Became a Traitor in an Academy

Unintended

The next day, Min-ho was looking at me with somewhat gentler eyes than before.

Though still wary, his gaze changed from looking at a tiger to looking at a fierce stray cat.

…Perhaps I got through to him a little?

Actually, I’m not sure how much of my lies worked.

Yes. They were all lies.

The senses, the childhood helper, all of it.

I just made them up on the spot.

So they were somewhat rough around the edges.

There’s no way the protagonist wouldn’t see through such sloppy lies.

He probably figured it all out. But he didn’t probe further, perhaps because he found out what he wanted to know.

…Sigh, it’s not easy. As expected of the protagonist.

Though I couldn’t be certain what answer he wanted, I had a vague idea.

He was probably trying to ask if I was a possessor like him.

Min-ho was quick-witted.

He probably reasonably suspected after seeing things he knew keep getting twisted one by one because of me.

More than that, I didn’t know he had been watching me too. But apparently he was.

I knew this body caught attention.

But to think it would even draw the protagonist’s gaze.

How has this rack never been helpful even once? I disliked my body even more.

…However, just yesterday I was truly grateful for possessing this body.

If I had been a normal human, I would have been 100 times more anxious trying to come up with plausible answers.

Never thought I’d benefit from being a beast-person.

Though I still faced beast-person discrimination as naturally as breathing afterward.

Right. Though I have cat ears on my head and a tail on my behind.

But that doesn’t mean I’m actually a cat.

Caffeine is fine to consume.

Just that its effects appear somewhat more dramatically than in other humans, so I don’t drink it often.

To give you an idea of how much, I couldn’t properly sleep yesterday just from that one cup.

Though I usually sleep late anyway, I barely managed to close my eyes at 4 AM.

So I’m dying of fatigue right now.

It was getting close to lunch time and sunlight was coming in through the window, so I kept dozing off and waking up repeatedly.

I want to sleep properly but Lapis keeps waking me up so I can’t.

Lapis seemed quite busy taking notes and poking my tail with her tail to wake me up.

It’s touchingly grateful that she’s taking care of me thinking I’m a real friend when I’m just pretending, but couldn’t she just let me sleep?

That’s what I wanted to say.

“B-Blanca, hang in there a bit more… i-it’s almost lunch time. You can sleep plenty then…! The teacher’s been staring at you for a while…!”

“I… see. Yaaawn…”

From now on, I should drink white chocolate or just hot chocolate instead of trying to look cool drinking coffee at cafes.

Come to think of it, since I’m a high school girl, no one would say anything if I indulged in sweet things, right?

Yeah, that’s what I’ll do.

I should enjoy the privileges of being a high school girl. Though I never wanted this body, shouldn’t one live with what they’re given?

Being tired, the lesson content just wouldn’t enter my head.

If you ask whether it’s different when I’m not tired, not particularly.

But there’s quite a difference between a few words remaining in my head and things not even sounding like human speech.

Good thing there’s no attitude score. No, is there one? Was there?

Who cares if I lose a few points. It’s not like you get expelled for that much.

While half-dreaming through class carelessly, I suddenly found myself sitting in the student cafeteria.

“Blanca. What time did you sleep yesterday…?”

When did I get here? I was definitely in the classroom just now. Strange. Did the protagonist teleport me? No. That’s in the later part.

“Blanca…? Blanca!”

Only when Yeonhwa called my name did I barely come to my senses.

“Huh? Oh. 4 AM. Yaaawn… haah… sorry, I’m just tired. This pork cutlet bowl is delicious…”

“My goodness, what were you doing up until such a late hour?!”

“Just had some coffee… So, what were we talking about…?”

We were definitely talking about something, but I couldn’t hear any of it because I was dozing.

True to her golden retriever-like personality, Yeonhwa smiled again and said we were planning where to go play after school.

“But… you look so tired. Maybe we should go another day. Ugh. I wanted to go to celebrate safely getting through the first week.”

“No, no. I can just sleep during training time while being discreet. That… board game cafe, was it? We’re going there?”

“Hey, you were listening well! Yeah, we’re planning to go to the board game cafe!”

Excited Yeonhwa went on to talk about how it might help with hero activities.

She could just honestly say she’s good at it and wants to try it with friends, no one would say anything.

Looking at her talk about strategy in actual situations and such, you’d almost think she was serious.

“Okay, okay. You don’t need to say all that, I’ll go with you, so that’s enough.”

I said that while forcefully holding back yawns that kept coming.

Usually even good things start to look bad if you talk them up that much.

“C-can I come too…?”

“Of course, Lapis! Four-player board games would be fun too?!”

Lapis coming too, huh. Might be okay.

Well, experience points decrease the more party members there are.

With Lapis joining, I might be able to slaughter them before Jin-hyeon or Yeonhwa can do anything.

If you ask what that means, it was quite simple.

On the way to enjoy board games, the game protagonists’ group gets attacked by a villain organization.

Suicide hopefuls, suicides. Whatever you call them, by such guys.

True to their name, they were a group not in the original work, full of crazy attention seekers with no interest in living who just wanted to make their names known to the world.

There’s no way these guys could actually enjoy board games without anything happening, right?

However, Yeonhwa seemed completely unaware of such a future and was still happily continuing her conversation.

Though it was definitely about board games until just now, somehow it had changed to talk about clubs.

“What? Same club as Blanca?!”

“Yeah. She asked if I wanted to join the same club as her since I had nowhere else to go, so I followed.”

“What kind of club is it?!”

“Ability Research Club. They say it’s a club that analyzes abilities and explores new possibilities… I’m not really sure what they do yet either.”

Jin-hyeon was telling Yeonhwa about what happened at the club, and Yeonhwa was nodding saying “oh there’s a club like that.”

“That’s unusual… doing nothing on the first day.”

“What did you guys do on the first day?”

“Yeah. We showed our abilities, and based on that they matched us with suitable seniors.”

“M-me too… same as Yeonhwa…”

Lapis looked at me rather than Yeonhwa with eyes full of expectation.

…Uh, good job?

Even while doing it I wondered if this was right, but when I patted her head Lapis seemed happy.

Like a pet, really.

It seriously made me want to raise one.

“He, hehe…”

…But that would be difficult since there are too many problems.

By the way, she really doesn’t realize she’s being treated like a pet.

Hmm, even I feel a bit guilty about this. I should treat her a bit better from now on.

Blanca was, as she declared.

Sleeping during training time.

I couldn’t decide whether I should wake her up or not.

You shouldn’t mess around during class time. But at the same time, you shouldn’t disturb someone who’s sleepy.

So I really didn’t know what to do.

The homeroom teacher was also just watching her sleep instead of condemning her behavior and waking her up, and other class students just glanced at her without interfering.

What’s the right thing to do in this situation?

…What would my idol have done at a time like this?

“Jin-hyeon. What are you doing in front of Blanca?”

“Ah. Well… I’m not sure whether to wake Blanca up or not.”

When I said that, Yeonhwa gave a bitter smile as if she expected this, and told me:

“Maybe it’s better not to wake her? You saw at lunch time how tired she looked. Though sleeping during class isn’t ideal, waking her doesn’t seem right either.”

Yeonhwa made the judgment for me. However, I wasn’t satisfied.

“…Um, Jin-hyeon. I think it’s okay for you to start making judgments on your own. The situation is different from back then, right?”

Yeonhwa looked at me pitifully. However, I still couldn’t.

Because I was afraid.

“…Hey, if you’re going to chat, go somewhere else. And you, you’re blocking the sunlight. Plus, you can’t even decide something this simple on your own. Really. Is that thing on your shoulders just decoration?”

At that moment, Blanca suddenly got up and moved seats while giving me harsh words.

“Blanca, that’s… Jin-hyeon has his circumstances…!”

Yeonhwa seemed a bit surprised by Blanca’s behavior and tried to defend me.

“That might be true. But will the families of victims who weren’t saved because of hesitating to make decisions care about those circumstances? I don’t think so.”

However, Blanca just shot back venomously with a voice full of irritation.

And that one line of hers stuck in my mind.

“…Sorry. I guess I lost it for a moment because I’m tired.”

Blanca seemed to realize her words were a bit harsh and immediately apologized before leaving.

“Jin-hyeon… don’t worry too much about it. Blanca would think differently if she knew your circumstances….”

“…No, she’s not wrong. Back then, if that person had hesitated, I wouldn’t be here.”

Though Yeonhwa tried to comfort me, Blanca’s words resonated more deeply with me.

I couldn’t stay bound by past wounds forever.