Starting today, tutoring was over too. I walked the road home, checking the money Kana had sent me on my phone.
With the money earned by teaching others my genius ideas, I was able to participate in the field trip taking place next week without blowing the savings the owner of this body had stashed away.
I had told Kana I wasn't interested in the trip, but I actually was. It wasn't anticipation or interest in where I'd go or what I'd do with friends. Rather, it was anticipation and interest in whether the story would progress there and provide clues for escaping this world.
However, although the original owner said he wouldn't take this body back, I honestly felt reluctant to touch the money Erika had saved. So I decided to take up tutoring requests while also getting some studying in myself.
Maybe there was a reason she had saved up so much—perhaps it was money she absolutely needed later, not because she hated her older sister. If that was the case, not using it was better for preparing for the future.
Lost in those thoughts, I put my phone in my pocket and glanced slightly upward.
[Request completed. As a reward, you will meet one of the heroines.]
The window floating there was one of the reasons I no longer put much effort into requests.
The first request had gone properly thanks to the system's help, but the heroines I met as rewards after completing subsequent requests were nothing but a collection of weirdos.
From a blond thug who showed up leading rough, heavily bearded men in black suits demanding debt repayment, to an astrologer who offered to read my palm while sneakily reaching for my wallet, to an obviously R-rated masseuse who said she wanted to practice massage but clearly aimed to touch my body first—encounters that brought me nothing but harm kept showing up under the guise of request rewards.
The student council that helped with the requests turned out to be a collection of nothing but eccentric weirdos after meeting them a few times, so I didn't particularly want to get too close to them either.
In the end, I concluded that the two I had met during my first request had simply been beginner's luck.
I wasn't going to stop taking requests entirely, but you could say I realized there was no need to rely on them so heavily and do nothing but run around completing them.
...This was one of the reasons too.
As I watched cars speed by, a window popped up before me while I waited for the green light at the crosswalk.
Before I could even feel any foreboding from that window, some massive force shoved hard against my back, and my body stepped onto the crosswalk where cars were whizzing past.
'Damn it, crazy. I didn't want this—don't forcibly initiate optimal behavior.'
Beeeeeeep—!
The truck was getting closer, and just as I thought my body would be hit before I could even step back onto the sidewalk, I felt a soft grip on my hand and heard a husky voice.
"Don't tell me you were trying to cross at a red light. Even if you thought you wouldn't get hurt thanks to your divine protection, isn't that way too reckless?"
Without even looking at her face, I could feel someone pulling my hand. My body, which had stepped all the way onto the crosswalk, was drawn back onto the sidewalk thanks to some woman's help.
The first thing I felt when I looked at my savior was a sense of vastness. Black hair resembling the night sky, and golden pupils that brought the sun to mind.
She was a woman I was seeing for the first time, but the message that she had tried to avoid me was enough to tell me she knew something about me.
To put it bluntly, she was a beauty. She wore a gray hoodie and clearly didn't care much about her loose outfit, but even so, she was breathtaking enough to make me lose my wits for a moment—and I had met plenty of heroines in person before.
I probably would have been fine even if hit by a car thanks to my protection, but it was only polite to thank her first. However, the woman's beauty left me speechless the moment I laid eyes on her.
While I stood there at a loss for words, the woman pulled my hand further toward the sidewalk and asked cautiously.
"...Or did you step out because you really wanted to die, like before?"
Hearing those words, I was certain of it. The first-stage limit break condition involving self-harm wasn't something just anyone would know. Kana still had no idea about my self-harm.
In other words, the woman who saved me was either someone close enough to hear news about 'me' even from afar, like this body's older sister, or she was in a position to naturally hear about me at school. Wondering, I checked above her head.
[Mysterious Beautiful Girl]
As expected, her name, role, and abilities didn't appear at all.
With such a striking appearance, I would have remembered passing her at school at least once. So maybe she was close enough to have heard about 'me' even without being there. Or perhaps she was a student from a faraway class who had only faintly heard rumors about me.
"What's your name?"
Since I had absolutely no intention of committing suicide, I ignored her roundabout way of asking if I had tried to kill myself by getting hit by a car, and asked what I wanted to ask first.
I didn't want to answer her directly and end up getting sympathy or a lecture about suicide, something I had zero intention of doing anyway.
"My name...?"
The heroine showing confusion at my question was clearly the [reward] I had earned by taking on requests for a week.
But while her name didn't appear at all, the fact that she was acting so familiar with me meant we were definitely close enough that I could find her if I knew her name.
"For now, I'll go with Iska. It's a simple pun, but I've said this much—you do know what I mean, right?"
—Seeing her play around with her name, did she usually go by a different one? What faintly came to mind was, quite literally, the school's queen, who liked to toy with names.
But if it were her, she wouldn't have bothered saving me. If it wasn't her, then there was something else that came to mind when I heard the word 'Iska.'
"If it's Iska, don't tell me...!"
I had heard the name Iska many times. When I spoke as if recognizing it, she nodded her head so vigorously that the hoodie covering her hair shook.
"Yeah, yeah, of course you should know. It's such an easy wordplay, there's no way a smart guy like you wouldn't get it."
"Japanese?"
Iska was a name I had heard mainly in Japanese anime and manga. I think I heard it was the name of some real bird, but I couldn't quite remember what kind. I only remembered that it was sometimes used as a person's name.
In many ways, she didn't look Japanese, but could a Korean have such strange hair or eye colors? Of course not. It was probably just that dating-sim correction where a Japanese person has pale, foreign-looking skin.
Thinking of 'Rao Ha,' I could immediately accept that she was Japanese, but apparently my genius deduction wasn't the right answer, because she glared at me.
"Are you stupid? Or are you pretending not to know on purpose? I showed you once before, so why do you keep acting like you don't know every time we meet since then? ...If you're really angry about that incident, I guess I can understand, but isn't pretending not to know a bit childish?"
She showed me once before? What did that mean? No matter how much I thought about it, I couldn't remember, so I had no choice but to assume some other being—not me—had seen it.
If that was the case, then the original owner of this body had seen this appearance once. Since the other party thought so, did she think I was pretending not to know even though she usually showed herself in a different form?
I kept observing the woman who naturally reminded me of the night sky, but there was no one among the people I knew who seemed to resemble that appearance. Honestly, I couldn't fathom any reason to hide one's appearance while attending school.
A crude thought crossed my mind—that she might be targeted by some organization or be a fugitive hiding her identity—but if that crude guess were correct, there would be no reason for her to wander the streets in her true appearance. So probably not.
Anyway, why did she speak as if I would naturally know about something I didn't? I wished she wouldn't just say 'that incident' and leave it at that. I wanted her to clearly tell me exactly what she was angry about.
If I asked first, she might notice my memory loss, so I couldn't do that.
"I'm not stupid, but I don't have any memory of that. Maybe you only think you showed me, but you never actually did. If you already showed me, couldn't you just show me your usual appearance here again?"
It was perfect wording.
Words that didn't reveal whether I remembered or not while provoking the other person's competitive spirit, naturally making her show her usual appearance. I was impressed with myself after saying it.
Was this what they called gaslighting—making someone move according to your will? I was marveling at my talent for pulling off gaslighting I had never learned from anyone, when the woman's lips began to open.
"I guess you either really forgot or completely ignored what I said back then. If so, I just won't tell you. Bleh."
Despite my perfect wording, I was at a loss for words at the sight of the woman winking one eye and sticking her tongue out. As a heroine, she should be an adult over twenty.
And yet she was actually doing a bleh. How childish could you get? I lamented her immaturity and pressed the back of my hand to my forehead to check if I had a fever.
It was hot.
In other words, I was burning with anger.
I hadn't been able to check her ability, but she was clearly someone with a provocation skill that instantly shattered my composure. Swept up by her ability, I prepared to headbutt her. My target with the headbutt was her face—a guaranteed critical hit.
The moment I tried to headbutt her, she pressed a single finger against my forehead. Unless the previous owner of this body had frequently headbutted people, she must have been someone who sat close enough to hear me threaten to headbutt, or who had heard such threats before.
Unless you factored in psychic powers, theoretically she must have been one of the people who heard me threaten to headbutt someone.
...Or maybe the original owner of this body really went around headbutting people too.
"Anyway, shall we get going? Standing around taking up space at the crosswalk is kind of a nuisance. I'll walk you home."
She knows where I live? Just who is she? Honestly, knowing this woman's identity wouldn't particularly change anything.
But people who hide their identities are usually important characters in a dating sim, so I just wanted to know. Understanding this woman's identity might also help explain why I couldn't see Rao Ha's role.
"Let's go. If we take any longer, I'll be late for school tomorrow."
The hand that had been pressing my forehead naturally turned over, palm-up, in front of me.
What was this supposed to mean? As I stared at it intently, she wrapped her hand around mine and crossed the crosswalk, now showing a green light. I didn't bother resisting.
If she really knew where I lived, there was no reason to refuse. And it would be good to find out, while walking with her, what those whose roles were of a different class had in common.