If she could go back to fourth grade, she would definitely draw hideous caricatures of those annoying boys next to their crude doodles on the blackboard.
Or better yet, she'd make them the protagonists of a humiliating doujinshi and scatter copies all over the school at night!
She might have lost her way, but she had grown stronger!
Tch, what kind of nonsense was "Hero for fun" anyway? And speaking of which, that Hojou…
Sure, his art was downright sadistic, but damn, his creativity was off the charts.
Snapping out of her thoughts, Eriri turned to look at Kyousuke.
So, this was what he called a passion project? A hero…
"Hojou, do you know? This is only the second time I've ever recommended this game to someone."
"Huh?"
Kyousuke had just started getting into the game and was about to ask Eriri for more recommendations to deepen his experience.
He hadn't expected this conversation to take a turn into storytelling territory.
"It's nothing… Hey, Hojou, let me ask you something."
"Hm?"
He looked over at Eriri, who had somehow slid off the couch without him noticing.
She was now sitting on the carpet, leaning against the sofa.
Her face, partially hidden by her golden locks, was turned toward the window.
Though her voice had been choked with sobs moments ago, it had now returned to its usual crisp and haughty tone.
As she watched the white clouds drift across the clear blue sky, Eriri took a deep breath, ready to speak—
"Well? I'm still waiting," Kyousuke urged when she didn't continue.
"Idiot! You totally ruined the moment I was building up!"
She spun around, glaring at him with a mix of frustration and embarrassment.
Why couldn't this guy read the room?!
"I could say the same about you, leaving me hanging like that," Kyousuke shrugged.
"Idiot, idiot, idiot!"
"Alright, alright, I won't interrupt. Go on."
He put down his controller, sat up straight, and crossed his arms, suddenly looking as serious as a judge awaiting testimony.
"Uh, you don't have to act so serious about it…"
Kyousuke's eyes had a way of shifting between moods—warm and gentle when he smiled, yet sharp and intimidating when angered.
Right now, he was somewhere in between, which reminded Eriri of her first art teacher in elementary school, a strict old woman.
The thought made her chuckle softly.
Seeing that, Kyousuke relaxed, leaning back into the sofa again.
"Hojou, if you were a knight, and the princess you cherished was scolded by ministers, shunned by her siblings, and slandered by the people just for associating with you"
"If she was trapped in the palace, silently enduring all that malice, forced to distance herself from you to escape it all… What would you do?"
She hugged her knees, her petite frame making her look even smaller, almost like a curled-up cat.
She didn't look at him as she spoke, and her tone was unusually quiet.
"So, what would you do?" she repeated. "Hero for fun."
"Obviously, I'd take down all those bastards and snatch the princess away," Kyousuke answered without a second thought.
"That's impossible! The royal guards, the army, other knights—they'd all stand in your way!"
"And besides, among those people are the very citizens the knight swore to protect, the royal family he pledged allegiance to…"
"It's not impossible! If it is, then that just means I'm not strong enough"
As someone who had transmigrated into another world, his life was supposed to be straight out of a power fantasy.
The idea of "impossible" simply didn't exist for him.
"You!" Eriri was fuming.
Hojou was a blockheaded idiot with the emotional intelligence of a cockroach!
"When I was in elementary school, I was bullied just for talking about otaku stuff with a boy in my class. If you were that boy, what would you have done?"
She blurted it out quickly, realizing she couldn't use metaphors with this guy. She had to be direct—no, brutally direct.
"If we had known each other back then, I'd think you were talking about me."
Kyousuke chuckled.
Bullying, huh? In Japan, that was practically a staple in every protagonist's backstory.
"Huh? What do you mean?"
Eriri turned to stare at him, eyes wide with disbelief.
"Well, you know… bullying."
"You got bullied?!" She shot up, scrutinizing him from head to toe.
Recalling his solid muscles and the reassuring strength she'd felt when he held her, she found it hard to believe.
"Yeah, I got beaten up pretty bad."
"What happened? Tell me everything!"
In Japan, most people who experienced bullying would go to great lengths to hide it, even from themselves.
The fact that Kyousuke was talking about it so casually—like it was just another fond childhood memory—was shocking.
"Oh, it's nothing much. I wasn't very sociable as a kid, so in third grade, a few classmates ganged up on me and beat me up."
"Did you get hurt?!"
Eriri's voice was tense, whether from empathy or the memory of her childhood friend, Taki Tomoya, getting hurt in a similar way.
"Nah. In fact, I made them cry instead."
"Huh?! Then how is that bullying? Sounds like you were the one bullying them!"
Seriously, how could someone this strong ever be a victim?
"Not so fast. After that, they brought back over ten guys and beat me to a pulp."
"Wait, what?! Ten against one?! That's not bullying—that's straight-up a crime!"
How was he saying this so casually?!
"Yeah, so I called the cops."
Kyousuke's tone was almost amused.
"You're kidding."
Was this guy really Japanese?
"What's the problem?"
"I mean… after getting bullied, isn't the usual reaction…" Eriri trailed off, unable to put it into words.
Some things were so ingrained as unspoken rules that even saying them out loud felt wrong.
"To suffer in silence?"
She didn't answer. Instead, she just sat back down on the sofa.
"And then what happened?"
"Well, things escalated. The three kids I made cry ended up apologizing to me before transferring schools. After that, no one dared mess with me again."
"No way… Isn't bullying supposed to get worse after you fight back?"
"Haha, how do you think 'That Kid Who Got Taken to the Police' sounds as a nickname?"
Eriri's eyes widened as realization struck her. "No way!"