Chapter 1: Thank You For Picking It Up

People often said that everyone was born equal, but honestly, I was pretty skeptical about that.

Wasn’t it incredibly unfair that important stats that had such a huge impact on one’s life, like physical appearance, were already unchangeable from the moment we first spawned into this world?

For example, if you compared a handsome classmate who was 180 centimeters tall with someone like me, Yagami Ryoya, who was only 167 centimeters tall and had an utterly average appearance, it was obvious who had the advantage.

That handsome guy who belonged to the top of the class’s social hierarchy would undoubtedly continue living the same kind of fulfilling, main-character life wherever he went.

As for me, I’d probably spend the rest of my life stuck in the position of Mob Character B, forever hiding in the shadow of some unremarkable main character.

Perhaps because I’d already accepted that as my fate, I had very little motivation to do anything with my life.

And so, my days passed by in a hollow, meaningless routine. I’d wake up in the morning, eat breakfast, head to school at the very last minute, sit through classes without putting much thought into them, and then return home once the school day was over.

I didn’t have a single friend in my class, nor did I belong to any school clubs. I had no place where I truly belonged at school, and I figured that was another reason why I’d become so twisted and cynical.

Needless to say, I didn’t have a girlfriend, either.

“…I wonder if having friends or a girlfriend would make life even a little more enjoyable?”

I muttered that to myself as I headed toward the shoe lockers after the final homeroom had ended.

Even so, I had no idea how people were supposed to make friends or get girlfriends in the first place.

Back in elementary school, friends had just come naturally. But ever since I entered middle school, that had stopped happening.

I could hold ordinary conversations with other people, so it wasn’t as though my communication skills were particularly poor. And yet, for whatever reason, I just couldn’t make friends.

Everyone around me seemed to make friends without any trouble. Meanwhile, I couldn’t even manage something as simple as that. It honestly made me feel utterly pathetic.

If I couldn’t even make friends, getting a girlfriend was even more impossible. Even when I did develop feelings for someone, it always ended up being nothing more than a one-sided crush.

Sometimes, I’d fantasize about suddenly becoming popular with girls, just like in anime and manga. But I knew full well that the real world wasn’t nearly that kind.

As I walked down the hallway, lost in those thoughts, the girl walking ahead of me dropped something through a gap in her backpack.

It looked like a pencil case. She hadn’t noticed it falling and was about to keep walking, so I picked it up and hurriedly called out to her.

“Hey, wait a second. You dropped something from your bag.”

“…Were you talking to me?”

The girl noticed my voice, stopped, and slowly turned around.

The moment I saw her face, I realized I’d just called out to one of the school’s most famous students.

She was Tsurugi Riona, one half of the beautiful Japanese-British twin sisters who were practically celebrities around school.

Tsurugi-san was the younger of the identical twins, and she had an older sister with an exactly identical face.

Her older sister, Tsurugi Reona, was technically in the same class as me. However, naturally, we had no particular connection, so we’d hardly ever spoken.

Incidentally, the Tsurugi sisters had completely opposite hairstyles and personalities. The older sister was cheerful and had long hair, while the younger sister was cool-headed and had short hair.

“Here. This is yours, right, Tsurugi-san?”

“Thank you for picking it up.”

Tsurugi-san thanked me without changing her expression, took the pencil case from my hand, and then lowered the backpack she’d been carrying onto the floor.

If this were an anime or manga, this would probably be the moment when some kind of youthful romantic comedy began.

Unfortunately, this was reality.

After putting the pencil case back inside her bag, Tsurugi-san thanked me once more before walking away.

“…Something happened that normally never would. Maybe today really is one of those days.”

Perhaps today was a lucky day that God had specially granted me.

If that was the case, maybe I’d even have a chance of pulling that SSR character I’d been aiming for.

With that thought in mind, I took my smartphone out of my pocket, launched my mobile game, and spent every last bit of the premium currency I’d been saving on a gacha pull.

The result was an absolutely spectacular failure.

Needless to say, my mood, which had just been getting better, immediately came crashing down.

Feeling thoroughly dejected, I left the school grounds and started making my way toward the shopping mall.

My destination was the bookstore. I wanted to buy a light novel.

The latest volume of Five-Personality Fiancée, an incredibly popular school romantic comedy, had been released today, and I was eager to get my hands on it.

Once I arrived at the shopping mall, I headed straight for the light novel section and began browsing.

“Oh, wait. Isn’t this the one I read on Shōsetsuka ni Narō¹ before? Huh, so it got published as a book at some point?”

As a light novel enthusiast, I often browsed through Let’s Become a Writer, a website where people posted their online novels.

Apparently, when a work managed to reach the top of the rankings, publishers sometimes approached its author with an offer to publish it as a book.

I’d even dreamed of getting one of my own works published and had tried submitting a story once.

However, hardly anyone read it, so I remembered giving up and abandoning the project after just one week.

“Apparently, you need 30,000 points to get published. That’s an impossible game, seriously…”

For the record, my own work had only managed to get four points in an entire week, so there was absolutely no chance of that happening.

Thinking about that, I picked up a novel I’d read previously titled “Apparently, My Younger Childhood Friend, a Modern-Day Delinquent, Has Developed a Twisted Affection for Me.”

Well, since I was here anyway, I might as well buy this one too.

After paying for my books at the register, I casually wandered around the shopping mall.

Tomorrow was Saturday, a day I’d been eagerly looking forward to, and I didn’t have school, so I could afford to get home a little late.

“Well, it’s not like I have anything to do at home besides reading light novels and watching anime anyway.”