“Time to wake up.”
Usually, when someone said to meet in front of the house, I took it to mean they would wait in front of the house, just as stated.
...But was that not it? Even if I was a devilishly charming man who made nonstop dates with women in games, it was hard for me to understand the meaning behind words exchanged among women.
So perhaps this was not so strange. Strange or not, however, this body—weaker than my old one—seemed to find waking up painful and began screaming in agony, so I simply did not want to get up.
“Are you still not going to get up?”
“Ughhh.”
At the sunlight streaming in through the curtains someone had pulled open, I grimaced in pain. My body was not a vampire, that imaginary monster, but sunlight still hurt.
As I covered my face with the blanket on one side and thrashed about, kicking the blanket with the other in protest at what was tormenting me, the woman who had come by first thing in the morning even stole away my final bastion—the blanket itself.
Though the sunlight had forcibly shattered my peaceful sleep, the woman, unaware of that fact, shook my body.
“Hurry up, eat breakfast, and let’s go to school together. Okay?”
“What time is it?”
“Six thirty!”
If it was six thirty, then I did have to start getting ready for school. Since I still did not know the distance to school, I had no choice but to follow the words of this woman who would serve as my thorough navigation system.
For the moment, I sat up in bed with my eyes closed and shook off my fatigue. Only after that did I intend to get up, but what happened next left me unable to hide my bewilderment.
My body suddenly floated up and began moving somewhere. I wondered how far she was going to take me, but her steps stopped before long.
“Should I wash your hair for you, or will you wash it yourself?”
“Huh?”
Did people usually offer to wash your hair too? My extraordinary mind was normally good at finding answers, but perhaps because some fatigue still remained, it strangely failed to find one.
Whether she took my response as agreement, or knew I was confused and ignored it anyway, she moved again, set me on my feet, made me bend my upper body forward, and not long after, my hair grew damp with a slightly cool sensation.
“The temperature isn’t weird, right? If I make it too cold, you hate it, and if I make it too warm, it damages your hair, so I made it just right.”
Her hands, strangely skilled at washing someone else, combed through my long hair that even I could do nothing about, and then water poured down once more.
If I opened my eyes, something that might be shampoo water or might simply be clean water could get in them, so I quietly entrusted my body to her.
“Dry your hair by yourself, and I’ll go set the table. I didn’t shake out the water perfectly, so droplets might get in. If possible, be careful not to let water get on your wrist.”
After washing even my face for me, she began toweling the moisture from my hair to some extent, and at her final words, all her actions finally made sense.
Ah, so this was why she had done the dishes and washed my hair for me? The actions had felt subtly too bothersome to be explained by childhood friendship, but if they were the kindness of someone caring for an injured person, then it was entirely understandable.
Here I thought this body’s devilish charm was still enough to enchant women even after the body changed, but that wasn’t it.
With even a hair dryer placed kindly in my hand, I slowly began drying my hair in front of the bathroom mirror.
As ever, nothing appeared in the mirror. But it seemed my body remembered how to dry my hair. My hand maintained an appropriate distance as if it were nothing, then even naturally swept my hair aside as it dried it.
Rather than movements that came from my body being controlled, it was more like unconscious habits that emerged when I did not consciously control them, and so I remained in the bathroom for a while until I had dried all my hair, so that they would not disappear.
*
“We have to be there by eight, so I made breakfast as simple as possible.”
It looked that way. Unlike yesterday’s luxurious table, which had even included meat, today’s meal was toast made with crisp bread topped with a golden fried egg and a little vegetables.
But this girl’s cooking skill, as it had been yesterday, would surely make it incredibly delicious, so I bit into it without hesitation and immediately regretted it.
“S-spicy.”
A sharp pain spread across my tongue. If one expected ordinary toast to be sweet, this was packed with the exact opposite flavor.
Like a real man, I thought I would endure it and eat, but I could not stop tears from naturally flowing from my eyes.
“Hmph~ This is your punishment for leaving me alone with the dishes yesterday and going upstairs. Make sure you finish it. Even if I was going to do the dishes for you, you should have at least stayed with me.”
Inna pulled down the skin beneath one eye and stuck out her tongue.
No, then you should have told me at the time. It was obvious she had chopped up one or two whole Cheongyang peppers and invested them all into mine. How was I supposed to eat that?
As my tongue slowly throbbed and I naturally searched for water with my gaze, Yu Inna poured some from the refrigerator for me.
Surely she hadn’t put anything in the water too. For now, I trusted her and drank, and the cool water instantly quelled the spicy heat.
Yes, if the pepper had been spicy enough to make my tongue sting, the water was so cool that it cleanly erased even the lingering aftermath from the stinging parts.
Her cooking skill was almost mystical. No, should I call it her touch? Even without going through the process of cooking, anything her hands touched instantly became delicious, so “touch” was probably the right word.
“If you really abandon me and run away, I’ll give you something even worse than this. So be ready.”
The girl who had shown me cooking like magic threatened me.
At that terrifying threat of giving me more things like the Cheongyang peppers that had let me experience hell, if only briefly, I quietly nodded.
In any case, in this unknown world, the one who knew the previous “me” better than I did was Yu Inna.
Unless the time came for me to leave this world, there would probably be no reason for me to abandon her.
“Here, stop eating that and eat this.”
Perhaps pleased with my answer, Yu Inna held out the toast she had taken a bite from.
It was not as though I was especially fussy about cleanliness, but I was not the type to go out of my way to eat toast someone else had eaten either.
But the toast made as my share had been occupied by Cheongyang peppers, so I had no choice but to bite into the part she offered me.
Along with the crisp texture, the sticky sweetness of corn cheese and the fried egg soothed the spiciness that had not completely disappeared.
It was a meal perfect both as a snack and as a light breakfast.
“...It’s good.”
“Right?”
The only regret was that there was just one. While I was looking regretfully at the Cheongyang pepper toast I could not eat, Yu Inna naturally put that toast into her mouth.
“...Are you okay?”
“It’s spicy in just the right tasty way, that’s all.”
Something that had made my tongue tingle to the point of pain was spicy in just the right tasty way?
Was her tongue strange? No, if her tongue were strange, then the dishes she had made for me could not be explained.
But I also could not think of any reason she would deliberately eat the toast she had made spicy on purpose out of determination to warn me. What was more, I had even put my mouth on it a little, so it should have been slightly dirty.
“If you’re done eating, shall we get going?”
Was it because she was a heroine? She was a strange woman I could not possibly understand with my common sense.
Led by the hand of that woman, I began the final preparations for going to school.
*
What did one need when going to school? A school uniform to pass through the front gate, and a bag that could carry the supplies or textbooks and homework assigned by teachers.
However, when I took over this body, the school uniform had already been torn to shreds, probably by the original owner of this body, and no matter how much I searched, I could not find a bag.
In other words, that meant I left for school wearing whatever I had roughly pulled from the closet, without bringing anything at all.
‘Going back to school at this age, huh.’
Moreover, unlike other people who must have enjoyed their school days, I had spent unpleasant ones, so to me, school was the Demon King’s castle.
The Hero surely would not have wanted to go to the Demon King’s castle either, but just as he had no choice because the Demon King was there, I had no choice but to go to school because the protagonist would be there.
As I headed there with solemn resolve, I had prepared myself for the students around me to subtly avoid me.
“Inna, hi! Yesterday, the kids and I all went to karaoke, and it was seriously so much fun! So, Eun-jung and Jin-u, you know...”
“Inna, why have you been going home so early lately? I wanted to hang out with you.”
“Yu Inna! Let’s go together, together. Why do you always leave me behind and go on ahead?”
But I had not expected the majority of students we met on the way to school to greet Yu Inna and show such friendliness toward her.
The Demon King lived in the Demon King’s castle.
I should have known from the moment she made and fed me hellfire toast.
As I slowly slowed my steps and subtly put distance between myself and the group of blackened humans that could be called Yu Inna’s crowd, Yu Inna, who had been conversing with people while glancing back at me strangely, looked shocked.
I was definitely someone with enough charm to lose to no one in one-on-one conversation, but I was a little weak against groups, so it could not be helped...
Then Yu Inna’s eyes turned fierce, and she tried to come to my side, but because of the crowd that had gathered after seeing her, she could not come this way.
...Is there something here? When I turned my head, there stood a woman with a red more vivid than anything else in this world.
“She’s always popular, isn’t she?”
Appearing with words that made it seem as though she knew Yu Inna well, yet also kept a slight distance from her, was a woman who felt more like a lady than a girl. Above her head, words were written.
A heroine—one of the very few I had searched for so desperately yesterday and yet found only a single one among countless people.
And a heroine I should have been searching for after the protagonist, a woman who in an ordinary dating sim would become one of the axes driving the story forward together with the protagonist.
[Lee Seora]
[Ability: Wisdom]
[Role: Main Heroine]
The main heroine had now appeared at my side. Far sooner than the protagonist I had been trying to find.
“It’s been a while, Erika.”
As if she knew me.
But that was not particularly important to me right now. The moment I confirmed her face, what mattered most was my heart pounding regardless of my will, and the information visible to my eyes.
[Affection toward target: 57 (70)]
Is 57 affection when I haven’t done a single thing for real?
...This damn system. One day, I’ll have to pin it down and at least have a conversation with it. Assuming, of course, that talking to the system is possible.