After parting ways with the student council president, who had gone ahead and left us behind, we were able to arrive at school safely without incident. Though it wasn’t as if nothing at all happened.
When we passed through the school gate, there was the minor matter of me being stopped because I wasn’t wearing a uniform, but when Yu Inna spoke up for me, the man—whether he was a security guard or one of the teachers, I couldn’t tell—let me go easily.
It was the same after we reached the classroom. Most of the class seemed about to say something to me, but once Yu Inna entered, they were too busy greeting her.
Even amid all that, Yu Inna kept glancing at me. Perhaps because everyone was fawning over her, she looked like the school idol.
She had plenty of friends around her, and even the teachers seemed especially favorable toward her.
As for me, standing there blankly because I didn’t know where I was supposed to sit, not a single person made any friendly gesture like greeting me.
Yu Inna, welcomed by everyone, and me, ignored by everyone.
Was it only my delusion to think that Yu Inna, looking me up and down, was secretly enjoying this contrast?
In any case, as I slowly scanned the empty desks, it wasn’t all that difficult to find mine.
There was one desk with “You should’ve just died for real, you retard~” carved into it with a knife. That had to be my desk.
Looking down at the chair, whose seat was broken unlike the other students’, and the unidentified liquid oozing out from inside the desk, I thought it over.
‘This method is way too old-fashioned.’
It was ridiculous how easily I could see a way to resolve this situation. If I asked or buttered up the girl who had shown overwhelming influence within the school on the way here, it would probably be taken care of without issue.
And since she had been showing me goodwill, along with a kind of power she possessed, asking her wouldn’t even be all that difficult.
If I hadn’t seen her strategy method in her profile, I would have tried asking her first. If only I hadn’t seen that line saying she bullied people by using those around them through influence.
Without giving any reaction to Yu Inna, who was looking at me worriedly, I continued thinking.
If that was the case, then why was she putting on that kind of expression? If she had tried to place this body within her possession in this manner and had been cut off by this body in the past because of it, she should know full well that I would be aware of this insidious side of hers.
In truth, I could more or less guess the answer.
‘Well, hiding the fact that I’ve lost my memories is only possible when I actually have some information to work with.’
For someone who was supposed to be my childhood friend to start finding me suspicious, even a single day was probably more than enough.
First of all, if I wanted to live in this world, I would need to sort out my relationship to some extent with the school’s Demon King, who enjoyed tormenting me by isolating me from others.
Just as I took a few steps toward Yu Inna’s desk, a certain girl grabbed my wrist.
The outside, where most people existed as humans dyed black, was different from the classroom, where the protagonist was likely to be. Most of the girls in this class had color, and this girl, who possessed her own distinct color, was probably a heroine as well.
[Seo Yuri]
[Role: Sub-heroine of the yuri DLC.]
[Ability: Falsehood.]
“Come outside. You don’t want to?”
“No, I do.”
Assuming she was roughly a sub-heroine, I looked above the head of the girl who had grabbed my wrist, and at the unexpected words, I briefly failed to control my expression. But thinking it over, it was only natural.
In a dating sim, even if there were a lot, the number of heroines was usually four or five.
The reason most of the class wasn’t made up of black and instead each had their own color was surely because there were other elements included besides the heroines of the main dating sim.
Though the existence of DLC-version heroines in this nameless dating sim world was something I had never even considered.
Before following the brown-haired girl who had spoken to me, I briefly glanced at Yu Inna. With eyes filled with resentment and hatred, she was glaring not at me but at Seo Yuri. As though Seo Yuri had interfered with her plan.
Had she wanted me to approach her and question her? When her eyes met mine, she smiled with her eyes as though nothing were wrong and let me go.
*
It was about time for morning homeroom to begin. It was the hour when students gradually stopped moving around and sat down in their seats, but instead of doing that, we sat side by side on the stairs just below the entrance to the rooftop.
“Mm, we don’t have much time, so should I get straight to the point? I really hate this kind of shady ostracizing. But even if I step in, all that’ll happen is we’ll end up with one more outcast. So how about we cooperate until we overthrow the queen who’s causing the bullying in our school?”
“I wasn’t planning to ask anyone else for help from the start. I just wanted to question her.”
In other words, I didn’t need help from others. There was no guarantee the situation would improve just because someone else helped me.
“But it’s not like doing that will resolve the situation, right?”
She was right.
The fact that ostracizing me was her capture method, and everything else about Yu Inna, felt twisted somehow. Even if I questioned her, I could easily imagine her simply denying it with, “Me...? There’s no way~.”
Still, I didn’t feel like cooperating and moving according to the words of a girl who didn’t look particularly smart.
Perhaps reading my unimpressed expression, the girl spoke in a slightly more urgent tone. Morning homeroom would begin soon, after all.
“As the first step of our cooperation, let’s go with something simple. I’ll switch desks with you and sit there. Then you can take my desk and sit there. Of course, if it gets exposed that I changed with you out of goodwill, I’ll be ostracized too, so I’ll say you threatened me into switching chairs and desks. How’s that?”
“So you want me to be the punching bag instead? If that’s all, fine. But the image of having your seat taken because you got threatened by an outcast won’t be good for you either.”
“I can handle that myself~. In the first place, I’m not the one she’s aiming for. It’s you. She’s not the kind of person who would pointlessly increase the number of people being ostracized. Not because she’s overflowing with benevolence or anything, but because she seems to hate the idea of someone in the ‘same’ situation as you increasing, and you sharing that sense of kinship with them. You get what I mean, right?”
If I accepted that proposal, I would certainly be perceived as a villain at school, but it would let me move in a direction Yu Inna wouldn’t expect.
Originally, the only way to beat someone who was smart and even had outstanding abilities was to throw a stone they couldn’t foresee.
And since it seemed the person who was likely this world’s protagonist had already progressed through a fair amount of the story, I probably needed to gain some kind of role within this school in order to figure that out.
For example, the kind of villain the protagonist would have no choice but to pay attention to.
“Fine. Sounds good.”
Yes, the first proposal wasn’t really something I had a reason to refuse. When I nodded, the girl looked at her wristwatch.
7:54.
After exchanging only a few words, it was already time to return to the classroom, and the girl’s words became much more hurried. Was she quite the model student?
“Then should we make a proper vow or something? There’s no guarantee we’ll keep it just because we vow to, but it’ll be better than not doing it. Until we overthrow the queen who encourages ijime at our school, we each say one thing we want the other to uphold. As long as you don’t sell me out, I will never betray you!”
“As long as you don’t love me, I won’t betray you.”
“Then I~, as long as you all like me, I won’t betray you!”
We each held out an arm. Three hands overlapped in one place, then separated.
It wasn’t a vow made beneath peach trees like the Oath of the Peach Garden, but it was the same ritual in that there were three of us.
...Or so I thought, before it suddenly occurred to me that there shouldn’t be three of us, and I abruptly turned my head to the side. There stood Inna, who I had no idea when had arrived, smiling and waving her hand.
“What the hell, when did you get here?”
“I hurried over the moment I saw you look at your desk and leave. I’ve been listening since earlier, and in the end, the plan is for us to cooperate while upholding what each of us wants until we catch the school queen who made someone dirty your desk, right?”
So that means we’re catching you. Why did she suddenly think this had nothing to do with her? As though she had never expected the “school queen” herself to approach like this, the girl’s face turned as white as a sheet.
Of course, since I had thought she might come looking for me, I wasn’t particularly surprised. Though the way she naturally joined the conversation when she wasn’t some kind of assassin did give me slight chills.
“The school queen... In other words, a plan to bring down the student council president who’s bullying you. I’ll help as much as I can!”
Inna said this while glaring at Seo Yuri as if telling her not to spout nonsense.
In a situation where it was practically confirmed that the school queen was Yu Inna, her words were no different from saying we should bring down herself.
At any rate, this was a situation where I could say to Yu Inna what I had intended to say this morning.
Morning homeroom was approaching, but just as I was about to say what I needed to say to her—
[Character Scenario 1: Subjugation of the School Queen has been unlocked.]
[Success Reward: 30 points of your Affection will be awarded to the heroines participating in the scenario. (The 30 points will be divided according to the number of participants.) (Affection distributed in this way will increase while ignoring the Affection cap.)]
[Defeat Risk: A key piece leading to a bad ending will be created.]
[Hint: Obtain information from more people. Someone entirely different may appear.]
Something called a character scenario suddenly appeared.
With the condition that even if I didn’t feel any affection, if we succeeded in subjugating the queen, my Affection would be forcibly distributed to the participants.
The risk upon failure was an increased chance of heading toward a bad ending.
On top of that, there was even a hint that the person who had ruined my desk, the queen who was no different from the owner of this school, might be neither Yu Inna nor the student council president.
I had thought I should only trust the profile to some extent, and as I regretted having relied solely on it before unconsciously deciding at some point that Yu Inna was the culprit bullying me, I swallowed back the words I had been about to say.
“For now, let’s go back to the classroom.”
Find and subjugate the school queen with as few participants as possible. That was the new mission that had just appeared for me.
Of course, judging by the abilities alone, this dating sim didn’t seem like an ability-user battle story with combat, so even if it said subjugation, rather than fighting...
It felt like we’d fight with something closer to R-rated.