A Misunderstanding

“—Ah, Tojo, huh. Looks like an annoying guy’s got his eye on you too, Rinne.”

I had met up with Yuika, and the three of us were shopping near the station.

When I told them what had happened in the classroom, Yuika gave me a sympathetic look tinged with annoyance.

Tojo… Yeah, I didn’t know his name.

“That guy hits on basically every girl, so his ulterior motives are way too obvious. It’s seriously gross. Didn’t he hit on you too, Yuika?”

“Yeah. I just ignored him, though, and before I knew it he’d moved on to someone else. Tomo, he tried talking to you too, and you looked super disgusted, remember?”

“Of course I was. Doesn’t he kinda give off this vibe like he looks down on everyone?”

“Ahh, totally get that. The fact he calls people ‘you’ in that condescending way is already a complete dealbreaker for me. That’s naturally the kind of way you address someone when you’re looking down on them. And the fact he does it unconsciously just makes it even more obvious what kind of person he is.”

“Exactly.”

Listening to Tomo and Yuika talk like this was actually pretty educational.

Before my memories returned, I’d been more of a loner, so I hadn’t paid much attention to things like that. I needed to be careful.

Even if I had memories from my previous life, it wasn’t as though they could magically fill in all the common sense of this world.

“Do people really hate being addressed like that so much?”

“Hmm, basically, yeah. There are some girls who like being called that by their boyfriend, but personally, even if it was my boyfriend, I’d lose interest the second he talked to me like that. What about you, Yuika?”

“No way, no way. The only place people casually accept that is in fiction or TV dramas, right? In real life I’d just be like, ‘Huh? Who does this asshole think he is? That’s rude as hell.’”

I see…

Though now that I thought about it, I wouldn’t like some stranger talking to me like that either.

Well, people online were generally rude anyway.

As for me, I used things like “you insolent fool” because it suited the Demon Lord persona.

From what they told me, that monkey… Yes, monkey apparently came from a wealthy and distinguished family, which meant he belonged to the sort of household where he could get away with doing more or less whatever he pleased if he wanted to.

On top of that, he was reasonably good-looking, so apparently his ego had swollen completely out of control.

“You know how our school actually has this kinda upper-class side to it? Most of the students are either connected to entertainment or come from wealthy families.”

“Wait, are you and Yuika from families like that too?”

“No, no. We’re more on the entertainment side, I guess? We’re what you’d call trainees.”

“It might be easier to understand if you think of us as aspiring idols.”

Oh.

I hadn’t known that.

I’d always thought both of them were cute, but yeah, I could definitely see them becoming something like that.

Sorry for casually thinking of Yuika as just the cheerful girl and Tomo as the gyaru.

Look, the Demon Lord didn’t know these things.

Even a Demon Lord had limits.

“Actually, what about you, Rinne? Before, I figured you came from some upper-class family, but with that face and figure, you look like you could totally be doing entertainment work too.”

“Hmm, my mom works in that field, but I don’t.”

“Ahh, so that’s it. We have lots of students here who’d have a hard time attending a public school or an ordinary school because one of their parents is famous.”

“Yeah, yeah. There are even kids whose mom or dad is an idol basically everyone knows.”

I hadn’t known that either.

Mom had just told me, “It’s close to home and I recommend it~,” and that was how I’d ended up attending this school. She’d only mentioned that there were lots of exchange students and international students too.

But I see.

If this was that kind of school, I supposed there might naturally be some twisted little shit—cough, strange people—like him around.

And maybe there was also the fact that I was me.

Originally, I’d been a loner who hid behind my hair, quietly avoided letting people see my face, and wore my uniform perfectly because I wanted to avoid standing out, practically radiating introvert energy. Then I’d suddenly stopped hiding what I looked like.

In other words, he might have assumed that someone like me, who was still inexperienced with social situations, would be easy to handle.

Yeah, if you looked at it normally, I probably seemed like an introvert who’d suddenly reinvented herself upon entering high school.

Though in my case, maybe it was more of a New Year’s debut?

Either way, I could understand why he might have thought I’d be easy to manipulate.

There was no way he’d imagine that I was a former Demon Lord who had regained both her memories and powers.

Even I would think, “Huh? Is that some kind of character setting?” if somebody told me that.

Well, whatever. That part didn’t matter.

The problem was that people like him were troublesome.

Especially since I had just rejected his invitation, and then Tomo had stepped in to defend me and firmly told him to back off.

Apparently, that boy had twisted, bent, rotated, and distorted the entire situation in his head until he’d interpreted it as, “They humiliated me.”

Ahh, I’d seen that type before…

I’d dealt with plenty of spoiled noble sons and people steeped in elitist thinking like that in my previous life.

Sigh…

Children from ordinary families usually encountered situations while growing up where they had to “give up” or accept that “things wouldn’t go the way they wanted.”

But people who had never experienced that had no resistance to it.

And because they happened to possess both intelligence and power, they could very easily end up doing something malicious.

I could more or less predict what kind of tactics those insane… cough, stupid… yes, stupid people might resort to.

“You should probably be careful for a while.”

“Seriously. Yuika and I live close to each other, so we’re hardly ever alone, and sometimes someone comes to pick us up too. What about you, Rinne?”

“Hm? I live close enough to walk, so I just walk home normally.”

“Wait, that’s dangerous. Want us to start walking you home from today?”

“I’ll be fine.”

Truthfully, now that my magic had awakened, there was no way an ordinary human could hurt me.

Even if someone rammed a car into me, stabbed me with a knife, or fired a gun at me, everything would stop and be deflected before it ever reached my skin. If it was a car, I’d be unharmed while the car crumpled. A knife would snap, and a bullet would ricochet away somewhere.

In short, no matter how a human in this world tried to hurt me, nothing could reach me.

And if things ever did come to that, I had no intention of simply standing there and taking it either.

“If anything, I’m more worried about you, Tomo. Even if Yuika’s with you, wouldn’t it be rough if you had to deal with several men at once?”

“Huh?”

“Huh?”

“What do you mean, several men?”

Ahh, right.

Tomo apparently hadn’t imagined anything like what I had—namely, hiring thugs to do something to us.

She’d only been thinking of the monkey himself pestering me, complaining, or otherwise refusing to take no for an answer.

“Sorry, sorry. Never mind.”

“You said ‘several,’ so for a second I thought Tojo was gonna start multiplying or something.”

“Ew, gross. One of him is already too many. Don’t make him multiply.”

…Multiply…

I’d prefer not to see that either.

If I saw something like that, I might accidentally get carried away and burn them all to ashes.

Still, I supposed it was normal in this day and age not to expect someone to hire thugs and arrange a kidnapping.

Maybe that would’ve been imaginable in Japan some decades ago, but nowadays everyone carried a camera called a smartphone and could broadcast information almost instantly.

Even so… I couldn’t shake the feeling that this wasn’t going to end in such a peaceful way.

As I wondered whether there was a park somewhere along my route home, I finished shopping with the two of them and headed back.