Translator: Tsukii
Editor: Kiro
Read at Watashi wa Sugoi Desu!
Side Story 1
Author Note:
This is actually the first chapter I wrote in this story.
It’s been shelved for a long time, but it’s not like the setting changed from when I first wrote, so I decided to do a few edits and post it.
One evening, in a classroom with just the two of us.
“I am a genius, and you are an ordinary person. You are nothing but part of the crowd like other students. You should find it painful seeing the gap in our abilities.”
She said so with a cold tone while staring at me.
“…This is where we part, Haruto-kun.”
I guess we could be considered childhood friends?
However, it seemed that she didn’t have any kind of affection for me.
She really didn’t say a single word of gratitude until the end. Well, not that I mind…
“From now on, please don’t get involved with me. Excuse me.”
She said that and left.
I was left alone in a quiet classroom.
So I’ve finally been dismissed as a servant.
I didn’t feel as bad as I thought I would.
I did what I did since I thought she was someone I ought to protect, but since the person in question rejected me, it couldn’t be helped.
It was out of my own will that I kept on supporting her.
Ever since I was little, I did everything I could.
I was also aware that she thought of me as a disposable tool.
Even so, I never choose to leave her until the end.
…It was because of the memories of my previous life. Because they reminded me of a dark past that should be forgotten.
As long as she didn’t choose to cut ties from her side, I wouldn’t have left her no matter what she did.
The person I supported for over a decade said such cruel words without tears or blood.
It indeed caused me some concern, but situation-wise, I did think it would help me as well.
This parting allowed both of us to take a step forward. It was definitely not bad at all.
Unfortunately, I was nothing but a small fry. Therefore, I should enjoy normal life like a small fry would.
Aah, but I would like to go to university at least. I was poor in my previous life, so I was interested in what university life would be like. For that purpose, I studied more seriously compared to my previous life.
While thinking about my future, I wandered around the classroom where I was left alone. What was I, a suspicious person?
“Farewell, Arisu-chan.”
Sakayanagi Arisu. As I muttered the name of the master I served until today, I sorted out my feelings.
Well then, I was in charge of taking care of Arisu-chan. Until a few minutes ago, that is.
She was undeniably a genius, but she was born with a weak body and needed help in order to live a normal life.
I did everything I could. It was practically the life of a slave.
Regardless of weekdays or holidays, I went to Arisu-chan’s house to take care of her. I got up at 5 every morning.
It would’ve been nothing for my previous life’s self, but this lifestyle was tough for a child’s body. School classes became an oasis for me to supplement my sleep.
But while I managed to get through exams with the knowledge of my previous life, since I was always dozing off, my grades didn’t improve at all.
In addition, I have always matched my pace with Arisu-chan and was wary of the surroundings to keep her safe.
I would carry her on my back whenever a heart attack flared, and in some cases, I would carry her all the way to the hospital.
When it rained, I held out my umbrella without minding myself getting wet by the rain to keep her body warm.
There were too many episodes like this.
I had been doing that for over ten years.
However, I no longer needed to do so. Because Arisu-chan herself chose the path of independence.
It was a mid-level public high school. I decided to start studying for the entrance exam of a common high school.
Here, I would explain my home environment in this world.
My father was a civil servant. My mother was his former colleague, so it was a civil servant family.
It seemed that my father had worked for a long time in the department related to school permits. And he was an old acquaintance of Arisu-chan’s father. Perhaps they first met when the other side approached him to get closer.
…Well, I didn’t want him to waver as a civil servant that way, though.
As expected, I doubt that was the whole story, but for the time being, such was my family.
However, that ended today.
Thinking about it carefully, I could understand why Arisu-chan said things like that.
I was really not suited to where she would go. Arisu-chan was a competent student who would be assigned to Class A and could make a ton of people her pawns on her own. I did think someone like me wasn’t good enough to get involved with her.
It was also true that Arisu-chan was a transcendently beautiful girl, and I could be considered fortunate to have stayed with her until now.
Even though I said I was a slave, it wasn’t like I really disliked the life I lived until just earlier. I never saw someone as cute as her—including in my previous life—and having a girl like that depend on me honestly made me happy as a man.
She said something like seeing the gap between our abilities, but I never once had an inferiority complex about it. Rather, because the gap was too great, it made me feel nothing about it.
I would go in the opposite direction of her path.
Arisu-chan chose to push me away. In that case, I would go to a different place than Arisu-chan. It was the right timing since it was the period of time for deciding future courses, so I could only say it was the correct answer. As I thought, she was a genius.
Either way, she was out of my hands now.
As for her high school life, she would have someone like Kamuro Masumi-san supporting her in the original story. Rather, I never knew Kamuro-san actually had this much trouble taking care of her in the original story. It might be something that occurred in the future, but I would wish her luck.
The next day.
“It’s 7 in the morning… but it’s not late.”
How many years has it been? Being able to wake up without preparing to take care of Arisu-chan?
It was a refreshing morning with plenty of sleep.
“Haruto, is it okay to just wake up at this time?!”
“It’s okay, okaa-san.”
Perhaps it was because I usually didn’t wake up around this time that my mother came to my room worriedly.
After getting ready to leave without rushing, I slowly ate breakfast and left for school.
When I arrived at the classroom, I was greeted with surprise.
“Huh, you aren’t together with Sakayanagi-san?”
A girl in my class called out to me when I went to school alone.
Perhaps she thought it was really rare to happen. After all, this was the first time I did so since I enrolled in this school.
“That’s right. Unfortunately, she seems to hate me now.”
“T-that’s rare to happen…”
It wasn’t exactly that, but this was simpler to explain. It wouldn’t cause much hassle anyway.
“Arisu-chan hasn’t arrived yet?”
“Yeah, I haven’t seen her yet. She sure is late.”
While chatting, the morning chime rang. I wonder what happened? Did she oversleep?
Although it no longer had anything to do with me, I couldn’t help but be curious.
In the end, Arisu-chan didn’t show up and everyone else took their seats because the homeroom started.
The homeroom teacher entered the room while carrying a file, checked the classroom, and said a few words.
“Sakayanagi-san seems to have gotten injured on her way to school, so she is currently in the infirmary. It seems the treatment has concluded, so she should be coming by the first period.”
The class became a little noisy.
…Perhaps she fell somewhere.
Since her family would take her to the school gate, it must have occurred somewhere after that.
Did she fall on the step or stairs in the schoolyard, or fell in a place with nothing around?
Since a long time ago, Arisu-chan’s walking was somewhat unstable. She would fall over in no time, so I need to make sure to check things on the ground so her cane wouldn’t get caught on a stone or tactile block. If there were steps or obstacles that couldn’t be removed which might make her stumble, I would go ahead and pull her hand as we walked it through.
Perhaps being left alone all of a sudden caused some sort of problem.
In order to prevent trouble, I basically walked on the side of the main road to prevent bicycles from approaching. Even if she didn’t fall, a sudden turn of events would be bad for her heart. It was my way of doing things to prevent the possibility of things that might lead to her having a seizure.
But now that I thought about it, perhaps I was doing things too excessively.
Even though I tried to be as perfect as I could because of things that occurred in my previous life, perhaps I went too far.
Arisu-chan might have a hard time falling initially, but she would get used to it eventually.
She was no longer someone I should protect.
Minding it at this time would be useless, and I think it would be rude to think like that.
…However, was she really okay?
Although I got slightly worried, I recalled what Arisu-chan said yesterday and concluded that doing something unnecessarily would only get on her nerves and make things even more troublesome. For the time being, not doing anything should be the correct answer.
The first period was physical education. Needless to say, Arisu-chan just stayed on the sideline.
If I looked closely, I could see a minor wound on her right arm. Not only that, there seemed to be bruises on her beautiful face? Or something like that. It looked painful, and that wasn’t a wound that happened just from stumbling once. How many times did she stumble?
As I stared at her, our eyes met. I knew well how scary it was to turn Arisu-chan into an enemy, so I pretended not to see her and did warm-up exercises.
“Haruto, I’ll hit the ball today, okay.”
“I won’t let you hit the ball easily.”
It was softball today. Although I wasn’t that good, it was my favorite sport.
I made a big circle with my arms, exerted my strength, and threw!
Just as it was about to reach home, the ball was grazed. Because the batter hit it at bad timing, it ended up as a foul ball… which flew toward Arisu-chan on the sideline.
“Oi! Avoid it!”
The batter’s shout was in vain and the ball hit Arisu-chan’s body directly.
Apparently, it hit the arm opposite to the one that was injured in the morning, and fortunately, it didn’t look like going to be a serious problem, but it still looked pretty painful.
…Eeh, was she really okay?
“Geez, how clumsy.”
The student who hit the ball said so while scratching his head.
Although it wasn’t on purpose, I thought it was an unreasonable thing to say from the one who hit the ball, but I kept silent.
Even after that, Arisu-chan seemed to have a series of misfortunes throughout the day.
In the classroom, her cane got caught on the leg of a desk and she fell. She collided with students in the hallway as well. I think I saw her fall down more than I could count.
By the way, Arisu-chan was treated differently by the students of the class.
I guess it was an obvious thing since she was a genius who got nothing but a perfect score on an exam since she enrolled in school.
At the very least, they didn’t hate her and they could have minimal communication, but she didn’t have anyone that could be considered a close friend. A big part of it was because everyone felt reserved toward Arisu-chan, who was clearly a special child. In addition, Arisu-chan herself didn’t seem to want to get along with others that much.
Because of that situation, more than 90% of her conversations were usually with me.
Since Arisu-chan’s intellect was incomparable to students of the same age, she didn’t have any students she got along with to begin with. At most, the students among the top layer could barely follow along with her conversations.
The reason we enrolled in this middle school was because our parents made her enroll in the same school as me. Since it was Arisu-chan we were talking about, she would manage just fine regardless of where she enrolled, but if she enrolled in a higher level of middle school instead, perhaps it would be better for her in terms of communication.
When I thought about it, although I was a fool, I was still formerly an adult, so I guess she had an easier time talking to me compared to a normal middle school student.
Originally, Arisu-chan had an aggressive personality. In the environment where there was not only nothing she could compete with, but nobody even comparable around her… I think she must have found it really boring.
Even in chess, there was nobody she could play with decently. Playing against an opponent who could win 100 times out of 100 matches would get boring quickly and wouldn’t feel fun at all.
That said, she only needed to endure until graduation.
As a reincarnator, I knew she wouldn’t get bored at that high school.
Arisu-chan seemed to be covered in wounds and was preparing to go home with unsteady movements.
She clearly had a bad complexion. I had a bad feeling, so I decided to follow Arisu-chan from a distance.
It wasn’t like I hated her in particular after all.
If anything happened, it would leave a bad aftertaste to me. It might be a naïve attitude toward someone who chose to cut ties with me, but regardless of what was said and done, I still couldn’t abandon Arisu-chan.
As a result, my judgment happened to be correct.
Author Note:
Arisu-chan’s decision was correct. It was just way too late.
Actually, in the first conception, the main story proceeded without this event.
The protagonist enrolled without studying much and passed the entrance exam (The score of the entrance exam had nothing to do with enrollment to begin with, the protagonist just forgot about it), but his evaluation was vague so he was placed in Class D. Although they parted ways on the bus on the way to the school as Arisu-chan got placed on Class A, as time passed, Arisu-chan got more battered… something like that.
If I got stuck in a rut, I was thinking of writing that as an IF route.
It only happened if there was demand for a version of Arisu-chan who became like a rag and became somewhat mentally ill.
I never thought there would be this many people supporting my work.
Thank you very much. Please take care of me from now on.
Tsukii Note:
As of the time I translate this, the IF route described above is ongoing. That one gives another perspective of characters which I personally think is necessary to know the full story, but because that one is R18 and conflicted with the policy of the group (no underage R18 scene, which high school students count) I won’t be translating that one. My apologies
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