A name appeared on the 3 mermaids:

[Sirens]

Daemon looked hopelessly at Lockheart. There was no way Lockheart's low-damaged AOE attack could kill the sirens. Lockheart was beaming green lights at the creatures with her short wand. But the creature's health bar had barely moved an inch or so.

Daemon clenched his fist:

"Oh, dammit! Lockheart stop attacking! It's my turn now!"

Daemon angrily tried to climb onto the boulder. He found a moss-free ledge low on Boulder and jumped onto another ledge. From there he jumped into the air, the Sirens were just below the Daemon.

Daemon did a backflip and stabbed one of the Sirens in the chest with his sword. Daemon landed on top of the boulder and kicked the other siren in the stomach. The siren staggered down the boulder and disappeared. Below, the death SFX of the siren resounded. As Daemon prepared to kill the last remaining Siren, Siren began to scream at Daemon. Daemon fell out of the boulder and fell 5 meters from the impact of the sound waves.

[Remaining Siren has enraged! Siren will deal every remaining player with continuous maximum-ranged damage by screaming!]

As soon as Lockheart heard a "Bump" from below, she shouted:

"DAEMON!"

Daemon was lying on the floor. He wanted to stand up, but his body didn't move. The siren was still shouting at this time, and to Daemon the sound was starting to sound more and more like a pleasant melody.

Lockheart rushed towards Daemon. She read the status effect above his health bar:

[Curse of the Siren: By simultaneously activating the prefrontal cortex and hippocampus parts of the player's brain, it shows the player an event from his memory as a dream. The player will be trapped in this dream until the boss or the player itself dies.]

Lockheart noticed that everyone's HP bar was slowly getting shorter and changing color.

Daemon was the most affected by this. Since he chose a class with low defense and HP, he was losing HP more than others.

Lockheart turned to Nyaru. Nyaru was not even aware of what had happened. He had closed his eyes and closed his ears to the screams of the siren. Lockheart walked over to Nyaru and shook him:

"NYARU! HEAL DAEMON! NOW!"

When Nyaru opened her eyes, she saw Daemon lying unconscious:

"BROTHER!"

Daemon watched through his eyelids as Nyaru crouched down to heal himself and Lockheart attacked the boss with his short wand.

The desperate cries from the Siren were now the hum of a perfectly pleasant melody. This humming from a familiar voice echoed in Daemon's head.

——————————————————————————————,

Daemon went back to his memory of 7th grade in middle school. While the teacher was lecturing, he was sitting in the back row.

Daemon was watching the girl just to his left hum a song. The girl's voice was neither too thin nor too deep, and her voice was not detonated, not even for a moment.

The girl was also very beautiful, with long black hair, coal-like eyes, and thick lips.

Her eyes seemed mostly scary but mature, the girl was completely quiet and calm.

She wasn't having bursts of energy like the other girls or screaming in thin, high-pitched voices as Daemon hated. She was a sweet girl who looked mature-looking and acting.

While Daemon was watching her, the girl suddenly leaned her head on the desk and turned her head towards Daemon. They looked at each other for a long time until the bell rang. Daemon's heart began to pound and pound. He had never had a girlfriend or even a close friend since he was a child. Everything was coming so fast to him, people's energies, relationships, conversations, tastes. It made no sense! Everything was changing so fast and it was so ridiculous. Then now, this girl was into him, it had to be.

Just as Daemon was about to speak, the bell rang and the girl stood up and walked away, laughing.

——————————————————————————————

Lockheart was dizzy as she battled the Siren. Lockheart, panting, raised her wand. She continued to shoot green lights at the Siren.

As Nyaru looked at Lockheart worriedly, Lockheart smiled and pointed at her HP bar:

"I'm fine, Nyaru! My HP Bar is still yellow! You keep protecting Daemon."

"Ok!"

——————————————————————————————

The next day, she smiled at Daemon as she sat at her desk. She approached Daemon and asked:

"Hey, your name was Takashi, right?"

"Y-yes. B-but I didn't know your name..."

Daemon nervously averted his eyes:

"S-sorry..."

The girl continued with a smile:

"It's ok. My name is Yui."

Daemon tried to continue speaking, but his voice was cut off again. Yui rolled her eyes and continued when Daemon didn't speak:

"I was wondering if we could continue our conversation in the canteen!"

"Oh, ok sure, why not?"

As the girl moved away from him, Daemon heard a few chuckles in the distance, but he didn't mind. It was the first time someone had wanted to talk to him rather than find him boring. He was happy.

Daemon went down to the canteen and sat down at a quiet secluded table. Yui was at a table talking to his friends. Daemon rolled his eyes again as screams rose from that table. Seeing Daemon, Yui greeted him and pulled up a chair next to Daemon, and sat down:

"Hey."

"H-hey.

"Some friends are coming with me, is it okay with you?"

"Oh. Y-yeah, it, ok."

Daemon was internally disappointed. He had hoped that they would be alone, but now Yui had invited her friends for some reason.

"Why would she do that, if she wants to talk with me?" Daemon thought.

Yui's friends also pulled chairs to Daemon's table. Daemon just watched in silence as Yui drifted into conversation with her friends. He wanted to get out of here, but he didn't want to draw attention to himself. On the one hand, he wanted them to talk to him, and on the other hand, he was praying for this conversation to end.

One of Yui's friends yawned and started rubbing her stomach:

"Aaah! I'm so hungry."

"Shall we eat something?"

Yui nodded, turning to Daemon and smiling:

"Do you want something to eat?"

Daemon nodded:

"S-sure, why not?"

Yui's friends went to get toast and boba from the canteen. Yui and Daemon were finally alone, and Daemon tried to find something to talk about:

"Y-yui?"

Yui took out her phone and started texting. At this time she replied with a yawn:

"Huh?"

"What kinds of things do you like to watch?"

Yui answered without even raising her head:

"Hah, let me see. I love Streamdale. Then I like 369 Days and I'm really into Sex Ed Caution."

"Oh, I've never heard any of them-"

"Lmao, really! Have you never just Nextfix and Chill? What type of stuff do you watch anyway?"

"Oh, well... I like the watch Nekosuba for a few laughs. Then, SDS may be, it starts as some sort of "ecchi" but then you realize it's actually a quality series. And oh, my favorite one is Ex: Zero. It's about a guy who got teleported-"

"Yeah, yeah ok. Lemme check."

Yui looked at a few of the series Daemon was talking about on her phone, then rolled her eyes:

"Aah, I see."

"I-is something wrong?"

"I was hoping you'd watch some more… normal stuff."

Yui mockingly laughed:

"Tch! I mean look at the Ex: Zero's cover. The girls all lie down and surround a guy. It's just 'neet' stuff..."

"Well, everyone has their taste, I guess."

"Seriously, I'm getting so bored, not gonna lie. Oh, finally, you girls come back!"

Yui's friends had come with food and drinks. As soon as her friends sat down, Yui stopped talking to Daemon and changed the subject. Yui and her friends were laughing out loud as they showed her messages from other men flirting with themselves. Daemon was sick to his stomach, he wanted to get away from this environment as soon as possible. Realizing this, Yui grabbed Daemon by the shoulder, Daemon panicked when the girl suddenly touched him:

"Woah!"

"Hey, Takashi!"

Yui straightened her hair and smiled at Daemon. She continued, trying to sweeten her voice:

"Aren't you going to pay the bill?"

"H-huh?"

Well, you are the man in here. So..."

"B-but..."

Yui frowned as Daemon replied:

"Wouldn't it be better if everyone paid their own bills?"

Yui laughed, trying not to get angry:

"Oh come on, are you going to make us pay the bill? Be a gentleman!"

Daemon clenched his fists, he thought to stand for himself, but other people were eating around as well. He took some coins from his pocket and handed them to Yui:

"Thanks!"

Yui handed the money to the cashier, Yui and her friends chuckled and moved to another table, and Daemon was left alone with his toast.

Daemon began to tremble. A few drops of tears fell from his eyes. He smiled bitterly:

"Man, I thought someone was interested in me..."

Then he shrugged:

"So I guess I shouldn't have good intentions..."