Our old world was unbalanced and unfair.
I knew that from early on in my previous life.
There are the haves and the have-nots, and those roles never change.
And even those who have can rarely win against others who have more.
It’s incredibly unbalanced and unfair.
And the girl named Hiiro Wakaba seemed to embody that unfairness.
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I fell in love in middle school.
The object of my affection was a year ahead of me at the same school.
We met because we were in the same club.
It was my first love.
In retrospect, I think I was so excited about it that I got ahead of myself.
These days, I can’t even remember what he looked like, even though I supposedly loved him so much.
At the time I thought I was deeply in love. Now, though, I think I’ve forgotten his face because my feelings were just that fickle.
Even if I did study for a high school way above my level and manage to get in, just so I could chase after him.
I used to hate school and homework so much that when I finally studied seriously for an entrance exam, my mom actually got worried about me, funnily enough.
Looking back on that now, maybe that’s kind of a good memory.
We fought like hell at the time, though.
I mean, she asked me if I was “all right in the head,” you know?
Here I was taking school seriously for once!
Shouldn’t she be happy about that as a parent?!
All that aside, when I finally got into the high school I’d worked so hard and raised my grades for, I was hit with a swift reality check.
The boy I was chasing had started stalking a female student…
It’s fine that he rejected me when I asked him out.
I mean, it’s not fine, I was devastated at the time…but now I realize that it was pointless in the first place.
The guy was a total geek, although back then I thought of him as “quiet and mysterious.”
It’s not that he didn’t talk at all, he just wasn’t the assertive type.
I guess he was kinda like Shun in that way.
And in both cases, it turns out that kind of guy gets freaked out when someone acts assertive toward them.
Oh, I was assertive, all right.
I went after him like you wouldn’t believe!
Boundaries? Never heard of them.
I mean, I even followed him all the way to high school.
Talk about over-the-top, right?
Thinking about it now, I can’t blame him for being creeped out when a girl who wasn’t his type kept coming after him like crazy.
It’s easier to be frank about it now that I’ve left him behind me.
Not that I had any choice, since I’m literally in a different world!
But still, like, if someone you liked was stalking someone else, wouldn’t you be mad, too?
It’d be one thing if he was dating another girl, ’cause at least then you could give up properly. A stalker, on the other hand…
What’s worse, she didn’t even give him the time of day.
That girl’s name was Hiiro Wakaba.
Annoyingly enough, she was so gorgeous that I could understand why the boy I liked got obsessed to the point of stalking her.
She was number one by a landslide in the boys’ secret ranking of the hottest girls in school.
I was somewhere in the teens, by the way, which I’m still not sure how to feel about.
On the one hand, that means that out of all the girls in school from first-years to third-years, I was definitely pretty high on the list.
But on the other hand, isn’t it kind of a bummer that I didn’t quite make it into the top ten?
PS: It was some second-year boys who made that ranking, and the girls in their class are the ones who put it up for all to see.
It even made the rounds to every student in school, complete with photos attached.
And as much as it pains me to admit it, I could totally see why Wakaba was by far the best ranked.
Yes, she had a gorgeous face and figure, obviously.
But beyond all that, there was just something special about her.
Like something supernatural, or maybe paranormal.
She carried herself like she wasn’t even human.
That mystical aura of hers is what really grabbed your attention, not just her appearance.
And most people who saw Wakaba could be divided into two camps.
Those who feared her, and those who worshiped her.
Although honestly, I think it was a little bit of both for most people.
Maybe you could call it awe, I guess?
It’s just a matter of which of those two reactions was stronger.
For my former crush, it was definitely worship, which is why he wound up stalking her.
…You know, I was too heartbroken to think about this at the time, but why in the world was I so obsessed with the kind of guy who would turn into a stalker?
Then again, considering that I followed him to high school, maybe I was also kinda…
Nope! Not gonna think about that!
All I can say is that I was seriously short-sighted at the time, to the point where I blamed my rejection entirely on Wakaba.
Most of it was that I just didn’t like the girl who’d stolen my crush’s heart, although part of my hatred might have been that I was afraid of her, too.
…Yeah, I admit it. I was scared of Wakaba.
I hated the way she looked at all of us like we were ants beneath her feet.
The way she didn’t react to me in the least, no matter how much I bullied or harassed her.
She pissed me off, and scared me senseless.
So after I was reincarnated, when I was stuck inside that egg, all I thought about was Wakaba.
More than my old crush, more than my family, more than anyone, I thought about her.
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Maybe that’s why, when we met the self-proclaimed Wakaba in this world, I could tell right away that it wasn’t really her.
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Maybe that’s why, when we teleported from the system core or whatever to meet the so-called evil god D, it made perfect sense to me when I saw that it was Wakaba.