In This World That Favors Men, I... ~Starting a Sweet School Life in a World With a 1:8 Gender Ratio~ - 106

Chapter 106: Family Album

ーーーーーーーーーーーーーーーーーーーー

【Memories Maker☆Transfers】

Previously, I had used this skill to create an album. (See: Chapter 93: Today Is an Auspicious Day, But First… ) That album was now in front of me.

Since I had only started living in this world last year, I naturally had no “past” besides my diary and profile. Of course, I was feeling troubled about that and apparently, this skill was designed to help with that.

True to its name, “Memory Maker” could produce not only photo albums but various other “items of memory” as well. All seemingly created based on a copied reference from my previous life. It sounded fun, and I’d thought I might try it out when I had some free time, but I’d completely forgotten about it because I’d been so busy.

But now, I was stuck in an emergency. I had to check this album—which I had tossed on the bookshelf without even really looking at it—right away. Why, you ask? Because just a moment ago, Mom had told me this:

“He’s coming back to Japan sometime soon.”

“Coming back? Who is?”

“Why, Kousei-san, of course.”

Uh… Kousei? Who was that again?

“Oh dear. Did you forget just because you haven’t seen him in years? He’s your father.”

My father!?

…Now that she mentioned it, there was a mention of him in my profile. There was, but I had completely forgotten about him. Well, I had a mother and a younger sister, so having a father wouldn’t be strange. Indeed. It wasn’t strange in the slightest, but in the past year, I hadn’t heard a single word about him. He felt like a fictional character to me.

“You don’t have to look so uncomfortable about it. After all, he’s been overseas for nearly ten years.”

Oh? So that was the setting?

“What did Dad look like again?”

Even Yui tilted her head at that, as if her memory was fuzzy.

“I know, right? It’s only natural to forget a face after so long. But once you see him, you’ll recognize him right away.”

“Why’s that?”

“Fufu. That’s a surprise for when you meet him.”

She said it with a smile, but in my case… Ten years ago… That meant I was old enough to remember his face. It’d be weird if I didn’t remember what he looked like, right? Just as I began to panic about it, I remembered the existence of this album.

Alright, let’s take a look!

The bright cream-colored album was fairly thick. I flipped open the cover.

“A baby… Is this me?”

On the first page were five photos of a baby dressed in an adorable lace baby dress.

In the corner was a handwritten sticker labeled “Yuusei’s Birth.” The baby, likely a newborn, had a soft, squishy face and was sleeping with eyes closed in most photos. In one photo, the baby was tightly gripping someone’s finger (probably Mom’s) with its tiny hand.

The face looked nothing like mine now, but this was a re-creation. In other words, it was a faithful copy of a moment that had once truly existed. Thinking that made my chest warm with emotion.

I turned the page. The next spread showed the same baby, now a bit more grown up. The facial features were already more defined, the eyes incredibly large, almost like a baby model. There were also photos with Mom. She looked so young. No makeup at all, just smiling with an expression that seemed to embody “happiness” itself.

Then the next page.

Whoa. Sudden growth spurt. Is this me now? …No, that’s not it. 

He looked a lot like me, but older—more mature. He might’ve looked exactly like my older-avatar version.

So that’s Dad?

No wonder Mom had said, “You’ll know when you see him.” Maybe it was because he looked like me. Or maybe I looked like him.

His existence was still shrouded in mystery for me, but maybe I would come to understand once I saw him. 

The album showed my childhood gradually unfolding. My parents were still young. Maybe because they had a commuter marriage, Dad’s photos were fewer in number. But he was occasionally in pictures up until Yui was born, and around the time I started elementary school.

In the original version of this world, maybe Dad had appeared even in the later scenes, but it probably got edited to match the script of this world. The last photo of him was in a family picture with Yui, wearing her brand-new school backpack. After that, there were no more pictures of Dad.

They said he’d been overseas for nearly ten years. When I first came to this world last year, Mom had also been abroad, so maybe they met up then.

Still, wasn’t that a little too free-spirited? Was his job that demanding? Or was this just how men were in this world? What kind of person was he, really?

The man who was Dad to me and Yui… He was always smiling in the photos. He looked so jovial, but… Maybe that smile belonged to my real father from the previous world.

Well, I’d find out when I met him. Mom had fallen for him, after all. So he couldn’t be that bad.

That was the feeling I had at that time.

ーーーーーーーーーーーーーーーーーーーー