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 25 & 26

Chapter 25: Schrödinger’s Love

After that, I ended up getting half-dragged around by a strangely hyper Chloe Mitsushima—first to a family restaurant for an absurdly huge parfait, then to McDonald’s for a Mega Mac, until I was finally released sometime after nine at night.

By the way—just as expected, or maybe I should say of course—when I walked her to the station, she kissed my cheek again right before we parted.

I tried to convince myself that maybe the first one had been an accident—a one-shot misfire, like something you’d read in a newspaper.

But then came the second one.

Clearly intentional.

And just like the one at the riverbank earlier, she flushed bright red and planted a passionate kiss right on my cheek.

While I stood there, more confused than embarrassed, Chloe fidgeted awkwardly—so shy it was rare even in the original story—and left me with these final words.

“You probably already figured it out, but… just so you know, I’ve never even kissed Yaohara before. Jeromiya—you’re my first, okay?”

—Come to think of it, this girl had pinned Nayuta Yaohara down while still in her underwear… but she hadn’t actually kissed him, had she?

While I was busy getting my heart racing over that unexpectedly innocent side of hers, Chloe waved and said goodbye, then disappeared past the ticket gates.

And just like that, I was left behind—alone in the middle of the crowd, awkwardly acting out some late-blooming youth like an idiot.

And now—
I was walking back to the Jeromiya house, my heart still pounding.

Thinking about it, today had been way too packed with things happening.

I’d been fed “ahh” bites of lunch by my favorite heroine, had my crotch groped, then suddenly ended up holding her while she bawled her eyes out, spent a youthful moment together on the riverbank, and on top of all that, got kissed twice.

If I listed all of that out and told someone, they’d probably go, “What the hell was that day?”

At the end of this roller-coaster of a day, a sky full of stars stretched overhead, shining quietly—like they were gently patting me on the back for surviving everything.

As I stared up at that beautiful starry sky, something I’d once heard came back to me.

The light from those stars I was looking at right now wasn’t fresh at all.

It had traveled thousands—maybe tens of thousands—of light-years to reach my eyes.

Some of it might have been shining toward Earth for tens of thousands of years before finally arriving.

Which meant—the stars giving off that light might have already burned out long ago.

They could’ve died thousands of years in the past… and I’d still be seeing them shine.

Something that looked so clear and bright right now, and yet might not even exist anymore—

Yeah.

It was kind of like that famous thought experiment some scientist came up with.

You put a cat inside a box, create a state where life and death overlap, and then the moment you “observe” it, the result collapses into either life or death—

The well-known story of Schrödinger’s cat.

When I first heard that story while lying on a hospital bed, it left me with an indescribably lonely feeling.

Because even if the cat had been alive inside the box, if the moment of observation caused the result to settle on “death,” wouldn’t all the time the cat spent alive inside the box just get denied—treated like it never existed at all?

The patience and effort of “me,” fighting desperately against illness on that hospital bed—if my life ended up collapsing into the result called “death,” would all of that just be erased too, as if it never existed?

That was how it felt to me.

And when I first heard that story, I remembered feeling a bit angry—thinking how cruel it was that someone could even come up with an idea like that.

Yeah.

If Chloe Mitsushima, Kanade Nikaido, Miyuki Hitotsuba—and everyone in the world who got swept up in something called love—were all like cats trapped inside that box…

Then no matter how hard they tried, no matter how desperately they loved someone, the instant another heroine got chosen, their feelings would collapse straight into “death”—

That kind of ending… that was just way too cruel.

No—was that really true?

If, in every romantic comedy ever written, the heroine who got chosen had already been decided from the very start.

If the so-called “heroine race” was nothing more than a massively overblown rigged game.

If we readers—and the heroines themselves—were just desperately calling out the name of a cat that had already died, from outside the box.

If a lonely, unseen death inside that box was the only role given to them—to every losing heroine in the world.

Then that—that was just far too cruel.

No matter how I thought about it, I couldn’t accept it.

“Schrödinger’s Love, huh.”

All by myself, I muttered the kind of line that felt like a grand title drop.

Thinking about it, this world itself was a massive fiction—a world created inside someone’s head who wasn’t a god.

From the perspective of people living in the real world I once came from, this place was nothing more than a manga setting, a huge thought experiment, a made-up box.

And inside that fiction, talking about love and romance, desperately trying to stir up drama in a life that could’ve passed quietly without any trouble—

Maybe we were…
Maybe we were unbelievably empty beings, after all.

Just as I was starting to think how unbelievably stupid—
No, downright pointless—all of this was…

A sparkle flashed, and a shooting star drew a short trail across the night sky before vanishing.

That brief, few-second glow stole my breath.

I let out a quiet sigh, then—

No.

I shook my head and smiled a little.

What was I getting so sentimental for, anyway?

This was the kind of life the “me” from before death had wanted more than anything.

Love, romance—things that barely mattered in the span of a human lifetime—pouring everything into them like my life depended on it.

That was a way of living the old “me” could never have pulled off.

Even if you knew you wouldn’t be chosen.

Even if the cat inside the box was already dead.

Until you opened the box, you never truly knew the result.

Believing in a miracle that might happen, people still stop and turn around when they see a star burning with all it has.

That was the overwhelming brilliance of a romantic comedy as a story.

And losing heroines were like shooting stars racing across that romcom night sky.

Even if they knew they’d burn out.

Even if all that waited after was nothing but empty darkness.

Still—

The way they shone bright white across the night sky before disappearing… was indescribably, undeniably beautiful.

All of a sudden, the silver glow of that shooting star from just a moment ago made me think of the hair color of some fanservice losing heroine somewhere.

Feeling intensely awkward for no good reason, I scratched just under my nose with my finger.

For all the whining and overthinking I’d been doing, maybe I was more aware of her than I thought.

Hoping—just a little—that this feeling was something very close to what people called love, I finally arrived in front of the Jeromiya house.

The moment I stood there—

I froze.

On the front door of the Jeromiya house—a place that, according to its “setting,” had both parents working full-time and almost never home—an A4 sheet of printer paper had been slapped on, with huge characters written in thick black ink.

『Onii-sama is FILTHY』

…Huh?

What was this supposed to mean?

Filthy in what way?

Still confused, I twisted the doorknob and stepped inside—only to find another piece of paper stuck to the entryway floor.

『Leaving your cute little sister behind and coming home in the morning』

M-Morning—home!?

Panicking, I glanced to the side—

『If you love boobs that much, go become that boob girl’s kid』
『WOSS (I liked onii-sama first)』
『Don’t assume you’ll always have a sister and money』
『Men need guts, women need charm, monks need sutras, sisters are the scariest』
『Other houses are other houses, our house is our house, sister is sister』
『Onii-sama is banned from eating natto ever again』
『Eru-chan, the little sister who snaps at Onii-sama out of nowhere』

…Yeah.

I could already tell.

Whatever awaited me deeper inside this house—it definitely wasn’t going to be peaceful.

The entryway—no, the living room.

From the floor to the walls and even the ceiling, it was completely covered in bitter, accusatory messages.

“Hiee!”

I let out a small yelp without thinking.

I tossed my school bag aside and hurried into the living room—and there she was.

My little sister, Eru, sat perfectly upright on the sofa, waiting for me.

An intense, pressure-heavy aura of anger radiated from her, so strong it felt like something invisible was rumbling in the air.

“E-Eru…”

“Welcome home, Onii-sama. What will it be? A bath? Dinner? Or perhaps sending Chloe Mitsushima-san a LINE saying, ‘I had a reaaally good time today’?”

“E-Eru…! H-Hey, listen—”

“I’ve already heard, Onii-sama. It seems you’ve been spending a lot of time getting close to Chloe-san lately. And then there’s today—coming home this late. Really, congratulations on finally losing your virginity.”

“V-Virginity—what!? N-No, Eru! I didn’t come home late because I was doing anything like that with Chloe!”

“No thank you, Onii-sama. It’s embarrassing just hearing you talk. The smell of breast milk is unbearable. …Honestly, how was it? Sucking on Chloe-san’s boobs to your heart’s content. You must’ve been shocked when they turned pitch black, weren’t you?”

“E-Eru! Just hear me out! Nothing happened between me and Chloe today! I-I’ll apologize, okay!? I’ll say I’m sorry!”

“If you’re going to apologize, shouldn’t you start by showing a little more sincerity?”

Saying that, Eru picked up a single-use packet of gum syrup from beside her, tore it open, and dripped it onto the floor in front of the sofa where she was sitting properly.

As I nervously shifted my gaze back and forth between the sticky puddle on the floor and Eru’s face, she spoke in a voice and expression so cold it honestly shocked me.

“Oh dear, the floor has gotten dirty. I wonder if there isn’t some perfectly convenient rag around here to wipe up this syrup. For example—something like Onii-sama’s tongue…”

—Is this girl serious?

Was she really telling her own brother to crawl down and lick it up?

I opened my mouth to protest, but before I could say anything, Eru silently tilted her chin, clearly ordering me to move.

Hit by an overwhelming sense of despair, I lightly smacked my own knees a couple of times—like I was trying to talk myself into it—then reluctantly got down in front of her.

“I’ll listen to your excuses after you’ve cleaned that up properly. And until I say it’s fine, don’t you dare lift your face, Onii-sama.”

“Y-Yes…”

Answering the queen with a trembling voice, I thoroughly savored the sweetness of the gum syrup—now smeared with floor dust—as I licked it up.

Chapter 26: My Little Sister Was Way Too Brutal

“H-Hey, Eru, seriously, get off my back already and walk on your own…”

“Hmph. After I went through all that trouble getting angry at you yesterday, you can still talk back like that? Looks like you’re still far from despair enough, Onii-sama. —‘We, the Imperial Ancestors, founded the nation on a grand scale, and deeply established virtue. Our subjects, loyal and filial, united in heart and mind across countless generations—’”

“GYAAAAAA!! S-Stop it already! Please, no more! Spare me the Imperial Rescript on Education! It even showed up in my dreams!!”

“What are you saying? An indecent, shameless Onii-sama who abandons his cute little sister to engage in improper relations with some boobs-lady clearly needs to be re-educated by listening closely to His Majesty Emperor Meiji’s noble words. …Now then, you’ve stopped walking. Hurry up. If you don’t, both of us will be late.”

“G-Grk…! This little sister—she looks like an angel, but the things she says are pure evil…! I’ve never hated the weight of my own sister on my back this much in my life…!”

Panting and wheezing, my legs unsteady from lack of sleep and sheer exhaustion, I staggered forward—while my little sister Eru, riding on my back, sat tall and proud like she owned the place.

Our classmates stared at us with eyes wide open.

Yeah.

Because I’d come home late last night, I’d been thoroughly chewed out by my sister.

I’d shivered through the humiliation of being forced to lick up the gum syrup she’d spilled on the floor, endured the torment of reciting the Education Rescript fifty times for some reason, and after that, spent a full hour carefully massaging her shoulders, waist, calves, and arms.

Only then had I finally been released.

And yet, this little sister of mine—an angel on the outside, a control-freak demon on the inside—apparently still hadn’t forgiven me.

Which was why, right now, I was leaving the house with her on my back and about to pass through the academy gates under the full gaze of everyone around us.

“Ahhh, all these eyes on us—it really hurts, doesn’t it?”

Eru said sweetly.

“I wonder what the few friends Onii-sama has will think when they see this. Surely they’ll congratulate you, saying what a lucky man you are to be treated like a slave by such a cute little sister. …Ah, right. You only have, like, one friend, don’t you?”

She declared all that loudly, in a voice so cold and dignified it was straight out of a queen being carried around by her subjects.

“If that thieving cat saw you now—the Onii-sama she supposedly captured body and soul yesterday—completely dominated today by me, your little sister, body and soul… what do you think she’d feel? Jealous enough to grind her teeth, wishing she could kill me? Kukuku… just imagining it is so entertaining.”

“T-That’s why—yesterday with Chloe, um… something did happen a little, but it wasn’t anything like what you’re thinking—”

“So you’re admitting that something happened?”

At that sharp remark, my eyes flew open.

“N-No, no! Nothing! Nothing happened at all! I take it back, I take it back! That just slipped out—!”

“‘We, the Imperial Ancestors, founded the nation on a grand scale, and deeply established virtue. Our subjects, loyal and filial, united in heart and mind across countless generations—’”

“G-GUOOO…! D-Don’t recite the Education Rescript right into my ear!! I already heard a lifetime’s worth yesterday—I’ve had enough…! Aaaaah!!”

With Eru on my back whispering the Education Rescript straight into my ear—like she was pouring it directly into my brain—I finally hit my limit and nearly collapsed in agony.

Our classmates, who clearly had no idea what was really going on, froze when they saw us.

After a few seconds of staring in shock, they gave up trying to understand, shrugged, and walked away.

And then, just as we finally passed through the school’s main gate, I suddenly felt a lot of eyes on us and looked up without thinking.

“Hmm? What’s going on—?”

The moment I raised my head—

I spotted silver hair I’d become all too familiar with over the past week, and my heart jumped.

Near the entrance, where streams of students were being swallowed inside, a crowd had gathered as if blocking the flow.

At the center of it all was Chloe Mitsushima, surrounded by a group of students.

She looked openly annoyed, absently twirling her hair with her fingers, while in front of her, a male student with flashy-colored hair was loudly going on about something.

“I’ve heard the rumors, Mitsushima-kun! Looks like you’re finally free now! Honestly, I always thought it was strange that a girl like you would get so hung up on such a dull guy in the first place… but now, finally, it seems like we can have a proper talk together, don’t you think?”

—He really had that textbook throwaway rival from a bargain-bin romcom vibe.

The blond guy flashed a dazzling grin, his white teeth practically sparkling.

At that moment, several of the girls surrounding Chloe let out high-pitched squeals, like they were screaming without quite screaming.

“You might already know, but let me introduce myself properly, Mitsushima-kun! I’m Goro Jogashima, a third-year, and the captain of the soccer club! Ah, you don’t need to introduce yourself—I mean, you’re basically a celebrity around here!”

Sparkle.

Once again, he smiled, teeth gleaming.

His uniform was worn in a sloppy, rule-breaking way you almost never saw at this academy, and he was decked out head to toe in expensive brand-name accessories and silver jewelry, like school rules had never even existed in his life.

He was good-looking enough—and yet somehow, just one look at his smug face made me want to punch it.

Worse, there was something strangely familiar about him.

Who was this guy again?

Why did he feel familiar?

I dug through both my memories from before death and Reiji Jeromiya’s memories… and in the end, gave up.

Looking around for someone—anyone—I at least vaguely knew and could talk to, I leaned closer and spoke to Eru on my back.

“Eru, get down.”

I was fully expecting her to complain, but maybe because of the atmosphere, she obediently nodded and finally climbed off my back.

I immediately called out to the boy and girl standing at the edge of the crowd.

“Morning, Yaohara.”

At my voice, Nayuta Yaohara—the protagonist of this romantic comedy story—and standing beside him with the unmistakable presence of the main heroine, Miyuki Hitotsuba, both turned toward me.

“O-Oh, morning, Jeromiya.”

“Oh my—aren’t you Reiji Jeromiya from Class C?”

“Morning, Hitotsuba. So… what’s going on here? Why is there such a crowd around Chloe?”

“Well, you see…”

Nayuta Yaohara leaned in and whispered to me, looking a little troubled.

“That upperclassman over there—he’s Jogashima, a third-year. Apparently he heard from someone that Mitsushima is single now. So he decided to hit on her first thing in the morning. The people making all the noise are basically his group.”

Hearing that, I couldn’t help letting out a low hum.

Yeah… this really was a romcom world.

Stuff that almost never happened in real life just kept popping up one after another.

While I was idly marveling at how ridiculous the logic of romcom manga worlds could be, that so-called Jogashima raised his voice again toward Chloe.

“I’ve actually wanted to talk to you for a while now. You’re famous, after all—and I hear you’re pretty popular around this academy too, so I was curious. What do you say? How about we grab lunch together at the cafeteria today?”

The moment she heard that, Miyuki Hitotsuba visibly recoiled, her face twisting in disgust, and she clicked her tongue sharply.

“I don’t know who that man is, but everything about him gives me goosebumps… Yaohara-kun, should you go kick him or something? What do you think?”

Goosebumps.

The instant I heard Hitotsuba say that, I let out a small “Ah.”

That’s right—I remembered now.

That guy’s name was Goro Jogashima, wasn’t it?

I had finally recalled who this smug-looking playboy standing in front of us actually was.

Yes—he was from the very first chapter of this long-running romantic comedy manga, Schrödinger’s Love.

Right at the start of chapter one, he’d been the guy who casually approached Miyuki Hitotsuba after she transferred to this academy—only to be absolutely shredded by her razor-sharp tongue, coldly brushed aside, and left behind in complete humiliation.

“Just having a guy like you talk to me gives me goosebumps.”

With that one merciless line from Miyuki Hitotsuba, delivered in front of everyone, his pride as a popular guy had been utterly destroyed.

Goro Jogashima—

He was none other than this wildly popular romcom’s proud representative of the ultimate named mob character whose sole purpose was to get humiliated.