Chapter 8
“Senior! Senior-!”
The sound of someone knocking on the door.
His consciousness gradually returned. Vita slowly lifted his eyelids in a daze.
‘…Who is it?’
The question crossed his mind, and he rolled around on the bed a few times—
“Gasp-!”
He suddenly came fully awake upon realizing his situation.
He was in none other than a woman's body. And on top of that, all through last night…
When he sat up, he saw his naked body right below eye level, and Vita's face turned red.
“…Ah, no.”
How engrossed had he been to fall asleep as though he'd passed out without even putting on his underwear?
When he checked the clock, it was already nearing noon.
‘Who is it? On a weekend?’
After pondering for a moment, Vita looked for his Magiphone first.
A Magiphone was, simply put, an extremely convenient means of communication. With one, you could contact someone regardless of the time or place.
[2 missed notifications.]
- Senior, it's Rue. How did the duel go?
- Nothing happened, right? I heard a strange rumor.
He had the situation figured out.
The person outside was surely Rue Millionaire, his close junior. There could be no doubt about it.
Rue was Vita's junior by one semester and belonged to Libra Dormitory.
It was a dormitory for eccentric students whose slogan was intelligence and inquiry, and that junior was, in fact, quite an unusual fellow himself.
Recalling that fact, Vita pulled on some clothes and began cracking his knuckles.
‘You came at just the right time.’
After all, Rue was the very person who had introduced him to ‘that medicine.’
Of course, if he looked at it objectively, Rue had merely been doing him a good turn and hadn't done anything wrong. Still, he couldn't help finding him irritating for no particular reason.
[I'll let you in, so come inside.]
Vita wrote a reply and immediately opened the door.
“Coming in, Senior?”
Rue came in soon afterward.
Look around- Look around-
He was a guy who looked unnecessarily cute for a man.
Light pink curly hair and large green eyes. He was barely any shorter than Vita, even after Vita had turned into a woman.
“Whoa- Uh…!”
Vita pounced on the back of Rue's head like a cat.
You can take a beating first.
Even though his body had changed into a woman's, Vita was still naturally nimble, since he had exercised from a very young age.
“Wh-who are you?!”
Rue, a male student from Libra Dormitory, was genuinely flustered.
“If you don't know, then die.”
“Eek, what?!”
He had definitely come to Senior Vita's room, so why was there a mysterious beautiful girl here?
“No, who are you?!”
He was practically losing his mind.
Even though he was being put in an armbar, it didn't really hurt.
Somehow, though, instead—
For an instant, he sensed the softness of a girl's skin and her scent. For Rue, who had no resistance to such things, it was far too intense a stimulus.
“Does it hurt, huh?!”
No matter how he looked at it, wasn't this the lucky-pervert trope he'd only heard about?
As Vita put him in a hold, the top had ridden up slightly, revealing white skin. Rue's green eyes were filled with utter bewilderment. What a completely defenseless, natural display this was!
That was why his face soon turned as red as a tomato, and Rue shouted.
“I-it hurts!”
“Why are you such a baby?”
Vita released his arm.
Still, he could tell this guy the truth. Rue was his closest friend, and he was also directly involved in this whole incident.
“It's me, Vita.”
When Vita told him the truth, Rue's expression went blank.
“Huh, whaa…?”
“I'm your senior Vita.”
Rue frowned.
“…Don't lie to me.”
Short pink curls and gentle green eyes.
At a glance, Rue looked cute, but his personality was a little unusual.
Perhaps he hadn't been assigned to Libra Dormitory for no reason. Even with his face flushed bright red, he still said everything he wanted to say.
“There's no way a beautiful girl like you could be my otaku loner senior…!”
Smack-
He really was just asking to get hit.
***
“What, a loner?”
“Yes… I'm sorry.”
Rue was kneeling after receiving a knuckle on the forehead.
“What do you mean, loner? Call me an honor student.”
It was something Vita's lofty pride could never tolerate.
Sure, his social circle wasn't particularly broad, and was, in fact, surprisingly tiny.
But words mattered.
He had merely been busy studying, and he hadn't wanted to go out of his way to expand pointless relationships.
“You know, so-called friends. There are people who call themselves friends but are meaningless, and there are people who aren't like that.”
Because there were relationships in which the two people could genuinely support each other.
There was a difference between knowing dozens of friends in the shallow sense and having even one truly sincere friend.
“You're the latter, Senior?”
Vita nodded, rather proudly.
“That's right. It's a bond between men.”
That truly was how he thought. He probably didn't realize that he'd built walls around himself because of that very mindset.
After listening to this long-winded rationalization for why he had no friends, Rue bobbed his head.
That groundless confidence, that innate ego.
“What you just said is really…”
Just like Senior Vita.
Vita merely sighed as he looked at Rue.
Of course it was hard to believe.
A senior he'd been close to had suddenly become a woman. It would naturally cause cognitive dissonance. Vita could understand that much.
“You don't get it, Rue?”
Then he supposed he had to prove it.
“I ended up like this because of that damn weird potion you introduced me to.”
“Th-that… uh.”
An awkward silence soon settled between them.
No one else knew about the potion, after all—just the two of them.
“No way, really…?”
Remembering that fact, Rue's expression changed.
Now that he looked again, the hair and eye color matched the senior he remembered.
“Could you be… Senior Vita's younger sister?”
“You know I'm the youngest of four brothers, right?”
“What's the anime Senior likes?”
Rue caught him off guard. Vita answered the out-of-nowhere question immediately.
“Magical Girl Eve Rosalyn.”
“What is your favorite scene?”
“The scene where the protagonist awakens before the villain Jackal. I told you about it before.”
“Why do you like that part?”
“Because it's the scene where the protagonist who never gave up is rewarded.”
Rue continued asking questions with a tense expression.
After perfectly answering more than a dozen questions in a row, Vita drove the final nail home.
“Will you believe me if I say this, too? We went to the cosplay festival together last time. We even took a picture with Lara, the cosplayer.”
He even knew the cosplayer's name. Rue's otaku instincts told him what that meant.
This was definitely someone of the same kind.
Their shared memories, and the way he spoke and behaved just as the senior he had always known did—
After groaning for a long while, Rue finally accepted it.
“Really… Senior Vita?”
His close senior had suddenly turned into a woman?
***
Rue and Vita were close.
For one thing, they were both otaku. They had first met by chance at a cosplay festival.
Birds of a feather flock together? Or was it sympathy between people who shared the same troubles?
They had even bonded over being short for men and feeling self-conscious about their cute looks, so they had grown quite close.
That was why Rue had thought the recent rumor was definitely strange.
At least, that was what Rue thought.
-Hey, did you hear? Vita Shamal ran away.
-Apparently some girl came out in his place?
Well, of course.
Who did they think Vita Shamal was? This embodiment of competitiveness would never run away.
“So that… was Senior.”
“That's right, it's me.”
The atmosphere grew rather solemn.
Rue knew better than anyone how much Vita pursued masculinity and how competitive he was. Maybe he had caused his senior trouble after all.
“…I'm sorry, Senior.”
Normally, Rue knew how to distinguish between his usual cheeky attitude and moments when he needed to apologize sincerely. This was certainly one of those times.
From Vita's perspective, a tiny pink fluffball was lying flat on the floor. The guy was pointlessly cute for a boy, and Vita's heart softened despite himself.
After sighing for a moment, Vita spoke.
“No, Rue. Thinking about it, it isn't really your fault. Who could I blame?”
It was all his own fault. He had tried to cheat in a sacred contest and had merely been punished for it. It was the price of his own shame.
“So get up.”
But Rue didn't seem to move at all. He kept his forehead pressed to the floor.
“Hey, what are you doing?”
“Pfft-!”
A moment later, when Vita saw Rue's pupils shaking in utter confusion, his own face turned red. Only then did he realize what had happened.
‘No, surely not…’
While hurriedly getting dressed earlier, he had shoved the underwear he'd left scattered under the bed. And the spot where Rue had planted his head and was looking was…
“S-Senior… I didn't mean to!”
“Just die already-!”
Another bump appeared on Rue's round crown.
One from the first hit, and one from just now.
Just as Vita paused, wondering if he had hit Rue for no reason, Rue frowned and said something out of nowhere.
“Sniff sniff… Senior…?”
“What, again?”
“Um, somehow… there's a strange smell in the room…”
Vita had a pretty good idea what the smell was. He flinched and shrieked.
“Seriously, you! Who says a woman's room smells?! That's bad manners.”
“But if it smells, what am I supposed to do?”
Honestly, did everyone in Libra lack empathy? They had no sensitivity at all.
“Haa… Rue. That's why you still don't have a girlfriend.”
Feeling a little guilty, Vita overreacted.
If he'd known this guy was coming, he would have aired out the room first.
Rue had been silent, but now he stuck out his lower lip and made a timid rebuttal.
“…You don't have a girlfriend either, Senior.”
Vita Shamal was a hopeless novice when it came to women, too. Since they were close, Rue knew well that Vita was awkward in his dealings with them.
“…Seriously, though.”
“Or you could be my girlfriend now, Senior.”
“Are you insane?!”
“Joking, joking.”
Before another bump could appear, Rue changed the subject.
“Anyway, Senior. What are you going to do now? Does everyone know?”
“Of course my family knows.”
He had no intention of telling his other friends.
“Aside from the two or three people I see as often as you, could I even tell anyone?”
“Definitely. That might be true.”
Vita sighed and then shook his head.
“What can I do? I'll live like this for now, then turn back into a man.”
Fidget- Fidget-
He's hesitating again. He must be preparing to say something ridiculous instead of sympathizing with me…
“But, Senior. It might not be so bad to live as a pretty girl for once while you have the chance…”
“Are you treating me like a woman now?”
Smack-
Another bump appeared on Rue's head.
Yet even as he rubbed his head, Rue thought to himself.
‘This potion really is terrifying.’
Earlier, he'd received a knuckle to the forehead for saying that a woman's room smelled, and now he'd received another for treating Vita like a woman.
‘…Changing your mind already. You're scary, Senior.’
Apparently, his senior really had become a woman. Vita had no idea what Rue was thinking, however.
***
After Rue left again, Vita calmed himself down.
-So, Senior. What happened with the duel?
Now that Rue knew the woman in the rumor was actually Vita, he asked about it, and Vita gave him a vague answer.
He told him it had been a draw.
There was no evidence at all, so it wasn't exactly wrong, was it?
Yes, exactly.
This wasn't just self-delusion.
But Rue kept pestering him about what event they had competed in and how it had ended in a draw.
Vita's face turned red, and he forcibly sent Rue out. What useless questions he asked.
“Haa—”
Lately, he had been sighing more and more often.
He had revealed the truth to Rue because of an unexpected situation, but Rue was the person he was closest to. If he had to name one best friend he'd made at the academy, it would definitely be him.
‘…Well, it'll probably be fine.’
Unlike his appearance suggested, Rue was good at keeping secrets. Vita was sure of it.
Vita lay on the bed and thought about this and that. Memories from the past two days kept resurfacing.
‘Forget it. Forget it.’
It was only that he had briefly lost his mind to biological urges, Vita repeatedly rationalized to himself.
A thought suddenly occurred to Vita, and he opened the window. He should air out the room a little, too.
Feeling the cool autumn breeze against his bare face, he composed himself again.
‘Until I turn back into a man…!’
From now on, he would never again be swayed by his urges.
Vita firmly vowed that it would never happen again.
Only then did a worry suddenly occur to him—
“Ah… right.”
It was something he had forgotten, but a glance at the calendar confirmed that tomorrow was the first day of the new term.
The fact that he had unconsciously forgotten it meant that his life had grown so lax lately.
Vita reflected on this anew. At the same time, he felt overwhelmed.
He had gotten somewhat used to using the bathroom, but that didn't mean he was accustomed to a woman's way of life. Even when he met Rue earlier, he had worn his men's clothes.
What was he supposed to do from now on? Really live as a woman?
What about the dormitory?
“Ugh…”
There were so many problems piled on top of one another that he couldn't find an answer at all.
And if—
‘What if I can't turn back…?’
If he had to keep living as a woman from now on—
His vision went dark. He didn't want that.
Just as Vita clutched his head amid all his worries—
-Ah, ah…
A broadcast suddenly came over the speakers.
-Student Bianca Shamal, please come to the faculty office upon hearing this broadcast.
It was a summons from the faculty office.
***
Meanwhile, on the academy athletic field.
Under the cool autumn sky, shirtless male students were sweating.
Two-Bound was a game in which a player had to shoot immediately after dribbling the ball twice, making both fast tempo and individual skill important.
“Hey, block him-!”
Everyone's eyes on the court were now fixed on Carlisle.
His two golden eyes flashed beneath sweat-dampened black hair, whose carelessly tousled strands fluttered slightly in the wind.
Like a beast out on the hunt.
Using lightning speed and superior physicality, he passed two players in an instant, feinted, and slipped past the last one.
And then, he shot—
“Ah, damn it.”
“How are you supposed to beat that?”
“Tch, as expected.”
Of course, the shot went in.
Amid the various reactions—
After high-fiving a teammate, Carlisle was drinking water shirtless when someone approached him and spoke.
“Hey, Carlisle-! They were calling you from the faculty office.”
Carlisle had just swept back his sweaty bangs when he suddenly paused at those words.
There was still a game left, but he had a good idea why he was being called.
He had heard a certain name in the academy broadcast earlier.
‘Bianca is in the faculty office right now…?’
That must be it.
The decision was easy.
When Carlisle set down his water bottle and hurriedly put on his clothes, surprised looks followed him.
“What, you're leaving?”
“Yeah, good work.”
In short, Carlisle did things his own way.
Even if he had been summoned to the faculty office, the Carlisle Schultz of the past might not have gone. But this time was different.
Well, actually—
He had a pretty good idea why he'd been summoned.
As Carlisle headed off, he was smiling before he even realized it.