Chapter 50 - Now, Whoever Sees This— (2)

One peaceful day.

My head felt a little fuzzy, but... I was sitting on my bed, watching anime on my computer.

The protagonist had a beautiful blond vampire girl tagging along with him, and without giving it much thought, I casually remarked:

"Why isn't my vampire a cute girl?"

"Gya? Gyagyat!?"

Shocked!?

Grizzly, the Invisible Vampire crouching beneath my bed, gaped in shock at its master's words.

It couldn't just sit there and do nothing.

"Gyagyagyagyagya!"

It transformed into an absolutely gorgeous vampire girl. Grizzly was super-duper pretty!

"Gyao! Mashter! I'm a cute girl now, too!"

But it was invisible, so nobody could see Grizzly.

Enraged, Grizzly roared and smashed everything around it to pieces.

"■■■■■—!"

BOOM! CRASH!!

"Aaaaaah! Run!"

I blinked in disbelief at the cars being hurled through the air, the fleeing people, and the burning city.

"What the..."

Where was my Poké Ball... no, <Mysteries of the Worm>? I'd better put Grizzly away.

With a pop, the grimoire <Mysteries of the Worm> appeared in midair.

... Except, for some reason, its cover was swollen.

<Mysteries of the Worm> spoke, its iron cover blushing shyly.

"Master... I'm pregnant with your baby grimoire."

"..."

Without a word, I looked for <The Lesser Key of Solomon>.

I shouldn't have done that.

<The Lesser Key of Solomon> appeared, its cover swollen.

"Magician, I, too, am pregnant."

I sighed in disbelief.

"... This is driving me nuts."

Then a rather shoddy holographic selection window appeared before me.

[Trust Mysteries of the Worm] vs [Trust The Lesser Key of Solomon]

There was no need to pick an option. It would be a waste of time.

This was a fucking ridiculous dream, after all. Time to wake up.

Besides, both of them were mine to begin with.

Telling me to choose just one made no sense.

‧

‧

‧

DING-DONG, DING-DONG.

A bell that sounded like something straight out of an old school anime.

"Yo... han... Yohan... dear... brother..."

My eyes blinked open at the quiet voice calling my name as someone gently shook me.

'... A desk?'

For some reason, I was slumped over a classroom desk. When I raised my head, I saw something absurd.

My gaze traveled up from the cute skirt before my eyes to a beautiful, black-haired woman with a composed face.

"... Yohan, dear brother, please wake up."

Shin Sion, dressed in a school uniform, was calmly calling me her dear brother.

"Fuck, this is messed up."

The words slipped out before I could stop them.

'Am I still dreaming? A dream within a dream?'

But apparently this dream wasn't going to let me wake up so easily.

Sion looked at me with her usual expressionless face and said,

"I'm sorry to wake you when you were sleeping so soundly. But school's over now... and I wanted to go home with you, dear brother."

Well, watching that pathological skeptic deliver dating-sim heroine lines with a straight face was pretty funny.

Then I read the words on the notebook page she cautiously held out as she spoke.

[Yohan, please play along with me.]

I immediately understood the situation. This wasn't a dream.

... I could feel countless eyes on me from every direction.

And an unnatural, artificial, unsettling silence pressed down on the classroom.

The students who had been chattering noisily until a moment ago all stopped talking at once and turned to look at Sion and me.

... One of them had even turned his head a full hundred and eighty degrees.

The atmosphere was obviously anything but normal, so I rose from my chair and played along.

"Sorry. I had a weird dream."

I tried my very best.

"Um... right. My sweet little sister Sion. Shall we go home together?"

"Yes... I'd like that. Let's go, dear brother."

For the briefest instant, Sion and I both narrowed our eyes and grimaced.

At any rate, the classroom's silence lifted, and the students' conversations filled it once more with a lively hubbub.

"Want to go to a dessert café today?"

"Oh, I've got club activities today... Sorry!"

Sion and I left the classroom.

As I thought things over while walking down the corridor, I remembered what had happened.

First, Sion had come to my apartment, and we'd eased the mood by eating cake together.

["Thank you for the milk. It has a nice, rich flavor."]

["Looks like buying milk that costs a thousand won more was worth it."]

The cake really was delicious, perhaps because it was expensive.

As we continued talking, Sion had given me more information about this uncanny case.

It was probably an uncanny entity that abducted people into a game. Since it took the form of a game, it was the sort that required clearing the game to escape or eliminate it.

Our objectives were to determine whether the missing people were alive, rescue them, and eliminate the uncanny entity.

She said they needed my grimoire's power in case of unexpected developments.

Sion had launched the game on the laptop she'd brought.

[Win This Girl, That Girl, Every Girl~ Heart-Pounding Harem Academy Life~ Together in Love and Death]

Looking at the blatant title and the game screen full of pretty girls with hair in every color of the rainbow, I'd thought:

'... That screen looks kind of mocking. I've seen horror games like this that pretend to be ordinary games.'

Then the Play button was pressed.

A wave of sleepiness washed over me, and I lost consciousness.

"..."

I looked at the school corridor, bathed in orange light from the sunset streaming through the windows.

Or should I call it an academy, to be precise?

It seemed we'd been dragged into the game, too.

Once there were no other students in sight, I asked Sion,

"How long was I asleep?"

"I don't know exactly how long, either. I regained consciousness ten minutes before you did."

Even in this situation, Sion calmly assessed what was happening and showed me the notebook she held.

"Perhaps because we played together... I seem to have been assigned the role of your helper and adviser."

"Like the childhood-friend character in a dating sim who gives you information about the heroines?"

Sion nodded.

"Yes, something like that. The notebook contained all sorts of information. ... But perhaps that means the game-manual notebook that should have gone to you became bound to me instead."

She sounded apologetic, but I didn't mind.

Her theory wasn't certain, and frankly, something else bothered me more.

"So... what was that about calling me your dear brother?"

"It'll be quicker if you see for yourself. Please call out [Menu]."

'What? A status window?'

It was an unexpected request, but since we were inside a game, it wasn't all that strange.

"Menu."

A holographic window appeared in front of me, displaying various options.

"Yohan, please click the [Student ID] icon."

I clicked Student ID as instructed, and information about me appeared.

More precisely, the only things that matched were my name and appearance. It was information about an entirely different Kim Yohan, a student at [Harem Academy].

[A second-year student at Harem Academy whose parents are away on an overseas business trip]

The funny thing was, my age was still twenty-one, but apparently that didn't stop me from being a second-year academy student.

... And then:

[Family Relations – Younger Cousin Shin Sion]

Sion spoke calmly.

"Perhaps this is another effect of playing together. It seems I've been cast as your younger cousin."

She flipped through the notebook and continued explaining.

"According to the game instructions, players are randomly assigned a role at the academy when they begin. They must act according to that role while keeping track of academic performance, stats, and events, ultimately becoming the 'harem protagonist' and winning over every heroine."

I remembered the students glaring at me earlier.

If we acted out of character... I doubted they'd let it slide.

Just then, a student passed us in the corridor, and Sion changed her wording.

"Yohan—dear brother, your role is the academy's popular upperclassman and bad boy."

"... What?"

I asked again, and Sion gave the same answer.

"A popular upperclassman and bad boy. It says it's a good role with a low chance of being assigned. ... Though apparently it can give certain characters a bad impression of you."

This was seriously absurd.

I'd never been popular in my life. How the hell was I supposed to act the part?

If I'd been the kind of person women liked in the first place, my bitch of a mother wouldn't have dumped me at an orphanage.

"Haah..."

As I was thinking that, a group of female characters with shadowed faces suddenly came pouring around a corner and approached me.

"Oh! There you are, Yohan!"

"Come to a dessert café with us! Buy us cake!"

"Buy us parfaits, too!"

They immediately surrounded me on all sides and started chattering noisily.

My eyes narrowed of their own accord.

I didn't want to waste time when we still lacked proper information, so despite my lack of confidence, I decided to try imitating a character who was popular with women.

The game seemed to be set in the world of a Japanese school story, after all.

"Everyone! Please calm down."

Just as Sion was about to intervene to rescue Yohan, he bellowed,

"Shut up!"

His voice rang through the corridor.

"I can't stand noisy chatter!"

"Eee, eeeek!"

Perhaps his assigned role gave him a boost. The background female characters scattered in delight.

'Hmm... this might actually be a little fun.'

Should I try saying, 'I, Kim Yohan, don't pay restaurants that serve food that isn't worth the price,' in the academy cafeteria, too?

Wasn't being able to do things you couldn't do in real life the great thing about games?

Of course, I was kidding. I had no desire to stay long in a game entangled with the uncanny.

With that pointless event out of the way, I said to Sion,

"For now, let's look around the school and find the other Special Response Section personnel who would have entered before us."

"Oh, yes... I think that's a good idea."

Sion stared at Yohan for a moment, then collected herself and nodded.

'A magician through and through...'

He had adapted quickly to this frightening, unknown situation.

Sion walked down the corridor, cautiously observing him.