Part 1

Why did the island have so many French restaurants? No, seriously, there were about as many of them as there were secret underground bases and hideouts, which was… kind of a strange comparison, now that I think about it. Anyhow, my question wasn't apropos of nothing, as I was sitting in one at the moment. As far as my experience with restaurants was concerned, this one was on the smaller side; a single main hall, with three smaller, more secluded sections near the windows. I was currently sitting by the smallest of these private tables, and even though we were on the ground floor, I've got a pretty nice view of Timaeus's harbor at night. Add in the full moon and the old lighthouse in the distance, and it was definitely scenic.

"Does your head still hurt?" came an unexpected question from the other side of the table, and I reflexively glanced over.

Judy, wearing a quite flattering black dress (courtesy of the princess) was sitting in front of me and giving me a questioning look. She had makeup on her face, which I still wasn't entirely used to, and she was wearing the ribbon I gave her not too long ago. It didn't really fit the rest of her outfit, but I obviously wouldn't point that out in this situation. I found her cute anyway, and it wasn't really important what others were thinking about her. Or rather, if they were thinking anything about her in the first place, considering we were surrounded with some especially bland Placeholders at the moment.

More importantly, when I didn't answer right away, my girlfriend used a finger to point at my face.

"You're holding your head. Judybot's medical database says that means your head must hurt."

For a moment I didn't know what she was talking about, but then I realized that, without noticing it, at some point I started massaging my temple. I stopped doing so, and after a momentary beat I told her, "A little, but it's not that bad. It's just the music."

As for what I meant by that, the restaurant actually had live music in the form of a quartet in the corner. It apparently added class or what have you, but while they weren't exactly bad, the high notes were playing havoc with my head, even though it's been three days since my disconcerting experience in Saahira's hotel suite. Three oddly quiet days, if I may add. I expected that 'Sahi' would transfer in, or the hubbub around the 'death' of an Arch-mage would cause us trouble, or even just that Ammy's 'great secret' would be dramatically revealed, but there was nothing. Really, the only oddity in the past couple of days was Angie acting strange ever since she found Ammy in Josh's bathroom, and my friend being oddly blasé about it. In fact, he was just unusually quiet in general.

Anyhow, since things were calm at the moment, I opted to use the opportunity to get a couple of things done while the peace lasted. I proceeded with my plan to arm the Fauns with enchanted weaponry (in retrospect, that might've been the cause of my continued headache), I discussed magic theory with Fred and his android companion (unfortunately, not much was accomplished), I further interrogated Cal about all things Knightly and, last but not least, I took Judy out for a solo-date, just like I promised her a while ago.

Speaking of her, my girlfriend was apparently considering something, and before long she called one of the waiters over and whispered something directly into his ear. The man nodded in the affirmative and left our table, and before I could even ask what she said, I noticed the volume of the quartet going down a few notches. That… was surprising. I didn't even know you can just adjust the volume of string instruments like that, but apparently it could be done, as the much softer music attested.

"Thanks, Dormouse. I didn't even consider that an option, but it definitely helps," I said with a self-deprecating smile, and my girlfriend responded with a bright one of her own. Well, by Judy standards, I mean.

"You're welcome," she answered before taking a sip from the glass of cold water in front of her. In fact, she did it so deliberately I had a feeling she tried to communicate something by doing it, but I had no idea what it was.

"So, what were we talking about before we sat down?" I asked mainly as a way to get the conversation rolling, and my dear assistant answered right away.

"You mentioned something about plot armor before we sat down."

"Oh, right. That." I remained silent for a moment to collect my thoughts, during which she took another very long sip. Nope, still had no idea, but I refused to let it bother me. "Long story short, Josh's encounter with Sahi made me wonder: do you think he might be losing his plot armor?"

"Did he ever have one?" Judy asked back, and that made me pause.

"I… think he did? I mean, he survived an encounter with Crowey as a total greenhorn, and he got away with some weird stunts when we tried to capture Fred. Not to mention, he's the protagonist, and protagonists have plot armor by default."

"In that case, I'd like to encourage you to become the protagonist," she commented, and when I remained in stunned silence, she clarified, "It would help my peace of mind a lot, and it's not like you weren't already acting more like a protagonist than him."

"I get it, but… Do you think that's actually possible? I mean, could Josh be losing his plot armor because of me?"

"It's possible. A protagonist moves the plot by definition, and you've been doing that way more than Joshua."

"… I can't really argue with that," I admitted, if a little reluctantly. "Though again, he had this whole thing with Ammy and breaking into Magi warehouses going on, so he was definitely involved in some plot threads."

"Speaking of which," she cut in with a tiny frown, and I could see her fingers rhythmically tapping against the table. It was most likely because she really wanted to take notes, but phones weren't allowed in the restaurant. It was a fancy place with old-school rules. Anyhow, she posited, "I think this chain of events could serve as a strong indication that we are not in a route-based Narrative."

"Oh? What makes you think that?"

"Joshua and Amelia were spending time together during multiple events. Normally this would indicate that Joshua was on her route, but since they aren't romantically involved anymore, it implies that this was instead her personal arc. According to my research, it's common in harem stories for every love interest to have their own arcs one after the other before the protagonist picks one of them at the finale," she explained, and I couldn't help but nod along.

"That's certainly a possibility… but then again, it could be that we're still in the common route, with arcs you just described, and the branching point into individual routes would be when Josh picks one of the girls from his entourage," I countered on principle, only to then pause and say, "Wait, what do you mean by 'no longer romantically involved'?"

My dearest assistant slightly cocked her head to the side and told me, "I was under the impression that she's already going out with w1ng3d n1nj4."

By the way, she actually spelled out the numbers. Don't ask why, I don't know either. More importantly, after I decoded what she meant, I promptly shook my head.

"Nah. Mike is definitely enamored with her, and she didn't seem completely unreceptive, but I don't think they are in an actual relationship."

"They aren't? That's odd," Judy responded while cocking her head even further. "Elly and I both agreed that, based on the way she was talking about him, they were already dating."

"I still don't think they are, but… when exactly did you talk about something like this?"

"It was girl-talk," she told me like it was obvious.

"I see…" For a few seconds it felt like the conversation was getting bogged down in the backwater, so I quickly cleared my throat and said, "Either way, the important thing to consider is whether Josh's loss at Sahi's hands has any deeper narrative implications."

"It could've been just a Hopeless Boss Fight," Judy proposed, and my brows immediately descended in response.

"Like in a JRPG?" She nodded, so I continued with, "So you think the Narrative wanted them to lose the fight?"

"Entirely possible," she stated, though she sounded less certain than her words implied.

"So maybe it was supposed to be a catalyst for character development for him," I guessed, only for a sudden realization to hit me like a bolt of lightning from clear skies. "Wait. But if he was supposed to lose there, then wouldn't my interruption get in the way of that?"

Judy remained silent for a while, yet even after thinking it through, she shrugged her shoulders and answered with an ambivalent, "Possibly. On the other hand, a third party showing up to save the protagonist at the end of a Hopeless Boss Battle is also a trope, so maybe you were supposed to defuse the situation from the very beginning. We can't say for sure without knowing how the original scenario was supposed to go."

Her words immediately triggered a sigh from me, and I followed it up by a generally annoyed, "You know, I'm getting a little tired of all of our theories running into this wall as of late. So long as we can't get a grip on the exact nature of the Narrative, and whatever plotline it may or may not try to adhere to, it feels like we're just blindly shooting into the dark, hoping to hit something by accident."

"True," Judy agreed, followed by a shallow sigh of her own. "We managed to come up with some plausible descriptive hypotheses using tropes, but without being able to see how the Narrative works and whether our actions affect it, they have no predictive applications."

"We really need an outside perspective, don't we?"

"We have one, it's just not very accessible," she pointed out, and it took me a moment to recognize that she was talking about me.

She wasn't exactly wrong though. It was thanks to some hard-to-explain insight that we knew that the world around us was called a 'Simulacrum', and that it was a constructed setting with multiple entities responsible for it. Granted, I still didn't know where that knowledge came from, but...

No, that actually wasn't entirely true. That information probably came from me. As in, the me who moved both Ichiko's and Sahi's souls like it was child's play. The me who knew things I didn't. And the weirdest part was that it didn't feel like that 'me' was another personality or identity, but just, well, me with a few extra layers. It was kind of like when you wake up from a dream, and while you can remember bits and pieces of a swashbuckling adventure you had, one which made perfect sense at the time, now that you're awake the whole thing just falls apart and you can't remember why you thought it made sense in the first place.

Anyhow, I slowly shook my head too clear it of idle thoughts. My dearest assistant probably misunderstood the gesture, as she hastily told me, "I'm not trying to pressure you into doing something unpleasant, let alone potentially dangerous, but even you have to admit that if you possess further external knowledge on the Simulacrum, it would be the biggest breakthrough we could hope for short of finding the original script of the Narrative."

"Maybe, but it's not exactly simple," I answered just a little sourly. "I told you; while I was hyper-aware and strangely knowledgeable when I was zoned out back then, I've no idea where all that information came from, and I can't quite recall any of it anymore."

"It probably came from you being a glitch in the system," Judy casually commented, earning her a critically raised brow in return.

"Glitch?"

"Would you prefer being called a bug instead?"

"I'd prefer neither," I grumbled, and now it was my girlfriend's turn to shake her head.

"Chief, look at all your abilities that defy the metaphysical rules of the Simulacrum. At this point they are way beyond just outside context powers; I'm convinced that everything you do is thanks to you somehow instinctively exploiting holes in the Simulacrum's code."

"That wouldn't make me the glitch, not to mention, there's no code. The strata of the world are more like... I think organic is the closest word I can think of. This is all beside the point though."

"What was the point?"

"I... Huh. Now that you mention it, we wandered a little bit off-topic. We started out with Josh's plot armor, didn't we?"

"Yes. We also concluded that if the incident during the weekend was because of him losing it, it was due to you stealing his position."

"We didn't 'conclude' that, it was just a possibility," I grumbled back.

"You've taken Elly, you've taken his leadership position, and you even took his sword in the stone and his chosen one status for the Brotherhood of the Most Heroic Bloodlines. Usurping his protagonist's status altogether should be but a formality at this point."

"And now I'm usurping of all things..." I whispered under a sigh. "And why do you sound so excited about the prospect? I thought taking the protagonist role was a bad thing."

"Why would it be?" Judy asked back, and for a moment I could only blink in lack of comprehension.

"What do you mean 'why'? Becoming the protagonist would completely mess up the Narrative."

"I was under the impression that we were already doing that."

"Yes, but this way it would get me very directly involved with it. I thought you were against that."

"That boat sailed a loooooong time ago, Chief. Bringing that up right now would be just silly."

"Okay, that's fair, but what about the harem part of being a battle harem protagonist? Don't tell me you are suddenly okay with that."

Judy very slowly narrowed her eyes into an annoyed squint, and then she emphatically asked, "Do you want a harem?"

"Well, no, of course not. I'm kind of having my hands full with just the two of you already."

"Then I see no issue," she told me, much to my bafflement.

"… I know this is a cliché, but let me say this anyway: Who are you, and what did you do to my Dormouse?"

My girlfriend awarded me a wry look and bluntly stated, "Since pleading, warnings, and threats of violence weren't particularly effective so far, I decided to borrow a page from Elly's book and try to focus on positive reinforcement instead." She paused here to let her words sink in, and then added, "Also, if your hypothesis about being a protagonist automatically coming with plot armor was true, it's all the more reason for me to give my full support for your usurping efforts."

"I'm still not usurping anything, it's just a result of weird circumstances with my powers and the sword and whatnot," I griped, but Judy didn't react in any way. In fact, the conversation came to a fairly lengthy halt, so much so that I thought we would remain in silence until our food arrived.

Fortunately, my prediction was off the mark, as she soon casually asked, "Speaking of Caledfwlch, do you really intend to become the leader of the Brotherhood of the Most Heroic Bloodlines?"

"Honestly, it sounds like the easiest way to end the blood feud between them and the Draconians," I answered with complete sincerity, yet she didn't seem entirely convinced.

"Let's presume you actually succeed and make them bury the hatchet. It would probably cause huge ripples in the Narrative and it might even cause the next arc to start in advance again. What then?"

"Well, if it happens and, say, the Celestials show up out of nowhere in force even though we should know of their movements ahead of time, it would at least confirm that we're working with an arc-based plot structure and that it can be sped up by our actions. Also, even if I somehow manage to get the Knights under control, I'd still have to deal with the other side of the conflict, so I'd rather worry about that than any possible arc-shenanigans."

"True, I suppose," Judy concluded, but then a second later she began tapping her fingers again as she mused, "On second thought, could it be that we are already in a situation where there are two overlapping arcs?" I raised a brow, which she must've interpreted as 'Go on', so she did. "Wouldn't dealing with the Knight girl, presumably the archetypal late comer love interest for Josh, be one arc, and dealing with Amelia a separate arc?"

"I don't think so. Josh made no contact with this Penelope girl yet, so if it is an arc, it's probably the class rep's."

"Is that so? In that case, do you think it's already over with their defeat at the hands of Arch-mage Saahira's proxy?"

"Maybe," I answered, and truth be told, I was even more uncertain than my word implied. "I mean, it was pretty climactic from Josh's point of view, and it had this big secret that was built up for a while, and it would've been revealed if not for my intervention at the last second, so I guess it could've technically been an arc-ending finale," I granted her, only to catch myself and add the obligatory, "If we're really having an arc-structure, that is."

Judy didn't respond to my dogged determination to not jump the gun, but instead she cocked her head again, though this time in the other direction.

"Secret? What secret?"

"Well, I kind of promised the class rep that I wouldn't tell anyone else. It's something about her in particular."

My dear assistant fell silent for a while, but then she tilted her head upright and uttered, "She's a homunculus."

"Wait, you knew?" I blurted out in surprise, only realizing my mistake when I noticed the hint of a shadow of a pale imitation of a smug smirk on her lips.

"Not until now."

"Hey! You tricked me!"

"No, I didn't. It was a question," she pointed out, this time audibly smugly.

"No it was most definitely not," I fumed, but seeing her being so triumphant made me let out a soft groan and I decided this wasn't a hill worth dying for, so instead I asked, "You must've had an idea to bring it up in the first place. What gave it away?"

"It was just a hunch," she readily admitted. "Considering the Arch-mage was experimenting with the creation of homunculi capable of magic, and that we never met Amelia's parents, I deduced that there could be a strong correlation between these two pieces of evidence. Quite elementary."

"It sure is," I agreed and let her enjoy herself a little longer. "Do you also know why she would try to jump through all those hoops just to hide this fact?"

"I don't know. It doesn't seem to be a particularly big deal to me."

"You took the words right out of my mouth," I agreed, and before I could say anything else, I noticed that a waiter was coming our way with a serving trolley, so I figured this was as good a way to end the discussion as any. Not to mention, we still had some date plans left, so I dusted off my best boyfriendly attitude, waited until all the food was on the table, and then I theatrically picked up my champagne glass and raised it for a toast.

Our glasses met a little clumsily because Judy wasn't holding her glass quite right, but I naturally ignored such a small faux pas and gave her a reassuring smile before I drank my share in one go. It was, of course, non-alcoholic champagne, because I might be a filthy rich, polyamorous, teleporting King of Knights who may or may not be a glitch in the system, but before all that, I was a law-abiding citizen, and if my ID said I was a minor, then non-alcoholic champagne it is. It's all about the principle, you see.

Part 2

"Morning."

My greeting sounded soulless even to myself, and Josh returned it with a lazy wave of his hand as I sat down at my desk. I was honestly feeling a little under the weather, and quite literally at that; it's been raining nonstop since last night, and it came with a cold wind that chilled me to the bone by the time I got to school. In retrospect, refusing Elly's offer to come to school in her family's limo wasn't a great idea, but there's no point crying over spilled milk now.

"It's rare to see you get here so early," I noted, and my friend shrugged his shoulder.

"Angie has morning practice with her club, and she dragged me to school." He paused here for a moment and glanced around, culminating into a curious, "Where are the girls?"

I used my head to gesture towards the door of the classroom and told him, "They took the class rep to the toilets to interrogate her."

"Interrogate? About what?"

"You know? Girl stuff?"

My less than descriptive answer was apparently satisfactory enough, as Josh let out a disinterested 'Ah, got it,' and then turned away from me. To be fair, I could've given him a more detailed reply, but considering that Judy and Elly wanted to decisively and one hundred percent certainly know whether Ammy was dating Mike, I figured it was a topic that would only complicate Josh's life regardless of her answer. I mean, at this point I was fairly sure she was out of the race for our resident harem protagonist, but one could never know what kind of reaction that would elicit from the nebulous Narrative, or just my friend in general. The last thing I needed now was some kind of unnecessary jealously or, heaven forbid, NTR plot rearing its ugly head.

Not that I pegged Josh as the jealous type, but neither did I expect the class rep to entertain Mike's advances, so who the hell knew at this point? Not to mention, Josh was a little melancholic by the looks of it, so a silly romance drama was probably the last thing he needed. In fact, he looked so down that after putting my bag away, I turned around on my chair and casually asked, "Why's the long face?"

My friend exhaled a long breath and answered with a dour, "I couldn't sleep well lately."

"Ah, that sucks," I uttered with all the sympathy a guy who doesn't actually need to sleep could muster. "Is it because the weather is crap, or something else?"

"Lots of stuff," he responded in the company of a shrug, but then he shifted on his seat so that he was facing me directly and asked, "Are you free tomorrow?"

"I guess so."

"That's good."

I was a little taken aback by his straightforward question, but I could understand where he was coming from. I promised that I'd hang out with him a bit one of these days, but yesterday I was already reserved by Judy, and today all of us would gather at the base for our regularly scheduled training session, so it was this weekend or never, and he was obviously running out of patience.

"At your place, after classes are over?" I asked, and he nodded after a moment of thinking.

"Sure." I thought this would be the end of the conversation, but then my friend gave me an odd look and asked, practically out of nowhere, "Speaking of classes, why do you think Mrs. Applebottom is teaching all of them?"

Oh. Oooooh? What's that? Did Josh just notice one of the peculiarities of the Simulacrum all on his own? Was the perception filtering failing? Or did I or the girls accidentally say something in his presence that gave him a clue?

While all of these questions raced through my head, I masked my shock with an amicable smile and said, "I don't know. Any ideas?"

Josh remained silent for a few short seconds, but then he sharply exhaled through his nose and shook his head.

"Nah, I just found it peculiar. I know the school is just a cover for the magical underground base or whatever, but you'd think they'd hire more than one teacher per class. Oh, wait. I suppose your ninja is teaching here too." He paused here, only to whisper. "Wow. That's another sentence I never thought I'd say in my life."

Well, that was a bit anti-climactic. While he apparently noticed the discrepancy, he didn't dwell on the logistical impossibility of a single teacher being present everywhere at once. Still, just the fact that he noticed was noteworthy. Maybe the perception filtering was also weakening with the loss of plot armor?

Wait, scratch that. Those two should have nothing to do with each other. That said, it couldn't help to poke around a little bit, so while feigning disinterest I casually asked, "Yeah, it's a little weird. How come you just noticed?"

"Hey, man. Cut me some slack," he abruptly huffed as he crossed his arms. "I had a lot on my plate and didn't pay attention to small things like that. Hell, I don't even know why I noticed it now in the first place. You'd think I have more important things to think about."

"Such as?" I probed further, and my friend promptly stifled a groan.

"Like how to avoid getting killed the next time I run into that girl with the floating arms," he hissed in a low voice, and this time I couldn't hide my surprise, despite my best efforts.

"You mean by Sahi? Why would she want to kill you?"

This time I received one of his increasingly rarer yet not one bit less cutting single, skeptically raised brows, followed by the words, "Dude, if you didn't show up in the nick of time the last time, Ammy and I would be both dead."

"Oh, come on. Don't exaggerate. You weren't in any serious danger." He still looked about as skeptical as a Phd biologist at a young Earth creationist lecture, so I let out a long sigh and told him, "Listen, Saahira is weird, annoying, overbearing, and the less said about the whole 'pretending to be a middle-schooler' thing, the better. However, she's not unreasonable."

"How do you know that?" he asked back, still critical of my words, so I answered frankly.

"Because I've been keeping an eye on her since the first time she came to the island, or rather since I first met her in person. If she was an actual threat, I wouldn't have bothered trying to negotiate with her; I would've just stabbed her in the back or bonked her over the head or something." My explanation seemed to be at least semi-effective, so I decided to top it off by saying, "Not to mention, technically she wasn't in the wrong, you know? You guys were the ones who broke into magi property and took classified documents. I get that it was for safekeeping and all, but technically it was still illegal."

"I… can't really argue with that," Josh conceded with a hint of a pout, which was quickly washed away by a sigh. "That doesn't mean I want to encounter her ever again. Not meeting with her for the rest of my life would be too soon."

"I don't want to make you feel worse than you already are, but that's probably going to be inevitable. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if you ran into her in a couple of days."

"What? Why?"

Josh had a 'Are you adopting/hiring/dating her too?' kind of look in his eyes, so before he could get himself worked up into a misunderstanding, I hastily raised my palm and shook my head.

"Simply put, Sahi is probably going to enroll into the school."

"What?! Why?!" he echoed his previous words, this time not even bothering to keep his voice down.

"I'll be damned if I know, but those are the facts."

"That's messed up, man," Josh grumbled, but before I could respond to him, a new voice entered into our conversation.

"I see that you're already aware of the new transfer student," Mr. Spiky, one of the four creepy amigos noted without even bothering to get up from his desk a couple of seats to our right.

"News travel fast," Mr. Bowl Cut commented from the other end of the classroom.

"It's only natural," Mr. Bedhair stated a seat behind him. "As we all know, news about beautiful new transfer students are the most important news possible."

"Preach, brother," Mr. Crew Cut agreed from the front row.

There was a moment of silence, broken by Josh uttering a confused, "What?"

"Just ignore them," I told him in the tone of a veteran soldier instructing a greenhorn. "They are an annoying bunch, but if they say we already have a transfer student, it could only mean—"

"Leo! Help!"

My words were abruptly cut short by a panicked voice entering the fray, drawing all attention to the half-open back door of the classroom, and my sister awkwardly standing under it, hesitating over whether she should enter or not. It didn't last for long, as there was some kind of commotion, and after glancing over her shoulder, Snowy's eyes opened wide and she dashed into the classroom and practically jumped over Josh's desk so that she could hide behind me.

I could barely even digest the situation when the sliding door was thrown wide open, followed by the words, "Stop running away you tart and face me like a…!"

The brand new voice slowly trailed off as its owner, a short-ish girl, looked into the room, and she fell completely silent the moment our eyes met. She was petite, with long, wavy red locks cascading around her flushed, lightly freckled face. Her previously thundering green eyes were currently wide open in shock, and on closer look, I could see a pink unicorn hair clip holding her hair in place just over her right ear. Moreover, she was actually wearing our school's winter uniform, complete with the bag still slung over her back.

For a second we just stared at each other in dead silence, and I would've had to be an idiot not to immediately realize the identity of the girl in front of me, but before I could get a word in, I was once again cut short by another new voice.

"What's going on here?"

The question came from the princess, who just returned to the classroom in the company of Judy and the class rep, and the moment the new girl saw them, she…

"Awawa! Th-this is not the end of it, you hear me?!"

… ran away in the opposite direction. Also, call me crazy, but that noise at the beginning…

"That sounded eerily familiar," my dear assistant noted as she made her way over to our side, and I couldn't help but exclaim:

"So I wasn't the only one who thought so!"

"… What are you talking about?" Elly muttered, conscious of the way we were looking at her, yet none the wiser as to why. I would've told her, but I had more important things to worry about, so I decided to leave this up to my other girlfriend and focused on the white-haired girl awkwardly shuffling behind me instead.

"Are you all right?"

"Y-Yes," Snowy answered with downcast eyes, but a moment later she looked back up at me and words started pouring out of her like water through a broken dam. "I was just really startled because she just showed up all of a sudden, and you told me I should try avoiding her and not fight, but then she started following after me, and then I didn't know what to do, so I came here."

"Calm down. You did well," Judy comforted my surprisingly rattled little sister by patting her back.

"Who are you talking about?" Elly blurted out, even though she was there.

"Yeah, what's going on? What did I miss?" came the next question from the freshly arrived Angie, with her gym bag over her shoulder.

I waited until everyone was gathered around my desk, then told them, "By the looks of it, the Knight girl who caused the utility-pole incident transferred to our school."

"What? Where's she?!" my draconic girlfriend immediately perked up, ready to bolt out the door at any moment, so I immediately grabbed hold of her right hand. To my surprise, Judy took hold of her left pretty much simultaneously, without even a momentary break in her patting of Snowy's back.

I sent my assistant an acknowledging nod before turning back to Elly.

"Calm down, princess. Don't make a scene at school."

"I'm perfectly calm," she answered a little sheepishly, yet the way she was still eyeing the back door told me she was probably itching to go out and find our newly transferred troublemaker. I glanced back to Judy, and she understood my intent without any need for words, as she immediately stepped away from my sister and instead used both her hands to cling onto Elly's arm. Of course, she could shake her off without too much trouble, but we both knew the princess wouldn't do something like that, so for the time being she was effectively held back.

Once I made sure she wouldn't go on the warpath, I let go of Elly's hand and turned to the class rep.

"Anything to comment on the situation?"

"I have no idea what's going on," Ammy told me without a hint of reservation. "This is the first time I've heard anything about another transfer student, let alone one of the Knights."

"So maybe she didn't actually transfer in?" Josh proposed on the side. "Maybe she's just here to pick a fight?"

"I… don't know. I should ask grandfather," the class rep muttered while adjusting her glasses, but I put a hand on her shoulder before she could get going.

"Don't bother. I'll do it myself." I waited to see if anyone had any objections, but when they remained silent, I looked over to my girlfriends, Judy still holding onto Elly, and the latter still raring to go, and told them, "If I don't get back by the time the class starts, tell Mrs. Applebottom I went to see the principal."

And with that, I headed out to have a long talk with Lord Grandpa and just what exactly was he thinking.

Part 3

After leaving the classroom, I quickly checked the location of the Arch-mage, and to my surprise, I found him in an office on the ground floor instead of his usual underground hidey-hole in the School. Since that was the case, I decided to visit him on foot. Sure, Phasing right next to someone had more flair to it, but overusing it for superfluous reasons was a bad habit I had to curb.

As I walked down the stairs, I noticed that we still had a lot of Placeholders idling in the hallways. I didn't bother to check the time, but this factoid told me that I still had about ten to fifteen minutes until classes started almost as accurately. I was tempted to peek into Snowy's classroom on the way, just to see if the Knight girl was still around, but I ultimately decided against it. It's better to take things one at a time.

The principal's office was situated just behind the faculty room, and I greeted Mountain Girl with a quick nod while passing through. She returned the gesture, though she looked ever so slightly bamboozled by my presence. I didn't linger to explain myself, but instead I unceremoniously threw the door in front of me open and entered without any further ado.

It was actually a surprisingly small office. On the left, there was a rectangular wooden table with four matching chairs around it, while on the right I found a large desk with a couple of filing cabinets and a bookshelf behind it. The place also had a few potted plants and paintings on the walls, giving it a nice, cozy atmosphere. Unfortunately, it didn't help my temper one iota, as the moment I laid my eyes on the dapper old man behind the desk, I was hit by a familiar wave of indignant irritation.

Normally I would've tried to suppress my irrational reaction to the Arch-mage's mug, but this time I didn't bother. I figured a more forceful approach was required, so I firmly closed the door behind myself and turned to my unprepared and apparently quite flabbergasted host.

"Hello, old man. We need to talk."

"... Pardon?" Lord Grandpa blurted out in surprise, but then he hastily put down the bundle of papers in his hand and cleared his throat, after which he sat straight and looked me in the eye. "Good morning, Leonard. While I can certainly remember telling you that you should visit me using the door, I did not quite mean that you should do so without any appointment or forewarning."

"Cut the crap," I snapped at him as I came to a stop in front of his desk and placed my hands onto it. Judging by the way the corner of his eye was twitching, the Arch-mage wasn't exactly happy about my tone, but he maintained a guise of civility by clearing his throat again.

"What exactly seems to be the problem?"

"The problem is the new transfer student," I stated without beating around the bush, and when the old guy remained silent, I decided to play along by raising one hand to chest level and adding, "Redhead girl, this tall, transferred to my sister's class this morning, called her a tart. Potentially Irish, have to look into it."

"Oh, you mean the young miss Penelope Pendragon," the old man noted with a disgustingly grandfatherly smile. I naturally knew he was pulling my leg, considering there were no other transfer students I could refer to, but my snappy response was thwarted by him continuing with, "I was under the impression you already knew about her transferal."

"Why would I know about it?" I blurted out, following which Lord Grandpa's smile slowly withered into a puzzled frown.

"Is she not your sister?"

"Wait, what? Who told you that?" I asked back in mild bewilderment.

"She did, naturally." When I didn't respond right away, the old coot leaned back in his padded swivel chair and proceeded to explain himself by telling me, "She made an appointment with me on the weekend, and she visited my office on Tuesday. She informed me of her intent to transfer to Blue Cherry High at the earliest possible opportunity, and she claimed to be your estranged sister."

"And you didn't bother to do a background check on her?"

Hearing my question, Lord Grandpa's brows immediately knit into a troubled frown, and a moment of hesitation later he simply told me, "You see, Leonard, considering the no small amount of headaches our recent interactions caused me, I can say with perfect honesty and without any reservations that I do not want to get involved with your affairs if at all possible. Even if we disregard our previous… disagreements, do you even have an idea of how much it cost the School to repair the auditorium after the stampede you caused during the last symposium?"

"I'm not taking responsibility for your lack of security, and you're changing the subject. Quit it."

"I am most certainly not," the old man huffed a touch indignantly. "I tell you again: I wished to stay out of your affairs at any cost, so I simply approved her transfer request and politely showed her the door before more complications would arise."

"… So you're telling me you didn't contact me or put any surveillance on her simply because you wanted to avoid dealing with me in any shape or form," I concluded while channeling my inner Judy, and Lord Grandpa nodded without a shred of shame.

"I believe that is the prudent thing to do when it comes to natural disasters, such as yourself," he commented with a wry look, before thoughtfully adding, "Truth be told, I have actually placed an Observer Orb on her, just out of curiosity, but it was immediately removed upon leaving the premises of the school building. It must be a characteristic running in your family."

I refused to grace his comment with a reaction and instead stared him down while looking for a hint of deception, but I couldn't find any. In the end, I turned away and clicked my tongue in irritation. Apparently I completely missed this particular event, and so it came back to blindside me. In my defense, while my Far Sight was a powerful tool that allowed me to gather all kinds of intelligence and learn about all kinds of plots and incidents, it was ultimately limited to me actively viewing one person or group at a time, so there were plenty of blind spots where things could fly under my radar.

Anyhow, with this, I was about seventy percent sure this wasn't another harebrained plan by the Arch-mage. That wasn't exactly a chiseled-into-stone-tablets tier of certainty, so I made a mental note to pay extra attention to him in the next couple of days to see if he would slip up, but for the time being it meant there was no point in pestering him any longer.

"I suppose I better go and deal with this new 'sister' of mine," I grumbled under my breath, only to stop in my tracks just as I was to turn away from the desk and then promptly face the old man again. "Before I leave, I just remembered something I wanted to ask."

"… Go right ahead," the owner of the room told me, though I couldn't help but notice the way he became visibly guarded.

"Okay, so, hypothetically speaking, if it turned out that someone was a homunculus, would that be a big deal, and if so, why?"

It took several long seconds for Lord Grandpa to interpret my question, and when he did, his eyes slowly narrowed into a pair of suspicious slits.

"That is a very specific question you just asked," he whispered as he probed me with his eyes, and when I refused to react, he let out a pent-up breath and stated, "If someone you knew was revealed to be a homunculus, it would be certainly a serious issue to consider."

"Okay, but why?" I pressed on.

"It would mean they are an artificial being," the old man clarified without making anything any clearer.

"Yes, I get that, but why is that a big deal?"

My host appeared stumped for a second, as if he was considering whether I was asking a trick question, but at last he uttered, in a grave tone, "It would mean they are not human."

"I get that too, but why is that important?"

"It is definitely important," Lord Grandpa stated, though he looked just a tad confused by my insistent questioning.

"I asked, 'WHY'! WHY is that important?" I emphasized, and it took him several seconds to formulate an answer.

"Because… they are an artificial being instead of a human?"

"That was a question," I warned him, but by all intents and purposes, he looked genuinely confused by my inquiry. "Okay, let's start from the beginning. Let's say someone, whose name we are purposefully avoiding in this conversation, is a homunculus. Are we clear on that?" The old man nodded, so I let out a sharp breath through my nose and continued with, "So, that person wants to do everything in their power to keep this a secret. Why's that?"

"So that their acquaintances wouldn't learn about them being artificial beings," the Arch-mage asserted like it was blindingly obvious.

"And why would it be a problem if others learned about this? Why is it a big deal?" I asked again, this time speaking very slowly and deliberately emphasizing every word.

Lord Grandpa remained silent for several seconds, but then he uttered, "Because they would learn that they are not human."

"Oh for the love of…! We are going in circles!" I exclaimed in the company of a long groan, but I wasn't ready to give up yet. "Okay, let's take a step back. So let's say others learned that they're 'not human'. How exactly does that affect this person? Why is that something that has to be kept a secret?"

"… It would mean they are not who they thought this hypothetical person was?"

"That was another question, and it doesn't even make sense!" I burst out, my patience wearing dangerously thin. "It doesn't change who they are, it changes 'what' they are, and it's a completely meaningless distinction."

"But… it means they are artificial beings. That is a fundamental difference and an absolutely meaningful discrepancy," my host pointed out, and for a moment I had to gather all my willpower not to blow up in his face.

I took several short breaths, and once I felt under control, I let out the great-grandmother of all sighs and simply told him, "You know what? Never mind. By the sound of it, I'm not getting anything out of you. Forget I even asked. Bye."

With that, I immediately turned on my heel and marched out of the room, leaving an eminently bamboozled old man in my wake. To be fair, I wasn't faring much better either. Just why was this question so difficult? Was this some kind of perception filtering thing, like how the guys never noticed the Placeholders acting weird? Maybe this was some kind of hard-wired thing and that's why he couldn't even comprehend the question? I simply didn't get it.

I was still mulling over the question when I reached the first floor, and would have probably done so for a while longer if not for an unfamiliar voice catching my attention. I stopped in my tracks and listened a bit more closely, and it quickly turned out I wasn't just hearing things.

"Psst! Brother! Over here!"

I glanced in the direction of the voice calling out to me, and before long I found a certain redhead waving at me while half-hidden behind the open door leading into the girl's restroom. I had no idea why she was hiding, or from whom, as by this point the corridors were completely empty, but considering I was planning to talk with her anyway, I figured I might as well use the opportunity to humor her. As such, I calmly made my way over to restrooms, though I obviously didn't go in after her.

The moment I came to a halt, she glanced around and gestured me to come closer. When I refused to budge, she let out an indignant huff and came to me instead. Again, I had no idea why she was making such a big deal out of this, as we could talk perfectly fine at our current distance.

"Brother," she… greeted me, I supposed? I decided to acknowledge it with a small nod, and when I did so, she sidled even closer and whispered, "Listen, we need to talk."

"Yes, we do," I replied, and even though my words were all but dripping with thinly veiled exasperation, she remained none the wiser of it. Still, for the time being I decided to uphold my role as her 'brother', so I let out a small sigh and asked, "Why did you come here?"

"I didn't have a choice," she told me with a frown as she glanced past my side, probably at the classroom door at the other end of the hallway. "I tried to contact you in the past, but I was thwarted by… Why are you living with an Abyssal Seducer anyway?! Explain yourself!"

"Let's not change the subject," I told the suddenly agitated girl and pointed an admonishing palm at her. "You still haven't told me why you transferred into the school."

"I told you, I couldn't help it," Miss Incognito Unicorn grumbled with a hint of a pout on her lips. "I needed to warn you about something, but the last time I tried to go to your headquarters, I was… Brother, who was that swordswoman? And what about that child?! Why are you living with so many women?! Just what were you up to while we were apart?!"

"Focus," I chided her, though I said it as much as a reminder to myself as well, as otherwise I would've already facepalmed myself into unconsciousness.

"Ah, right." Once again, the girl's attitude turned on a dime and she pointed a finger at me. "Listen, Brother! We'll talk about your womanizing later, but for now, you have to know this: there's a dangerous individual on the island. His name is… Bel of the Abyss!"

What followed after this was about three minutes of her giving a short and fairly inaccurate description of my escapades as my alter ego, thought if nothing else, at least this confirmed that they really didn't make a connection between me and the flamboyant fake Abyssal.

"… and that's why you should be very careful, and throw that Abyssal thot out of your house."

"I don't see how those two things are related," I pointed out, only to get summarily ignored as she checked the time on her tiny wristwatch. Apparently she was an analog person.

"I have to go now! Classes are starting, and I promised Sir Roland that I would pretend to be a model student so that I wouldn't compromise your cover!" I wanted to point out that if I still had a cover to be concerned about, the way she antagonized Snowy would've already blown a hole the size of Uranus into it, but I never got the chance. "Be on the lookout, and don't let yourself be led astray by a pretty face, you hear me?!"

Before I could get a word in, she rushed past me, gave me a small wave, and disappeared into a classroom. Then she came out with a loud "Awawa! Wrong classroom!" and dashed into the one on the other side of the corridor.

For a moment I couldn't help but stare in mild bewilderment, and once I overcame it, I stopped delaying the inevitable and a moment later the heel of my hand hit my forehead with enough force to make a muffled clapping noise in the empty hallway.

Part 4

"How?! How did you become so powerful so quickly!?"

"I'm not that powerful," I answered humbly, but apparently it wasn't satisfactory enough.

"Not that powerful my ass! I leave you alone for just a little while, and when I check on you again, you suddenly have a legion of demons!"

"I wouldn't really call that a 'legion', at least not yet," I tried to excuse myself, but I was cut short.

"Whaaa?! Why do you have fifty pit fiends?! This is total bullshit!" Josh exclaimed at my side, and while his volume level didn't agree with my lingering headache, I graciously let it slide and only sent him a questioning glance.

"Is there a problem with that?" I asked with all the innocence of a white dove landing on a newborn lamb in the backyard of Lotario dei Conti di Segni. For the record, that's very, very innocent.

"Of course there's a problem!" my host fumed without even trying to hide his outrage. "That's a tier-five ranged unit! You can only recruit four of them every week! How the hell do you have fifty of them on week three?!"

"Just a combination of luck and creative utilization of a few skills," I told him humbly, but he only continued to stare daggers at me.

"Then care to explain how you got these guys without cheating?" he continued to pester me while pointing at the screen in front of me, with an expression that said he will totally strangle me if I won't tell him the truth.

"It wasn't that difficult. First I passed a diplomacy check to recruit one of the monster armies near my starting position, and using them I beat this other army that was guarding this relic, and combined with these two artifacts I found nearby it forms a set that upgrades my faction skill so that when I sacrifice the captives after the battle, I get pit fiends instead of imps."

"What?! Let me see that!"

Saying so, Josh snatched the mouse out of my hand and quickly checked my main hero's inventory. In case it wasn't obvious enough, I was currently in the process of hanging out at my friend's house, as planned. Things were pretty laid back at the beginning, but after some random discussions about unimportant things, Josh proposed to play a game he recently bought. It was a retro, turn-based strategy game with great pixel art, good music, and terrible balancing, and it perfectly fit Josh's similarly retro PC with its small CRT monitor. I wasn't ragging on the guy though; it wasn't his fault that computer tech leapfrogged twenty years in a few months. If anything, I had a feeling it was my fault, but let's keep that one to myself for now.

Anyhow, it was a game where you had your castle where you recruited your fantasy units, captured resource nodes, fought neutral armies on the map to level up your hero's skills, and your goal was to capture all enemy castles on the map. It also had a fun little feature the options menu called 'hot seat', where two players could play on the same machine by taking turns. As such, since I was a total newbie, and Josh only played the game enough to get the basics, we decided to form an alliance and fight two medium-difficulty AI players while also continuing our discussions. Since Josh picked the goodie-two-shoes human faction with knights and priests and angels, I thought it would be funny if I picked the evilest looking faction for our team up, so I ended up with the demonists that received low-tier units for free after every victory. Well, at least on paper.

"This is such a broken set bonus," Josh grumbled just as he finished inspecting the artifacts on my hero character. "And you say you just found all the pieces around your starting location? Seriously?"

"Yeah. They were guarded by some pretty strong neutral armies, but after I got the first one to join me, the rest was easy to take care of."

"Wow… You're either insanely lucky, or you're cheating," my friend concluded, and I could only shake my head.

"I don't even know any cheat codes for this game. Not to mention, can you even cheat in multiplayer?"

"Can you? I've no idea. All I know is that I left you alone for just five minutes to get some chips, and by the time I returned, you suddenly had enough pit fiends to steamroll the rest of the game."

"It gets better," I noted with a not-at-all shit-eating grin. "Once I get my main castle up to tier four, I can upgrade them to pit lords, and then they will do AOE damage to everything in a two hex radius."

"Seriously?" When I nodded, my friend let out a long whistle and then concluded with, "This game is just broken."

"I don't know. I kinda like it," I admitted, earning me a roll of an eye from Josh. "Anyhow, it's your turn now."

Saying so, I got up and let him switch places with me while the screen showed the AI players rapidly taking their turns. While we waited for that (as I said, Josh's machine wasn't exactly cutting edge), I picked up one of the bags of chips on his bed and opened it up without any reservations. However, by the time I turned back to him, I found my friend absently gazing at the screen with a contemplative expression on his face. I stopped in my track to take a second glance, but whether I liked it or not, it was indeed a very familiar look. It was the kind that was subtly hinting at the viewer to ask if everything was all right. I had a feeling I'd run into something like this today, so I resolved myself to get it out of my hair and be done with it.

"What's eating you?" I asked with my best reassuring smile in tow, and Josh glanced over at me in a way that said he was waiting for me to ask. See, I told you it was that kind of expression.

"Idunno. Honestly, I'm just feeling a little muddle-headed lately. I guess I still didn't fully digest nearly getting killed the other day."

I wanted to once again point out that he wasn't in mortal danger, but if it didn't help the last time, I had a feeling it wouldn't work now either. Instead, I walked over and softly asked, "Is that what's bothering you?"

"Yes. I mean… I think it is. Maybe," my friend answered, sounding about as uncertainly as the words he used. I waited for him to collect his thoughts, and once he did so, he opened with an unusually dramatic sigh. "I think I'm just feeling… burned out isn't the right term, but it kind of is. I mean, after I got over the first shock about all the fantasy and sci-fi crap showing up out of the blue, things just kind of… petered out." I raised a curious brow to prompt him to continue, and he did so right away. "I guess it's because for a while I thought I was important. You know? All the prophecies and stuff? I was pretty scared by all the other things that came with it, and I could honestly live without any of it, but it wasn't a terrible feeling. Being important, I mean. You can relate on that point, right?"

"I… suppose?" I answered a touch absent-mindedly, not expecting the question. "I was pretty shocked at first as well, but humans are pretty flexible."

"No, I mean, being important in the grand scheme of things," Josh corrected me with a frown. "But then again, maybe you can't. You got where you are because you worked for it. Me? It was just a bunch of prophecies."

For a moment I studied Josh's face to see if he was being sarcastic, but since he looked entirely serious, I decided to drop all pretenses and tell him, "Trust me, it might not look like that from the outside, but I'm not nearly as important as you are. Also, it had less to do with hard work and more with stumbling around in the dark while pretending that I totally knew the way. How does the idiom go? In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is mistaken for an almighty janitor?"

"I've… never heard that one."

"I might be remembering it wrong, but I like my version better," I responded with a shrug. "More importantly, don't speak of the devil like that, or you might just get visited by the trouble you're asking for. If you ask me, the reason why all hell hasn't broken loose around you yet is all thanks to nobody knowing about how crucial you are to all of the supernatural folks yet."

"And because they're all focusing on you," my friend pointed out, and when I rewarded him with a frown, he raised his voice to add, "Come on, we both know it's true. You're the one who got all the money and powers and influence, and you're the one who keeps causing all kinds of incidents. For example, I never caused a bunch of old men to stampede and wreck an entire lecture hall."

"It wasn't the entire auditorium, and I don't remember ever telling you about this."

"Heard it from Ammy," Josh responded with a grin, and I couldn't help that feel that it was obvious in retrospect.

"Go figure," I grumbled, much to my friend's amusement. It only lasted for a second thought before he returned to a more somber countenance.

"Speaking of Ammy, I think I stuck around with her mainly because I just wanted to do something. I mean, you've been doing all of these secret things in the background, so I thought I'd try it too. In the end, I just felt like a third wheel, and when push came to shove, I even failed to protect her and got beaten, and you had to bail me out again. I mean, don't take me wrong, I'm not complaining about being saved from the jaws of death in the nick of time and stuff, but it just made me think: am I really that important?"

"I don't think the two things are closely related," I pointed out, only to get dismissed with a soft huff.

"Aren't they? I never thought everything would be smooth sailing, but I figured there would be something. A conspiracy to unravel, some hidden potential or technique to master… Heck, I would've been fine with one of those famous whirlwind romances you see on TV all the time, but I got nothing."

"To be fair, I never experienced anything like that either."

"Says the guy with two girlfriends," Josh scoffed at my objection with a decidedly undeserved amount of righteous indignation. "I don’t even have one."

"Maybe you could try doing something about it then?" I proposed in the heat of the moment, and my friend practically threw his hands into the air.

"Again, says the guy with the two girlfriends! It's not so simple for the rest of us!" After saying that, he fell silent for a second or two, then quietly added, "Or maybe it's just me? I mean, even Ammy got a boyfriend."

"Wait, you mean Mike?" Josh nodded, so I told him, "They aren't going out."

"They aren't?"

"Nope. Remember how I told you the girls interrogated her? Apparently, they are still in the UST phase."

"I don't know what that means, but I have a feeling I don't even want to know. Also, that's surprising."

"Tell me about it," I agreed, though probably not for the reason he thought. After all, just the fact that one of his entourage successfully 'escaped' his harem protagonist aura without any dramatic incident or relationship woes was remarkable in and of itself, but the way nobody, including Josh himself, seemed to be against it was another thing entirely. Anyhow, I decided that if this topic came up, I might as well run with it, so I said, "So what if the class rep is in a 'will they won't they?' kind of relationship with another guy? It's not like there aren't enough fishes in the sea."

"Oh, really? Fine, let's do a headcount of the girls I know," he responded defiantly and began counting on his fingers. "Judy and Elly are obviously off the table. So is Ammy. Ms. Rinne is my teacher, so that's not happening, Ichiko is too small and she bites, so that's a no-no, and Galatea… well, she's hot, and she has the best knock-knock jokes I've ever heard, but not really my type."

I wanted to ask him just when did he even have enough time with the androidess to learn that, but there was a much bigger elephant in the room to fry, so instead I asked, "What about Snowy and Angie then?"

"What about them?" Seeing that I wasn't going to back down, Josh let out a long breath and said, "Fine, I get it. Lili is just…" he suddenly paused, and after a beat he asked, "For the record, I know you have this whole 'overprotective big brother' thing going on, so do I really have to talk about her?"

"Depends. Are you going to say something that would make me want to inflict grievous bodily harm upon you with a grapefruit spoon?"

"… I'd say… no?"

"In that case, you're probably safe."

Josh didn't look entirely convinced but spoke up anyway.

"So, the thing about her is that… she's cute, right?"

"Yep," I agreed.

"And she's pretty too, right?"

"We can also agree on that," I granted again.

"So, I think I kinda like her, but she's… well, being your sister makes it a little weird."

"It does? How so?"

"I don't know, it just does," he blurted out before averting his eyes. "That's just how it is."

"If you say so," I relented with a shrug, and for some odd reason Josh looked downright relieved for a moment.

"So, what I’m trying to say is that ever since she moved in with you, things have been… different. She's always doing something or hanging out with the girls and doesn't seem like she's interested in… you know? I mean, just the other day we spoke for a while during lunch, and she was only talking about this new tablet thing you and Elly bought her and how great it is."

"Yeah, she's quite enamored with it as of late," I agreed, and my friend nodded right along.

"That's what I mean. We also don't have much to talk about to begin with, but I had absolutely nothing I could add to that. I mean, we don't really have any common topics in general, with her growing up in that Abyss place and everything. I just feel like she and I are far apart."

"Isn't there a term for that? Opposites attract?" I teased him a little, but he only shook his head again.

"Not even that. I mean, we aren't 'opposite enough' for that. She's just nice and a good friend and I think I like her, but I'm not sure I like-like her yet, and it's just awkward. Do you get what I'm saying?"

"More or less," I told him, but to be perfectly honest, I kind of lost the thread a while ago, so I decided to move on to greener pastures. "What about Angie?"

The moment I uttered her name, Josh almost let out a snort.

"If anything, she and I are too similar. Also…" He abruptly paused here and sent me an odd look, and after urging him with my brows a little, he apparently resolved himself to something and stated, "So… I don't want to cause you any trouble or anything, but I think she might like you."

"Me?" I repeated after him without bothering to hide the ocean of disbelief roiling under my voice, and he nodded again.

"All week, she's been only talking about romance. I mean, she does that a lot when she's talking about her terrible young adult books, but this time it really felt like she was hinting at something in particular, and she's been saying some strange things. Like that she could be convinced to try a relationship with multiple people. You're the only one with one of those around, so it wasn't hard to put two and two together."

I awarded my friend's forthcoming words with a skeptical frown for the ages, but since he didn't get the clue, I had no choice but to state, "Dude, you really need to work on your math. Among other things."

"What? Why?"

"It's…" I had a hard time deciding whether I should say anything more, but considering we were already neck-deep in this topic, I figured I might as well try to nudge him a bit. "Okay, let's take a step back. When exactly did she start talking about these things with you?"

"I told you, she's been going at it all week."

"Yes, but when did she start doing it? What was the trigger?" I led him on, and after some thinking, he finally came to a realization.

"I guess it was after what happened on Monday? You know, with Ammy in the bathroom."

"Good. Now, try your equation again."

Josh fell silent for almost half a minute at this point. I was initially a little reserved about interfering with Josh's love life, but honestly speaking, his 'potential harem' has been in tatters thanks to my interference anyway, so I figured I might as well give him a push, Narrative be damned. In fact, looking at it objectively, his entourage already got whittled down to a run-of-the-mill love triangle, with Josh liking Snowy but being unsure about it and Angie nursing a crush on the guy but getting stonewalled by the whole 'childhood friend always loses' trope.

While the premise was always about Josh making up his mind, both literally and narratively speaking, at this point things wouldn't progress anywhere unless he at least realized the situation he was in and made it move. Speaking of which, my friend finally came to a realization of some sort and he promptly shook his head.

"Dude, no way. We're talking about Angie here. Angie."

"So?" I responded while simultaneously picking up an already opened can of soda from the nearby nightstand. "I don't see how that makes a difference."

"But it does! I mean, we knew each other since kindergarten! I would've noticed if she was… you know? Interested and stuff?"

"No, you wouldn't have," I stated quite emphatically in return.

"Come on, man! That's just uncalled for," he griped so hard he was practically whining, probably thinking that I called him dense… which he kind of was, but that's beside the point. "Not to mention, it doesn't make any sense. Why would she start talking about dating multiple people if she was... you know?"

The wishy-washy question earned my friend another skeptical frown which slowly morphed into one of exasperation as I decided to just ignore my reservations about the whole 'muddling with the Narrative and its conventions' thing (not that it ever did any good for me, now that I think about it) and be a bit more blunt about things.

"Listen, Josh. Think about your situation a little, will you? You're the prophesied chosen one of a bunch of different folks. Elly literally came to this island to rekindle your childhood relationship and marry you, Ammy has been hanging out with you since middle school, Snowy tried to seduce you the first time you met, even if on her brother's orders, and Angie is your childhood friend who's been with you all through this. Why do you think she would consider going polyamorous in this situation?"

Josh remained suspiciously silent for a good while, only to then blurt out, "No way. Does that mean… I'm actually popular?"

"Was that seriously the first conclusion you drew from what I just said?!" I exclaimed in a mixture of indignation and disbelief, and my host immediately raised his hands in defense.

"Hey! Just because you're popular with the girls, it doesn't mean everyone else can take it in stride like you do!" After uttering that objection of wildly misplaced priorities, he let his hands down and asked, in a considerably lower voice, "But… am I really popular? I mean, Elly was a weird case, and Lili is… I don't know, man. It still sounds a little sketchy to me."

"It's not though, and you're just being obtuse at this point."

"Cut me some slack, will you? You can't just dump all that on an unprepared guy all at once!" Josh grumbled as he crossed his arms in front of his chest. "I told you, I still have to wrap my head around the idea of being popular, and… I still can't really believe it. I mean, it's Angie we are talking about! And Ammy is… well, we were pretty close in middle school, but she never really showed any real interest… or at least I think she didn't? Man, this is all kinds of screwy."

"It's not. Just go and ask them if you don't believe me."

"Hey! Not all of us are the reincarnation of Casanova in this room, you know?" Josh continued to fume.

"You don't need to be. Just go over to Angie and ask her how she feels about you. Easy peasy."

"I tell you, it's not. I get it that you think it's easy because you're surrounded by girls all the time, but it's not that simple."

"You're also surrounded by girls, blockhead," I pointed out just a touch impatiently. "Do you even have any other guy friends aside from me?"

"Of course I… erm… there's Pascal I suppose. I think we're friends. Or at least acquaintances, I guess."

"And the rest of them are all girls, so drop the pretenses," I concluded, only for my friend to go on the offensive in turn.

"That's beside the point! At least I'm not actively increasing the number of girls around me!"

"I'm not doing that either," I noted, only to get scoffed at for my trouble.

"Aren't you? You got Judy, Elly, Snowy, Rinne, Ichiko, Galatea technically lives in your base so she counts too, and there's that whole thing with Sahi or Saahira or whatever, so that's seven girls just off the top of my head. Then, on top of that, now we even have the new girl who's running away from you while making Elly-noises whenever she sees you!" There was a long beat at this point, during which Josh apparently realized that he just said something weird, and he followed it up with a casual, "What's the deal with her, anyway?"

If it was anyone else, I would've figured they were trying to change the subject, but Josh was generally too guileless for that, so a quick sigh later I told him, "She's not running away from me per se, but from the princess, and I think I mentioned this before, but she's the Knight you were supposed to keep an eye out for."

"Oh, right. You did say something like that yesterday, soooo… is she your old acquaintance? Wait, hold on! Forgot about your amnesia again, my bad."

"No biggie. Also, she's apparently my estranged sister."

"Ah! So it's actually eight girls!" Josh declared with a grin that even showed his molars, much to my irritation. "Seriously, you can barely go a week without another girl attaching herself to you."

"The situation is a tad more complicated than that, and speaking of her, you should probably avoid her for the time being."

"Why? Is she dangerous?"

Josh suddenly sounded apprehensive, so I waved a hand to calm him down.

"Not necessarily, at least to you in particular, but I'm kind of in the middle of a thing with the Knights, and it would be bad if you got caught up in it. It involves her, some magical oaths, and a sword you were probably supposed to have. No take-backsies though; it's helping me heal my hand."

"Is that so?" Josh muttered a little absent-mindedly as he digested my words, only to latch onto the weirdest tidbit, as usual. "Is it at least a cool sword?"

"Nah, they are a little naggy and melodramatic." My friend was giving me a weird look in return for that answer, so I quickly added, "Oh, you mean how it looks? It's pretty neat if a little too ornamental for my liking. Next time we're having a training session in the base, I'll introduce you."

"You're talking about it like it's a person. Is this another of those 'sword is going to turn into a girl' situations?"

"I really hope not," I answered with palpable foreboding, earning me a chuckle in response.

"So, I should stay away from the new girl, huh? Too bad. She looked kinda cute from a distance."

"… Dude, weren't you just carping about your difficult love-life five minutes ago? How about you sort that out first before you start eyeing the new girl?"

"Yeah, yeah, I got it," Josh grumbled as he turned around in his chair and began to absent-mindedly play the game again. "I still don't know how I should go about it, but after that recent near-death experience, I guess I could at least try. Those are supposed to give people all kinds of epiphanies and stuff, aren't they?"

"Even if they do, they're overrated, and I already told you that you didn't have a near-death experience."

"Yeah, sure. I'm going to totally believe you one of these days if you keep repeating that enough times," Josh continued to grumble, though there was a small smile on the corner of his lips. However, it quickly disappeared as his brows descended into a frown and he leaned closer to the monitor to take a better look at something. "Where did I get eight more cauldrons?"

"Oh, that? You said you needed a couple to finish building your town center, so I sent you over a few."

"You can do that?" he asked in surprise as he turned back to me, and I nodded back while pointing at the corner of the screen.

"Yeah. You can send resources to your allies in the trade menu."

"Huh. I didn't know that. Thanks, pal."

"You're welcome, buddy," I replied, and just like that, we continued our fun, if occasionally heated, gaming session. All things considered, it was a pretty nice way to spend a Saturday afternoon, though knowing that dastardly Narrative, I had a feeling I was experiencing yet another one of those 'calm before the storm' moments. Didn't mean I wouldn't enjoy them all the same though.