Chapter 77 (1/2)

”The weather forecast said it's going to rain all week,” Josh noted absent-mindedly, and I responded with a similarly half-hearted grunt.

”I guess that means rooftop lunches are off the table for the foreseeable future.”

”Probably.”

For one reason or another, my friend seemed really distracted, to the point I had to nudge him a little so that he'd notice that the line in front of the cafeteria counter already moved.

”Hey, pal? Are you all right?” Josh gave me an uncertain glance in exchange for my concern, so I guessed, ”Are you still stressing over what we talked about on Saturday?”

”What? Nah, man,” he denied with a lazy wave of his hand. ”I just woke up today, looked at my calendar, and realized that the exam period is starting next week.”

”Oh, that?” I mused as the line moved again. ”I thought it was something serious.”

”Exams are serious business,” my friend huffed, but then a moment later his eyes lit up as he looked at the blackboard above the counter. ”Hey, look at that! Caviar is back on the menu.”

”I'm not buying you any,” I told him with the kind of gravitas I usually reserved for more dire circumstances, such as refusing some especially adamant door-to-door salesmen (it's a long story), and he promptly rolled his eyes at me.

”I wasn't asking! I just pointed it out because it's unusual, that's all,” he grumbled, but I knew better than to give him an inch.

In the meantime, we finally reached the counter and we made our orders. For once, even Josh picked a fairly normal dish, and as for me, I went with fried chicken and onion rings. I asked for an extra serving of the latter, because Judy liked them and tended to snack from my plate whenever I ordered some. I also ordered a slice of apple pie, and while the lady on the other side put our dishes together, I couldn't help but noice how she was eyeing me after I made my order.

”Is that for Lili?”

”You mean the pie? Yeah. I give her more than enough allowance to buy it herself, but for some reason she never does, so I figured I'd get her a slice.”

”How very big-brotherly of you.”

I had a feeling he was poking fun at me, but I saw absolutely no problem with what he said, so I answered with a humble, ”Thanks.”

Once we got our food, I turned on my heels and headed for our usual spot in the dining hall, with Judy, Elly, and Snowy already seated there. Josh also caught up to me in a second, and once he did, he let out an unusually dejected sigh and did a sudden verbal U-turn.

”Seriously, man. With all the chaos of the last three months, we really need to start cramming. If my average gets under three-point-seven, my parents are going to flay my ass.”

For the record, the school was grading on a five-point system, and they would round the averages up from the seventh decimal instead of the fifth, meaning that Josh, contrary to all of his complaints, was actually aiming for some pretty decent grades. More importantly, there was one particular pronoun in what he said that piqued my interest.

”'We' need to start cramming?” I repeated after him with extra emphasis, and he nodded right away.

”Well, yeah. I mean, we agreed that we'd study together, but never got around to it. It's now or never.”

”Good point,” I noted as we reached the table. My girlfriends left a seat empty between the two of them, so I naturally sat there, while Josh picked the empty spot beside my sister.

”Hi, Lili,” my friend greeted her, only to pause and lean closer to take a better look at her. ”You look a little strange today. Did you catch a cold?”

”Can Abyssals even catch a common cold?” my dear assistant followed it up with a question of her own.

”I… don't know. I've never been sick since I was a child, but I've never been out of the Abyss for this long, so I honestly don't know.”

”In that case you better take some extra vitamins,” I told her with a smile as I carefully handed the slice of pie over to her. ”Apples are a great source of vitamin C.”

”Oh, wow. Thanks, Leo,” my sister finally smiled, and I returned the gesture even as a wave of killing intent was washing over me. More on that later.

”So if you aren't sick, then why were you looking so down?” Josh asked once he finally sat down.

”It probably has something to do with her,” the princess noted with an irate growl, all the while she was cutting her steak with the elegance of a pure-bred noble lady. It wasn't hard to figure out who she meant by that, and I didn't even need to look over to know that the subject of her comment was watching us from afar even now.

”By her, do you mean the new girl?” Josh asked, and unlike me, he made a point of glancing around. ”Is she bullying you?”

”N-No, not quite,” my sister said in a mousy voice. ”She's just… not very friendly. Also persistent.”

”Translation: she's trying to pick a fight, but she can't do it in the school, so she's just glaring at Neige all the time,” Judy stated while simultaneously reaching over and taking an onion ring from my plate without even asking. See? I knew this would happen, and thus my preparations ahead of time once again justified having that 'S.' in my middle name.

”Yes, she's bothering her a lot,” the princess suddenly spoke up with a determined expression. ”You could even say that she's ruining sister-in-law's school life! I believe the most prudent thing to do is to resolve this by going over to her and beating her up. Who else agrees with me?”

At this point she tried to jump to her feet, but I was one step faster, and I put my hand on her shoulder and gently pushed her back onto her seat, accompanied by another spike in ambient bloodlust.

”Easy there, princess,” I soothed her by patting her head, and somehow the killing intent directed at our table rose a whole notch, but the moment I glanced in the direction where it was coming from, it disappeared. Behind a column. With a high-pitched 'Kyaa!'. Go figure. Anyhow, I turned back to my girlfriend and told her, ”You promised not to make a scene, remember? I still need to make some preparations, so until then, please don't confront her.”

”But she's bothering sister-in-law…” she muttered with a crestfallen look on her face, so I immediately redoubled my head-patting effort. It resulted in another wave of bloodlust, but this time I completely ignored it and focused on my food instead, allowing Josh to make a grab for everyone's attention.

”So, back to that thing we were talking about…” he began, but before he could get to the point, our attention was drawn to a certain loudly complaining Celestial arriving at the scene.

”I can't believe they did this! What were they thinking!?” Angie fumed even as she unceremoniously sat down next to Josh.

”You need to calm down. You're bothering the other students,” the class rep, arriving in her wake, tried her best to pacify her, but with little apparent success.

”How can I calm down?! This is a travesty! A betrayal! Treachery of the highest order!”

It was at this point that I sent a glance at Judy, and her eyes asked, 'Aren't you going to ask her what she's talking about?', so I used my eyebrows to communicated, 'Nah, I'm just going to wait for the punchline. It's probably going to be something silly.', and my girlfriend immediately answered with a tiny twitch of her left eye that said, 'That's more or less guaranteed.'

”What are you talking about? What happened?”

Since I remained silent, it was Josh who asked the obvious question. What he received for his trouble was an angry Celestial all but grabbing him by the collar.

”Don't act like you're innocent! It's your fault this happened! You and your vocal minority must've threatened the producers into bowing their heads with your deluded demands and proclamations!”

”… I… I think I completely lost the thread. Does anyone know what she's talking about?” Josh muttered while glancing around the table, and when his eyes met with the recently seated class rep's, she let out a shallow sigh.

”They are rebooting Trucy the Werewold Huntress,” she stated in a voice that said she really didn't want to hear any more about the topic, but my friend apparently didn't pick up on it.

”Really? They do?”

”The news just leaked,” Angie explained while still sending a death glare at her childhood friend. ”Apparently 'some fans' were unsatisfied with the ending of the series, so the network greenlit another season where they will completely erase the original ending.”

”How?” Josh blurted out in surprise, and the Celestial girl's face scrunched up like she was smelling something really foul.

”Time travel.”

”Seriously? Man, that sucks.” Normally that would've been the end of it, but then Josh's eyes suddenly lit up and he asked, ”Wait, but if they are redoing the last season, does that mean that Trucy and Ceraph might end up together after all?”

”I knew it,” Angie exclaimed as she grabbed his collar again. ”It was you and your toxic brood! Why couldn't you just let Trucy be with Elliot!? Why must you ruin everything with your bulldozer of toxicity running of high octane entitlement?! Why, oh why…?!”

”Angie, please behave yourself. We're trying to eat here,” I sternly warned her, and after locking eyes for a mere second, she finally let go of Josh and turned to her food (a plate of lasagna, in case anyone was interested) with a pout the size of a small planet.

”It's so unfair…” she grumbled, and this time it was Josh's turn to act.

”Come on, Angie. Don't let it get to you. Look on the bright side: if it's good, it's going to be another kickass season of our favorite show, and if it sucks, we can just pretend it never existed and go with the previous finale… even if it sucked that the shafted Ceraph at the very end.”

”Don't you get started again…” she hissed back, and my friend immediately raised his hands in surrender.

”All right, I got it. No more Trucy for the day. We have something important to discuss anyway.”

”Something important?” Snowy echoed him, and Josh responded with an unusually dramatic nod.

”Yes, very important. You see, the exam period is just around the corner, so we really need to start preparing for them, or we're going to be in trouble.”

The moment the word was mentioned, Angie's expression darkened again and she all but smacked her head against the table with a lethargic groan.

”Argh! You just had to do it! I thought my day couldn't get worse after Team Trucy's abject betrayal, and then you just had to remind me of the exams! Tu es terrible!”

”Why French?” Judy whispered in mild confusion, and all I could do was an equally uncomprehending shrug between two bites.

”I'm not Tu es terrible! ” Josh protested in return (with rolling 'r'-s to boot) and put both of his hands onto the table, probably for emphasis. ”I just think that it's better to be safe than sorry, so we should—”

However, before my friend could conclude his sentence, he was once again interrupted by a new voice entering the scene.

”Dunning,” the voice called out to me from behind, and when I turned around, I found Armband Guy walking towards me with measured yet evidently hurried steps.

”Hello, Pascal,” Josh greeted the newcomer a tad grudgingly, apparently not too happy about getting interrupted again, and Armband Guy returned the gesture with a curt nod aimed at the whole table.

”Hello, Bernstein. I need to talk with Dunning for a moment.”

”Is it public, private, or classified matter?” I jested, yet the guy seriously considered his answer.

”It is technically classified, but the details are public.” Saying so, he glanced around the dining hall and then took a step closer to the table, practically looming over it. ”I wish to call in a previous favor from you.”

”You owe Pascal a favor?” Ammy inquired on the side, and following her, the rest of the girls (plus one guy) were giving me curious looks.

”It was something related to Sahi, and it wasn't a big deal,” I told them off-handedly, and Armband Guy immediately nodded along.

”Precisely. My request also concerns her, and it should not be particularly taxing.”

”Oookay, what is it then?” I asked to keep the conversation rolling while simultaneously ignoring the newest actor on the stage in the form of a certain brown girl sneaking up behind Armband Guy with comically over-mimed steps.

”I am certain you are already aware, but Arch... Sahi officially transferred to Blue Cherry High.”

”Yes, we noticed,” Josh noted just a touch nervously, probably still a little on guard after what happened between the two of them. The incognito ex-Arch-mage, on the other hand, just put a finger in front of her lips, already bent into an impish smile, and she continued her over-exaggerated sneaking act.

”So... Do you want us to help her fit in?” came the next question from Angie, and the guy promptly shook his head.

”Nothing so vague. The issue is that she transferred into the second year, because—”

”Because I'm a child genius who skipped grades!” Sahi suddenly exclaimed while she simultaneously threw her arms around Armband Guy's waist with a beaming grin that said 'Gotcha!'. Pascal, on the other hand, only stiffened for a moment before he slowly looked over his shoulder and gave her a not at all amused look, but then a second later he was looking at me again while staunchly ignoring the girl clinging to him. If I had to make an analogy, it was like an old Saint Bernard ignoring a playful tabby kitten.

”It is as she said,” he stated with a voice as dry as an old broom sweeping a dusty sidewalk. ”Since you are here, you should explain your predicament yourself.”

The girl, currently wearing her hair in a long braid and in a new uniform that perfectly fit her, let out a semi-embarrassed giggle and looked at me without loosening her grip on the guy.

”You see I, like, enrolled with the pretense that I skipped grades, but it's been, like, decades since I studied this stuff, so I could totally use a refresher course.”

”You should've thought of that before you came up with that cover story,” I pointed out, which naturally earned me a frown.

”I was, like, under a lot of time constraints, and this was the bestest option at the time.”

”What she is trying to say is that this was the only option where she could pretend to be a genius and brag about it,” Pascal commented on the side, and in response, the alleged teen genius immediately tightened her grip on him.

”Hey! You're supposed to be on my side! Endy told you to support me!”

”That is precisely what I am doing. I am protecting your dignity by attempting to explain your frankly inexplicable thought processes.”

”Agh! You used to be so respectful just a few days ago! This is lame. You're lame. Stop being lame!”

Completely ignoring her nagging, Armband Guy looked me in the eye again and bluntly stated, ”I don't have the time to tutor her, and you owe me one, so take responsibility.”

It was at this point that Josh cleared his throat to gain his attention, and once he got it, he explained, ”Actually, your timing is perfect, because we were just planning to get together to study for the exams. One person more or less shouldn't make a difference.”

”Really? Thanks! You're total lifesavers!” Sahi beamed at us, and at first I thought that was the end of it, but all of a sudden she set her feet and, with a heave, he began dragging the guy still in her grasp, one step at a time.

”What are you doing?” came the deadpan question from the mouth of Armband Guy, and the girl dragging her let out an enormous huff before answering.

”If you're going to ditch me, then the least you can do is to buy me lunch first!”

”You have your own budget now, so I have no reason to do that anymore.”

”Stop being so ugh and just come with me already!”

Honestly speaking, if he didn't want to go, I was pretty sure Pascal could've stopped her at any time, so just the fact that he let her drag him away meant he was playing along. As for why, I had no idea. Maybe it was because he was ordered to keep an eye on her? Or maybe he was messing with her? Maybe not; the guy never struck me as the playful type. But then again, he never struck me as a professional level Street Combat player either, so what did I know?

Anyhow, once they left, Josh clapped his hands and declared, ”It's settled then! We're going to have a study meeting. No, let's make it two. As many as necessary.”

”You're already moving the goalpost.”

Hearing Angie's grumbling, he turned to the girl and emphatically told her, ”I know that you already gave up, but I still have a chance to have my three-point-seven average, and I'll be damned if I'm not going to give it my best shot.”

”If you are trying to do your best, why don't you aim higher?” Ammy cut in with a small frown, and after a moment, my friend let out a defeated sigh.

”Cut me some slack, please. Three-point-seven is high enough for the likes of me, and it's hard enough even with the guaranteed fives in PE and Arts.”

”I'm okay with not failing any of my subjects, really,” the Celestial girl whispered while absent-mindedly playing with her food.

”With how hectic things have been recently, I'd be okay with a four-point-five average,” Ammy admitted a little sheepishly, earning her a couple of boos from the childhood friend duo suddenly on the same wavelength again. It was at this point that I decided it would be for the best that I grabbed the reins of the conversation, so I conspicuously tapped my fork against my plate to get everyone to listen to me.

”Before you guys get off-topic again, let's come to an agreement on this whole study group idea. Anyone who wants to take part, raise your hand.” Naturally, everyone did so, though in the case of Judy and her photographic memory, I figured she was only tagging along to hang out. She didn't know yet, but I was planning to put her in charge of reviewing the rest of the group at the end, and I wasn't about to tell her yet either. ”Next, where should this study group be held? If Sahi's also coming along, then my living room might be a little cramped, but we can't exactly take her to the base either. How about the library?”

”Objection!” Angie cut in with a finger pointing at me. ”That way we can't have snacks! You can't have a study group without snacks!”

”Yeah, that's just common sense,” Josh agreed like it was absolutely evident.

”In that case—”

”Why don't we hold the meeting in our mansion?” the princess proposed out of the blue, and when I directed a questioning gaze at her, she hastily explained, ”Mom and Dad said they wanted to meet the rest of my friends anyway, and we could use one of the guest rooms.”

”Wouldn't Sahi pose a problem?” Judy asked the question on my mind, but Elly immediately shook her head.

”Not a problem at all. If we are just studying, there should be no problem, and even an Arch-mage would think twice before causing an incident in our home.”

”In that case, I have no further objections,” Judy concluded and raised her hand. ”I'm for.”

”Me too!” Angie agreed right away. ”I've never seen Elly's place from the inside!”

”I'm a little curious too,” Snowy whispered with a raised hand, and soon even the rest followed suit.

”Very well. The last matter is this: when?” I imposed the question, and Josh immediately came forth with an answer.

”Angie's having tennis practice today, and I also have some stuff to take care of in the afternoon, so that's a big no.”

”In that case, tomorrow?” I proposed, and after a long beat, everyone nodded. ”So, just to summarize: tomorrow, after school, at Elly's place, we all gather and study for the exams, unless something uselessly dramatic happens in the meantime. Are we clear on that?”

”Chief, you are jinxing things again,” my dearest assistant warned me, but I placated her with my patented Disarming Smile ver.0.7.3.

”Nah, I simply learned that optimism doesn't work. This way if I'm wrong and nothing happens, I will be pleasantly surprised, but if we do run into some annoying developments, I would at least have the option to smugly smile and say 'See, I told you this would happen!'.”

”It fills me with shame that I can't refute your logic,” Judy grumbled in response, so I did the responsible boyfriendly thing and put my arm around her shoulder to cheer her up, all the while ignoring the sudden spike in bloodlust filling the air around me. Again. The fact that I was getting used to it was pretty alarming, but I had a feeling I wouldn't have to put up with it for long before the Knight girl would cause a huge incident that would spiral out into another epic flustecuck.

In case it wasn't obvious yet, friendship ended with optimism. Now pessimism is my best friend.

The last lesson of the day ended with the same unceremonious finality as it tended to do every day. The rain outside eased into a light drizzle sometime after lunch, and while things were relatively peaceful (Angie's sustained complaining about a certain TV series notwithstanding), I was feeling unusually under the weather.

”Chief? Are you spacing out?”

See, that's what I'm talking about. I didn't even notice Judy coming over to my desk until she spoke up. If it was the class rep with her inexplicable ninja powers, that would be one thing, but missing my girlfriend was something else entirely. Anyhow, I shook these stray thoughts out of my head and stood up.

”Don't mind me.” I theatrically stretched my back to punctuate my point, and feeling the blood rush in my ears finally perked me a little.

”Do we have any plans for today?” the princess asked next. She already packed her bag and was waiting for me to pick up the pace, so I did just that.

”Nothing I can think of,” I told her and flung my bag over my shoulder. ”I have to continue training with Cal to get my hand better, but I can get that done during the night.”

”The weather isn't suitable for strolling, and we're going to be gathering in the Dracis mansion tomorrow, so by process of elimination, we should hang out at the Chief's place.”

”Movie night?” I asked, and she nodded right away. ”Any recommendations?”

”Not yet, but I'll look something up by the time we get home.”

”I have an idea. Why don't we go to your house today?” Elly proposed out of the blue, and Judy practically froze up for a moment. My other girlfriend didn't notice, as she added, ”I don't think I've ever met your dad, and I've only seen your mom from a distance. I think I should introduce myself.”

”I don't think that's a good idea,” my dear assistant answered in an even more deadpan tone than usual, and when the princess sent her a 'Why?' kind of look only missing the little red question marks circling around her head, she soon admitted, ”My parents don't know I'm going out with Leo yet. I'm still waiting for the right opportunity to tell them.”

”They don't know? And what about me?”

While Elly was asking that, I gestured to get going, and we made our way out of the classroom. Ammy was still inside, leaving for last as usual, while the childhood friend duo was out the door the moment the bell rang and I figured they'd be downstairs and looking for Snowy. Ever since the Knight girl showed up, they've been 'picking her up' at the end of every day. I figured we'd meet them at the shoe lockers as usual.

Speaking of which, it took Judy until we nearly got there to awkwardly explain that her father was a little overprotective, so telling him that her daughter was in a polyamorous relationship at this point probably wasn't the best idea. I once asked her at which point would it cease to be a bad idea, but she sulked for an entire morning after that, so I decided to ignore that bugbear for now.

But that was neither here nor there. More importantly, I could already see Josh, Angie, and Snowy in the entrance hall, so we quickly made our way over to the lockers as well. It was such a routine by this point that it took me until I was putting my indoor shoes back in to notice something peculiar.

”... Judy? Come here for a sec.”

”Is there a problem?” my dear assistant inquired the moment she made her way around the row of lockers.

”Maybe. I just want you to see this before I touch it. Just to avoid shenanigans.”

”Did someone say 'shenanigans'?” Angie butted in by poking her head around the same lockers, followed by the rest of the peanut gallery.

I decided to pay no attention to them and pointed at the piece of white paper sitting at the bottom of my shoebox, and the ever-so-nosy Celestial immediately let out an excited 'Oooh?'.

”What's that?” Elly asked the moment she arrived, and she all but pushed me aside trying to get a better look.

”No matter how I look at it, that looks like a love letter,” Josh noted on the side, and his childhood pal vehemently agreed with a series of nods. ”How many does this make? I think it's the third.”

”If you mean a piece of paper in my shoe locker, sure, but I didn't get a single love letter so far.”

”You didn't?” came the sudden question from the class rep, who appeared in my blind spot like usual.

”They were both letters of challenge from Elly,” I explained, and the gawkers all nodded in acknowledgment, more or less in unison.

”So? What do you think it is this time?” Josh asked an innocent yet dangerous question, and Angie responded without a moment of thinking.

”My money is still on a love letter.” Sensing the skeptical glances surrounding her, she immediately doubled down. ”What? Leo's pretty popular! All the girls in the tennis club think he's cool! It's about time he gets a love letter!”

”No way!” Elly protested with a troubled frown. ”There's no way they wouldn't know that we're already dating, right, Judy?”

My other girlfriend remained conspicuously silent at first, but then she faced me and stated, ”Please remind me to write you a secret letter one of these days. I don't like being the only odd one out.”

”... Your priorities sound a little off,” I noted, earning me a disinterested shrug.

”It's practically guaranteed that it's a letter from the new girl, probably angry at you for spoiling Elly in public. There's no point getting worked up over something silly like that.”

”Boo! At least play along for a bit!”

Angie's protests fell on deaf ears, and I figured I should just get this over with before she actually managed to get my girlfriend worked up anyway, so I picked up the paper and unfolded it.

”What does it say?” Snowy inquired on the side, and after skimming its contents, a tired sigh forced its way past my teeth.

”It's three for three,” I said and lowered my hand so that the rest of the group could also take a look at it.

”Meet me on the roof... things to resolve... don't be a knave...” Ammy muttered as she read the lines, and when she reached the end of it, she looked over to the princess. She wasn't the only one either, and I couldn't exactly blame them. The style was eerily similar to the first letter she wrote me ages ago.

”Welp, I guess I'll have to take care of this,” I said to no one in particular and pocketed the letter.

”Should we wait for you?” the princess inquired with a serious look in her eyes that couldn't quite hide her ongoing confusion about why everyone was still looking at her with difficult expressions.

”No, you guys should leave before the weather turns for the worse again. I'll catch up with you once I figure out what our stalker wants from me.”

”Stay safe,” Judy wished me well... Or was it a warning? Either way, I told her I wasn't going to pick a fight just yet, and I waited until they pulled up their umbrellas and left the building before I pocketed my hands and began climbing the stairs.

Simply put, I couldn't put my finger on this Penny girl. Her whole character made little sense to me. From a narrative standpoint, I mean. Her enrolling wasn't entirely unexpected; as much as we got lost in the supernatural zaniness of the Simulacrum, at its core, the main 'setting' of our narrative was a high school, so her coming here was highly probable. Hell, I even expected a Knight to transfer before we even learned of her existence, so things conveniently falling in place so that she could come here to complicate our lives was not outside my predictions by any means.

What really bothered me was the fact that she felt like a watered-down version of the Princess.

A new transfer student with an agenda? Check.

Clumsy hostility towards others? Check.

High-pitched cutesy noises whenever she was embarrassed? Check.

Dropping letters into my shoebox calling me to the roof? Check.

So, here comes the million Jen question: was I overthinking this, or was the Simulacrum already reusing character archetypes? Objectively speaking, it really shouldn't. Even if the world was procedurally generated, which wasn't entirely out of the question, theoretically 'plot relevant' people tended to be at least nominally unique, and honestly? My brief and slightly terrifying forays into the bedrock system underlying the supernatural stratum of the world told me that the Simulacrum was insanely, mind-numbingly, comprehension-shatteringly complex. As in, we were talking about 'down to the molecules' level of complexity. Considering that, why would it, or whoever designed it, ever need to resort to such shortcuts?

The issue was further muddied by the fact that something like that wasn't even really out of the ordinary as far as the world's modus operandi was concerned. We had all that complexity, and yet there were so many obviously immersion-breaking things that had to be smoothed over by perception filtering, such as the unnatural cleanness of everything, or the Placeholders and everything related to them.

Actually… hold that thought for a minute. The explanation of the former, my ninja maid jokes notwithstanding, was still waiting to be found, but for the latter, Judy recently had a hypothesis: it wasn't that Placeholders couldn't be properly 'simulated', but that they purposefully weren't to reduce the number of variables in the Narrative itself. Her idea made sense even to my nominally Narrative-agnostic sensibilities, and I had to admit that it would be a viable solution for minimizing the butterfly effect. After all, if 99.9% of the people on the island were little more than automatons going through the motions, it meant that they wouldn't cause any unforeseen deviations that could derail 'scenes' or 'scenarios' that were set up by the Narrative.

Of course, we also knew that by pulling a Placeholder into the 'plot', it could result in them rapidly developing into a full-fledged person, but that just further illustrated that this most likely wasn't a question of 'couldn't' but rather a 'designed not to' situation. However, if I turned that on its head, wouldn't it mean that the Knight girl wasn't unexpectedly similar to Elly because of some kind of limitation in the simulation, but because she was supposed to be like that from the beginning?

Let's take a step back and try to look at this from a meta-perspective. The Draconians and the Knights are set up to be unconditional enemies. My current goal was to get rid of this animosity, and I've been provided a convenient way to do it by using Cal. However, if we presumed that there was an 'original script' where I wouldn't get into a relationship with Elly and instead she would enter into Josh's entourage, the presence of the sword and it acting like a 'get out of jail free' card would suddenly fall into a different light.

In short, it was entirely possible that Cal was convenient for resolving the conflict because it was designed as a plot McGuffin for that purpose from the very beginning. Let's say in a hypothetical scenario, Josh picked Elly and got into her 'scenario'. Knights attack, Penny transfers, et cetera. Bloodshed would be inevitable, but frankly speaking, the 'plot' seemed to be on the light-hearted side of things; so far the only person who ever got injured in our group was me, and mainly because I was more or less directly butting heads with whatever plot or subplot the world was throwing my way. So, how could Josh resolve the situation without bloodshed and while staying on the rails of the plot? The answer was obviously our favorite bootleg Excalibur and them making their wielder into the ill-defined 'King of Knights'.

This would naturally mean that I more or less totally stole his role in this particular plot, but there's more: one of my biggest headaches was the fact that, even if I could claim to be the new 'King', I would still have to strong-arm the rest of the Knights into abandoning their centuries-old feud with the Draconians, but what if I was overthinking this? If I presumed that Cal exists to set up the possibility, it's entirely possible that there are other 'plot points' already established by the Narrative to enable the protagonist (in this case, me, I suppose) to succeed in brokering peace.

So… what if this Penny wasn't similar to Elly because 'oh, look, the Simulacrum is so kooky', but because she was deliberately set up to be so? My five cents would be that they were supposed to interact in school, without the princess being aware of her being a Knight, and then realize that they are not so different, potentially leading to a friendship to pave the road of peace between the two factions. It's a cliché, but a pretty good one, if you ask me. Too bad it's a non-starter at this point, as the princess obviously knows she's a Knight, while Penny hates her guts for being close to her big brother or what have you. Add in some potential brocon tendencies, and it's like a powder keg waiting for the spark to ignite it.

That said, at the moment this was still just a hare-brained idea of mine, but it would certainly explain why the personalities and behavior of these two were so similar. Ah, speaking of similar…

”Oh, come on! Open already!”

I came to a halt at the last bend of the stairwell leading to the rooftop access, and what a surprise! I found a certain redhead vehemently trying to pry the locked door leading to the roof open. Oh, and now she even kicked it.

The word déja vu surfaced in my mind, but I quickly chased it away and cleared my throat instead. The moment I did so, the girl at the top of the stairs shuddered and then hurriedly turned around. Considering the situation, I primed my vaunted girl-catching reflexes, just in case, and when our eyes met, she immediately averted her gaze with a slightly flushed face.

”Brother, you're here… I'm afraid that door to the roof is locked,” she muttered, but then she soon remembered why we were here in the first place and she faced me again with a fiery scowl. ”Never mind, we can talk here too!”

”We sure can,” I agreed, and for a second or two I hesitated whether I should walk up to her or not, but considering that we could communicate just fine from this distance, I figured I'd best stay out of arm's reach for the time being.

But more importantly, the Knight girl remained silent on the top of the stairs and continued to glare at me for a while, and when I didn't respond, she suddenly blurted out, ”Brother, I can't approve of your conduct!”

”… I'm sorry, but could you be a bit more particular?”

”I'm talking about the lengths you go to maintain your cover,” she told me in a hiss. ”I can't bear to look at you pretending to be lovers with that idiotic girl anymore!”

”First off, she's a little silly at times, but certainly not 'idiotic'. More importantly though, I'm not pretending.”

”No, you don't—” she began, only for her vehement words to come to a sudden stop as she narrowed her eyes. ”What are you talking about?”

”We are actually dating,” I clarified with an earnest look. ”As in, for real.”

”W-W-Whaaaat?!” Her uncomprehending cry echoed for several seconds in the empty stairwell, and once she recollected her wits, she pointed an accusatory finger at me that once again reminded me of a certain lovely dragon-girl in her early, somewhat over-the-top phase. ”I don't believe you! You cannot date a wyrmblood!”

”I'm doing it anyway,” I answered in a neutral tone, but it only seemed to make her even more agitated.

”Come back to your senses, Leo! Even if she somehow ensnared you—”

”She didn't. We just love each other,” I told her frankly, but I once again only managed to enrage her even further.

”D-Doesn't matter! Even if she seduced you, the moment she learns you are one of us, she will turn on you! Don't you understand!?”

”She already knows though.”

”… She does?”

”Yep.”

Hearing that gave her a long pause, but she quickly doubled down by declaring, ”T-Then once her family learns of it, you are done for! Turn back before it's too late and you doom yourself!”

”They also know,” I pointed out, and then added, ”and they are fine with it.”

”N-No way! That's impossible! You must be under some kind of…” Her eyes suddenly opened wide and she redoubled the intensity of her finger-pointing as she declared, ”It must be that Abyssal Seducer who messed with your mind! There's no way the brother I know would say something like that! It must be that tart's fault!”

I had a feeling this conversation was going nowhere fast, but I pretty much expected this from the very beginning. Still, I had to at least try and resolve some of the misunderstandings.

”No, Snowy didn't do anything of the sort, and she's definitely not a 'tart'. I adopted her because she had a rough family background and she had nowhere to go, so I'd appreciate it if you didn't insult my sister like that.”

”But she's not your sister! I'm your sister!”

”Speaking of which, there's one more thing we should—”