One day during summer break, Kobayashi Shihono and Endo Aoto were sitting in Kobayashi’s living room as usual. However, their current conversation was tense, lacking the typical laughter and cheer.
“Now then, it’s almost summer vacation in the otome game’s world too...which means we have to watch out for the event that’s coming up,” Shihono said, glum.
Aoto nodded. “Yeah, the newbie check. At the rate we’re going, Bal will probably be Fiene’s partner for that fight, right? Which means...”
“Yep, we’re gonna need him to fight pretty well, or else he and Fiene could die. It’d be the same with any other love interest.”
They fell silent for some time. The people they were talking about were characters in the otome game Love Me Magically!, also known as Magikoi. Rather, they were supposed to just be characters, but ever since Aoto’s play-by-play and Shihono’s color commentary had begun to reach them, they instead felt like friends living in another world. The possibility of their deaths weighed heavily on the two high schoolers.
Shihono shook her head. “We can’t be acting like this. Sieg thinks we’re gods, so if we’re worried, he’ll worry too!”
Aoto nodded and smiled. “Right. So I was thinking about the fight, and it’d be a walk in the park if we had multiple healers, wouldn’t it? In the game, Fiene only goes with one of the guys, but why don’t we just break the party-of-two rule?”
“Oooh, that’s a good idea! Lieselotte’s Memoir showed that Liese-tan wanted to hang out with everyone. We should send her and all of the available love interests!”
“Oh, that sounds fun.”
Having found a starting point to a solution, the two friends nodded at each other with earnest smiles, returning to their usual cheerful mood.
“All right, we’ll go with that, then,” Shihono said. “Back to being energetic gods, Play-by-Play Caster Endo!”
“Yeah, let’s have fun and do our best, Color Commentator Kobayashi.”
After playfully calling each other by their roles in the game’s world, they began speaking to Siegwald, the prince who could hear their voices and revered them as “gods from a foreign realm.”
Summer break at the Royal Academy of Magic was to begin next week. Accordingly, we students were going to perform a major cleanup of the mountains behind the school today. Now, this was no ordinary cleaning activity. The entire student body was going to join forces to hunt down the countless monsters lurking there.
All of the students at our academy were capable of using magic, but the majority of the people living in the country could not. Thus, it naturally fell on us to use our power to protect the civilians. Plus, practical experience was an important part of our education. That was why this school was built in front of mountains that were prone to amassing mana and spawning monsters.
However, long breaks meant that all of the students would be absent. There would be no one left to handle the monsters, so we needed to do a thorough extermination before leaving. This hunt had become a school tradition known as the Big Cleanup.
Right before said cleanup, the students and faculty gathered in the square between the school building and the mountain. It was early in the morning, and everyone was wearing sports uniforms instead of their usual attire. The first-years seemed nervous for their first Big Cleanup, while the upperclassmen and teachers watched them with warm smiles and reassured them. Everyone was checking their equipment and supplies and doing light warmup exercises.
Despite being the crown prince and a third-year, I was just as—or perhaps more—nervous than the first-years, although I couldn’t let it show due to my position. The mountain was regularly culled, so there wasn’t supposed to be a risk of encountering anything particularly strong, but from what I heard, a grizzly bear had appeared just the other day. It had quickly been defeated by Baldur Riefenstahl, a knight-in-training, but the fact remained that such powerful monsters weren’t supposed to be on this mountain.
I hope it was just a one-off anomaly...
My thoughts were cut off by Lieselotte’s cold, stern voice. “Miss Fiene, I do say you’re being conceited,” she said.
Lieselotte was my fiancée and the daughter of a marquis. She often fretted over Fiene, the sole commoner at our school. Sometimes, she would even give her guidance despite them both being first-years. Was that the case right now as well?
“I-I’m sorry,” Fiene said, lowering her head. Her face was pale and she was trembling slightly.
Just as I was about to rush over to do something about the uncomfortable atmosphere, Baldur—who had been standing closer to them—stepped in between them as if to defend Fiene. “Hey, Liese, are you bullying Miss Fiene again?”
“Bal!” Lieselotte glared hatefully at him.
“Oh, no, she wasn’t... Um...” Fiene looked fearfully at the two Riefenstahl cousins who had begun scowling at each other.
“I take offense to that accusation,” Lieselotte said. “I was merely stating the truth. Miss Fiene was trying to venture into the mountain alone. Regardless of her skills, how can that be described as anything other than conceited?”
Baldur heaved a sigh. “Even so, you could’ve phrased it better. You can’t just publicly shame her like that.”
“Oh, um, no, I agree with Lady Lieselotte,” Fiene said. “I do think it might be reckless to go on my own. It’s just that I couldn’t think of anyone to go with, you know? I’m isolated from the rest of the students and all.”
Baldur hummed and gave a single nod before shifting his focus from Lieselotte to Fiene. “I see. In that case, I’ll go with you.”
“Um, that would be kind of awkward...”
Fiene averted her gaze and mumbled something in response to Baldur’s offer, but it was too quiet for me to hear.
“What difference does adding Bal make?” Lieselotte asked. “It was you two who encountered an unusual monster in these mountains the other day, so you should know it’s foolish to venture there by yourselves when you don’t know what else could be out there.”
“Miss Fiene and I had no issue dealing with the grizzly bear the other day,” Baldur said. “No enemy is a match for us.”
“Now that’s a bold statement! This is exactly what I call carelessness, arrogance, and conceit!”