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TL: ALT
Chapter 113 – Flashback
“Excuse me.”
I said and entered the infirmary, but the doctor was not there.
Instead, a voice came from behind the curtain separating the beds.
“Is that Kurashiki-senpai by any chance?”
“That voice… Sayuki?”
“Yes.”
After hearing the answer, there was a rustling sound.
The curtains were opened from the inside.
A junior girl with sticky black hair and paper-white skin appeared.
Her name is Sayuki Natsume.
She is a junior that I met as a member of the library committee, and now she is also a member of my party.
It was a familiar face.
It should be.
“Natsume…”
The moment I saw the junior’s face, I felt fear.
Regret and guilt.
And an undeniable feeling of bitterness.
The words scribbled on a piece of paper filled my vision.
“If you can’t help me anyway, I wish you hadn’t done anything in the first place. If you want to despair first, don’t give me any hope. If it had been pitch black all the time, I might have been able to bear it, but because I was shown the light, I couldn’t. I don’t know what to do anymore. I hope that those who bullied me, those who half-heartedly defended me, and those who decided to turn a blind eye will all die socially!”
“Ugh…!”
I put my hands over my mouth, holding back the nausea that was rising inside me.
“W-what’s wrong, Senpai? Your face is pale!”
As I crouched down, Natsume Sayuki rushed over to me in a panic.
I managed to stop myself from shaking her hand.
However, Natsume―or rather Sayuki―could sense that I was about to reject her.
Sayuki is also a member of my party with whom I have shared many hardships and joys.
Especially in my party, we were sensitive to each other’s emotions thanks to Honoka-chan’s telepathy.
“I’m sorry. I’m not feeling well…”
“N-no… I think that’s true, since you came to the infirmary. Do you want me to call the doctor?”
“I’m fine. Natsume, is it okay if you haven��t slept at all?”
“I have the usual anemia. And it’s not Natsume, it’s Sayuki.”
“Sorry. You’re right.”
I decided to call Honoka-chan by her first name, and after that, Sayuki told me that I should call her by her first name as well, but I still called her by her last name.
But that doesn’t mean that they were love rivals fighting over me.
Sayuki said that she didn’t know what romantic feelings were.
But she also said that she didn’t want to be left out of the group.
She was grateful for being saved from Junko Himuro’s bullying, but she also felt indebted to me, and that’s why she wanted to be an equal member of the party… she said with an unusually embarrassed look on her face.
Well, even then, she still calls me “Kurashik-senpai.”
That’s my memory in this world.
However, in my mind, a completely different memory was recalled.
The intense negative emotions overflowed the moment I saw Sayuki’s face.
It was so intense and uncontrollable that I wondered how a person could have such feelings.
Thanks to that, I remembered.
“I’m sorry. I really don’t feel well.”
I mumbled with a pale face and left the infirmary with my face down.
I didn’t dare to look at Sayuki’s face.
“Eh, if you don’t feel well, shouldn’t you rest here…?”
I left the infirmary without answering Sayuki’s confused voice.
* * *
Thinking that no one would come to the rooftop, I went to the rooftop.
The door to the rooftop is locked, but I take the Rusty Key from my magic bag and open it.
The Rusty Key is an item I got in the dungeon, and it is useful for opening simple locks.
It is a very dangerous item; if it were to be sold, it would probably fetch a very high price.
The magic bag that contains it is also a small, large-capacity, rare item.
Even if it were sold at a bargain price, it would be worth enough to build a mansion.
…Well, if I were to put such an item up for sale, it would probably be classified as a strategic exploration item and bought up by the government before the deal could be completed.
The most famous strategic exploration item is the elixir, but magic bags of a certain capacity also have a modest designation.
“Magic bags, huh?”
In my original world, I would have used the Item Box skill.
It’s not just me.
Item Box was a skill that almost everyone could learn.
Maybe that’s why the magic bag wasn’t designated as a national strategic exploration item.
There are other things that are very different.
In my original world, skills like Simple Appraisal, Appraisal, and Fathom were necessary to see the status of others.
It was not possible to see the status of others just by staring at them with a narrow eye like in this world.
Still, it is strange that such a system as “Job” exists.
There are no skills in this world.
The only thing in this world is jobs.
There are skills and abilities included in jobs, but they are different from skills.
But that is not important.
The biggest difference between my original world and this world is this.
This is it,
“Natsume didn’t commit suicide…”
I stare at the sky above the rooftop and mumble.
The beautiful clear sky of May.
It was a sky that seemed to embody the word ‘youth.’
“I finally remembered something. I had entered the collapsed Okutama Lake Dungeon to stop it from collapsing.”
I succeeded in stopping the collapse.
In this world, I―a high school student who is an S-rank magic swordsman―was astonished. “How?” But facts are facts.
By the way, there was also an incident in this world where Clovis planned to collapse the Okutama Lake Dungeon, but we stopped him just in time.
“I think it was after that. God said she’d use the void to give me what I wanted as a reward.”
I said… yes, I told her I wanted the skills to integrate skills.
“But the system wouldn’t allow that, so she said she would build me my own training dungeon to give me a bonus that was close enough.”
There are holes in my memory here and there, but if I know this much, I can imagine what it might be like.
“A world where Natsume didn’t commit suicide, huh? Damn, this is a world of comfort.”
In a fit of rage, I punched a nearby wall with my fist.
“There’s no way I can pretend it didn’t happen. I can’t just do that.”
The reason I became a shut-in was because of Junko Himuro’s bullying, but the reason I couldn’t get out of it was because of Sayuki Natsume’s suicide.
Moreover, Sayuki’s suicide note was leaked on SNS after her death.
When I saw it, I felt regret, fear, anger, guilt… and despair.
To be honest, my heart was broken.
The easiest way to recover would have been to pretend it never happened.
In the first place, we only had a relationship to the extent that I had no obligation to protect her.
Even if she had killed herself because I couldn’t protect her, and even if she had blamed me in her suicide note after her death, it would have been better than turning a blind eye.
I tried my best to protect her, but I couldn’t, and the worst thing happened.
But I did everything I could.
So, I did nothing wrong.
If I could have made up such an excuse and pretended that the incident had never happened, I might have been able to recover somewhat.
But I couldn’t.
“I will accept it…”
Objectively, I was not at fault.
Nevertheless, I wanted to accept the consequences of my decision.
Perhaps I took the situation too seriously at the time.
It seems so in retrospect, but I was narrow-minded at the time.
Or maybe I was more caught up in self-blame than I realized.
“And now this…”
The world where Honoka-chan is a junior in high school, one year below me, and she is also my girlfriend.
The world where I am not ignored by my classmates, but rather, I am the central figure in the class.
A world where I am looked up to and pampered as an S-ranked explorer with the fourth highest level ranking in Japan, even though I am a high school student.
And a world where the bullying of Sayuki Natsume is resolved by force, and she lives on without committing suicide.
“Haaaaah… don’t get depressed.”
There is no way such a convenient world exists.
This world is just too convenient for me.
I can only imagine what this is like, given my memories from before I was transported to this world.
I took a deep breath,
“――You are watching me, God! I know I’m hallucinating!”
I shouted in a voice that echoed over the rooftop.