CH 4

“It’s been a real mess today.”

When I got back to my dorm room, I lay down on my bed and thought about the events of the day. I had saved Winds at lunchtime, and had been challenged to a duel by Dobberwin, and tied up in the staff room to clean up the duel.

“It blew off my piano time.”

I had a schedule of playing the piano in the instrumental music room every weekday. At Sarun Afia Academy, each period is 70 minutes long. There are four periods, two in the morning and two in the afternoon, and the last period is an elective class. I didn’t take any of these elective classes. It seems that I’m the only student in the entire school who hasn’t taken any elective classes, and people look at me suspiciously, but I’m a merchant, so none of the classes at this school are useful to me. So it was a natural choice.

Instead, I made good use of my free time by playing the piano in the instrumental music room on the outskirts of the school building. The instrumental music room consisted of one large room and three smaller rooms, each with its own upright. The soundproofing in the small rooms was perfect, and the reverberations were moderately controlled so that the sound did not bounce back excessively even when the upright lids were fully opened.

I found this wonderful room on the day I entered the dormitory, before the entrance ceremony. Since then, I’ve been going to the instrumental music room every day as long as my schedule permits.

It was a stupid story about a duel that made me jump. There was no way I could play the piano with that kind of mentality. Playing is all about rhythm and mentality. If that collapses, there’s nothing you can do. For this one point alone, Dobberwin’s sin was serious. So, since I couldn’t play the piano anymore, I had no choice but to go to the library.

“I believe in the game….”

In the library, I hesitated over the question that had arisen today: how Airi and Letty got along.

The otome game [Eleanore!] uses a double heroine system, so there were a great number of endings. For the two main characters, Airi and Letty, there were three initial capture targets: Alfred, the Highness, Cain, the swordsman knight, and Brad, the genius mage.

There are two targets that can be conquered after clearing these three initial, and one target whose route can be opened by clearing all the ends, for a total of six. Each of them has two endings, so there are twelve endings for each of Airi and Letty, for a total of twenty-four endings. In addition, there are four special endings, for a total of twenty-eight scenario endings.

In the game, they are basically rivals in love. In the main scenario of the game, the battle for his highness Alfred, the villainous daughter intervenes and a three-way battle unfolds. The two heroines are basically competed even in the case of the other capture targets. However, there are some scenarios where they fight on a common front.

[Flick scenario]

In this scenario, when you take Flick, a vassal of his Highness Alfred as your capture target, you’ll team up with other heroine who is taking Alfred as her capture target and together you face the villainess, and finally both heroines are united to His Highness and his vassal. At this time, the end is a form in which the two heroines are tied together with a strong friendship, but that is a scenario that can be selected after capturing the three main targets. The current situation is that the game has just started and the three main targets have not yet been captured. So there is no flick scenario. So there can be no Flick scenario.

(It’s strange.)

There’s something else I find strange. I haven’t seen Brad, the guy with the glasses, in the library. Brad, who is supposed to be a diligent student who spends most of his time in the library, is not there. I’m there every day after school, so if he was there, I’m sure I would have run into him. But I haven’t seen him at all, and I’ve never seen him.

In the game, if you go to the library after school, you are sure to meet Brad. There, you can talk to him, ask him to introduce you to books and teach you magic to raise the glasses guy’s love parameter.

Hmm?

No, wait a minute!

(That’s me talking to the heroine in the library!)

I hadn’t noticed.

How could I have missed such an important thing?

I see the heroines, especially Airi, three or four days a week to talk, teach her books, and give her advice on how to learn magic. Letty, on the other hand, probably comes to the library to call for Airi, but we still meet and talk once or twice a week.

(I’m her target. Oh, my God!)

I hadn’t thought of that.

For the past month, I’ve been so focused on building my own schedule and actually keeping up with it that I haven’t paid any attention to the game characters. I mean, I’m not even a mob, I don’t need to worry about that, and the game characters’ movements have nothing to do with the story of returning to my world.

Normally, I wouldn’t care about scenarios, but now that I’m involved in the scenario, it’s a different story.

It’s true that my getting along with Airi and Letty was probably careless when I thought about it. In particular, I can’t deny that the distance between Airi and me is a little too close. However, from the perspective of an adult relationship, we are too far apart to be dating, and as long as this relationship does not develop, it will not be a problem.

If Brad had shown up at the library, he would have been chatting with the heroines and getting to know them, and I, who was not even a mob character, would have naturally become irrelevant.

But where the hell is Brad?

Where is that skinny student studying instead of coming to the library after school? His name was on the class list. So he must be in the school, but I haven’t seen him once since I entered. His Highness Alfred, on the other hand, was spotted at the entrance ceremony, accompanied by his vassal Flick and his servant of honor Edith, attracting the peachy gaze of many female students. It’s hard to believe, but I was surprised to see that the dark group blue hair I saw in the game was realistically reproduced.

One more person, the swordsman knight Cain, I’ve encountered several times in the hallway. He was very conspicuous because of his short brown hair and cool body, walking around with his chest out. I didn’t need anyone to tell me that that was Cain.

However, Alfred, Cain and Brad are all in different classes from me, so I have no idea how they move. Well, I don’t even know the villainess’ move in my class at all, so I guess it doesn’t make any difference if they in my class either.

If you think about it, the initial capture targets, the heroines, and the villainess all had different classes. There were ten classes in our grade, and the six main characters in the game were all in different classes. In addition, one of the two characters that I was able to capture later on, Flick was in the same class as His Highness, but the villainous Lindsay was in a different class than the other six.

“So that’s why there were no class scenes in the game.”

In the game, you could talk to your capture target ls in the library, cafeteria, schoolyard, training ground, arena, rooftop, etc. There were no classrooms. If everyone was in a different class, there was no reason to talk in class. But how could they assign everyone so neatly? How could they have wasted time creating such a detailed setting?

Although I was able to solve the meaningless mystery, considering the flow of the game that is deviating from the original game scenario, I may have to keep a close eye on the movements of the main characters of the game such as the capture targets, the heroines, and the villainess. In particular, I need to pay attention to the differences between the characters’ personalities in the game and in real life.

For example, Letty, who was supposed to be an energetic and lively thunder girl, has turned from an outdoorsy person to an indoor person in real life. In real life, Letty is certainly lively, but she seems to be wandering around the school as the school’s informant, which is completely different from the character in the game.

Airi looks much the same as she did in the game, but even so, she is very studious and serious, without any of the “blushing” that I felt in the game. She’s very studious and serious. She doesn’t have any of the wandering habits of scavenging for men in the game. Airi is a really nice girl with a cute smile. I guess you could say she is different in that area.

With that in mind, the other characters. When I imagine how the villainesses in my class, whom we have never talked to, and the capture targets, Alfred, Cain, Brad, Flick, and Lindsay, whom I have never met face to face, are actually different from the game, it is quite possible that something unexpected will happen to us.

In the midst of these interactions with the main characters, I found myself getting deeply involved in the scenario itself, even though I was no more than a minor character. There is a possibility that if I get involved too much, I might not be able to go back, so I think it’s best to be cautious.

(Well, I’ll be up at 5:00 again tomorrow. Let’s go to bed early.)

I quickly crawled into bed and prepared for tomorrow, trying to keep up with the schedule I had set for myself.