea to come closer as she put on that fashion show.
That she had to marinate the meat and thus spent a great deal of time, that she had purchased expensive ingredients for a student, or even that she had made the person who cooked also do the dishes—all of these were trivial matters when she thought of her heart directed toward that girl.
What mattered was that, despite being rejected by the “other girl” and left alone in silence for three days, she still showed signs of suffering unlike her usual self.
That was what mattered most. A chilling glint momentarily flickered through the girl’s crimson eyes before vanishing.
“Well, I’ll see her tomorrow anyway.”
Whatever she intended to do, she could do it then. After all, their cute little princess did not have the best reputation at school.
Longing for her childhood friend to return to school tomorrow if nothing else, Yoo Inna opened the front door very slowly, as if she had waited until the very end for someone to come down from the second floor, and returned to her own home.
*
Roles floated above people’s heads. Realizing this fact while looking at a girl who couldn’t have lived even half my age, I tried to go outside but was unable to due to one critical issue.
Not knowing where my wallet was hidden in this white-covered room, or that what I presumed to be my school uniform for tomorrow had been shredded—those were problems, to be sure—but the greatest problem was the lack of a mirror.
No, strictly speaking, there was something I presumed to be a mirror; the problem was that it did not reflect me properly. I looked at what I presumed to be a mirror.
[Name: Erica.]
[Role: Undefined Heroine]
With these two things plastering the mirror, it could not fulfill its original purpose of reflecting me. And I could hardly call such a thing a mirror.
Undefined role. And the clue of “Heroine.” If I was a Heroine, then naturally the Protagonist would also exist somewhere in this world.
The Protagonist—the sole, unique individual capable of capturing the hearts of Heroines endowed by the world with all manner of abilities, all while claiming to be ordinary.
Since harem dating sims with a male Protagonist were far more common than yuri dating sims with a female Protagonist, if there was a Protagonist in this world, it would likely be a man.
“The Protagonist, huh…”
Crouching before the full-length mirror in the room, I muttered that role. Not falling in love with a man would be easy.
But if it was true that I had become a girl in this body, as I suspected, overcoming the physical pull inherited through DNA would not be so simple.
Right now, I could swear I would never love a man, but until just moments ago, I hadn’t imagined in my wildest dreams that I would become trapped in a dating sim world. Therefore, I had to consider the hypothesis that the Protagonist might directly attempt to capture me, and the worst-case scenario that I might fall for the Protagonist.
As long as there was a mechanic called affection cap release, I likely wouldn’t lose my chance to go outside by falling in love at first sight, but how formidable the Protagonist’s power to capture all Heroines truly was—could only be known by meeting him directly.
According to the system message that I must not be captured, the Protagonist was the one person I ought not meet. But to escape this world, the Protagonist was precisely the one I presumably had to meet.
Perhaps from crouching too long, I grabbed my slightly numb legs and stood up. In any case, there was no answer to be found by constantly thinking about the Protagonist I would inevitably meet tomorrow. I simply had to do now what I had first resolved to do, even having ducked out of dishwashing.
“Maybe I should go out for a walk.”
The name and ability floating above Yoo Inna’s head. Even if her role appeared because this world was a dating sim, there was no reason for abilities to exist in a normal world.
It might simply be a device to highlight the Heroines’ specialness, but there must be a reason it had been made visible to my eyes. For example, the bare minimum of conscience from whoever had dragged me into this other world.
Searching the internet could be one way to learn of this world’s peculiarities, but a method like the internet could never reveal the information currently visible to my eyes.
Information that could only be obtained by moving on foot. For that information, I had to go outside.
Before that, I had wanted to know exactly what form the clothes I was currently wearing took, as they appeared only as a blurry white, but if the owner of this body—the girl who had probably been a Heroine—possessed even a shred of shame, she wouldn’t be wearing anything strange.
Trusting in that fact, and unable to properly check what I was wearing because the mirror was blocked, I waited a good while even after the front door closed before carefully descending from the second floor and arriving at the shoe cabinet.
There was only one pair of shoes in the shoe cabinet. Whether she had worn only this single pair, a worn-out, frayed dress shoe stood out starkly in my eyes.
Given that she lived in a two-story house, it didn’t seem like money was lacking, so why had she kept using such old things?
An emotion that I felt I might understand yet might not. Whatever the other party had felt, a semi-transparent window appeared once more before my eyes.
[Shoes received as a gift from a lover.]
I hadn’t taken over this body by choice, so I felt no pointless guilt, but it was unpleasant how that window suddenly popped up as if trying to make me feel unnecessary guilt.
Even if I looked displeased, it was meaningless to vent anger at a system whose sentience I couldn’t even confirm. And thinking it had popped up just then to scratch at my nerves was an overreaction, too.
If this kept happening, I would later have to consider the possibility that the system might feed me a false method of escaping this world.
I put on the shoes with worn-down heels and opened the front door. When I had thought I was kidnapped, I had vaguely imagined the door wouldn’t open easily, but it opened without resistance.
And the world that met my eyes made me certain. That I hadn’t succumbed to mental illness, but had perhaps truly undergone dimensional transfer. That seemed better than the alternative.
Because if this mental illness lasted a lifetime, suicide would truly be far preferable.
*
Should I call them black humans?
I don’t know how people look to others’ eyes, but in mine, all but a select few were stained black, as if relentlessly showing me that this world was nothing but fiction.
“Hey, miss~. Come take a look~.”
I’m not a miss, so I brushed past him, looking only above his head. Had he perhaps been calling the middle-aged man next to me “miss”?
Extra.
In dating sims, many extras don’t have faces shown, so I could somewhat understand their faces being undefined and stained black.
But their voices? Why were the voices reaching me so clear?
Usually, due to resource or budget constraints, you might pay illustrators extra to draw extras to some degree, but it was rare to assign voice actors to extras.
In other words, if this world were truly a dating sim, it would be normal not to hear their voices at all.
*Unless someone is distorting my sight.*
It was merely a guess I could never be certain of. Though I hadn’t graduated from university, I was a smart person with many certifications, so my guess was probably roughly correct.
“Uh…?”
Perhaps because I was lost in thought, I couldn’t react until a woman wearing a hood and even earmuffs collided with me with a thud.
My body collapsed, strengthless. I hadn’t examined myself properly in a mirror and hadn’t checked my naked body, but this body was so frail I would have thought it had been drugged.
“Ouch…”
Did we really have to bump that hard? I think I scraped my knee. As I tried to stand up while rubbing the sore spot, the hooded figure extended a hand to me.
She didn’t even ask if I was okay. I looked at the top of her head with anger, committing this to memory for revenge. I expected only [Extra] to appear anyway.
Unlike Yoo Inna, whom I had first met and who had been a sub-Heroine, most people I had seen outside were extras.
But contrary to my expectations, above the hood were written words other than the brief label [Extra].
[Han Ye-seol]
[Ability: Voice]
[Role: ?? Heroine (Please note that this Heroine’s role may change depending on the Protagonist’s choice branch.)]
Words that signified she was the second Heroine I had met in this world, excluding myself.