Prologue

“Rekka Namidare, you need to marry me.”

“......Huh?”

What the hell was she talking about? I stared blankly at this girl who was standing in front of my house with her arms crossed.

Her features were chiseled and she had the muscular build of a boy, but a pair of firm breasts were pushing up against her black shirt and leather jacket. Both her jacket and her cargo pants were covered in pockets of various sizes. Each one of them was stuffed with something. She even had a pouch at her waist, too. She was really heavily equipped.

I’d thought she might be a soldier, but she had a different air about her than R. She was more like... a warrior, kinda? So why was this cool warrior girl asking me to marry her all of a sudden? Even going so far as to wait in front of my house in the evening... It didn’t make any sense.

“Hmph. Didn’t you hear me, Rekka Namidare?” She pointed at me with her right hand, which was clasped in a fingerless glove. “Marry me.”

“Um... Listen, okay?” I wasn’t sure how to react to hearing this out of the blue.

“It’s perfect. Marry her, Rekka. That would complete my mission and make my life a lot easier.”

Yeah, R, could you shut up for a bit? Actually, forever would be good.

I just had to ignore the blue-haired girl from the future as usual. What was going on here, anyway?

“Hey, do I know you from somewhere?”

“No, today is the first time we’ve met.”

I was hoping that maybe there was some connection between us I was missing, but no luck. And there was no way I could get a girl I’d never met before to fall in love with me... I didn’t even know if I could get a girl I had met before to do that.

Well, putting the sad truth aside...

“Then why do you want to marry me?”

“To change fate.”

“Fate...?” All right, a new embarrassing milestone in the conversation. “Isn’t this the part where you tell me that you and I were connected by fate in a past life?”

“What are you talking about? Are you stupid?”

“No, I mean... You’re telling me that you like me, right?”

Though, honestly, if she had started talking about past lives, it would have been too much even for me. But then what was she trying to say?

“You don’t understand what I’m saying?”

“Yeah, no. Not in the slightest.” I shook my head and shrugged.

She sighed, as if in resignation. “I’m telling you to be the hero of my story.”

Why hadn’t she just said so in the first place?! But, wait... That made even less sense than telling me to marry her.

“The hero of your story?”

The weird way she said it piqued my interest. Being the hero of a girl’s story... That sounded like my lineage was involved. It sounded as if she knew about the bloodline of the Namidare.

“R,” I whispered to the girl from the future floating in the air next to me.

“Yeah, looks like she’s a heroine.” R knew exactly what I was getting at, and answered my question before I could even ask.

So this weird girl was a heroine.

“...”

In this world, there were plenty of stories that were heading for bad endings. Maybe the hero had been lost, or maybe they’d never even existed in the first place. That’s where the Namidare bloodline came in, meaning I had a tendency to get caught up in this kind of thing.

It wasn’t new to me. I’d resolved several stories already, but they were all products of coincidence where I’d run into the heroines by chance. This was the first time someone who knew about the bloodline of the Namidare had come to me. Was that a good thing, or a bad thing?

And was the bloodline of the Namidare really something that other people knew about? Dad had sort of left that part out.

Cussing him out in my head for being so lazy, I decided to ask her directly. “Who are you?”

“My name is Hibiki. I’m the eldest daughter of the Banjo family. We’re one of the Namidares’ branch families.” The girl—Hibiki Banjo—narrowed her eyes as she spoke in a calm and proud voice. “Just like you carry the Namidare bloodline, I carry the Banjo bloodline.”

“The Banjo bloodline?”

I didn’t even know we had branch families... And what was this “Banjo bloodline” supposed to be?

“I’ve come to end this cursed blood.”

She clenched her gloved hand into a fist, squeezing so tightly that her fingers began to turn pale. There must’ve been quite a story behind this... Even I could tell that much.

“So marry me, Rekka Namidare.”

But I still wasn’t sure where that part came in.

“Well, for now...” Sweating coldly, I gestured toward my house. “Want to come inside? It’s probably best if we calm down before we talk more.”

“...Yeah.” Hibiki relaxed her grip and gave a slight nod, but she was glaring at me as if she was somehow unsatisfied.

“...Hahh.” I sighed a little. It seemed like things were going to be even more complicated than usual this time.