002 - School life starts from negative #2

TL/ED: Lolz

(TLN: Victoria uses Viktor as a nickname for Victor, sounds the same in English, but it would look weird if I typed it how it sounds.)

As I recall, Victor and Victoria were engaged.

There are only three... no, two... ladies of House Arkwright in the world.

Being the true nobility of aristocracy, they marry off their own children from a very young age.

The marriage was arranged without regard to the wishes of the two parties, so there was no affection between Victoria and Victor.

Having been together since childhood, they are more like brother and sister than lovers or a married couple. They even have similar names.

Still, it is Victor's sense of duty to his fiancé, coupled with his thoroughly inflexible and uptight personality, that keeps their relationship going.

And Victoria's sense of responsibility, as the second daughter of the Archduke of Arkwright, to be honorable in all that she does.

But I, Ha Seung-ri, know very well! The engagement of those childhood friends is doomed!

Victor, who turned into a nasty monster, will be killed by Victoria, the main heroine of Student Council Route, with the main character, Luke!

ㅡGhh… . Victor... ia.

ㅡ...Victor, it's enough...I'm letting you off the leash of House Arkwright. Our engagement is hereby ended...

Poof.

With the same feeling as above, Victoria plunges the hilt of her famous sword into Vicktor's monstrous head and frees him. She kills him.

In the process, Victoria grows as a person.

She realizes that her enemies are not only House Blackstar, but her own lineage, her own blood, House Arkwright.

Later, the story of the Student Council Route, one of the main routes of which is to confront the evil head of House Arkwright and emerge as a Goddess of Victory.

That's right.

I will die to the woman in front of my eyes.

When I think about it, I get chills even when I look at her pretty face.

I don't know about Luke, the protagonist, but from my point of view as Victor, isn't Victoria a complete angel of death? Such an angel of death crumpled her face.

"What? What did you just say? Ugh, seriously. Did I hear you wrong?"

Victoria's eyes widened like she was terribly flustered. She looked all over the place and even started to fan her face with her hands.

Isn't this the kind of flustered behavior you see at the dating event in Act 8 of the Student Council Route? If it were a game, the event CG slot would be unlocked ─ I wondered, as I spoke again.

"In case you didn't hear me, I'll say it again. Our engagement is now canceled, Victoria."

"Do you really think I don't get it? Who decided? Who decided to end our engagement on a whim?"

"We never had any affection for each other anyway."

"That's not the issue...!"

Victoria was about to shout, but then she spotted a group of people exiting the Judgment Chamber, so she closed her mouth and hmm-hmmmed. Only after they were out of sight did she speak again.

"That's. Not. The issue."

She clenched her teeth and looked very upset.

"Why are you acting like this all of a sudden? It's not like you. You were like this earlier too. Babbling strange things. It's true you were a bit different than usual in front of the delegates... a bit spineless. But still..."

"No matter what you say, my decision will not change, Victoria."

I had to end this engagement somehow. Staying with Victoria like this would kill me...!

But she was more opposed than I could have imagined.

"Viktor, you were demoted and made a regular student. What do you think you can do without the protection of the Arkwright family? Don't you know what it's like for seniors who were demoted from leadership to regular students?"

"I know."

"No, you don't. So, all this talk about ending the engagement and breaking up is nonsense."

"I'm very aware. And my future is not your concern. It's something more for me to deal with."

"…"

Victoria kept silent. I could have been more gentle, but Victor, this a**hole, he really was a man of few words.

No wonder he got stabbed by his fiancé.

As I was thinking about how best to end this conversation, looking out over the vast sea from the corridor's balcony.

from a kettle. I turned my head in surprise to find Victoria, her face flushed bright red, exhaling harshly.

"H-ha, haa..."

...Is something broken?

...Is it something dangerous?

I'm getting a tingling sensation near my stomach.

* * *

Victoria still remembered what happened when she was five years old.

The day her family's patriarch had brought her a scrawny boy about her age and introduced him to her.

━This is your fiancé, Victoria. Introduce yourself.

She couldn't understand it.

She understood that even at five, she might be engaged to someone far away. Her elder sister was engaged, after all.

What she couldn't understand was how a boy so scrawny and ragged could be chosen as her fiancé, the second daughter of a duke.

Black hair and a scrawny face.

Judging by his demeanor, he was clearly an orphan. Since the Rose War when she was three, the world was full of orphans.

And to make one of those orphans her fiancé?

Even Neva, the laughingstock of Marquis de Filione, would have been more understandable.

The only somewhat comforting aspect was the strange 'determination' she saw in the black pupils that looked at herself. But that was it.

━Father, is this boy really my fiancé? He doesn't look like nobility. He looks more like a commoner, or even worse.

━That's right, you have good insight. Take good care of him. He has potential.

━Potential? Potential for what?

━That's not something you need to know.

Young Victoria felt as though a flash of lightning had struck before her eyes as she heard her father's words.

Could this be some kind of test the head of the family was putting her through?

Perhaps it meant, if she wanted to surpass her older sister and older brother and inherit the family, she should succeed in this test.

So Victoria took the scrawny, sullen child, bathed him, taught him manners, clothed him, and gave him a name.

Victor.

A name that mirrored her own.

Victor was unskilled, but he was gritty to the point of ignorance, and he worked hard. He'd even managed to make it to the coveted position of Executive member of the Prison Academy's Student Council...

"You dare to dump me? You dare to break our engagement? I am Victoria Arkwright, and I hate it when anyone disrespects me."

Victoria couldn't believe it.

Victoria couldn't fathom it. That timid boy, who had once begged for her attention, was now talking about breaking off their engagement to her?

That was truly unthinkable.

'How dare you?'

'Why all of a sudden?'

'Perhaps out of a sense of pride for losing to a first-year transfer student...? Out of a sense of remorse for being demoted and becoming a regular student...?'

'No, Viktor lacks the finesse to make relationship decisions based on pride.'

In an instant, several thoughts flashed in and out of Victoria's sharp mind.

'Did he find another woman?'

Of course, that was nonsense.

Of course, it was an absurd notion. That inflexible Victor couldn't possibly have found someone else. Victoria couldn't imagine him abandoning her for another woman.

But.

'He's been acting weird lately. He's been saying weird things, he's been blanking out. I don't think it's because he lost to the first-year.'

There's something called a woman's intuition. Victor, as she knew him, seemed a bit different recently. However, Victoria detested relying on such flimsy intuitions, so she decided to ask straightforwardly. After all, this man couldn't lie.

It's what he's been taught and made to do.

If you ask him a straightforward question, he'll answer.

"Have you, by any chance, found another woman?"

"Yeah."

"Yeah, of course not. It can't possibly be anyone else. You wouldn't leave me for someone else, right? What did you just...?"

Victoria questioned her own ears. Since Victor couldn't lie, the only possible source of falsehood must be her ears.

But then Victor drove the wedge in again.

"There is another woman."

* * *

She's a smart, brilliant girl who's at the top of the second year, the so-called Golden Generation. She wouldn't listen to a single word I said about ending our engagement.

So I had to come up with a plausible reason to annul the engagement.

As I was thinking about what to do, the opportunity came from Victoria.

And I decided to pounce on the bait.

"I've met another woman, so our engagement is now over."

What woman in the world would forgive me for cheating?

Wouldn't she?

Gurgle gurgle.

Was it because I lied? My stomach started to churn restlessly. If I were an ordinary person, like Ha Seung-ri, I would have screamed and rushed to the bathroom in agony.

「Quirk «Steel» activated.」

However, Victor was quite a remarkable guy. He endured this, huh? Could he really withstand this? Despite the excruciating pain, I managed to keep my expression unchanged.

Thanks to that, even though I was in a lot of pain, I was able to not change my expression.

However, the woman in front of me, Victoria, twisted her face in ways I had never seen even in her event CGs.

"Haa...!? Seriously, huh? Really, you're unbelievable. What on earth are you saying? Are you insane? Who on earth? Who is it? Within the Prison Academy, right? Could it be Enio?"

"No."

"Then who the h*ll is it!"

"I don't want to reveal that, but you know better than anyone that I, Victor, don't lie."

There was a moment of silence after my answer. In seconds, maybe three. But three seconds was a long time for me, as I endured an agonizing pain.

"...Wait, did you deliberately lose to that transfer student named Luke as part of a plan to leave the Student Council? Was it all an act? That's a lie, you're not skilled enough to pull that off."

Was she talking about the tutorial of the game? Victor was supposed to challenge the protagonist, Luke, for violating the dress code. In that event, Victor loses to Luke. It was a tutorial to explain basic combat mechanics and item usage, and Luke was designed to win regardless of the player's actions.

There, Victor didn't really lose on purpose.

Because it is a tutorial that tells you how to use simple battle methods and items, it was actually designed so that Luke could win no matter what he did.

This Victor didn't lose on purpose.

But in this case, I'd have to say.

"I can't say that."

I blurted out a vague answer.

"Really? Fine. Then let's break it off, Victor. I'll release you from the Arkwright family's leash. Our engagement is over."

It worked...!

It was worth forcibly enduring the pain and lying to this extent!

While Victoria was rambling on with her monologue, struggling to suppress her agony and stuffing a falsehood into Victor's mind, it didn't matter – whatever she was saying was fine!

At that moment, Victoria added a few more words.

"But with you, it's a rejection on my part, so you're not dumping me, I'm dumping you! Got it!? Do you understand?"

Swish.

Victoria stormed off, not bothering to hide the fact that she was terribly insulted and humiliated.

A few students along the way said, "Hello, Miss Victoria. Lovely weather..." But Victoria paid them no mind and swiftly disappeared down the corridor, completely concealing herself from view.

At the same time, the pain in my stomach fades a little.

She's pissed.

And rightfully so.

I put her through a bad experience.

I mean no offense to you, Victoria.

I want to separate myself from House Arkwright, not you.

For now, this was the best way to get away from the Arclight family.

I can't just say, "After Act VIII, your family will start to go downhill and disintegrate."

Unless I am given such a strong indication, she will never leave her fiancé, Victor, alone with the personality I have seen in her for over 10,000 hours.

In the end, I will be transformed into a horrible monster by the hand of House Arkwright.

Victor is the future son-in-law, who was taken in by the Arkwright family.

Without this much precipitation, the family will not give him up.

"What on earth is going on? I've never seen Miss Victoria so angry...!"

"I don't know, something about breaking off the engagement... and someone saying they're rejecting it...?"

"I heard something about Victor having another girl."

"Ah, please. You probably misheard."

The people around us began to buzz with speculation. If someone overheard our conversation, they would be talking about it all over the place.

Victoria and Victor breaking off their engagement.

If this were an event in the game, it would have been a blast. Isn't the current situation just me, unable to enjoy a game as a game?

But I knew I wasn't out of the woods yet. If Victoria's character was anything like the one in the game, she'd be watching me with suspicion.

She might be thinking, 'Viktor has been demoted to a regular student, so he's going to break up with her so he can let Victoria free'.

Then the engagement will eventually fall apart, and I'll be a sloppy monster, with a foot-stomping ending.

I'm not completely out of Victoria and Arkwright's clutches yet.

"I must find another woman, even if only temporarily."

Even if we break up quickly, it'll do. That way, I can fully change Victoria's mind.

Only then will Victoria's heart completely change.

The problem is that Victor has a reputation for being disliked by most female characters. Who on earth would date him?

Difficult.

"But not completely impossible."

As a 20,000-hour veteran, I knew what to do in this situation.

If that's all it took, I could have a girlfriend...

Having drawn my conclusion, I strode unimpeded through the sun-drenched corridor.