Vol 2 Chapter 14 – Resumption【Vol 2 — Youth in the Midst of Calamity】

“――――”

“…………”

I pressed one hand hard against my forehead and stared at the floor without blinking.

Head down, gaze nailed to the ground, I kept my silence.

I could feel Lucas watching me.

He was observing me quietly with the kind of look that takes full stock of a person.

After a strangely long silence, he let out a slow breath, as if deliberately bleeding the tension out of the air.

“Looks like you’ve settled down, at least.”

“……”

I said nothing.

I couldn’t say anything.

What was I even supposed to do with any of this?

Even now I still could not fully believe it, and I despised myself for that.

Why her? Why like this?

What had I done to deserve this?

To describe my current situation plainly and objectively, it came down to one thing.

I had been liked too much, and now my safety was under threat.

“I don’t get it at all… God…”

The words slipped out straight from somewhere deep.

I could admit that I had always been conscious of making good impressions on them.

That I had acted in ways they would receive well.

There was probably a part of me that had kept the image of the oblivious harem protagonist from the anime and manga and light novels of my previous life tucked away in some corner of my mind.

But honestly, what was I supposed to have done?

There were cute girls nearby who I genuinely thought had good personalities.

Was I wrong to be kind to all of them?

I had nothing to be ashamed of.

I remembered what I had thought on the day I became fully aware that I had reincarnated into this world.

I thought: I’m going to live a wild, popular life.

It was not some solemn oath I swore from the depths of my heart.

It was just a vague, offhand thought.

Maybe this time around, I could live a life like that.

And then three cute girls happened to be nearby, and yes, one of them was my actual little sister, but even so—getting along with all of them had genuinely been fun.

I truly believed that.

So then why did it turn out like this?

Was it my fault for noticing their feelings and doing nothing about them?

“…Is this my fault?”

“…Man. What a miserable face.”

Lucas shook his head with an air that said what a sad state of affairs.

Something hot shot through me at the sight.

Anger.

This guy doesn’t know a single thing.

He has no idea what I’ve been through, what kind of situation I’ve been put in—and he thinks he can just say whatever he wants——

“I don’t know what happened, and frankly I don’t care. But I can tell you’re sitting there chewing on something you can’t do a damn thing to change.”

“Huh?!”

“Don’t take it out on me. It’s embarrassing.”

“——!”

“Stop chewing over things that mean nothing and start thinking about what you’re going to do from here. I’m not going to force you to tell me everything, not after it’s already come to this. But if something comes up, I can help within my means.”

I could not believe what I was hearing.

“…What?”

“You’re not a kid anymore. Figure out what you need to do for yourself. In exchange—try trusting your father. If I ever find you in worse shape than this again, I won’t let it slide. Not a chance.”

“…What are you even—”

“Be careful out there. The moment things get out of hand, tell me immediately.”

Something flicked from Lucas’s finger.

A small ring.

I caught it in my palm and looked it over.

It was set with a green gemstone.

“What’s this?”

“Channel some mana into it and it’ll transmit your location to me. Which means I can teleport straight to you. It only works once, so if you waste it on something stupid I will genuinely kill you.”

He fixed me with a look that was about half serious, and I suddenly felt as though I were standing in front of some unidentified danger.

It hit me then.

Lucas was the man who had taught them their magic arts—a spellcaster whose skill was in a completely different league.

“We’re done talking. Do what you want from here.”

He spat the words out and jerked his chin toward the door.

I turned what Lucas had said over in my mind, chewing on it.

“…Understood. I’ll do what I want, then.”

I closed my fingers around the small green ring and turned my back to him.

“Oh, almost forgot. Take this too.”

“Hm?”

A heavy gray pouch came flying at my face as I turned around.

The moment I caught it, a solid weight slammed into my arms and nearly knocked it to the floor.

The lumpy texture and the heft told me everything.

Gold coins.

“……”

I bowed my head deeply to Lucas and left the house.

What I wanted to do, what I should do, what I intended to do.

I had no clear answers for any of it.

But there was one thing I hammered into the bottom of my chest, one thing I would face head-on——

◯

The royal capital.

I pushed my way through a crowd and noise that would have been unimaginable back in the village, and pressed forward.

I organized the situation inside my head.

Shoving down the urge to scream at everything I was facing, and the impulse to throw it all away as a dream and run—I thought quietly.

Aria.

Sophia.

Elena.

These three.

They were the ones who had come to care for me.

But the shape that care had taken was difficult to call anything but deeply abnormal.

To be honest, it was beyond anything I could handle.

Not a matter of wanting to or not wanting to—I simply couldn’t.

Because each of them wanted me entirely to themselves.

The moment that premise existed, there was nothing to be done.

“……”

I had no idea what to do.

And I didn’t have much time.

Relying on Lucas didn’t sit right either.

I didn’t want to talk about them as if they were threats against me.

As if they were something to be removed.

This was my problem.

“But……”

The fatigue of my unsettled heart piled onto the heat of the crowd pressing in from all sides.

I bit my lip and closed my eyes.

I was out of time.

Sophia was here in the royal capital, and so were Aria and Elena—I was certain of it.

All three of them were searching for me with desperate, single-minded intensity.

The sensory-theft magic Lucas had mentioned.

Now that it had been removed, I finally understood.

That was the reason they had always appeared before me as if they knew exactly where I was going—had known, for so long now.

They had literally known exactly where I was heading at any given moment.

What a staggeringly simple answer.

And now that Lucas had stripped those spells from me, I looked safe on the surface.

But the reality was the exact opposite.

That was precisely why I was in even more danger now.

If they found me, what would happen?

What would happen then?

“What would happen, what would—— ngh, ——AGH!”

A sharp stab of pain tore through my head.

I clutched my skull, groaning, while the people around me shot puzzled glances my way and kept moving.

“…Calm down, calm down. Come on. Breathe. Think it through carefully. There has to be some good plan somewhere——”

“——”

“Oh, sorry about that.”

Something soft collided with me with a gentle thud.

Walking through a crowd this dense—it was bound to happen.

I gave a quick bow and tried to step around them.

But the moment I caught a sideways glimpse of the face I had bumped into, I sucked in a sharp breath.

“…A-Are you all right?”

A kind-looking young woman was peering up at me with a worried expression.

Calm down.

Just because she’s a woman doesn’t mean she’s anything like her. Seeing that in someone who looks nothing like her is completely irrational.

“S-Sorry, I’m fine. Please don’t worry about it.”

“O-Oh, okay? Well then——”

She went on her way, still looking a little concerned.

A genuinely kind person.

Did someone like her also have some cruel, ugly side she kept hidden from the world?

“…I told myself to calm down—— ngh!”

No good.

My thoughts kept sliding somewhere dark.

I steadied myself and breathed in slowly and deeply.

Two deep breaths.

Three.

I closed my eyes and slapped myself hard across the cheek.

The sharp crack of it rang out, and the pain cut straight through the fog in my brain.

“All right——”

“Oh, found you, Will~!”

It happened with the casual lightness of a moment lifted straight from ordinary life.

Standing right in front of me, wearing the same innocent smile she had worn since we were children——

Aria was there.