Obviously I couldn’t talk to Sora about otome games and romanceable characters, so I decided it would be best to pretend he was right and I had simply been agonizing over what to order for lunch.
“Ah... Umm... Well then, perhaps I’ll go with the steak lunch for today. A large portion,” I answered.
Sora furrowed his brow.
“Didn’t you have a large portion the other day, only to complain that you felt sick and your stomach hurt later? Don’t make the same mistake,” he warned.
“Eh? Did I? But I really am hungry today, so I feel like I’ll be okay.”
“No. Why won’t you learn? I’m sure the same thing will end up happening.”
After receiving this lecture from Sora, in the end I caved and only ordered a regular portion for my steak lunch. I took my tray from the lady who worked in the cafeteria, sat next to Sora, and wasted no time in eating that meat.
The sensation of the juice gushing out of the meat into my mouth, the way it seemed to melt on my tongue, told me that this cafeteria was still using excellent meat. And it was seared so perfectly too—their steak really was to die for.
Yum... This is heaven...
Just as I was taking another bite, someone else spoke up.
“Lady Katarina.”
Raising my gaze from the steak to the person who had addressed me, I saw a gorgeous woman with blonde hair, blue eyes, and a smile that stretched from ear to ear approaching our table with a tray in hand. She was Maria Campbell—the true protagonist in the world of this otome game.
“May I sit with you?” she asked, now standing in front of me. In stark contrast to my meat-heavy meal, her lunch was centered around fruits and vegetables and looked much prettier than my steak.
I guess this is just one more way in which the protagonist and the villainess are different, I thought.
“Please, sit,” I said, gesturing to the empty seat across from me.
“Thank you very much.” Looking delighted, Maria sat down opposite me.
Before the plot of the otome game began, I had been quite wary of her, given she was both the protagonist and the villainess’s rival, but once I entered the Academy of Magic—the setting of the first game—and actually interacted with Maria, I’d found that she was an absolutely lovely girl. As a bonus, she was also a natural at baking sweets, so she had completely captured my heart (and stomach). Then, once we graduated, we both came to work at the Magical Ministry and had only grown closer since.
“Will you be spending this afternoon in the usual fashion?” asked Maria in between elegant mouthfuls of her salad, as I chewed on my steak.
“Yep. Business as usual. What about you?”
“Business as usual for me as well.”
“Let’s both do our best, then.”
“Yes.”
Generally speaking, unless some other more pressing work came up, we each spent our afternoons working on deciphering our respective covenants: Maria with her Light Covenant and me with my Dark Covenant. Both were written using an ancient script. Moreover, only the person who had been accepted by a tome could read it, making it impossible for anyone else to help us with this difficult task. We constantly referred to dictionaries as we sat in the same room, each of us working on deciphering our own covenant.
However, compared to Maria, who even after graduating still remembered the ancient script we’d learned at the academy—though the covenants were written in an even older script, there were many similarities to what we’d studied—I had only ever learned enough to just barely make a passing grade, and had completely forgotten everything as soon as each test was over. So there was a huge discrepancy in speed between us when it came to deciphering the text. The gap was so great that, while I was still working desperately just to decipher the many warnings included at the front of my covenant, Maria had already learned to use spells she had found in her covenant.
And anyway, I simply wasn’t remotely suited to working on deciphering texts—or doing any other desk work—in the afternoon. With a full stomach, I often found myself getting sleepy. Every day brought another battle with my own drowsiness.
All of this meant that my work deciphering the covenant proceeded at a snail’s pace, though the fact that a text on Dark Magic came with so many warnings just spoke to how dangerous it was, so I told myself that this, too, was important work as I toiled away.
Also, a while ago one of my senior colleagues in my department had said something that helped me to rid myself of some of my worries about Dark Magic and approach it with a more positive attitude. Until that conversation, I had simply thought of Dark Magic as something evil. Anything that could be used to control people’s minds must have been made by evil people to do evil things, I thought.
But then that senior colleagues told me Dark Magic could also be used to rid someone of painful memories that caused them to suffer. If used for that purpose, from that person’s perspective, Dark Magic would be a good thing. The world is filled with all manner of things, and people all look at them only in one way—the way they want to look at them. If, instead of thinking of Dark Magic as inherently evil, I thought of how it might be used to help others, that might help me feel a bit more motivated.
After my colleague said that, I found I was able to change the concept of Dark Magic that I held in my mind. I felt so grateful to him for giving me that advice. Thanks to him, I found I was able to approach my work deciphering the covenant more intentionally than I had been able to before.
All right, time to fill up on meat, then work hard! I thought as I stuffed my face with meat again.
After we finished lunch and arrived at the room where Maria and I worked on deciphering the covenants, I suddenly clutched my stomach.
“I ate too much... It hurts. Maybe I shouldn’t have ordered dessert on top of lunch.”
Sora gave me a disapproving look and sighed.
“You can’t say I didn’t warn you. But you insisted you’d be all right, and ended up making the same mistake you always do.”
I had no words with which to refute his claim. At the time, since I had only ordered a regular portion of steak, and I have a separate stomach for dessert anyway, I was sure I’d be okay with a helping of dessert. In my case, I really am always fine as long as I’m still eating, and it seems like I can always eat more. It’s only a while after I’m finished that the suffering begins. In other words, there’s a time delay. Due to these factors, I never realize that I’ve overeaten until the pain arrives. I tried making these excuses, but the truth was I knew I was in the wrong, and these were my just deserts.
“You’re completely right. Sorry for always causing trouble,” I said, apologizing to Sora and Maria who were, after all, showing concern for my well-being.
“Please, you needn’t worry about it, Lady Katarina,” said Maria sweetly.
“If you really feel that way, have a little more sense next time,” added Sora, much more sharply.
✦ ✦ ✦
