Prologue

Prologue

 

IDEAS LIKE GOOD AND EVIL are relative and differ based on point of view.

Ordinarily, such philosophical pretension never crossed my mind, but I was beyond exhausted. Mentally, I was wiped. Emotionally, let’s just say that my face had been devoid of all expression for hours.

What I really wanted to do was flop down on my bed and spend the rest of my meager time on Earth immersed in my favorite manga. Or maybe an anime. Playing a game wouldn’t have been bad either, so long as it was one made for a male audience, i.e., me.

Unfortunately, I—a full-time employee and functioning member of Japanese society—was playing an otome game instead, my eyes dead-fish glazed. These dating sims were made principally for women. They featured female main characters with a bevy of male love interests to pursue. The opposite of these were galge—dating sim games targeted at men.

That’s right. A man like me had no business spending his precious afternoon off on a game like this. Maybe if I genuinely liked otome games it would be a different story, but I exclusively preferred galge.

“Uggghhh, why do I have to spend my whole freaking day trying to rack up affection points with a bunch of dudes?”

The blushing man on-screen did absolutely nothing for me.

Of course, most of the characters in this game were some kind of gorgeous. A popular artist had done the character designs and sprites, and the cast was voiced by famous actors. If this were a galge and these were all female characters, I would have been crying with joy. But what was I supposed to do with this guy’s husky voice?!

I wasn’t playing this game for pleasure, so I was using a guide on my phone to clear it quickly. My eyes flitted between the game and the walkthrough as I made my selections. A cheery little sound echoed, indicating I had successfully raised my affection points with the idiot love interest I was currently pursuing. The character’s 3D model struck a pose, his cheeks flushed as he pushed his hair back.

“You’re not like all the other women,” he said. “Tell me your name.”

This man was some kind of prince, and he was oh-so-popular at the academy. The protagonist had encountered him by chance, and since she didn’t know his true identity (gasp), she was treating him just like a normal person (gasp!) in this scene.

“What a load of bull,” I couldn’t help grousing. I’d already completed my first playthrough and this encounter was old news to me. “She’s lying. We’ve been through this before. She totally knows who the prince is. I’m telling you, this protag is calculating. Conniving, even.”

But no matter how I warned him, the prince was completely oblivious to her scheming.

“Acting all happy, blushing like a fool,” I grumbled at my screen. “This guy really has no taste.”

Work had been such a nightmare lately that it was my first weekend off in ages, and here I was throwing it all away playing this excruciating game. It was already Sunday afternoon. Seriously, why?

My phone chirped with an incoming message. When I checked it, I found a message from my sister with a picture attached: I’m enjoying my time abroad with my friends!

The photo showed her and her friends having the time of their lives on some hotel beach. Her smiling face made my blood boil.

I immediately replied: I call BS! You’re making me play this game for you because you said you were too busy to do it yourself!

The otome game presently sucking out my life force actually belonged to my little sister. She was a university student living at home with our parents, while I lived by myself. She had dropped by Saturday morning. I knew something was off the second I saw her, and lo and behold, she hadn’t come for the pleasure of my company.

All smiles, she said, “I’m sure you’ve got nothing better to do… How about full clearing this game for me?”

Full clear. In other words, complete 100 percent of the content in the game. Collect all the illustrated moments, animations, and scenes, so they could be viewed later through the menu. She was asking me to play through the entire game.

What I really wanted to tell her was, Enough of your crap! Do it yourself!

My phone dinged again with my sister’s reply: What the hell? You sure you want to take that attitude with me? Maybe when I come back I won’t sort out that whole misunderstanding with Mom. Come on, I’ll buy you a souvenir, just full clear the game for me, okay? Please? (FYI, if I get back and you haven’t done it, I’m going to leave even more naughty stuff in your room) ~ Sincerely, your cute little sister.

I had to suppress the urge to chuck my phone to the ground. “Damn her!”

I wanted to refuse her request, really I did. The problem was, my sister had surreptitiously stored some of her more dubious reading material at my place, since she still lived with our parents. Namely, the kind of books hardcore nerd girl fujoshi are into. She didn’t even tell me she’d done it. When my mom came to clean my apartment and found all that racy, homoerotic content carefully tucked away, she assumed it belonged to me. I tried clearing things up with her, but the harder I defended my real taste the more it sounded like I was trying to hide the truth.

It was a nightmare. Both because of the misunderstanding with my mom and because now I knew way too much about what my little sister was into.

To make matters worse, my parents believed my sister’s lies over my protests. She was pretty, talented, and always got good grades. People often praised her for being kind and considerate. In reality, she was just really good at wearing a mask, as I learned the hard way time and time again.

If you couldn’t tell by now, my sister’s personality sucked.

She made my life hell in order to hide her hobbies, and no matter how much I might try to convince our parents otherwise, they would never take my word over hers. When my mom first called about it, worried, I almost felt like crying. I vowed then and there that I would have revenge on my sister.

I swallowed my anger and the need to throw things, and set my phone aside. I reached for the controller again and tried to focus on completing the game so I could clear my good name.

There was only one path left to me: I had to see this game through to the end. Frustrating as it was, my sister had a way with words. When she showed up Saturday morning, she not only twisted my arm into playing her game for her, she also talked me into giving her extra cash for her trip. I felt pathetic for letting myself be blackmailed.

It was clear I didn’t stand a chance of winning against her if I played fairly. I would have my revenge, though. And as I continued farming affection points in the game, I began concocting a plan.

“I’m going to make her regret pissing me off.”

My little sister had always been cunning. She knew she was cute, and she knew how to use that to her advantage—the complete opposite of me. Her only weakness was probably this hobby she’d hidden from the rest of the world.

I stewed in frustration as I kept playing. My brows furrowed. “I keep getting stuck at this same spot…”

The creator of the game had clearly poured a lot of money into making this series, hoping it would be a hit. My sister was so enthralled with the artist and voice actors that she bought the first-press limited edition of the game the second preorders went up. But the game had a slight problem: there were roleplaying and strategy elements. The developers had only made games targeting men in the past, so this one was (unsurprisingly) missing the mark a little for their new, largely female audience.

The setting for the game was a whimsical fantasy world with swordplay and magic. Characters lived on chunks of land that floated in the air. You might think the civilization wasn’t very advanced given the existence of royalty, but actually, people flew around in airships, and knights fought in mobile suits called “Armor.”

The protagonist was attending the nobles’ academy, although she was just a commoner. She was a plain girl from the countryside who’d received a scholarship. High-ranking noblewomen bullied her for her special status, and she had to contend with various other challenges as well.

And of course, the world in this otome game showed incredible favoritism toward women.

My little sister initially intended to clear the game herself but gave up when she couldn’t best the strategy elements that originated in other game genres. Thus, I was suffering in her place.

“You’re always playing these kinds of games,” she’d said. “It should be a piece of cake for you.”

True, I did enjoy video games, but even I found myself annoyed with the difficulty here.

“Who would even want these kinds of elements in an otome game anyway?” I grumbled as I worked the controller.

Airships were lined up on the screen, shaped like rugby balls, standing across from one another on the hexagonal grid of a battlefield. Each side would fire cannons at the other in a turn-based system, and then the knights, in their mobile suits, would fly in and charge the enemy.

“Shit! Why the hell does the enemy use its skill right then?! Makes it insanely hard to win.” I glared at the screen. “They should have made it so players can speed through this stupid stuff.”

My allies suffered enormous damage even when they attacked, due to the enemy’s special abilities. Then, when it was the enemy’s turn to go on the offensive, my units lacked sufficient defense. I got wiped out every time. Even if my units had superior skills, a lot of random elements (hit chance, crit chance, etc.) still made winning difficult. I could make all the right moves, account for the best field positioning and terrain, and those pure RNG elements would still take me out.

No wonder my sister threw in the towel.

“Ah, crap,” I groaned. One of the conditions for winning this map was to keep the prince alive, and the airship he was in had just gone down. The words Game Over popped up on the screen.

“Seriously, again?! How the hell can I lose when I’m following the walkthrough?”

I really wanted to tell my sister to give up on completing this. I wanted to tell her to download someone else’s full-comp save files from the internet. But…the game had a certain feature where the characters would actually say aloud whatever you’d named the protagonist. My sister had used her own name—something about wanting to hear those famous voice actors whispering as if to her. Ergo, downloading someone else’s data wasn’t going to get her what she wanted. I had no choice.

“I’m so sick of this! The prince keeps dying!” A thought occurred to me. “Is that what the developers want? Are they trying to coerce me into microtransactions, is that it? You want my money that bad?!”

For an offline game, this one had a wide selection of extra paid content. Players could purchase special items to make the battles easier to get through. I wasn’t sure if it was to placate complaints that the game was impossible to beat or if the developers were just being calculating.

I didn’t want to spend more money than I already had for my stupid sister, but there was no denying that the strategy elements were sucking up all my time. Everything else was the same as any galge. As long as I followed the guide and got all the right answers, I’d have no problems clearing it.

I took a break from playing to look at the paid content—which was plentiful. Most of the stuff sold for about a hundred yen a piece, but the battle items, such as the airships and mobile suits, were more like three to five hundred yen, some even as high as eight hundred.

“These extra fees are precisely what killed this company’s reputation,” I noted. It had been a heavily anticipated release, but players soon criticized the game for being unbeatable without paid items. The outrage prompted the company to lower prices in their online store within a month of its release. I still thought the items were expensive, though.

As I browsed, I noticed one of the items was a men’s swimsuit. Exasperating. “No thanks, I don’t wanna see a dude in a Speedo.”

Granted, if this were a galge, I’d probably buy every single item just to see all the girls in their swimwear.

“Guess there’s not much difference between men and women, huh?” I chuckled weakly, feeling drained.

It was personally way uncomfortable to think about female players enjoying guys waiting on them half-naked. But really, games and anime had a lot of situations like that. If it was a male character surrounded by a bunch of women, it was called a harem; if it was a female character surrounded by a bunch of men, it was a reverse harem.

“Wonder if girls feel the same way about harems as I do about reverse harems?” The fact that I was even giving such a thought serious consideration was proof I was utterly beat.

“Eh, not like it matters.” I needed to focus on finishing up this game. “Okay, so what do I need to buy to beat this thing?”

All the paid content items were powerful. There were exclusive weapons for the male characters and equipment for the protagonist. Personally, I wanted something that would serve me well in battle; cosmetics could suck it. As long as I could beat the game, I didn’t give a crap how it looked.

“Oh, how about this?”

My eyes landed on the most expensive item of the bunch: a battleship. It didn’t require resupplying and it ignored all of those annoying RNG battle elements. Most importantly, it was a super strong unit.

“Although it looks more like a spaceship than an airship,” I mused.

Its metallic exterior had a completely different aesthetic than the other airships in the game. It was enormously powerful, living up to its thousand-yen price tag. I gave the description a brief glimpse and saw it was an ancient blah blah blah… TL;DR: It was a prodigiously powerful spaceship.

“Wait, so it really is a spaceship? That has to be a typo, right?”

Had someone messed up when they wrote the item description? Frankly, it didn’t matter as long as I was able to clear the game. At this point, I’d buy whatever just to get through.

Next, I checked out the Armor for sale. Well, that’s what they were called. They didn’t look like regular armor, more like giant robots. Even so, the men who donned Armor to fight were known as knights.

Did women really enjoy watching men fight for them?

Well, can’t hurt to purchase this, too.

The black armor almost looked like an enemy unit, it was so imposing, but that didn’t bother me. Being the dark hero was badass. Come to think of it, this was actually a pretty cool design for something in an otome game. And it was going to have so much more combat utility than those stupid love interests.

Like, one was a swordsman who was amazing in duels but possessed no long-range weapons; another was a guy who thought it was weak to rely on anything but pure skill, so all of his equipment was outdated and flimsy; and a third was skilled magic user who was about a total glass cannon that would shatter the second an enemy unit so much as sneezed in his direction.

These pointless jerks had been the cause of a long, long series of Game Overs.

“Ugh. I’ve gotta do it. I’ve gotta finish this game.” I’d lost enough of my sweet, sweet weekend as it was. I broke down and purchased the spaceship and the dark Armor.

After equipping them and restarting the entire adventure sequence, I hit the ninety-percent-completion mark by that evening. I was a master of efficiency, racking up affection points and blazing through the daily events with each love interest. I sold all the gifts they gave me to the secondhand shop right away, and I did it while the dude in question was still in my party. Sure, selling a gift right in front of the guy who gave it made me a jerk too, but it was a game, so who cared?

Of course, if this were a galge, I’d totally go out of my way to make sure the girl was off my team before I got rid of her gift. Game or not, I couldn’t be a douche when it came to girls.

But this was my sister’s otome game. All that mattered was clearing all the content. Now all that was left was getting the ending where the protagonist dated the whole cast of male characters at once. This was the game’s true storyline, the canonical true ending.

I didn’t give a crap what they called it. When I finally achieved the reverse-harem ending, I felt two things: joy at being released from my servitude and hollow from how much time I’d wasted. I watched the final video play and simmered with anger…then sadness.

“That’s two whole days of my life I’ll never get back.”

I saved the data, having kept my promise to my little sister, then collapsed on my bed. When I glanced at the clock, I realized it was a little soon to be going to sleep. I had no desire to move whatsoever, but with the freedom that came from finishing the game, I realized I was hungry. I pressed a hand over my stomach. Breakfast was the last thing I’d eaten.

“And there’s nothing in my fridge.” I’d originally planned to spend the day restocking groceries, but instead I’d prioritized that stupid game. “Guess I can hit up a diner.”

I double-checked the time on my phone and noticed a message from my little sister: Today was so much fun. I’m beat! I’ll be back home in a few days, so make sure to clear the game by then. If you don’t take me seriously, you’ll be a pervert in our parents’ eyes forever! lol

“She really is a piece of work.” Making me do her grunt work while she went out of her way to emphasize how much she was enjoying herself.

Speaking of, one little thing bothered me about all that.

“How’d she get the money to go on a trip?”

The little bit of spare change she extorted out of me wouldn’t have been enough to cover the whole thing. And no way did she have any kind of part-time job. She couldn’t stay out late for work anyway, since our parents gave her a curfew. Plus, she’d whined about not wanting to work. She had too much pride to do anything illegal for cash.

Then I recalled what Mom had told me not too long ago, and a light bulb turned on in my head. “She said my sister needed money for a class to earn her license.”

My parents had assumed she meant a driver’s license and given her the funds without question. That had to be what she was using to finance her overseas adventure.

I immediately copied her texts and the pictures she’d sent me, then sat down at my laptop and sent a message to our mom, attaching the evidence.

“That idiot. This is what she gets for blackmailing me.”

What would my parents think when they saw the truth and realized she’d not only blackmailed me but used their money to go overseas without permission? She couldn’t weasel her way out of this now. I’d ripped the sheepskin off the wolf.

I grinned triumphantly…until I goddamn realized.

“Wait. So I could have exposed her from the very beginning without wasting all that time on her stupid game?! Ugh, just kill me now.”

Disgusted at myself and still hungry, I stood, reaching for my wallet. The whole business with my little sister could be put on hold until I had a chance to eat. At any rate, I didn’t need to worry about that godawful otome game anymore.

I stepped out the front door feeling strangely light, almost as if I were floating. It was the same kind of happiness you might get leaving work after a hard day.

“I think I’ll splurge a little tonight. Really treat myself.”

I made my way along an oddly empty road, streetlights flickering eerily, then started down a set of stairs. That was when the dizziness hit.

“Aw, crap.” I grabbed for a railing. “This isn’t good.”

I fell.

It was like I was a marionette, and all my strings had been cut. My strength was gone. I watched helplessly as the ground came closer, anticipating the pain of hurtling down the stairs…and all I could think of was how I’d lost my precious weekend to my sister, and now I was probably going to die.

God, I was pissed.

Right then, my vision shifted. Was my life flashing before me? But no…I’d never seen anything like this before.

A land floating over ocean. Airships soaring above me. Blue skies and white clouds. My own hand reaching out toward the sun.

“It’d be too…pathetic…to die like…this…”

And then my consciousness faded.

 

***

 

The gentle embankment was blanketed with long green grass. I could hear it rustle as it moved, smell it as I drew in a breath.

I, Leon Fou Bartfort, was sprawled out across said embankment with a hand raised up toward the sun. My heart thundered furiously in my chest, and I was covered in a cold sweat. My chest ached; I felt sick.

“Wh-what the hell was that?”

I sat up so fast I ripped blades of grass right out of the ground. The wind was strong, blowing leaves and grass all around, and then a shadow crept over me, blocking out the sun.

It was an airship. A square wooden box flying high above me. Normally, I would have viewed it with disinterest—they periodically visited our territory—but today I couldn’t contain my shock as my eyes widened in disbelief. It was like I was seeing one for the very first time.

I slapped a hand over my chest as my heart continued to pound. My breath was still coming in gasps. I stood, my eyes following the airship as it zipped across the open ocean.

Something about the ocean seemed…off.

“What the…? What is…?”

I tried to move forward but my legs tangled beneath me and sent me back to the ground. Glancing over myself, I had the odd idea that my legs and hands were strangely…small. I had no doubt this was my body, but it seemed to have…shrunk?

Some things are too much to think about. Instead, I decided to investigate what I’d noticed a moment ago. I stood and walked slowly toward the ocean with my child-sized legs, my heart humming with unease.

A fence prevented anyone from falling over the edge, but the sight from there was the same as always. I was standing on a mass of land that drifted over a salty body of water.

“That’s right,” I reminded myself. “Our island is floating.”

I wasn’t sure whether to be happy or sad once I remembered that this was “normal.” Were islands supposed to float?

Had I somehow forgotten? Was that why I felt… I didn’t know. Something had felt strange since the moment I caught myself lifting my hand up toward the sun. In that split second, it had felt like my whole life—or rather, another person’s life—had flashed before my eyes. There was nothing particularly special about it, but he had seemed happy. And it had felt too vivid, too raw for it to just be a dream. Yet I couldn’t even remember his name.

I cradled my head in my hands. The memories were still so pristine. …Except for the name.

I was only five years old, yet I knew I had experienced something far beyond my years.

I sank down onto my butt as the memories from my current life and the memories I had just recalled seemed to merge together in my head. I pressed my back against the fence and gazed up at the sky.

“What…happened to me?”

I didn’t even know who I was asking.

 

***

 

The sun was beginning to set, so I headed back to my house. I remembered disliking the place, which was why I’d run off to the embankment in the first place. Still, I wanted to return before dark. I steeled myself before walking into the entrance hall. My dad was waiting just inside the entrance, his arms crossed and his legs spread out wide beneath him.

“Idiot boy!” He smacked me over the head with his enormous fist.

Tears sprang to my eyes and I slapped my hands over my head. Behind me, the front door swung open. I looked back to see my mom walk inside behind me.

“So you’ve finally come back,” she said. “Why must you run away like this on a day when the mistress is set to return?”

My dad, Balcus, was a liege lord—a baron. When I thought of nobles, my mind summoned the image of extravagant clothing on a slender form. Or maybe someone more…rotund? But my dad was neither; he was all muscle with a bearded jawline. His clothing consisted of a simple shirt, brown trousers, and boots. He didn’t look the part at all.

My mom, his lover, was named Luce. She was a daughter of one of the knight families that owed allegiance to Bartfort House. Like my father, she wore the type of working attire you might expect of a villager, rather than the dress of a lady.

The mistress she spoke of was my father’s official wife.

“I-I’m…sorry.”

My parents eyed me, as if realizing something had changed in their son. But before they could say anything—or drag me off where I belonged—the door to the front door swung open again, and a woman wearing a dress adorned with jewels entered the manor.

The mistress, Zola Fia Bartfort.

At the sight of me, her gaze turned chilly. Her two children, Rutart (the oldest son of the house) and Merce (the oldest daughter) were close behind her. They also wore expensive outfits, unlike me. Last to follow was a tall, beautiful man in a suit. He had long, pointed ears and seemed to sneer at us.

“Honestly,” the mistress said. “Children with no proper education are little better than beasts.” With her narrowed eyes and her hair pulled back in a tight bun, she perfectly fit my archetypal image of a noblewoman.

My mom apologized, and my dad hauled me outside immediately. As he manhandled me toward the storage shed out back, his lips drew taut, but he didn’t say more until we reached it. “Think about what you’ve done,” he told me at last. “I’ll see that your food is brought by later.”

I could only nod.

Someone else was already inside the shed: the second oldest brother of the family, Nicks. He was two years my senior and wore the same kind of outfit as I did. He was reading by lantern light.

When my dad and I came inside, Nicks regarded me with exasperation. “You really are an idiot. Just bear with it a few days and they’ll be gone.” His eyes turned back to his book.

My dad pressed a hand to his head. “Nicks, help Leon study.”

Nicks gave him a perturbed look but cleared off space at the desk and carried another chair over. Once I took my seat, he warned me, “If you doze off, I’ll smack you.”

My dad waited until I nodded in agreement, then he left.

Once it was just the two of us, Nicks sat across from me, picked out a book he thought I could read, and passed it over. Its pages had seen so much use it was nearly falling apart, but I opened it anyway. Scribbles decorated the interior.

It was a strange feeling to be trying to read in a storage shed, swatting away bugs that gathered around the lantern.

As I tried to study, some language I didn’t know flitted through my head, its writing system completely different from what was on the page in front of me. In fact, that other tongue seemed somehow easier to parse.

I puzzled over this, until my brother seemed to decide I was stuck on an unfamiliar word. “Try thinking about it by yourself first,” he said. “If you can’t figure it out on your own, then I’ll help you.”

Silence lapsed between us. The insects buzzing around the lantern were a distracting annoyance.

“Hey, bro?”

He seemed startled. “Did you just say ‘bro’? You were calling me Nicks just this morning.”

Flustered, I tried to correct myself, but he beat me to the punch. “Trying to act more grown up now, huh? Eh, it’s fine. What did you need help with?”

I shook my head and tried to figure out how to say what was on my mind. I was beginning to have doubts about all the things that had seemed so normal to me before: like how Nicks and I were being treated. I understood why the heir to our family was given special regard, but why were we being shooed off to the storage shed? We had other siblings—older and younger sisters. Why weren’t any of them out here with us? They weren’t legitimate children, either.

“Why are we the only ones out here in this damn shed?” I asked finally.

My brother mumbled to himself, something about how I usually spoke with more reserve. But he put his book down on the table and stared up at the ceiling. “Because the mistress hates us, that’s why,” he said at last.

“Because we’re Mom’s—uh, Mother’s kids?”

Nicks folded his hands behind his head, leaning back in his chair. “You think there’s any other reason? Even though our sisters are illegitimate, she still hesitated to force them out here. But for boys like us? This is just how it is.”

Even at seven years old, my brother apparently had a lot to be dissatisfied with. He proceeded to explain—really, complain about—our house’s circumstances.

The Bartforts weren’t a true noble family, but they did technically hold their own territory: this floating island. Formerly, they had been a knight family, a baronet actually, just a step below a baron, and they had lived in relative harmony. Vassal families cultivated the land and welcomed knights without a lord to protect them. As a result, the population expanded, and the number of fields that required tending increased. Likewise, the number of people the land could support also grew…which was decidedly not a good thing, according to Nicks.

During our grandpa’s time, an agent from Holfort Kingdom came to our territory and decided it was large enough to be recognized as a barony. When they informed my grandpa they would be elevating his rank, he panicked.

Knowledge from my previous life caused me to question this reaction. Wasn’t becoming a baron something to be happy about? Elevating someone’s noble rank was basically like a promotion. But shouldn’t it be based on some sort of achievement, like exploits on the battlefield? Could you really be rewarded just for the size of your land and the number of people in it?

“Why didn’t he want a higher status?” I asked.

Nicks seemed a bit unsure himself, but he said he could tell by our dad’s tone when he told the tale that it wasn’t something to be happy about. “Grandpa complained that it was too sudden. Plus, your offerings to the crown have to be proportionate to your rank. That’s why we’re so poor.”

More knowledge from my previous life filled in the gaps in my understanding. Some houses barely managed to reach the level necessary to be recognized as baronies, while others easily surpassed the minimum requirements. The latter had no issue paying their taxes to the kingdom, but the former strained to meet the mark.

A lot of baronets who could very well be regarded as a barony for their size and population kept their mouths shut to avoid notice.

At any rate, our isolated island in the countryside had become a barony. The position demanded that our house conduct itself in a way appropriate for its new title, and so my dad was forced to marry a woman of high standing.

“Dad and the mistress are married, right?” I said. “How come she doesn’t stay here with us?” She and her two children only came to visit occasionally.

“That’s pretty normal for any lady born to a family of higher rank than baron,” Nicks said. “Sucks, doesn’t it? If you’re going to get stuck with a wife, it would be better to marry someone from a baronet house or lower. Well, then again, women from higher ranking houses wouldn’t even look twice at us.”

“So that’s normal?” I clarified.

“You’d better study while you can. If you can’t get hitched while you’re at the academy, you’ll be a late bloomer and get stuck marrying some older lady. You don’t want to be single when you’re twenty, right?”

I couldn’t hide my surprise. I knew about the academy, of course, but hearing late bloomer as something derogatory toward men? Normally women were the ones who were told that if they didn’t end up married by a certain age, they’d be a spinster.

I paused. “Nicks?”

“‘Bro’ is fine, I don’t care. What is it?”

“What do you mean when you say we could get stuck with some older woman?”

He cocked his head at me. “Exactly what I said. You’ll get married to a widow, someone who couldn’t get married in the first place, or someone whose man ran out on her. A lover isn’t going to cut it. It’s not honorable. That’s why a lot of young guys get shipped off to grandmas.”

My brother was frightfully mature for his age.

“But isn’t it usually the opposite?” I pressed. “Aren’t men usually at the top of society?” The memories of my past life insisted that men were dominant—something something patriarchy? Apparently that was wrong.

“Come on, all you have to do is look at our dad to know women are on top. You saw it for yourself. He can’t even stand up to that wench—err, the mistress.” Clearly Nicks found her unpleasant. “You know, you’re acting kinda strange today.”

I forced a smile before returning my attention to the book on the table. Cold sweat beaded my forehead. The bizarre memories of my past life continued to insist that something was off about this one.

This is weird. This world is straight-up weird.

For a while, I read in silence, but I was mulling over what Nicks had told me. It felt like I’d heard his story somewhere before.

“Academy… Holfort Kingdom? And the mistress’s servant was an elf? Wait a minute. Don’t tell me…”

My brother chastised me. “What are you muttering about?”

“U-um, that dude in the suit. That elf—he was the mistress chick’s lover, wasn’t he?” The manner of speech from my memories slipped out.

Nicks didn’t seem to care. Actually, he seemed exasperated. “Quit asking stupid questions and get back to studying.”

She had a demi-human—an elf—as her servant/lover… I knew this setup. In fact, I remembered it vividly.

I slumped over, my forehead smacking the top of the desk. “This is that stupid otome game.”

My memories, which had seemed muddled and murky before, suddenly felt sharp and clear. This was the world of that fluffy, romantic dating sim.

Nicks slapped me over the head with his open palm. “Don’t sleep! Seriously, what’s wrong with you today? Did you hit your head?”

I lifted my chin and gave him a forced smile, my lips stretched over my teeth.

He recoiled with surprise. “Wh-what is it?”

“This world is completely insane.”

“Uh, yeah, I guess so?” He seemed at a loss for how to respond. Perhaps to avoid talking any further, he turned back to his book.

I never dreamed I would experience reincarnating in another world. Sure, fantasy and magic and swordsmanship didn’t sound so bad, but it had a matriarchal society? I couldn’t have been reincarnated into a more normal civilization?

I cradled my head in my hands. “This suuuuuuucks!”

“What the heck is wrong with you!” Nicks fussed. “Shut up already!”

I, Leon Fou Bartfort, was a Japanese man reincarnated into the world of an otome game. Give me a freakin’ break!