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 23 & 24

Chapter 23: The Fanservice Heroine Grows More Dependent

We couldn’t exactly leave Chloe inside the school forever while she kept crying, so I suggested we move somewhere else.

That was how we ended up at the nearby riverbank, quietly looking out over the city as the sun dipped low, its reflection shimmering across the water.

This riverbank actually showed up pretty often in the original Schrödinger’s Love.

Whenever the protagonist, Nayuta Yaohara, had something weighing on his mind—

Which usually meant agonizing over which heroine he was going to choose in the end—

This was the spot he’d come to alone.

So seeing this place occupied not by Nayuta Yaohara, but by a mob like me and one of the main heroines, Chloe Mitsushima—whose tears had finally begun to settle—felt kind of strange in its own way.

Sniff…

Chloe wiped her nose and spoke quietly.

“…I know I’ve said it already, but… I’m really sorry about earlier, Jeromiya.”

“It’s fine. I already told you I don’t mind.”

“This is… kind of scary to ask, but… you don’t hate me now, do you?”

“If I hated you, I wouldn’t have brought you out here.”

“Even so, you definitely pulled back a little, didn’t you? Ugh… I’m seriously the worst. Why did I even do something like that…”

Her ears turned bright red, and maybe out of habit when she got depressed, Chloe hugged her knees and buried her face against them.

I mean—

Now that she’d come back to her senses and was getting embarrassed, this was honestly rough on me too…

I scratched my cheek awkwardly, trying not to look at her too directly.

“I think… I was happy. …No, not just think—I definitely was. When you said ‘I’m a man too,’ Jeromiya, it felt like you were actually seeing me as a girl. Like… really looking at me that way. And after that, suddenly everything else just stopped mattering. Being on school grounds, what if someone saw us—I got tired of even thinking about stuff like that…”

—No, seriously, why did she suddenly start saying things like this…!?

Overwhelmed by sheer embarrassment, I couldn’t even manage a response. All I could do was stare desperately at the river, where some duck-like waterbird paddled back and forth with a dopey look on its face.

“I don’t even understand myself anymore. Every time I think about you, Jeromiya, I just get worse, faster. I did love Yaohara, but… what I feel toward you is probably heavier. More real. More raw… I don’t know, maybe it’s something like… dependence.”

Dependence.

Hearing that word sent a mix of excitement and fear through me at the same time.

It wasn’t something you’d expect to hear from the energetic, powerful fanservice heroine. And this definitely wasn’t some deranged eroge world where words like knives or confinement flew around.

I had no idea how to respond, so I stayed silent and listened.

Only then did Chloe finally lift her face and look straight at me.

“Jeromiya.”

“Y-Yeah?”

“I like you.”

…Huh?

For a moment, I honestly thought my ears had malfunctioned.

It felt like she’d just said something incredibly serious—far too casually.

While I stood there blinking in confusion, Chloe didn’t even smile as she spoke again.

“I like you, Jeromiya. Not one percent—one percent isn’t even close. I probably like you… about one hundred and twenty percent.”

—Damn it.

So it really wasn’t my imagination.

While I stood there frozen, opening and closing my mouth like a goldfish running out of air, Chloe let out a quiet breath and shifted her gaze to the surface of the river.

“But… I still like Yaohara too.”

Those words hit me like a bucket of ice water dumped straight over my overheated head.

I swallowed down the urge to shout what are you even trying to say and waited for her to continue.

With a small sniff, she scrunched her nose like a sulking child.

“When I heard Hitotsuba-san’s voice earlier, I realized it. I haven’t moved on at all. I’m the worst kind of woman. Right when things were… about to cross a line with you, Jeromiya, another guy’s face popped into my head. I was all fired up, and then—poof—it all vanished at once.”

She let out a self-mocking laugh.

“I’m seriously the lowest… the worst, most disgusting, sleaziest nympho slut bitch there is. The absolute worst kind of shameless slut.”

She lined up one crude word after another—so many that it made me panic and think there had to be a limit, even for a fanservice heroine who was usually open about that kind of stuff.

With a long haa, Chloe let out a sigh.

“So? That was the worst confession ever, right? Jeromiya… did you hate me a little, at least?”

“L-Like I said… that’s impossible. At this point, no matter what you say or do, I can’t bring myself to hate you.”

“Why not? Normally, if someone said something like that straight to your face, you’d hate them.”

“Yeah, maybe what you said just now was pretty awful as a person. But that’s not the same thing as cheating or betraying someone.”

“It’s the same. There’s no difference.”

“It’s completely different.”

“…Please, Jeromiya. Don’t be kind to me anymore. Just tell me you hate me.”

She sniffed again, her voice clinging to me as she said the exact opposite of what she’d been saying earlier that day.

“You know… earlier, I was reacting to you in a really bad way. That wasn’t love—it was just raw impulse. Something ugly and pathetic. I don’t want to hurt you with something like that. If you only liked me one percent, then you could hate me too. So—”

“So stop trying to make people say they hate you so easily.”

I said it more firmly than before. Then I turned my whole body toward Chloe and looked straight into those strangely colored eyes of hers.

“Being able to hate someone means you also have to be ready for them to hate you back, right? I don’t have that kind of courage. At this point, I don’t have the guts—or the bravery—to start hating you now.”

For some reason, when I said that, my mind felt strangely calm.

Yeah. Pushing someone away, choosing to dislike them from a distance—that probably takes even more courage than liking someone.

After all, there’s no guarantee that the person you got close to yesterday will still be beside you tomorrow.

“I know that better than most, since my body was weak. Even when I made friends in the hospital, they’d eventually be discharged… or sometimes they’d die before me. It’s scary, you know. Losing someone you got close to. Drifting away from people isn’t something you can do so easily.”

I looked at her.

“That’s something you understand better than anyone right now, isn’t it?”

When I said that, Chloe stared straight into my eyes.

Then she gently pinched the sleeve of my uniform between her fingers and asked, her voice trembling,

“Then, Jeromiya… if you can’t hate me—does that mean… you like me?”

Chapter 24: The Fanservice Heroine Gets Back on Her Feet

Thump. My heart gave a single, heavy beat.

I could tell right away—just from the faint flush on Chloe’s face—that this question was nothing like the one from earlier in the day.

This one was serious. Dead serious.

The heroine who used to be my favorite—

She was right here now. Not on a page, not in a story, but standing in front of me as reality.

And that girl was trying to hear the truth from me.

Maybe because of that, Chloe’s face looked strangely beautiful.

So beautiful it almost felt sacred—enough to make the whole situation feel unreal.

Even so—

I lowered my gaze just a little.

I didn’t know.

I didn’t know what it really meant to like someone.

Lying on hospital beds where painful goodbyes kept repeating, I’d always drawn a clear line between myself and others on purpose.

For someone like me, stepping over that line was never easy.

If you crossed it and moved closer to someone, then someday, you had to be ready for that moment to come.

I understood that much.

Liking someone meant choosing to walk toward them anyway—even knowing that someday you’d have to face that ending—and still taking their hand.

But—

That was as far as my understanding went.

Liking her not through some vague filter like “favorite heroine,” but as a real girl, as a real person—

No matter how hard I tried, I just couldn’t summon the courage or nerve to cross that final line.

Not yet.

After a few seconds of silence, I finally said it honestly.

“I… don’t know. I’m sorry.”

Seeing Chloe lower her gaze, clearly disappointed without even trying to hide it, hurt more than I expected.

But at the same time, I was sure of this too—

If I took some vague feeling like being comfortable together and called it “love,” she’d probably get hurt even more than she already was.

Panicking a little, I hurried to add more.

“A-Ah, b-but! It’s not like I don’t like you at all! I mean—how do I put this—I do think you’re someone I really like being around. It’s just… I’ve basically only known the world from a hospital bed my whole life, so I honestly don’t know if this counts as love or not…”

I suddenly started rambling like a noisy talking bird, and Chloe’s eyes went wide.

I swallowed hard, using every bit of saliva in my mouth, and kept going.

“When I talk with you like this, it’s fun. I feel calm. Sometimes you make me so nervous I can’t settle down at all. And more than anything—I can’t just leave you alone. Feeling like this… doesn’t that count as some kind of love? A-And even if it’s not exactly that, would it really be wrong to just label it as love for now? Would you hate that? Would that… not be enough for you?”

I said all of that—even though I wasn’t sure myself—trying my hardest to be sincere.

Slowly, Chloe’s face went whoosh, turning bright red.

“Eh!?”

Startled, I watched as she began fidgeting awkwardly, completely flustered, then turned her bright-red face away in embarrassment.

“W-Wait—no… why are you suddenly saying things so nicely!? E-Even I get embarrassed by that…!”

“E-Eh!? T-That was embarrassing!? I thought it was a pretty lame answer myself…!”

“It is embarrassing! I was ready for you to say something like, ‘A slut like you is fine as a fling but no way I’d ever make you my girlfriend,’ or something like that…!”

“T-That’s exactly why! There’s no way I’d say something like that now—there’s no way!”

Without thinking, I grabbed Chloe’s left shoulder tightly.

“Hyah—!”

She flinched, but I didn’t let that stop me as I raised my voice a little.

“Geez, stop putting yourself down like that! Ever since you got dumped, that bad habit’s gotten way worse! Where’d that ‘I’m the best woman in the world’ attitude go, huh!? A woman as great as you—any guy would obviously fall for you! Isn’t that right!?”

—Ah, crap.

I was totally sounding like some hot-blooded shounen protagonist now.

Even while feeling exasperated with myself, my mouth just wouldn’t stop.

“If you can’t believe that anymore, then I’ll believe it for you! That you’re the best woman in the world! And that I’m the luckiest man alive just for having the best woman in the world tell me she likes me! No matter what you think, I’ll keep believing that on my own until the day I die! That’s everything I’m feeling right now—so is that not good enough!?”

When I finished blurting all that out in one breath, Chloe—who’d been staring at me in shock—went completely slack within a few seconds.

I blinked in surprise, and then—

“Ehehe… ehehehe…”

Her embarrassed laughter slowly grew louder.

“…W-What is that supposed to be? That’s basically a proposal, isn’t it? Saying you’ll believe it until you die and all that… We’re still in high school, you know? Is it really okay to say something that serious to a girl like me?”

“Ah, geez… just take it however you want. What’s said is said, so it’s too late now…”

Realizing I’d said something completely insane just by getting swept up in the moment, I grabbed my bangs and groaned in sheer embarrassment.

“Hey,”

Chloe tugged lightly on my sleeve.

“Huh?”

I finally looked at her—

And saw her face, flushed bright red, so obvious it stood out even in the fading evening light.

Chuu—

The next instant, a warm, slightly damp sensation touched my right cheek.

“Eh—!?”

“Nihihihi! Surprise attack successful—Tora, Tora, Tora!”

“W-Wha—!? W-What did you just do to me!?”

“What do you mean what? I gave you one passionate kiss. I like you, Jeromiya, so it’s only natural, right? And since you like me too—makes you happy, doesn’t it?”

“H-H-H-HAH—!?”

Compared to earlier—when she had groped my crotch and already shaken me badly—I felt even more flustered now.

Chloe slipped both arms around my neck, leaned in close, and traced little circles on my chest with her finger while clinging to me in an overly sweet, pampering voice.

“Hey… don’t you think maybe we should just go all the way sometime soon? You know—youth, passion, boom. Then neither of us could run away anymore.”

“T-That’s exactly what I’m talking about! You can’t just casually say stuff like that to a guy…!”

“Ahaha, says the guy who was completely losing it earlier. By the way, that was my first time ever grabbing a guy’s—down there♪”

“P-Please stop! Seriously, stop! I won’t be able to look you in the eye starting tomorrow! I won’t know what face I’m supposed to use around you anymore…!”

“Aww, Jeromiya, you’re so adorable. Really cute. Like you said earlier—keep showing me faces like that for the rest of your life, okay? I wonder if you’d make an even better one if I teased you a bit more…”

“W-WAAAAH! That’s enough! That’s enough for today! N-No more kissing! Let’s… uh… save everything for another day!!”

—Honestly…

If she kept coming at me like this every single day, would I even survive until next year?

Would I end up collapsing after a month just from sheer overstimulation?

While seriously worrying about something that stupid, I found myself completely unable to escape from Chloe’s arms for quite a while longer.