CH 53

He Is, in the End, a Protagonist Too

Translated by HamletJr

Edited by HamletJr

“See ya later, Shinozaki. Today was a blast, eh?”

“Urk… W-Well, I guess.”

“Heh, too bad it doesn’t look like your lower half had any fun.”

“Of course not! I’m not a playboy like you!”

Touché, Ryuichi remarked as he chuckled. He never would’ve thought he’d be able to joke around with Sohei like this, so having dinner with him at the club today was an unforgettable experience for him. 

It wasn’t like the manga world had been that dark and brutal, but the sight of the protagonist and the antagonist getting along like this would’ve been unimaginable to those who knew the manga from Ryuichi’s previous life.

“Later, Shinozaki.”

“Yup. See you, Shishido.”

They exchanged farewells and turned their backs to each other. However, just as Ryuichi was about to leave, he heard a voice call out to him from behind.

“Shishido.”

“Hmm?”

When he turned around, Sohei hesitated for a moment before he firmly looked Ryuichi in the eye and said this:

“The last time I saw you coming out of that store with Shizuna, I said things like how indecent and inappropriate the place was.”

“Yeah, that you did.”

He sure did, Ryuichi recalled. He had also rubbed Shizuna’s breasts in front of him while she was lightly disguised as a gyaru, which, in a way, must’ve been another painful memory for Sohei too. At the time, he’d done it knowing it would spite him, but now that he was talking to him like this, he immediately regretted his actions.

“About that time, well…actually, nevermind. So?”

“Yeah.”

Sohei continued.

“I still think that places like those are inappropriate, or at least, that they’re for adults. But…the manager and the waitresses are very kind, and I think they’re really warm people.”

“I truly feel that way,” he added.

Even though the club was inappropriate…well, in practice, it was a place that was made to serve those purposes, but still, it was undeniably run by very kind people. 

Nevertheless, it wasn’t strange that people like Sohei would have negative impressions of the place, but it still made Ryuichi really happy to hear him say that.

“I’ve now learnt that I shouldn’t blindly deny something without hearing both sides of the story.”

“Well, a club ain’t really the place to learn stuff, though.”

“I know. But…in the context of a real-world field trip, there’s really no better place to learn than here.”

Incidentally, while they were inside, there had also been a man and a woman kissing passionately behind Sohei, which was a scene that was very stimulating for him. Still, the female waitress skilfully led the conversation with Sohei, and he seemed to have enjoyed himself from start to finish, so it must not have been a bad experience for him.

“…Man, never would’ve thought things would turn out like this.”

After parting with Sohei, Ryuichi headed straight home. When he contacted Shizuna after he got home and told her about what happened with Sohei, she was very surprised, but at the same time she asked him why he hadn’t called her over too.

“That’s so unfair of Sohei-kun.”

“That’s what you’re jabbing at?”

But, well, the next time he went out to eat again, he made a mental note to invite Shizuna as well. Even if this had not happened, he would still go to the club occasionally with Shizuna, and if anything, she herself might come with Chisa and the others since she said she wanted to see him working part-time.

“Well, it’s okay. The final exams are coming soon, so I’ll have lots of time to spend with you then, Ryuichi-kun.”

As Shizuna said, the final exams were coming soon, so they were planning to study together. Studying all the time was also tiring, though, so as they’d said before, there were also plans for the girls to get together at Shizuna’s house.

“Man, there are tons of events before the summer vacation, huh.”

“Fufu, let’s make every one of them a cherished memory. ♪”

“You got that right,” Ryuichi agreed as he laughed.

While Ryuichi was enjoying himself on the phone with Shizuna, Sohei was also thinking back to what had just happened. Ryuichi had said it was like a real-world field trip, but there was certainly no better time to learn about a part of the adult world than now.

“Where did you go with your friend? You didn’t go to some shady place, did you?”

His mother had asked him a question that’d spooked him, but he smiled and managed to gloss over the matter.

“…Shishido, huh. Turns out he’s a pretty good guy.”

Call him naive, but Sohei’s perception of Ryuichi had now changed. Sure, he was the one who stole Sohei’s love away from him, but Sohei didn’t want to hold it against him forever, and seeing Shizuna smiling had helped him to adopt that mindset.

“Leave Shizuna to me.”

His words had been very powerful and trustworthy. Sohei was sure that Ryuichi would make Shizuna happy, and although he was still frustrated, he was sure of that fact.

“But man, it’s been really tiring today… I think I’ll head to bed.”

He got on his bed and tried to go to sleep early, but he couldn’t stop thinking about what had happened inside the club. The woman whom he had been accompanied by was named Mihara, but he had never been in such close proximity to an adult woman or seen such a large cleavage before, and the experience was so arousing that it was burned deep into his mind.

“…Haaah. Am I a pervert or something?”

Well, surely there were many people who could sympathize with Sohei’s problems. After all, anybody would burn the memory strongly in their mind if they could converse with a woman as sexy as her.

“………”

Although he had had slight difficulties in falling asleep, Sohei soon closed his eyes. Then, he had a mysterious dream—one in which his other self was speaking to him.

“What the hell are you thinking? That guy stole Shizuna away from you!”

A person with the same face as himself was speaking to him. His words were a series of angry bellows about why he was getting along with Ryuichi and what he was doing when Ryuichi had taken Shizuna away from him.

“…He sounds like me a little while ago.”

It was the figure of a person who couldn’t accept reality and kept complaining about it. It was the figure of a person who had depended on the intimacy he’d had as her childhood friend and had continued to cling to the sweet illusion that she would definitely look back at him… When he looked at it objectively like this, he could clearly see how pathetic it was.

“Why are you laughing?! Do you have no pride?!’

“…I see. So I was laughing.”

Apparently Sohei had been laughing at his dream-self. Realizing this hadn’t invoked any thoughts in particular, though; in fact, he laughed even more at himself.

“Pride, huh… I’ve long since thrown my pride away; that very same pride that’s constantly nagged at me and made me hesitant and wavering. Shizuna is certainly important to me, but—”

He paused for a moment, took a deep breath in, and continued.

“I’ve decided to leave her to a man who can make her truly happy and at the same time make her fall in love with him. That guy…Shishido will surely make Shizuna happy.”

“You…leaving her to him?!”

What a strange dream this is, he thought. And yet, he still couldn’t understand why this person was so angry. Well, Sohei had a lot of things on his mind as well, but he decided to forget about this dream as soon as possible and turned his back on it.

“Are you running away?!”

“Running away? No, not at all. When I go to sleep, I wake up, which means it will be tomorrow, so I’m not running away, I’m just facing the future, you idiot~.”

After he said this, his dream-self disappeared with a vexed look on his face. It wasn’t that he didn’t feel anything when he saw himself vanish without a trace; it was just that he was thinking that if he’d slipped up, he could have ended up like that, too.

“…I learnt quite a bit about Shishido in my talk with him, huh.”

While they were eating dinner together, the manager and the female waitress had joined in the conversation and asked Ryuichi about himself. Sohei learned that he, too, had suffered a lot in his own way, and in the process had met Shizuna and many other people who helped him get to where he was today. 

There was no doubt that he was a delinquent, but what Shizuna had fallen in love with was his true self, his kind self. Sohei laughed when he thought about how a girl falling in love and going out with a person feared by others was almost like something out of a well-made manga.

“Well, a lot of things happened, but he was easy to talk to. And he was a good guy… Truly.”

If this world was a manga, then all he’d done was win over the heroine that was Shizuna.

“If I had to use the word ‘protagonist,’ I’d say Shishido more than fits that role.”

Sohei muttered as he surrendered himself to the sensation of waking up. Unbeknownst to Sohei, this world was a former manga world that had already begun to take its own route. The original protagonist, the one who’d only been stolen from, was not here. Instead of being sulky and disgruntled, Sohei had the strength to accept reality and look firmly ahead.

“…All in all, it was a pretty nice place. Well, obviously I can’t say I’ll become a regular there, though. ”

Well, of course you can’t, most people would retort and laugh. 

Sohei had said that Ryuichi was a protagonist, but having the strength to accept his frustrations like this was also another sign of a protagonist.

Hang in there, MC. It was as if the light shining on him was telling him that the future would surely be bright.