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 35 & 36

Chapter 35: The Fanservice Heroine—Just in Time

With a gag stuffed in my mouth and my hands bound tightly with zip ties, I was dragged into a warehouse tucked away in a corner of the old club building.

Inside the warehouse, old tools were scattered everywhere in messy piles.

A single, worn-out mattress had been laid out on the floor, and around it were things that clearly didn’t belong in a prestigious academy like this—alcohol, porn magazines, and other trash.

It looked exactly like the hideout of these thugs.

Someone shoved me hard in the back, and I tumbled onto the mattress.

Don’t give up. Never give up.

Clinging to that thought, I forced myself up and glared at them.

For some reason, that seemed to please the sleazy bastard—Goro Jogashima.

“Heh. You’re the first girl who can still look at us like that after being brought here. This place is our sanctuary. Lots of girls have been dragged in here before, but you? You’re the best catch we’ve ever had.”

He lifted my chin with the tip of his knife.

“Seeing you look at me like that even now tells me you’re planning to report us after it’s all over. But sorry—that’s not going to happen.”

He motioned casually behind him.

When I looked, several boys—clearly already worked up—had their smartphones pointed straight at me, cameras rolling.

I clenched down hard on the gag.

The sleazy bastard smiled thinly, as if he’d expected that reaction.

“If you don’t want this video getting out, then that’s how it’s going to be. From today on, you’ll be shared by us again and again. Or what—are you going to swallow the shame and try reporting us somewhere? Either way, you won’t be able to stay in the entertainment world or at this school anymore.”

As he said that, the sleazy bastard grabbed the front of my uniform blouse and yanked hard.

Rip—rip!

Buttons popped off with sharp sounds, and my chest was left exposed beneath my bra.

“““Oooh!”””

The losers behind us let out excited cheers, while the sleazy bastard swallowed and gave a low whistle.

“Damn… it’s unreal. You don’t look like a normal highschool girl at all. This is gonna be fun.”

“H-Hey, Jogashima, what’re you taking your time for? Hurry up and strip her already.”

The man called Kasajima, who seemed to be their leader, urged him on, his face clearly twisted with desire.

“And why’re you still keeping that gag on her? You like making them scream, don’t you? Nobody’s coming to this place—take it off.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. …Alright then, Mitsushima-kun. Just don’t scream too loud, okay?”

Saying that, he pointed the knife at me and used his free hand to remove the gag.

The moment it came off—

I spat straight at his face with all my strength.

“—!”

He jerked back with a groan, turning his face away.

When he looked back at me, his expression was dark, heavy with anger.

“Y-You bitch—! Even now, you’re still pulling this kind of crap—!?”

“Screw you, you pieces of trash! No matter how rough you get, I’m not doing what you want! Don’t you dare underestimate Chloe Mitsushima!!”

At my shout, the sleazy bastard grabbed my head as if to shut me up and slammed me down onto the mattress.

Even then, I glared straight at him and kept hurling insults.

“No matter how much you try to ruin me, I’ll never forgive you! I’ll expose every single one of you and drag you straight to hell! I’ll make sure you never get to walk outside with your heads held high again! You ready for that!?”

“You really think you can do that…!? You think you’ll be fine after footage of you getting toyed with is spread all over the country!? Now shut up and—!”

“Fuck you fuck you fuck you all!! No matter what kind of footage you spread, I won’t bow to you! My first time is something I’ll only ever give to the person I love! Go on—try it! I’ll bite down and tear apart anything you force into my mouth!!”

At some point, tears started pouring out of my eyes for reasons I didn’t even understand.

Yeah—no matter what they did to me here, no matter how dirty they tried to make things, I was never going to obey trash like them.

Because I had someone I loved.

If I loved someone, then everything about me was something I wanted to give only to him—that was my dream.

Because I wanted to be truly loved by him someday.

Because I dreamed of walking hand in hand with him as lovers someday.

I was an invincible girl in love.

So there was no way—no way—I was giving my first time to scum like this!!

“H-Hey, Jogashima, what are you doing!? Shut her up! This is getting bad—!”

“I-I know…! Hey, if you don’t stop it right now, this is really—!”

The losers’ voices cracked with obvious panic as they started to lose control.

And at that exact moment—

“Chloe! Chloe!!”

—Suddenly, the voice I wanted to hear more than anything else in the world echoed through the warehouse.

Everyone froze and turned toward the entrance at once.

With a loud creak, the rusted warehouse door swung open.

No way.

Why?

How was he here?

Right in front of my stunned eyes—

A boy with an ordinary, unremarkable face stood there, drenched in sweat and gasping for breath.

Reiji Jeromiya.

My “war buddy.”

The boy locked eyes with us—and stood there, frozen in shock.

Chapter 36: The Sprinting Gloomy Mob

For a place supposedly described as one of the most prestigious schools in the country, Seiran Private Academy was infuriatingly huge.

Just getting from the main entrance to the old building alone took a good ten minutes on foot.

Praying with every step that those ten minutes wouldn’t end up shortening the time she had left, I ran—gasping for air, drenched in sweat.

After reincarnating as Reiji Jeromiya, my “brand-new” heart was pounding like crazy from a full sprint I probably never would’ve managed in my previous life.

Still—it wasn’t stopping.

Thankful once again to whatever higher being had given me this healthy body—

I cursed myself just as hard for being careless.

Yeah.

I’d been completely careless.

I’d gotten too comfortable in those sweet, easy days with Chloe Mitsushima.

I’d leaned too much on the idea that this world was a rom-com manga world—and forgotten that things like this could still happen.

A harmless, fluffy school rom-com.

There’s no way the heroine would get dragged into something as real and ugly as violence.

That was what I’d believed.

Maybe this world had seen through that carelessness—

And deliberately set things up this way to strike me right where I least expected it.

This world was without a doubt the setting of the hugely popular rom-com manga Schrödinger’s Love.

But just because of that didn’t mean this world was completely different from the one I came from—a world where malice and violence didn’t exist at all.

In fact, ever since I’d remembered my reincarnation as Reiji Jeromiya, whenever I turned on the TV, I still heard about wars happening somewhere in the world, or news about murders and robberies happening day after day in this very country.

This world had malice too—

I’d just been deliberately refusing to think about it.

Maybe because my previous life had been so unbearably cruel, the “me” who had died once had started to see this world as a perfectly clean, peaceful paradise—like a heaven with no evil left in it.

“Damn it…”

I cursed under my breath as I ran.

I prayed with everything I had that this was all just my misunderstanding—a stupid, embarrassing overreaction.

I prayed that Chloe was safe.

That she’d laugh when she saw me, soaked in sweat and out of breath, and tease me for worrying too much while giving my back a friendly smack.

And then—

That she’d smile shyly, take my hand, and say,

“But… thank you for worrying about me.”

I couldn’t help hoping for that future.

I didn’t even know why my heart was racing this badly.

Why was I—why was I this worried about her?

If this feeling—this unbearable fear of losing her—was something people called love…

Then did that mean I was in love with her?

I didn’t know.

There was no way I could know something like that.

All I really knew was how endless and painful the days on a hospital bed were.

That much, I understood better than anyone.

Someone like me—who’d lived such a pitiful life before—couldn’t possibly understand what real happiness was supposed to feel like.

And yet—

Even if I didn’t understand it, I hated this.

More than anything, I hated the thought of seeing her cry again.

Ever since I met her—ever since I regained my memories as “me”—she’d been crying over and over.

She cried after being rejected.

She cried in my arms.

She cried when she remembered her heartbreak.

Now that I thought about it… she was always crying beside me.

And I hated that.

I didn’t want to see her crying face.

I wanted to see her smile.

She was so much more beautiful when she smiled—bright like the sun.

And yet, as long as I stayed by her side, she just kept crying.

If only I were more dependable.

If only I were better at handling things—better at protecting her from sadness.

If I were like that… maybe she could keep smiling.

Maybe the reason she kept crying next to me—

Was because I just wasn’t good enough.

“Hm? Jeromiya? What’s wrong—why are you in such a hurry?”

The sudden voice made me stop short, and I stared hard at the person who’d called out to me.

I was drenched in sweat and breathing hard, and the two girls standing on either side of him looked at me with puzzled expressions as well.

“You look seriously panicked… what happened? And—huh? Mitsushima isn’t with you today?”

It was Nayuta Yaohara—the protagonist of the rom-com manga Schrödinger’s Love.

Standing beside him were the story’s main heroines, Miyuki Hitotsuba and Kanade Nikaido.

For a split second, I hesitated.

Should I tell him everything?

That Chloe might be in danger.

That I was going to call for help, so could he please go to the old club building and look for her—

Even if it turned out to be nothing more than my misunderstanding, maybe that was what I should ask.

After all, in this manga world, I was nothing more than a background mob character.

And the person Chloe Mitsushima was really supposed to fall in love with—

Was the protagonist standing right in front of me.

Maybe it wouldn’t be some flashy, heroic moment—but if anyone was meant to save a heroine in danger, it was him.

I was the odd one out in this world.

Someone who didn’t really belong here.

Originally, I shouldn’t have even been close enough to Chloe Mitsushima to casually talk to her at all.

“Uh, Yaohara. Actually—”

I opened my mouth, then froze before I could finish.

I clenched my fist, trying to force the words out, but Nayuta Yaohara, Miyuki Hitotsuba, and Kanade Nikaido all just stared at me in confusion.

Is this really okay?

A voice in the back of my head asked me that.

Is it really okay for you to lean on the protagonist like this—when you’re supposed to be her war buddy?

What if—right now—she really was in danger?

And what if she wasn’t calling for Nayuta Yaohara…

…But for me?

“Yaohara, I—”

No matter how many times I tried, the words just wouldn’t come out.

I didn’t want to.

If she was in danger, I wanted to be the one to save her.

Even if the protagonist could rescue Chloe Mitsushima, this was one role I didn’t want to hand over.

Because I was her war buddy.

Mob character or not.

Gloomy introvert or not.

Side character or not.

None of that mattered right now.

I was the one who should save her.

No—

I was the one who wanted to save her.

“—Sorry, it’s nothing!!”

In the end, I didn’t tell the protagonist anything and started running again.

It felt like I’d just yelled at a rescue boat that had come to save me, then kicked it away and told it to get lost.

Even so, I didn’t want to rely—now of all times—on that rom-com-manga-style protagonist buff that said, the hero will save Chloe Mitsushima no matter what.

Even a mob could at least be a human shield.

If I threw myself into it with everything I had, I could probably mess someone up badly enough to stop them from moving for a while.

It was reckless.

Completely unreasonable.

But believing that was the only choice I had.

Dizzy from exhaustion and lack of oxygen, I finally reached the old club building.

Just like Eru had said, the area around it was overgrown with weeds.

There wasn’t a single person in sight—no, it felt like there wasn’t even a living creature around.

The silence was unsettling.

Where was she?

Where was Chloe?

I looked at the cluster of buildings standing there like gravestones and felt a surge of panic at the thought of having to check each one.

The time that would take—

At least… at least give me something.

Anything—a clue—

“Chloe—!”

Before I even realized it, I whispered her name, praying to my war buddy wherever she was.

“Please, Chloe! Tell me where you are—!”

The very next moment after that desperate plea—

“Screw you, you pieces of trash! No matter how rough you get, I’m not doing what you want! Don’t you dare underestimate Chloe Mitsushima!!”

As if answering my prayer, that scream rang out—and I snapped around.

Behind me stood an abandoned warehouse, probably once used to store sports equipment.

Chloe’s sharp voice was coming from inside it.

“No matter what kind of footage you spread, I won’t bow to you! My first time is something I’ll only ever give to the person I love! Go on—try it! I’ll bite down and tear apart anything you force into my mouth!!”

When I heard that next scream, I started running.

Without thinking, I grabbed the warehouse’s metal door, calling out the name of my precious war buddy.

“CHLOE!”

At that single shout, I felt several people inside suck in their breath.

Using not just my arms but my legs too, I forced the double doors open.

“CHLOE—!!”

The moment the doors swung wide, the contents of that “box” were revealed—

And the scene inside was so sickening it made my stomach churn.

Chloe Mitsushima lay sprawled on a mattress, her uniform blouse torn open at the chest, her face soaked with tears, her head being held down roughly.

The sleazy guy I’d seen before was straddling her.

Behind him, several rough-looking boys held up their smartphones.

All of them stared in shock at the sudden intrusion—

At the mob who had burst in out of nowhere.