CH 2.2

I managed to get through the fifth period with no problem and proceeded to sleep through the sixth period. Time passed and it was currently after school.

I placed my pencil case in my backpack and threw the rest of my things, textbooks and notebooks, into my locker.

Of course, I would be in trouble if a teacher discovered me doing this, but it was too troublesome to bring them home. Besides, I didn’t study at home anyway, so this was more convenient for me. (T/N: The raw used the term 置き勉 (Okiben) here. It’s the term for leaving all your books at school so you don’t need to bring any of them home. In Japanese it’s frowned upon to do it and only ‘delinquents’ would do it. Anyway, I left the term out in the translation because I found no English equivalent of it.)

After I finished packing up, I looked at the witch, who was fiddling with her phone in her seat.

“Alright, see you later, Godou-kun. I have to go to my club.”

“I’m going ahead, Godou. I wanna stop by the arcade today. See ya.”

I raised my hand in response to Yuuka and Shinji’s goodbyes. Then, I went to the witch’s side.

“…So, what are you up to?”

She yelped in surprise when I called out to her. What the hell? Was she that absorbed in her phone?

“I asked, what are you up to?”

I saw her phone screen, she was looking at her ‘RINE’. (T/N: It’s LINE, a messaging app that’s popular in Japan.)

At first, I thought she was texting someone, but after taking a closer look, she was actually staring at the app’s home screen. The top of the screen showed ‘Friends (4)’ with two of the contacts listed as ‘New Friends’. From the familiar profile picture of the two contacts, I could safely assume that they were Hina and Yuuka.

The witch quickly hid her phone.

“…What?”

She glared at me. I could see a slight tint of pink in her cheeks.

“…You.”

“W-What? Don’t give me that pitying look!”

I could see tears forming in her eyes.

Well, I thought she was up to something, but she was just giddy because the number of her RINE friends increased. I guess I could safely assume that the other two contacts she had in her friend list were her parents’. Well, it was good that she got along well with her parents, I guess.

“If you have anything to say, say it to my face!”

“Ah, no… I mean… I guess… Good for you? Um, do your best out there, okay?”

“Don’t say that! You’re just making me look pitiful!”

“What do you want me to say then?! You’re such a troublesome woman…”

“How about not peeking into other people’s phones without their permission?!”

Oh, that was a good argument.

“My bad… But still, I didn’t expect to see that…”

“Even the way you apologize pisses me off…”

The witch gritted her teeth as she glared at me.

Well, friends were about quality and not quantity, so the number of friends you had shouldn’t matter, but… Her having only four friends in her RINE meant that she didn’t have any friends from her previous school, right? …No, I should stop thinking about it.

Then, I heard a light-hearted voice coming from behind.

Hina came into the classroom while slinging her bag over her shoulders. She noticed the teary-eyed witch and furrowed her brows at the sight.

“What’s wrong? Was Godou bullying you?”

“Ah, n-no… T-There was dust… In my eyes…”

While the witch was making a random excuse, someone else entered the class.

I looked over and saw a girl carrying a huge pile of handouts.

“Everyone! Sensei forgot to hand these over!”

Her gait was unsteady when she said that sentence.

It seemed like she wanted to place the handouts on the teacher’s desk, but because of her posture, what she did looked dangerous.

Through my trained eyes, I managed to predict what would happen to her in the next few seconds.

If this continued, she would fall over and the handouts would scatter all over the floor. There was also a possibility that her head would hit a nearby desk .

“O-Oi, watch out!”

I called out to her and dashed toward her. Right at that moment…

“Huh?”

As expected, she tried to correct her posture, but her action was counterproductive and made her completely lose her balance instead. In the end, she fell over while letting out a scream.

If I were to go over there normally, I wouldn’t make it in time to save her.

And so, I decided to push my body to the limit.

I still had the body of a normal high school student, but I could temporarily remove the limiter from my brain to enhance the physical capabilities of my body.

“There…”

I grabbed the pile of handouts with my right arm and caught the girl’s waist with my other hand.

After that, I corrected my body’s posture so that I could hold the handouts properly with my right hand and pulled the girl closer to me with my other hand so she wouldn’t fall over.

“Eh? Huh?…”

The girl stared at me with a puzzled expression.

At that moment, I felt a sharp pain in my ankle. I guess I sprained it, huh? Well, that was a given for doing something like that without any warmups.

I tried to ignore the pain and called out to the girl,

“Are you okay? Can you stand?”

“Y-Yes! U-Um… S-Sorry for troubling you! A-And, t-thank you!”

This girl was Sasayama Miki. She was one of my classmates, but I haven’t talked to her much. She was close with Hina, though.

“If you’re okay, then that’s good. Be careful next time, okay?”

I let Sasayama go and patted her shoulders.

“Y-Yes! T-Thank you, Shiraishi-kun! I saw my life flashing before me for a second there…”

Hina then rushed to Sasayama’s side and asked her about her condition. In response, Sasayama smiled at her.

“Not bad, Godou.”

“A man’s gotta look cool once in a while.”

I shrugged my shoulders in response to Hina’s praise before placing the handouts on the teacher’s desk.

In exchange for that ‘cool act’ I sprained my ankle though.

Unlike my previous life, I had a much harder time helping people because of this body.

After all, even though I retained all my combat experiences and reflexes, my current body was still that of a high school boy. I could raise my physical capabilities like what I did just now, but my whole body would hurt all over if I did it for a long period of time.

“What?”

When I went back to the witch’s side, she was giving me a blank stare.

“…That habit of yours still hasn’t changed, huh? Is your leg okay?”

“Ah, you noticed, as expected.”

I shook my legs a little.

“It’s not a big deal. I’ll just need to smear it with some poultice and it’ll heal in a few days.”

“Can you walk home with that leg?”

“My house is nearby, so yeah, of course. Don’t worry about me.”

This level of pain wouldn’t bother me.

Thanks to my previous life, I was subjected to a lot of things more painful than this.

“I’m not worried about you or anything.”

She turned her head away with a ‘hmph’.

“Godou, we’re going to our club! See you later!”

“U-Um, thank you again, Shiraishi-kun! I’ll repay you properly next time!”

Both Hina and Sasayama ran out of the room. They seemed to be in a hurry.

They were both in the track club and they were probably running out late for their club activities.

Most of our classmates had either gone home or went to their clubs. Some of them were still talking in the hallways, but there were only me and the witch inside the classroom.

“So, are you planning to enter a club?”

I asked the witch. She turned her face away in response.

“…If there’s a literature club, maybe… I don’t want to join any clubs related to sports…”

“Figures. You’re hopeless in that regard.”

“Shut up. Don’t compare me with a muscle-brain like you!”

“Who do you call a muscle-brain?! Anyway, the literature club was shut down a while back. They didn’t manage to get enough active members.”

“Is that so? Then, I won’t be joining any clubs.”

“You sure? Joining one is the easiest way to get more friends, you know?”

“Shut up, that isn’t any of your business! You’re preaching to me about clubs and whatnot, what about you? Why are you still here? Don’t tell me you didn’t actually join any clubs after all that preaching?”

“Of course I did. The going-home club. Let me welcome you to the club, newbie.”

“I don’t need your welcome. Also, why are you still here? Go home already!”

“Oi, oi, I’m here because of you. Didn’t you ask me to dispel your curse?”

“Ah, right.”

Hearing my words, the witch nodded.

Wasn’t the purpose of her transferring in to dispel her curse? How could she just casually forget about it like this? Was her head okay?

“Well, firstly, let’s move elsewhere.”

“Where to?”

“My room.”

“…What?”

I knew that she was the witch, but it still felt embarrassing that she thoughtlessly invited me to her room like that.

“What? Do you have a problem with it?”

“…Aren’t your parents home?”

“No, they are not. I planted a suggestion in their mind to send me here by myself using magic.”

“Oi, what the hell?”

“Look, I had no other choice, okay?”

She snorted before continuing,

“So, what are you going to do? I don’t want to invite you either, so if you have a good place for us to do it, I’ll be okay going there with you.”

Look at this girl… Acting haughtily when asking someone for a favor.

“…Well, since you’re living by yourself, might as well. It isn’t like I can use my power anywhere else.”

Though, I wasn’t sure if I could use my exorcism or not. But, if the witch’s theory was correct, I should be able to do it no problem.

In any case, I still couldn’t use it anywhere I wanted. In order to dispel the curse out of her body, I still needed to make physical contact with her so I could interact with her mana and make a pathway for me to inject my power. Holding her hand should suffice, but there was no way I’d do it in public. Aside from that, I had to concentrate when using my power, so a quiet place was more preferable.

“Let’s get going.”

Let’s finish this troublesome business as soon as possible.

I turned my back to the witch and walked away. She followed behind me quietly.

“…Anyway, um, why aren’t you in a club?”

“What? Why do you ask?”

“I mean, it’s fitting for a muscle-brain like you.”

“What do you mean a muscle-brain like me? Just because you’re bad at physical activities doesn’t mean–”

“…”

“What’s wrong?”

For some reason, the witch stopped walking. When I turned around, she was crouching while holding his forehead.

There was a pillar right in front of her. I guess she bumped into it somehow, huh?

“…What the hell are you doing?”

When I called out to her, she stared at me with teary eyes.

“I was just walking normally! Don’t mind me!”

She could still act like this, amazing.

She always acted haughtily like this in the other world as a self-defense mechanism but it seemed like that habit carried away even in a peaceful world like this. It wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, but well…

“D-Don’t touch me!’

I moved her hair out of the way with my hand and took a look at her forehead.

“Ah, you got a bump.”

“Y-You’re too close! Don’t you know there is something called sexual harrassment in this world?!”

“That doesn’t apply to you, specifically.”

I obviously wouldn’t touch another girl’s forehead. The witch was an exception. Wait, actually, I wouldn’t mind doing it to Hina because she was my childhood friend.

“That aside, where’s your house? Is it close to school?”

“Yeah. It’s within a walking distance.”

“That’s awfully close…”

“My parents made me live near the school because they were worried about me.”

“I see. They really love you, don’t they?”

When I said that, the witch furrowed her brows.

“They love me?”

“Of course. They are worried about you because they love you.”

“They’re just worried out of obligation because I’m their daughter.”

Said the witch in a hurry, as if to cut me out.

The way she said that sentence bothered me. I stopped walking.

“You… What are you?…”

It was as if she was implying that if she wasn’t their daughter, they wouldn’t care about her.

“You won’t understand how I feel. Everyone looks up to you. They need you.”

There was a faint smile as she said that. Just like back then.

“I guess… You’re right…”

I was chosen as a hero to lead the people around me.

Since I’ve killed countless demons and saved countless people, everyone put their hopes in my back.

And so, I didn’t understand the witch’s feelings. After all, unlike me, she was hated by everyone.

Even so, I still had a complaint about my situation.

“But, they only sought after me because of my power. They depended on me because I was capable. No one cared about me because of who I was. That was the kind of existence I was… And that’s the reason why they killed me in the end…”

“Even if that was the case…”

The witch trailed off her sentence and broke into a mysterious smile.

I didn’t know what kind of feelings were hidden behind that smile.

“I still envied you…”

She was the enemy of the world, the root of all calamities.

The witch who received the hatred of everyone in the world, let out a bewitching smile.

“Just kidding.”

The shadow of her past self overlapped with the girl standing in front of me.

“I don’t really care about all that stuff. Let’s get going, we’ve wasted enough time already.”

The witch flipped her hair and walked toward the school building’s entrance.

Then, she suddenly turned back with a blank face.

When she passed by in front of me, she let out a cough.

I pressed my forehead with my hand involuntarily.

“You forgot to change your shoes, didn’t you?”

“L-Look, everyone did that once in a while! …Right?’

At least be firm when making your argument, jeez.

“Not me for sure…”

The fact that this happened after a serious talk like that made me feel embarrassed… Wait, why was I the one getting embarrassed from her antics? Give me a break…

“I don’t know… Just… Hang in there, Witch…”

“…I’m only like this because I’ve been nervous for the whole day, okay? …I think…”

I left the witch who was trying hard to defend herself and went outside.

When I took a step outside, a wave of heat enveloped my whole body.

It felt like the sun was trying to burn my body.

Summer has arrived, huh? There was no better explanation other than this. Even though it wasn’t long since I left the school building, sweat already started coming out from my body.

Yet, the energetic voices of the baseball and soccer club members could be heard from the direction of the field. How could they run around in this kind of weather? I’d rather stay inside my house while eating some ice cream instead of torturing myself like that.

“It’s so hot…”

The witch brushed her hair off her face and fanned her chest lightly with her hand.

“Are you okay?’

“…What? Do you think I’ll collapse from the heat?”

“That isn’t impossible. Back in the other world, the heat never got this bad. Summer in Japan is nuts…”

“Well, isn’t that because we lived in the north? Maybe it was like this too in the south.”

“Maybe…”

I only traveled around the land of the Holy Augusria Empire, the de facto ruler of the northern region. Aside from that, I went to its vassal states too, mainly the Mariano Federation. The furthest region to the south I went into would be when I was raiding a dungeon in the Istria Kingdom, but that kingdom was located on the border between the north and the center of the continent. (T/N: アウグスリア (Augusria), マリヤノ (Mariano), イストレ (Istria))

While reminiscing about my previous life, I went to the bicycle parking lot. The witch’s house was within a walking distance, meanwhile mine was a bit far. It took me twenty minutes to get there with a bike.

At the parking lot, I saw some of my fellow going-home club members hanging around.

“See ya.”

I pushed my bike out the gate after that. I said my goodbye early so they wouldn’t go out of their way to invite me to go home together.

Meanwhile, the witch was walking a few meters behind me so people wouldn’t notice that we were going home together. While I didn’t mind her doing that, I didn’t know where her house was.

I asked her for directions with my gaze and she confirmed it with hers, so I boldly walked toward said direction.

Eventually, we reached the crossroad. It seemed like the witch decided that she didn’t need to watch out for other people’s gazes anymore, so she came forward and walked by my side.