He was a fool whom everyone respected and adored, a person utterly different from a gloomy, sharp-tongued character like her.
It was Japanese history class. As she listened to the lesson, Yukino opened the Negative Image reversal progress bar in the system interface.
[Negative Image: 88%, Possession Success Rate: 88%]
Treating the progress bar like a game boss she needed to grind, Yukino thought about how she'd been burning the candle at both ends for over two weeks, pouring her heart and soul into it and going to all sorts of lengths to exploit bugs and grind quests. Even so, she'd only managed to whittle away about a tenth of the boss's health.
At this rate, it was just too slow.
What if someone possessed her again without warning while she was still grinding the progress bar?
Just then, Yukino's phone vibrated softly.
Email was extremely widespread in Japan, but after Line burst onto the scene, young people had mostly come to prefer using Line. Email and Line in Japan were roughly like text messages and WeChat in neighboring China.
The difference was that email still had a sizable user base among middle-aged and older people, unlike text messages, which had nearly been phased out.
[Come home next weekend, Yukino.]
It was an email from her mother.
Yukino deleted the "screw off" message she'd nearly finished typing.
It was class time. If she replied instantly, she'd be caught at once.
Being around her mother always came with these subtle little traps.
Oh, right. Of course, she couldn't send "screw off" to her mother, either.
She'd been arguing with Kasumigaoka online so much these past couple of days that she'd picked up some of her awful expressions. She'd almost sent it just now.
Ah, damn.
She thought this without changing her expression.
After more than a year of having no memories, she—their daughter, their little sister—would seem strange to her family, wouldn't she?
And she had no idea what her relationship with them was really like.
Her mother's email hadn't sounded especially stern, but according to Mr. Ito, the chauffeur, who'd let something slip last time, Blonde Yukino had once nearly angered her mother into fainting.
She'd managed to make a mother who could keep her composure even as Mount Tai crumbled before her eyes see stars.
In a way, Blonde Yukino was pretty impressive.
A Line notification suddenly popped up on her phone. Yukino exited her email and opened Line, where she saw a message from one of the only two friends on her list.
It was from Kasumigaoka.
[I won't charge you for tutoring starting next month~]
It was a little unexpected. Kasumigaoka, who claimed to sleep through class all the time, had actually found time to message her.
Yukino thought for a moment, then replied.
[No need.]
Kasumigaoka's messages came in one after another.
[What do you think yesterday was? That was attempted criminal behavior! Doing something wrong has to come at a price. The price of one light novel is nowhere near enough. If you forgive people that easily, they'll just think you're easy to push around.]
[Yukinoshita gets bullied at school because she acts like she doesn't care about anything.]
That was strange to hear from you of all people.
Was it just her imagination?
After Blonde Yukino had completely upended the order of her world, she seemed to have broken through the walls she'd built around herself, too. At last, she had no choice but to summon the courage to lift her head and look beyond the world she'd shut herself inside.
And because her mother had probably already lost all hope in the person she was now, she was no longer as afraid or frantic about making her mother angry as she used to be.
Yukino was a young lady raised under strict family rules, someone her mother had treated as a backup in case anything ever happened to her older sister.
She was a girl who'd been bound by countless rules since childhood, yet no one had expected anything of her or affirmed her. For a long time, she'd shut herself away in her own little world, not knowing what she was living for.
The soul from another world had turned her life upside down, but it had also shattered all the rules that had bound her.
At last, Yukino replied to Kasumigaoka.
[I'm not short on money.]
Yukino was still Yukino. Even without those rules, and despite being bound to the Unscrupulous System, she still kept to the principles she believed in.
Kasumigaoka: [Showing off your wealth? Screw off!!!]
Meanwhile, Miura was replying to Onozawa Kaho's question.
[Did Yukinoshita make the cream puffs herself? Waaaah, I want some too~]
[Hmph, Yukinoshita likes me so much, of course she made the sweets herself.]
Miura was so smug, so happy, she even wanted to stand up, put her hands on her hips, and livestream herself eating the whole box of cream puffs in front of the entire school.
As soon as she sent the message, Miura noticed the words "handmade by [such-and-such bakery]" on the packaging inside the fancy bag.
Miura: "..."
Yukinoshita likes me so much. Why didn't she make the cream puffs she gave me herself...
How half-hearted!
Yukinoshita, do you even know how to pursue someone?
It was another gym class.
At Sobu High School, boys and girls had gym class together, but they trained in separate areas not far apart. For that reason, the school's gym clothes weren't short and revealing like leotards. They wore loose, school-style white T-shirts with blue trim and knee-length shorts.
Yet even in such ordinary clothes, Yukinoshita had a unique air of coolness and ethereal beauty.
Especially during volleyball in the indoor gym. When Yukinoshita tied her hair back, leaped high, and spiked the ball with all her strength, her expression was so fierce it could be called menacing. Her ponytail streamed behind her, and the volleyball seemed to obey her every command, going exactly where she wanted.
She was so cool!
Miura cheered in her heart.
Then Junko Kamizawa scolded her.
"Yumiko, stop daydreaming! We're way behind!!!"
Onozawa Kaho even whispered a complaint in her ear. "Weren't you saying you wanted to be friends with her? What kind of friend stares at someone so intently?"
Miura immediately grew embarrassed and angry. "I'm just studying Yukinoshita's volleyball technique, that's all!"
"Sure, sure. Then hurry up and return the ball!"
But how was she supposed to return it...?
Just thinking about the fact that a beautiful girl who looked like a crystal princess out of a fairy tale liked her made Miura lose all motivation to fight back. Her footwork slowed, and so did her movements.
Meanwhile, Yukinoshita was still on a rampage.
Miura had once been called the queen of Sobu High School. She was good at both academics and all kinds of sports—badminton, tennis, volleyball, basketball, even baseball. But she'd never heard that Yukinoshita was this good at volleyball.
She could probably compete professionally, couldn't she?
Yukinoshita had never shown this side of herself. If Miura hadn't deliberately organized a volleyball game during gym class and casually invited her, she might have stayed on the fringes of the crowd as she always had, never becoming part of it.
Smack—
Even though Miura had started trying her best to receive the ball again, one fierce spike after another still shot past her feet.
Miura was starting to doubt her entire life. Was she, the sports prodigy of days gone by, actually just useless?
At one dejected glance upward, Miura thought she saw Yukinoshita looking her way from across the court, her eyes seeming to hold all the soft, sparkling snow of winter.
After that, the force of the attack, led by Yukinoshita, clearly eased up. In the second half, Yukinoshita even asked to leave the court and rest.
Miura's team slowly began to catch up, but because the gap had been so wide at the start, they still lost to the other team by a narrow margin when the match ended.
It was only a game between two groups of girls in the same class, so winning or losing didn't really matter. Everyone chatted and joked around in high spirits. The boys who'd been watching from the sidelines also came over to offer water to the girls they liked.
Some of them excitedly discussed Yukinoshita's performance.
"Yukinoshita was incredible, wasn't she?"
"I thought we'd get crushed because the other team had Yumiko, but we won~"
"Honestly, I think Yukinoshita's pretty cool."
"Ohoho, don't tell me you've fallen for Yukinoshita?"
"Quit messing around, haha!"
Miura bit her lower lip and looked toward Yukinoshita, who was sitting in the indoor gym with a towel over her head, her head bowed as if she were resting.
Even when she played, she acted all on her own, receiving the ball and spiking it by herself without ever considering teamwork. Now that the game was over, she was once again quietly keeping everyone at a distance.
What a mess.
"Yumiko."
Hayama walked over holding two bottles of water and handed them to Miura.
She was just about to put on a puzzled face and say she couldn't drink two bottles when Hayama said, "Could you give one to Yukinoshita for me?"
Why don't you give it to her yourself?
As if he'd guessed what Miura was thinking, Hayama smiled awkwardly and scratched his head. "Yukinoshita wouldn't accept water from me."
Over the past few weeks, after Yukinoshita transferred classes and turned over a new leaf, her reputation at school had improved. As for the rumors linking her to Hayato Hayama, the Campus Prince everyone adored, people were no longer as opposed to them as before.
Ambiguous gossip was spreading everywhere: Hayama wanted to win Yukinoshita back!
They were both so handsome and beautiful. Standing together, they'd be the perfect couple everyone envied.
How nice, how nice...
But for some reason, a fine yet persistent ache suddenly appeared in her heart. Mixed with a bitter, sour feeling, it became a kind of pain Miura had never experienced before.
Even hearing the news that Hayama and Yukinoshita were dating in the past hadn't made her feel this bad.
Miura smiled brightly and took the two bottles from Hayama. "Of course! You and I are practically one and the same!"
But all those feigned emotions fell apart the moment she approached Yukinoshita. "Were you deliberately taking it easy just now?"
Her voice was full of hurt and embarrassed anger. "Am I really so pathetic that you couldn't even take me seriously?"
She'd wanted to angrily demand an answer, but for some reason, the moment the words came out, they were full of undisguised disappointment, with even a little hurt and pleading in them.
She'd always managed to hide it so well in front of Hayama.
Yukinoshita lowered the towel and tilted her head, looking at Miura with some confusion. After a moment, she explained, "My stamina's poor. I was only just managing to keep up in the first half. By the second half, I couldn't keep going."
"Who are you trying to fool? You scored so many points when you were attacking!"
"I'm not lying to you."
"I don't believe you!"
Miura felt as if her soul had been split in two: one half bewildered, hurt, and angry, the other clearheaded and overwhelmed with shame.
Yukinoshita looked at Miura like that, then sighed softly.
The sound was so faint, so faint, that it reminded Miura of the powdery snow slipping quietly from the branches when the wind blew after a heavy snowfall.
That sound seemed to sigh right into Miura's heart.
Just as Miura was at a loss over this sudden, inexplicable emotion, Yukinoshita reached out her slender fingers and gently took her hand.
Miura froze for a second, then her cheeks flushed.
"W-what are you doing...?"
It was meant as a question, but her voice was so quiet it was almost a whisper.
"I've rested for almost ten minutes, but my temperature's still this high, and my blood still hasn't settled. I wasn't lying to you. I've had poor stamina since I was little."
Yukinoshita said, "Miura, you're very good. I wasn't confident I could hold back against you."
And at that very moment, Miura's heart was full of one thought:
She's praising me!!!!!!!!!!!
Before you continue