“Hey, did you hear? A Dungeon appeared behind the club building. The teachers taped it off this morning to keep people out,” one classmate said.
“Really? I wonder if any famous Streamers will come,” another replied.
As I tuned out my classmates’ chatter, I glanced at the class list, which only filled me with despair.
“Same class again this year,” Kiraboshi muttered, pushing her glasses up in disappointment.
As always, the new second-year assignments put her in the same class as the Kamase Sisters and Shirogasaki-san.
The ojou-sama aside, why were the sisters always in the same classroom?
“Am I just unlucky?” I wondered, feeling gloomy as I listlessly left the crowd and entered the new classroom.
—A piercing sense of wrongness made me stop in my tracks.
This was… like being in a Dungeon, with hostile Magical Power aiming its blade at me.
A heavy, viscous, stagnant air, mixed with malice and mockery, coldly filled the surroundings.
I casually scanned the classroom before the morning homeroom.
When a girl in the class met my gaze and quickly looked away, my premonition turned into certainty.
I remembered this.
In my second year of middle school, a classmate of mine experienced something similar and seemed to have a hard time breathing.
As Class Representative, Kiraboshi felt she should treat everyone the same, regardless of who was targeting her, so she talked to her… but the girl stopped coming to school, and Kiraboshi was ridiculed as someone who “couldn’t read the room.”
An atmosphere similar to that wrongness clung to Kiraboshi’s desk.
Like an evil spirit. As if black shadows were swaying and wriggling, murmuring and chuckling.
But Kiraboshi didn’t remember doing anything particularly wrong.
Besides, school was on spring break, and there was nothing that would have been exposed to other people’s eyes…
“Kiraboshi-san. Do you have a moment to spare?”
“Eh…? Shirogasaki-san?”
For some reason, Ojou… Shirogasaki-san was peering at me.
As always, the airheaded, oblivious unattainable beauty, Shirogasaki, was the one who suddenly announced last month that she “wanted to go to a Dungeon.”
But she herself hadn’t been involved in anything that happened afterward.
So, what did she want…?
“There are people watching here, so would you mind if we moved somewhere else?”
“U-Um… sure…?”
The place she led me to was the club building behind the school building.
The yellow tape that marked it as off-limits was probably a measure against the Dungeon that my classmates were talking about.
“…Fighting in a Dungeon might be easier,” I couldn’t help but think, as I asked,
“So, Shirogasaki-san, what did you want to talk about?”
“I understand that asking a friend this question is very rude. However, I really wanted to ask you… What were you doing during spring break, Kiraboshi-san?”
“Well, normal stuff? Studying and working part-time… My parents were against it, but I got permission by promising to study even harder.”
Kiraboshi’s parents were conservative and didn’t understand Dungeons very well.
At first, they refused to let her work for Kageichi, but she promised to study even harder than before and got their permission.
The results of her studying should be evident in the upcoming placement test.
“A part-time job, you say? At what kind of store? Who did you go with?”
“…Is there something you’re concerned about?”
“Yes. I’m sorry to be rude, but there are rumors.”
I couldn’t see her intention.
Shirogasaki was sometimes out of touch because she was a pure-blooded ojou-sama, but even so, this was too vague…
“Actually… I don’t believe it, but everyone is saying… that they saw Kiraboshi-san with an adult who was old enough to be her father.”
“Ah.” Maybe she was seen going to the Dungeon or shopping with the teacher.
I wasn’t hiding it, but…
“And, along with that, everyone is…”
Shirogasaki paused, hesitated, and then squeezed out the words.
“…That Kiraboshi-san, despite her serious face… is actually… selling herself…”
“Selling?”
Kiraboshi frowned.
Selling. Like a product. Selling?
I certainly bought weapons at a Dungeon specialty store, but that wasn’t what she meant.
—An adult old enough to be her father. Together. Walking.
…Selling?
“Hmph…!”
A surge of heat ran through Kiraboshi’s body.
Her throat burned, and she clenched her fists in anger at the thought.
“Don’t be ridiculous. This isn’t a joke. Who started that rumor?”
Certainly, there was nearly a double-digit age gap between Kageichi and Kiraboshi, though not quite enough to be father and daughter.
But to mistake her benefactor, her teacher—for a middle-aged man looking for compensated dating!
“That’s not true. He’s not that kind of person, Shirogasaki-san. The rumors you heard are a misunderstanding!”
“Then, what is your relationship with that man?”
“He’s a senior at my part-time job, and my teacher. Is there something wrong with that? I started working at a Dungeon part-time since spring break.”
“Is that really the case? I heard that Kiraboshi-san was hesitant to enter Dungeons… but suddenly, it seems like things have changed.”
The answer to that was simple.
If I didn’t become stronger, I would be taken advantage of.
Just being serious and good at studying wasn’t enough; I would be preyed upon by others.
…Because of that incident in the Dungeon. No, Kiraboshi had vaguely felt this unease even before that, and she realized that she wanted to change herself, so she asked to be his student.
—What’s wrong with that?
“Shirogasaki-san. I decided to enter Dungeons of my own free will. To become stronger.”
“So, you don’t have a special relationship with that man?”
“Shirogasaki-san, do you think that every female high school student who has a private tutor has a shady relationship with them?”
If so, she was too influenced by shoujo manga.
And I’d thought this sometimes, but she was shallow in her thinking, even if she didn’t mean any harm.
She took rumors too seriously.
…But if I explained it properly, she would understand—
However, Kiraboshi’s expectations were dashed.
“Understood. Then, to confirm the truth, I will go and greet that man directly. Is that alright with you?”
“…Huh?”
“He’s a working adult with a decent job, right? Then, it shouldn’t be difficult for him to prove his identity. What do you say?”
Shirogasaki smiled with pressure, and Kiraboshi’s thoughts became jumbled.
Eh? Why?
Was I being doubted that much…?
…There was no particular problem with introducing Kageichi.
Although he was a freelancer, he was outwardly a decent Hunter with a license.
But even to clear up suspicion, wasn’t it going too far for a mere classmate to go and greet her boss at her part-time job?
Kiraboshi didn’t want to cause Kageichi any unnecessary trouble, and besides…
What would Shirogasaki ask when she actually went to greet him?
Was she really going to ask Kageichi to his face, “Do you have an indecent relationship with Kiraboshi-san?”
“…I-I think it would be rude to the other person, so I’d rather you didn’t.”
“No. This is an important matter, Kiraboshi-san.”
“Why, to that extent?”
I didn’t get it. Why did she have to go that far?
Shirogasaki must have noticed that Kiraboshi was frowning at her incomprehensible values.
She furrowed her brow, but then said in a gentle voice, like a bird chirping, “Because…
“We’re ‘friends.’ It’s a friend’s job to stop a friend from going down the wrong path, and to correct them, right?”
—Eh.
Why did this girl think she was on the “right” side?