Chapter 12
[2 Months Ago]
“Oppa… Am I really that unattractive?”
“This is about Siwoo again?”
“Yeah, yeah. You know, he didn't even touch the lunchbox I brought. It's so mean.”
Sophia complained to me, her pretty eyes brimming with tears.
The protagonist's wall is way too high. How is someone like him supposed to build a harem?
Fortunately, the two of them had already been flirting before I had to do anything.
Things were going well up to that point, but whenever Sophia tried to take things one step further, the protagonist kept putting up that wall.
I ought to go talk to him, but whenever I brought it up, he subtly changed the subject.
“It's not that you're unattractive. Maybe your lunchbox isn't very appealing.”
“I packed the food you made in it, though!”
“What? I made it for you to eat, and you took it with you?”
“But… eating outside is better than eating at home, and, well, eating together with lots of people is better than eating alone…”
“You should've just said you wanted to eat with Siwoo. If you had, I would've prepared enough for two.”
“Ahaha…”
I'd taken it upon myself to play Cupid and was doing everything I could to bring the two of them together, but it wasn't easy.
I tried things like arranging for the three of us to spend time together, then casually slipping away,
or egging Sophia on until she asked him out, but
every time, the protagonist would make an awkward face and back off.
So recently, I even devised a strategy of forced physical contact, telling her to launch a full-frontal assault, but that didn't work on him either.
Is he really impotent?
If a beauty like Sophia latched onto me, I'd be confident I'd get hard immediately, but apparently the protagonist didn't even flinch.
Sunlit hair falling to her shoulders, eyes that held the sky. A face with the freshness of a young girl, and a voluptuous body already fully mature.
I couldn't understand how he could remain unmoved when a woman like that liked him.
Was that what it took to become the protagonist of a harem?
“What… Why are you suddenly staring at me so creepily…?”
“This is what a look of pity looks like.”
“Uwee! I don't want your pity! I want to be loved, not pitied!”
“By Siwoo, right?”
“Huh! Uuugh… Oppa… Am I really that unattractive? Hmm?”
Having realized I'd seen through her feelings, Sophia blushed, then her expression suddenly fell as she clung to me.
Here we go again.
Since the protagonist kept putting up that wall, Sophia's self-esteem had taken quite a hit.
A girl who had always received nothing but love had been rejected so often that she came down with the Maybe I'm not anything special after all…? disease.
To cure this illness, she needed the protagonist's love, but she couldn't get that right away, so I was giving her love as a second-best option.
Not love as a man. Love as an older brother.
I was stroking her head with Erogenous Stimulation turned on, but I meant it.
In the first place, I had no intention of pursuing the main heroine this time.
If I didn't stroke her like this, Sophia would become genuinely depressed and spend all day looking miserable.
This was just a big brother's consideration; I couldn't stand seeing her like that.
“Today, too, I told him he looked cool while he was training, and he got all serious and wouldn't even look at me, saying I still had a long way to go…”
Pat, pat
“Oh, I see. That guy didn't even look at Sophie.”
“I brought him a lunchbox, but he said he'd already packed one himself… And when I asked him to eat with me, he said no… Does he hate me?”
Pat, pat
“I see. Siwoo hates Sophie.”
“W-what? Does Siwoo really hate me?”
Oh, crap. That wasn't what I meant.
I had made that mistake by reflexively repeating the end of her sentence.
“Listen carefully, Sophie.”
“Mmm…”
“Men are supposed to tease the girls they like. The more they like them, the more they pick on them.”
“…Is that so?”
“Yeah. Siwoo's a pervert who pretends to hate you because he enjoys watching you get sad.”
“Siwoo isn't that kind of pervert!”
-Thud
Sophia drove her head into my solar plexus—the very head I'd been patting—just because I'd made one joke.
I let out an oof, but when I saw Sophia leaning against my chest, all thoughts of getting angry vanished.
She must have really been anxious this time.
I hugged Sophia, who was trembling in my arms.
Since this was a rural village, people generally married young, and talk had started about Sophia needing to think about marriage soon as well.
That seemed to have made her more anxious lately.
I suppose I really should have a talk with Siwoo.
“Sophie, as you know, Siwoo's shy. He must have been shy this time too.”
“…Really?”
“Knowing Siwoo, maybe he was embarrassed by the smell of sweat or by the lunchbox side dishes or something. It's foolish to worry about such a dense guy.”
“Hmmm…”
“Come to think of it, Siwoo told me himself last time. He said he deliberately put on a stern face because he couldn't help smiling whenever Sophie was beside him.”
“Really? Siwoo really said that?!”
“I'm telling you! So there's no way Siwoo hates you. Got it?”
“Hmph…! Of course Siwoo couldn't hate me!”
Sophia wiped away her teary eyes as if she'd never been depressed and put on her usual confident smile.
Finding it cute, I stroked her head again, and Sophia closed her eyes, basking in my touch.
“Hehehe… Talking things over with you always makes all my worries disappear.”
“Then will you do the dishes today, Sophie?”
“Hmph! Those are two separate things!”
Startled, Sophia jumped away from me, then ran off with a playful expression.
She's such a cute little sister.
Since I'd grown up an only child, I'd always wished I had an older or younger sister,
but whenever I brought it up, my friends looked at me as if I were crazy.
They always said that if I actually had one, I'd never say anything like that.
But now I understand. Those guys were all lying. What a bunch of deceivers.
Anyway, I'd grown much closer to Sophia recently while counseling her about romance.
Sophia had been prickly when we'd first met, but now we were close enough for her to readily let herself be held in my arms.
But that didn't mean I planned to cross the line with Sophia.
Sophia clung to me because she saw me as family, and I likewise thought of her as a younger sister rather than a woman.
That was actually a lie, but regardless, I was trying my best to think of her as a younger sister, so I had no intention of laying a hand on Sophia.
If only she weren't the main heroine…
====
When I walked to the vacant lot behind the village, I saw the protagonist training hard.
For some reason, the protagonist was Siwoo again, and his face was hardly different from the Siwoo I saw every time.
In other words, he was handsome again—just a little taller and more muscular.
Since he was a hero this time, Siwoo was strong even before awakening.
He was naturally strong and had excellent vision for tracking movement, so I'd never seen him get hit in a fight around the village.
Even so, Siwoo never stopped training.
He was an absurd training addict, practicing without taking a single break even when Sophia came looking for him several times, acting cute and asking him to play.
Well, there was nothing wrong with liking training. He was the protagonist of a classic hero story, after all.
But this guy took it too far.
He was swinging a sword, and someone was cheering beside him? From his perspective, that had to be noise pollution.
She brought him a separate lunchbox? Of course he wouldn't touch another lunchbox when he was the kind of guy who ate a training diet.
Ask him out on a date? Would a training addict like him agree when it meant losing training time?
But I was sick of watching this, too. If I was going to play matchmaker, he should at least play along.
It made my blood boil to see that they obviously liked each other while he stubbornly kept putting up that wall.
I ought to kick him in the back, then ask him whether he liked training or Sophia more.
“Oh, Deokbae hyung! What brings you here?”
Without answering, I picked up a wooden sword lying nearby and charged at the hero.
I drew imaginary inner energy from a dantian that didn't even exist, then raised the wooden sword and brought it down toward the hero's head as if pressing down on and crushing Mount Tai.
-Whack
Tsk, so he really was a hero after all.
My wooden sword was blocked by the hero's sword and knocked aside, and the palm gripping my wooden sword tingled.
But I couldn't back down here.
Using the recoil, I spun once and swung the wooden sword at the hero's side, as if sweeping away a thousand troops.
-Thud
Damn it, I didn't expect him to block even that.
But it hadn't been completely ineffective. The hero must have tensed up, because he kept his sword raised and watched me warily.
This was my final chance!
Before the stiffened hero could react, I thrust the wooden sword in at incredible speed, as though a dragon were taking flight.
This time, perhaps the hero failed to react, because my wooden sword slipped past his blade and struck him between the brows.
No, that was just an illusion.
My wooden sword had stopped right in front of the hero's forehead.
The hero had caught my wooden sword with his bare hand; it had only looked as though it went through.
So I lost in the end…
The Three Talents Sword Technique, which I'd practiced for more than ten years solely in my mind, had been stopped with ease.
As expected, a hero was a hero.
“What was that all of a sudden?”
“You little punk, you made Sophie cry again, didn't you? I told you to show some restraint.”
“Hahaha…”
“Don't laugh, you brat. I might get attached.”
“But you really need to train, hyung. Your form is good, but you aren't putting any power into it.”
Training-addicted bastard… He saw his opening and brought up training.
It wasn't as if I had been sitting around doing nothing.
I would need at least a minimum set of stats to join the hero's party, so after entering this world, I'd trained without taking a break.
But something had to change if I was going to keep it up.
Even after taking the experience potion from a Random Box and training, my stats hadn't changed.
“Enough, you punk. How long are you going to treat Sophie like that? What, once you've caught a fish, you don't care about it anymore? Or is Sophie just not good enough for you?”
“Of course not! That's not it. It's just…”
“Just what?”
“I'm sorry… Haha.”
“You little shit.”
There are two ways to make someone angry: one is to stop in the middle of a sentence,
and the other is…