There are quite a few heroines in dating sims who use misunderstandings as their motif.
A heroine who looks fierce and blunt on the outside, but melts into a puddle at the sight of something cute, could be called a classic among classics.
At first, everyone misunderstands her as a delinquent, but it turns out she’s actually a very kind girl—
There were plenty of clichés like that in dating sims, so I thought the head of the disciplinary committee I’d just met would be one of those.
“Here, catch~.”
“E-Eh?!”
But a woman who casually flung a living cat at its owner did not belong to that category of heroine at all.
No, putting everything else aside, she just didn’t feel like a heroine.
A heroine could only be called a heroine if she had some charm that made a man want to pursue her.
If anything, the girl who panicked and caught her own cat after it was thrown at her seemed more heroine-like.
Though that was only according to my standards, as someone who looked favorably on things like “cuteness.”
“Then tell the vice president it’s been resolved properly, all right? If you don’t...”
“Yes! As soon as I arrive at school, I’ll run straight to where the vice president is!”
When the head of the disciplinary committee glanced at the bat attached to her motorcycle, the client answered like a fresh recruit with military discipline drilled into her bones.
Was this hell? If there was at least one good thing about becoming a woman, it was that I’d been able to leave behind a world where terrifying delinquents actually existed. I never thought I’d run into a delinquent who seemed like she belonged in reality even in the world of a dating sim. Though, seeing as she was carrying out a request submitted to the student council, she didn’t seem like an entirely bad person.
[Request resolved. You may receive your reward only after going to the vice president.]
She’d even carried me through it when I hadn’t resolved anything myself.
Sitting in the back seat of the motorcycle, I watched as the woman who had completed the request lightly climbed onto it.
A request to find a cat.
Honestly, in a situation where we had no idea where in the city the cat could possibly be, she had gone straight to where it was as if it were nothing.
How had she been able to do that?
“What? Curious?”
The delinquent’s voice rang out along with the rumbling sound of the engine starting.
To be honest, I was curious.
It seemed like she had somehow used a superpower, and if that tracking ability didn’t work only on cats, then I might be able to find the queen I currently needed to locate in one go.
“But do I have any reason to tell you?”
The moment she finished speaking, the motorcycle shot forward. Since I had a body far too fragile to withstand that speed, I had no choice but to grab her waist in order to survive.
Right, asking about superpowers was one of the things I mustn’t do. Whether she had applied her own superpower or someone else had helped her, I wasn’t supposed to ask.
Finding a cat that could have been anywhere in the city in one go was realistically impossible, so in other words, that question had been no different from asking whose superpower, or what kind of superpower, had been used to find the cat.
“You don’t, so ask me once we’re closer, punk.”
Hadn’t they said asking about someone’s superpower when you weren’t close was taboo? For all that, the owner of the voice didn’t sound particularly angry, and with her, I began a drive to who knew where.
And somehow, though I had no idea how she knew, the head of the disciplinary committee took me home before disappearing.
The student council.
My first meeting with one of the people presumed to hold an important role in this world ended that anticlimactically.
***
A transfer student arriving only after May, when the student council president election had already ended, was rare. Unless there were special circumstances, there was no reason to go so far as to transfer schools and part with friends you’d grown attached to. And those special circumstances were usually what made the transfer student special.
A spy who transferred in order to approach the protagonist, someone who deliberately ran away because they didn’t want to marry another person—there were countless stories, but what they had in common was that the real story usually began when the transfer student arrived.
If the school’s queen was closer to a time-limit villain who would lead the protagonist into a bad ending if left alone, then unless the transfer student was the type to pass by briefly and intensely, there was a high chance they were an important character. This world already had the student council president as the main heroine, so what remained would be the true heroine.
Was that why? Kim Haneul, too, was oddly staring straight ahead instead of talking with the girls beside him.
It was different from his usual self, smiling favorably at everyone. His face was slightly stiff, but it looked serious, and that was decisive proof of just how much he was looking forward to this.
‘As expected, I’d guessed it, but now it’s confirmed.’
Through what the system had told me, I had roughly known that Kim Haneul’s goal was to pursue the true heroine, but rather than fully trusting information provided by something as unreliable as the system, the information shown on the face of this androgynous boy was much easier for me to believe.
“Is something happening today?”
“Mm, I just have a lot to think about.”
Perhaps realizing that Kim Haneul wasn’t focusing on their conversation, everyone except the girl sitting next to him scattered and returned to their own seats. Not long after that, the front door opened and the homeroom teacher walked in.
“Everyone, um, you were sitting quietly this time? I guess the news that a transfer student is coming has already spread somehow.”
[Information Broker Kim Daseul]
[Role: Event Heroine (News)]
[Ability: Listening]
The homeroom teacher’s eyes briefly landed on the girl sitting beside Kim Haneul before sliding away. The girl said to be Kim Haneul’s information broker was her.
Following the homeroom teacher’s counseling event and the vice president’s mission event, what appeared over her was an event called News. The event itself seemed perfect for gathering the information I wanted, but the catch was that Kim Daseul appeared close to Kim Haneul.
For someone like me, whose social skills weren’t high enough to approach a stranger and act friendly, if I suddenly went up to Kim Daseul myself, it was obvious everyone would wonder why.
“Next time, don’t spread stories from the teachers’ office so carelessly. Um, it seems like everyone’s looking forward to this, and making her keep standing there would be awkward, so shall we call her in? All right, come in.”
Skipping over the morning homeroom that was little more than empty formalities, the homeroom teacher immediately called in the transfer student. The first thing to enter the classroom was hair close to ruby in color. And what appeared next was an outfit made of golden silk.
It was clothing that looked expensive no matter who saw it, but as someone who knew almost nothing about clothes, especially women’s clothes, I didn’t know what it was called. It seemed roughly similar to a qipao I’d seen in anime and such, but I couldn’t be certain.
While I was pondering the clothes the transfer student was wearing, the last thing I noticed about the woman standing in front of the lectern was her eyes. Special eyes with an iridescent hue that looked purple from one angle and red from another.
My eyes automatically tried to check the information floating above her head—,
“Mm! First time meeting you. Me, name is Lao Ha. I am called the heir of the Lao family, famous even in the great nation beside this country for producing powerful superpower users! Nice to meet you.”
[Currently, the target’s role rank is higher than yours. You cannot obtain information.]
Those words appeared, and nothing else showed up.
“What’s wrong?”
[Best Friend Yu Inna]
Seeing as words appeared above Inna’s head as usual, the system hadn’t stopped like last time.
She seemed to be either a main heroine or a sub-heroine, so what kind of role did the woman I’d met last time have that my system had frozen just from looking at her? And what were these things like Best Friend and Information Broker that were naturally attached before names?
For a moment, I was at a loss for words at the system’s act of naturally infiltrating title-like things without me even knowing when it had updated. But of course, regardless of whether I had lost my words or not, the woman in front spoke confidently while looking at our class.
“If there is something you want to ask, you may ask. I will do my best to answer. This is a privilege others do not receive, so everyone may be happy!”
Watching the transfer student use a unique manner of speech that seemed to announce she had come from overseas, I glanced at Kim Haneul’s face.
His eyes had drooped; he looked disappointed. Well, since Kim Haneul was presumed to have toyed with the student council president or my former self’s heart in order to pursue Inna, he seemed like someone who acted with more focus on finding the true heroine than on preserving human decency. So Lao Ha’s appearance, with words and actions that didn’t look true-heroine-like no matter how you looked at them, must have been extremely disappointing.
“Then what do you like? Hobbies are fine too.”
“Good question! I like many good superpowers. People who think your superpower is good, come! I give good treatment to good superpowers!”
The sight of a woman promoting her own family after being asked what she liked was strange no matter who saw it.
Her skin color and such made her look closer to the West than to China, yet she was saying she had come from China.
But her name was not visible to my eyes.
Because of that fact, I instead found hope in that woman.
Kim Haneul might think otherwise, but in my opinion, that woman was the true heroine.
If even my eyes, which could see the main heroine, couldn’t see her, then wasn’t there nothing else she could be but the true heroine?
“Um... you shouldn’t keep talking about that here.”
“Mm! Then I will sit and continue! Where should I go?”
“You can sit in an empty seat, but...”
Of course, that didn’t mean the transfer student wasn’t a strange person.
Lightly ignoring the words of the homeroom teacher, who had a slightly timid side when it came to students, she strode forward confidently.
Perhaps because there were no delinquents in the class who would trip her, she was able to reach the place she had aimed for.
Yes, right beside Inna.
“I want to sit here! Is it possible for you to yield?”
The transfer student’s choice ignored the homeroom teacher, who had told her to sit in an empty seat.
Normally, one might treat it as having encountered a mad dog and move aside, or else fight back and ask why she was trying to steal their seat. But instead of doing that, Inna looked at me beside her.
“Do you know her?”
Even though I’d said I’d lost my memories, she was asking whether I knew her. In other words, that was clearly a question meant to “test” my memories.
To think she laid traps in every single word. If you said even this gloomy side was like Inna, then it was like Inna. With the entire class’s attention on me because of the transfer student, I calmly conveyed the truth.
“I really don’t know her at all.”
“We are a relationship that wants to know each other starting now!”
Though I was immediately contradicted. Apparently satisfied with my answer, Inna let out a humming “Hmph~” and looked to the side where the transfer student stood.
“It’s your first day after transferring, so how about you don’t pick pointless fights and just sit in an empty seat? You shouldn’t steal a seat that already has an owner. If that owner had left, maybe you could, but I have no intention of leaving this place.”
...For some reason, I felt like I knew what she was comparing a seat with an owner to. Whether I was watching from beside her or not, Inna extended a finger and pointed at a seat. The empty seat behind Kim Haneul.
“—So just go over there.”
“...Mm, I wanted this seat, but if you come out like that, it cannot be helped. I go.”
At Inna’s quiet declaration, which sounded like a final warning, the transfer student looked at me for a moment, then let her hair strike once against her waist before going behind Kim Haneul as Inna had told her to.
Once the situation seemed to be more or less settled, the homeroom teacher clapped once and said,
“That concludes this morning’s homeroom...”
Then she scurried away. She had probably been emotionally wounded by being ignored by a student... but it couldn’t be helped that, unexpectedly, she looked cute doing so.
After all, it was only natural that the homeroom teacher, who didn’t have that great an age gap with the students called heroines, would catch my eye more than they did.