Vol 1 Chapter 4 – On My Past Life’s Youth

ba-dump, ba-dump

What an absolutely great day.

Takahashi-senpai—when we introduced ourselves, I learned her full name is Chihiro Takahashi.

Meeting her was a true stroke of luck.

How should I put it? She was just so considerate.

She gently taught me the ropes of real-life card games in this world, and she even lent me her own deck to play with.

You don’t often meet people that kind.

And it had nothing to do with me being a guy or her being a girl.

Even if I were a girl, I’m sure she would have been just as kind.

And I’m sure she still would have invited me to join the club.

Takahashi-senpai is a genuinely good person.

“I’m incredibly lucky. A day this fortunate is a rare thing indeed.”

I could even say it out loud.

Not only did I meet such a wonderful person, but she even invited me to her club.

I guess I was just sick of it all.

I’m the only boy in my class, so finding friends is impossible.

On top of that, you know that one person who’s absolutely, positively in every class?

The one who spends every break with their face buried in their desk, pretending to be asleep? My class doesn’t have one.

That was my position in my past life.

Everyone here is a normie.

All they talk about is the latest fashion, or manga and anime that have sold millions of copies.

All the girls in class are chummy with each other, and when they talk to me, the best I can manage is a mechanical, “Oh,” or “Yeah.”

Especially when one of the super-normie types talks to me, they say so much at once I’m not even sure if I managed to give a coherent reply.

I wish normies would just die.

No, that’s going too far.

No matter what, I shouldn’t be casually saying things like “just die” in this day and age.

Especially not as someone on his second life.

I should apologize. To the normies.

Putting that aside.

While I do keep up with the major hits, what I really love is subculture.

Right, so, in my past life, I spent my middle school days just pretending to be asleep with my face on my desk.

But in high school, I made friends who were just like me—a bunch of “lame” card gamers.

They were in the otaku club that was a newspaper club in name only, and all we ever did was play card games.

It was fun.

It was so, so much fun.

Chanting “untap, upkeep, draw” like a magic spell.

Shuffling our cards, double-sleeved in inners and outers, swapping them for a final cut, and then—it’s time to battle.

It’s not like in an anime, where some villain is trying to take over the world with a children’s toy.

It’s not like we could earn money like the pros, and there was nothing to be gained by winning.

We weren’t going to get famous.

It wouldn’t make us any money.

Even when we won, we didn’t get a single thing.

And yet.

Man, why do I love card games so much?

I know why.

It was our youth (Aoharu).

Those middle school days I spent just silently enduring, pretending to be asleep, waiting for time to pass.

In high school, it was the miserable ones like us who gathered, connected, understood each other, and just played card games.

There was no one-upmanship over grades or gym class, there was only the game.

There was only that connection.

People would probably laugh.

Serious, conventional people would laugh.

They’d say it was just miserable people consoling each other.

But that was our youth (Aoharu).

I even wondered if it was okay to have that much fun.

Let me reminisce a little.

“Screw your mono-blue deck, I’ll kill you. You clingy bastard. Stop poking me with these cheap-ass creatures. Your whole hand is nothing but annoying stall cards! Are you planning to win the game with just this?”

“Screw your mono-red deck, I’ll kill you. You brain-dead meathead. At least mix in a dragon. It’s nothing but goblins! You’re just gonna sac ’em all for a final push, aren’t you?”

We had such heartwarming conversations.

Kill that creature, kill you, just kill, kill, kill.

Apparently, constantly repeating the keyword “kill” like that…

…is not okay in this day and age.

Apparently, it’s not okay even if you’re good friends.

Takahashi-senpai gently explained it to me. “You should say, ‘I’ll deal damage to that creature and destroy it. I’m sending it to the graveyard,’ or ‘I’ll deal damage to that creature and exile it from the field.'”

This isn’t some barbaric, ancient era, you know.

The keywords “die!” and “kill!” are especially bad, it seems.

I mean, when you think about it normally, of course they’re bad. Yeah.

Maybe there was something wrong with my youth (Aoharu).

No, I want to deny it, to say it wasn’t wrong!

But yeah, I know it’s not okay.

Honestly, it’s fine. It’s not like I have the guts to shout “Die!” or “Kill!” at a female player anyway.

That’s one part of my mentality that’s still stuck in my past life.

I’m so glad Takahashi-senpai corrected me.

I’m relieved, from the bottom of my heart.

The common sense of this life and my past one are already buggy enough as it is; if I messed that up, I’d have made a huge fool of myself.

I’m so, so glad I met Takahashi-senpai.

Still.

I’m really looking forward to this.

“The Contemporary Culture Club, huh?”

I say to myself.

I get off the exercise bike and stop the anime I had streaming from a device mounted on it.

It was an interesting anime, aside from the excessive amount of male fanservice.

Honestly, I got used to that sort of thing by the time I was ten.

“What should I do?”

What should I do?

I say it, but my mind is already made up.

I’m joining.

I want to join more than anything.

In the end, it doesn’t matter if I was stabbed and reborn, or reincarnated into a world with reversed gender roles; the way I live my life hasn’t changed.

I hate normies.

I know I keep repeating myself, but.

I want to spend my time with a group of people who were like that one kid in every class, the one who silently endured the day by burying their face in their desk and pretending to be asleep.

This is an opportunity you couldn’t get even if you wished for it.

And she’s the one who gave it to me.

Takahashi-senpai has already become something of a benefactor to me.

“…To be blessed with an opportunity like this, in a world like this.”

I savor the feeling.

I’m so unbelievably happy.

I can play real-life card games again.

Without any worries.

I can play to my heart’s content without having to be considerate of anything.

I want friends.

Friends to play real-life card games with.

And on top of that, I want to try things I couldn’t in my past life, like TRPGs, and friends who are into their first creative projects.

I want them so badly.

I want it all, no matter what it takes.

And the one who made that possible was Takahashi-senpai.

“…”

She’s precious.

Of course, I don’t mean that in a romantic way—such presumptuous feelings would be rude to her. This is a feeling of friendship and deep affection.

I’ll say it again: for someone as wonderful as her to take an interest in me, I can only call it a stroke of pure luck.

“I need to get Takahashi-senpai to like me somehow. …Should I get a haircut?”

I mean, I get it trimmed into a men’s short style once a month.

My mother in this life was very insistent about that kind of thing.

I’ve been thoroughly taught how to maintain a respectable appearance as a man in this world.

“Should I bring a gift or something to the club room? No, showing up with something like that just to join might seem weird… and she did say to just bring myself…”

My thoughts are spinning in circles.

Yeah, I should probably just do as I was told.

I want to charge in there tomorrow, but she told me to come the day after.

She probably plans to convince the other members in the meantime.

Good luck, Takahashi-senpai.

I think to myself and decide to sleep for the night.

Filled with sincere gratitude for Takahashi-senpai.