I Reincarnated as a Mob Character in a Romcom Manga—After I Kept Comforting the Third “Fanservice” Heroine When She Got Dumped and Cried, I Feel Like She’s Started Directing Some Seriously Heavy Feelings at Me - Chapter 15 & 16

Chapter 15: Side – Chloe Mitsushima (2)

～The Fanservice Heroine’s Feelings Start “Accelerating”～

Up until now, there had been times when people straight-up called me a bitch to my face.

And honestly?

I’d usually taken that word as a kind of compliment.

Flashy. Strong-willed. Powerful.
Always freer and more unrestrained than anyone else.

All men should fall for me.
It was only natural that they would.

And if there was something I wanted but couldn’t have—then I’d take it, no matter what it took.

That was who Chloe Mitsushima was.

At least, that was what I believed.

No matter what anyone said, I wanted to be the best woman in the world.

Because of that, I’d never once slacked off when it came to polishing myself.

But—for some reason, right now, that word I’d always taken as praise felt just a little unpleasant.

As I walked along with a boy whose arm I was holding, stealing glances at his bright-red face, my chest filled with a strange sense of happiness and satisfaction.

—Ah… So he’s aware of me. He’s looking at me as a woman.

Every time I saw that redness on his face and understood what it meant, the heart that had been crushed not long ago from getting dumped slowly filled back up with warmth.

My cheeks loosened, and I caught myself grinning without meaning to.

And while I enjoyed the pleasant pounding of my heart—on the other side of it, I could still feel feelings for someone else I hadn’t fully let go of yet.

That faint, lingering emotion pricked at my chest, and a small ache quietly settled there.

Reiji Jeromiya.

The person who gently offered me a handkerchief when I was crushed by my very first defeat in life, when all I could do was cry pathetically.

The person who said, half-joking but full of conviction, “Then I’ll fight a guerrilla war together with you,” and declared himself my ally.

Until just recently, he’d only been a classmate.
A complete stranger I knew nothing about.

And yet now, walking this close together felt strange—just as strange as the way my heart started pounding every time I looked at his face.

Everything about this change in me felt unreal.

Some people would probably say, “She was weak, and he took advantage of the timing.”

But that was wrong.

Absolutely wrong.

Right after getting dumped by Yaohara, I didn’t even have the emotional room for someone to take advantage of me.

After all, it had taken a full year to get rejected.

And worse than that—it had been my first love.

Right after that first love shattered, I didn’t even have the strength to properly listen to someone else’s words, let alone grab their hand and try to stand back up.

I had been crouched there, crying and screaming, wishing I could just disappear like this.

And yet he suddenly jumped into the world I was trying to shut myself inside of, gently reached out his hand, and helped pull me back into a world where the light still reached.

When I was drowning in despair, growing bitter, trying to lock everything away—sight, sound, all of it—he told me he’d stay with me until I was satisfied. As long as it took.

He was the one who scolded me in his own way, telling me, “You’re the best woman in the world, so stop doing things that don’t suit you,” and reminded me of who I really was.

If it were just about being kind, Yaohara was kind too—just as much.

But Jeromiya was different.

His kindness felt like the kind that understood everything about me.

What kind of person I was.
What I thought about.
What kind of self I wanted to keep being.

For some reason, Jeromiya seemed to know all of it.

Because he understood all of me, he never treated my pain or sadness as something small.

Instead, he chose to stay right by my side.

That warmth… that sense of reassurance…

Before I knew it, I had started seeing this classmate—this boy who didn’t look reliable at all at first glance—as someone truly special.

I guess I really am a bitch after all—somewhere deep down, at the bottom of my heart that was overflowing with happiness.

That thought slowly seeped in, cold and heavy, weighing down my legs just as I felt like running toward my next love.

I probably could’ve just said, “That’s enough,” turned my back on the past, and moved on.

But the wound left by a heartbreak that dragged on for nearly a year was still throbbing.

Every time I tried to start running again, it felt like it split open and bled.

Even for me, cutting off the lingering feelings I still had for Yaohara—that wasn’t something I could do right away.

…No—that was wrong. That was just an excuse.

Thinking that, I tightened my grip around Jeromiya’s arm.

If I’m being honest, I think I’ve already started giving up on Yaohara deep down.

No matter how much I struggled or tried to take it back, it was pointless.

After flailing around for a whole year, both my head and my heart understood that.

So the conflict I’m feeling right now—in the end, it’s probably just this simple.

I don’t want Jeromiya to dislike me.

I don’t want this person—out of everyone—to think I’m a bitch.

Getting dumped by a guy I was obsessed with for a whole year, then jumping to the next guy in less than a week—I don’t want him to think I’m that heartless kind of woman.

If he ever looked me straight in the face and said, “You’re really easy, aren’t you?” I think I honestly wouldn’t be able to recover ever again.

For some reason, he seems to understand me perfectly already, so maybe this wish is coming way too late.

Even so, right now, I’m being overwhelmed by this intense fear—the feeling that if he were to hate me, I wouldn’t be able to go on living.

I don’t want to let go of this hand.

I don’t want him to drift away from me.

I want him to keep listening to my whining about this heartbreak forever.

Not just that—I want him to listen to more and more of my stories, and nod along to every word.

“Yeah, yeah, I get it.” “That was really hard.” “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

I want him to comfort me with words like that.

To accept me.

To hold me close and gently pat my head.

…No, that wouldn’t be enough forever.

Just being held and having my head patted would probably start feeling insufficient before long.

I’d end up wanting more—the next step, the things a boy and a girl our age naturally start wanting from each other.

“Jeromiya.”

“O-Oh… yeah?”

“Please… don’t end up hating me.”

Before I realized it, I’d said something like that, clinging to him with my words.

Jeromiya paused for a moment after hearing it, then answered simply, “Of course.”

That was all it took.

Just those words—yet my chest filled up with so much happiness and satisfaction that I honestly felt like I could die happy right then and there.

Chapter 16: A Summer of Formalities and the Fanservice Heroine

After that, once HR ended and we returned to the classroom together, things quickly got a little noisy.

Unlike me—who, as usual, was completely ignored by my classmates—Chloe Mitsushima, one of the most popular students in the entire grade, was instantly surrounded by a crowd of top-tier boys and girls the moment HR finished, and an impromptu interrogation began.

“H-Hey, Chloe! What were you doing with Jeromiya first thing in the morning!? Why did you two come in late together!?”

“Eh? It’s nothing that serious. I was just venting a bit because I’d been feeling rough, and it happened to be Jeromiya. You know, despite how he looks, he’s actually an amazing listener—and really good at comforting people.”

“Right?” With that, Chloe smiled at me and gave a small wave.

As for me, I had no idea how I was supposed to react to that smile.

In the end, all I could do was blush hard, stay silent, and turn back to face forward.

Seeing that exchange, the class’s top-tier students all froze, wearing expressions that clearly said what the hell did we just see?

“Wait—what was that just now!? Since when are you that close with Jeromiya!? Weren’t you totally obsessed with Yaohara from Class A until recently!? You chased him nonstop! What about Yaohara then!?”

“Ah. Yaohara officially dumped me three days ago.”

She said it so casually—like it was nothing—that even I flinched.

And judging by the reaction around us, everyone else flinched even harder.

The classroom went dead silent, like someone had dumped a bucket of cold water over it.

Without thinking, I turned around toward Chloe’s seat at the back of the room and blurted out, “H-Hey…!” in a scolding tone.

Maybe she found it cute that I was worried, because Chloe’s smile only deepened.

“Relax, Jeromiya. There’s nothing to worry about. It’s true that I got dumped. And because of that, you comforted me, and we got closer, right? Honestly, I think it was a good thing. If I hadn’t been dumped, I wouldn’t have gotten this close to you. I really mean that.”

—Man, seriously.

So this was the fanservice heroine.

Was it really possible to be this open about liking someone—without hiding it at all—just charging straight through like this?

I answered with my confusion written all over my face, muttering, “O-Oh… I see…”

At that moment, one of the class’s top-tier guys—a brown-haired dude named Tachibana—grabbed his head and shouted loudly.

“Dammit! Jeromiya, I’m so jealous I could die! Why wasn’t I there this morning!? If it were me, I’d have totally tried to pick Chloe up on the spot! Hell, maybe by now I’d be able to enjoy these boobs as much as I wanted…!!”

“Don’t be stupid, Tachibana. Like I’d ever let some flashy playboy like you do whatever you want. I was able to be comforted because it was Jeromiya.”

Chloe puffed out her cheeks and lightly kicked Tachibana in the shin with the tip of her shoe.

Right around then, a top-tier gal from our class named Aizawa spoke up, sounding a little hesitant.

“B-But still, Chloe… after Yaohara, is it Jeromiya next? I mean—sorry to Jeromiya for saying this—but is that really your type? With your looks, you could easily aim way higher, couldn’t you?”

“Jeromiya and I aren’t like that. We’re more like… comrades. Yeah. War buddies.”

That explanation only seemed to confuse Aizawa even more.

“W-War buddies…? What are you even fighting?”

“Obviously, a losing battle in love. Jeromiya and I both survived a brutal defeat. So we ran off into the mountains together, holed up in some damp, musty cave, and while I complain about how much it hurts, Jeromiya goes ‘yeah, yeah’ and helps patch me up.”

As she explained our relationship like that, Chloe’s expression softened slightly, a faint hint of loneliness creeping in.

“The way I lost was just too rough. I’m not really ready to think about ‘what’s next’ yet. I think I’ll stay a pitiful, freshly dumped woman just a little longer. So for now—just to be clear—Jeromiya and I aren’t dating. I’ll say that much out loud.”

Yeah, that made sense.

I found myself nodding along with her words in my head.

No matter how much of a reincarnator I was, Chloe Mitsushima was still one of the main heroines of this world—Schrödinger’s Love.

And the person she was meant to be in love with was, first and foremost, the protagonist, Nayuta Yaohara.

Even if her individual route had already ended, a different development—a new romance—would only begin after Nayuta Yaohara’s own story reached its conclusion.

Given Yaohara’s past words and actions, the heroine with the highest chance of “winning” right now was clearly the main heroine, Miyuki Hitotsuba.

At the very least, until Yaohara and Hitotsuba ended up together, it was safest to assume that Chloe wouldn’t have a next boyfriend.

After thinking that far—suddenly, I felt an overwhelming mental fatigue wash over me, like I’d used up way too much brainpower at once, and the idea of thinking any further just felt exhausting.

Somehow… it all felt way too systematic.

Too dry. Too flavorless.

Even for someone like me—who’d never had any romantic experience even in my past life—I couldn’t help but feel that way about the current situation.

This world was a romcom world created by its author.

Everything unfolded according to that person’s will and intentions.

I understood that. It was something I had to accept as a basic premise.

And romcoms had their iron rules—laws, really.

One of them being that once a heroine lost, she basically couldn’t rejoin the race.

After that, the only things a losing heroine could do were limited.

At best, she’d keep holding onto feelings that would never be returned, or bark out something like, “I’ll find a way better man than him!”—a classic loser’s howl.

And yet…

“Hmmm,” I thought, realizing that I was honestly finding this whole situation boring.

I wasn’t sure why.

But at the same time, there was a calm part of me saying, “Is that really what romance is supposed to be like? No. That can’t be right.”

From a meta, romcom-common-sense point of view, for Chloe Mitsushima, this moment was basically a consolation match—just dead time while waiting for the main heroine race to reach its conclusion.

And for me—the reader who’d always kind of rooted for Chloe Mitsushima as my favorite heroine—this felt like the end of summer, when your home prefecture’s team loses at Koshien, and you half-heartedly cheer for the neighboring prefecture’s team that’s still somehow hanging on.

A summer where there’s no losers’ revival—lose once, and that’s the end.

Yeah, yeah, I knew that was the iron rule of romcoms. I knew it.

But still… was that really okay?

Wasn’t it a waste?

I couldn’t help but think that, just a little.

Powerful. Free-spirited.

A walking bundle of confidence and competitiveness.

A stubborn girl who never gave up, no matter how many times her all-out seductive attacks were brushed aside—

That was the kind of heroine Chloe Mitsushima was.

That abnormal toughness that refused to ever give up on “winning.”

That resilience that never let go of hope until the very end.

That refreshingly reckless drive to act.

Back when I was just a reader, she’d genuinely given me the will to keep living.

So seeing Chloe Mitsushima now, spending this time as a losing heroine—to me, it felt unbearably frustrating.

Like watching something painfully low-stimulus, almost dull.

Aizawa was right when she said Chloe could easily aim for someone way higher.

And honestly, I thought the same.

Someone like her should be able to cleanly move on from heartbreak and become the main heroine of an even better, shinier alternate story.

If romcom “common sense” didn’t allow that—then it just felt like an incredible waste.

“Um—sorry, can I talk to you for a second?”

All of a sudden, that voice came from the back of the classroom.

I lifted my head and turned around.

And the moment I saw who it was, my eyes went wide.

Nayuta Yaohara—the protagonist of this romcom world.

A guy who looked completely plain no matter how you looked at him, standing awkwardly at the classroom entrance, like he didn’t quite know where he belonged.