Entering School and Making a Male Friend
Dear Ashley Carlyle-sama,
It"s only been a few months, but I already feel as if I haven"t seen you in forever. Have you been doing well? You haven"t caught a cold or anything, have you? It"s been pretty cold recently, so I"ve been worried that you and Father might have gotten sick.
You might be wondering about how my life at school has been, but it"s just so-so. Not really good, but I can"t say it"s been bad either. The school facilities here are amazing, as one might expect, but I just can"t get used to being here without you. Having spent time away from you, I finally understand just how amazing of a servant you truly are. I really had no idea just how much you"ve been doing for me all these years. I really need to start being at least a little more independent, don"t I? By next year when you enroll, I"m planning to have matured into a respectable adult, so you better prepare yourself to be amazed.
At any rate, I miss you. I really want to see you. I had been planning to come back home during our next vacation from school, but due to unforeseen circ.u.mstances, I will unfortunately be unable to do that. I wrote down all the details in Father"s letter, so you can ask him about it later.
Please make sure to take good care of yourself this winter!
Sincerely, Cecile Alldington
P.S.
Is a slightly clumsy, pet.i.te, black-haired girl with a cute, feminine voice and the ambience of a tiny, adorable animal the type of girl you like? I"ll be waiting for your reply!
＊＊＊
It"s been a little over two months since I started school, and thankfully there hasn"t been any sort of danger yet. Actually, I haven"t even come into contact with the important characters at all. When I first got here, I made sure to check out each character with my own eyes so I"d know who to avoid, but other than that, nothing. Somehow it feels like this is going to be a peaceful, possibly boring, year.
But I guess that"s not surprising. The plot for “b.l.o.o.d.y Mind” doesn"t actually start until the main character becomes a second year student. At that time, some incident occurs, making the heroine become somewhat famous throughout the academy, and that"s what throws her into contact with all of the capture targets initially. Until then, the only two characters who have anything to do with the heroine are Rudolph, who is her second year homeroom teacher, and her cla.s.smate, Lufrey, who had been instantly smitten when he saw her at the entrance ceremony. The other capture targets didn"t even know of the heroine"s existence until after that incident at the beginning of the game.
And Cecile was the same way. It wasn"t until after that incident occurred, and she saw everybody giving all their attention to the heroine, that she even noticed her. But at that point, Cecile started to get jealous and ended up bullying the heroine. She is the stereotypical proud type of villainess after all. In other words, the most troublesome type of character. But, well, I don"t plan to do any of the things that she did….
I don"t even plan to speak directly to any of the important characters, but that doesn"t mean I"m not interested in them. Whenever the heroine, or a capture target, or even just a support character happens to pa.s.s by me, my eyes are automatically drawn to them. Through my observations, over these pa.s.sed two months, I"ve managed to gather some information on them too.
For instance, the heroine"s name is Leila Morton. I found this out after eavesdropping on a conversation between her and one of her friends. I wasn"t too surprised to hear this though, that is her default name after all. And by default name, I mean that is the name the game gives her when the player chooses not to name the main character themselves.
Leila is just like how I described her in the postscript of my letter to Ashley. Honestly, just seeing that girl, who"s as adorable as a baby animal, makes me feel pretty similar to how I felt about Ashley did when he was younger. Every time I see her, I feel like an arrow was shot through my heart from her unbearable cuteness. Nevertheless, I keep my distance from her. I don"t want to get involved with the game"s plot, after all. Even though on the inside, all I want to do is run up and hug her. So far I"ve been able to hold myself back.
Leila is just like how I described her in the postscript of my letter to Ashley. Honestly, just seeing that girl, who"s as adorable as a , makes me feel pretty similar to how I felt about Ashley when he was younger. Every time I see her, I feel like an arrow was shot through my heart from her unbearable cuteness. Nevertheless, I keep my distance from her. No matter how much I want to run up and hug her on the inside, I make sure to hold myself back since I don"t want to get involved with the game"s plot.
“Wow, another letter to your beloved servant, Miss Alldington?”
I"ve already put down my pen when I hear a male voice say from directly behind me. I turn to glare at him in return.
“No manners as always I see, Mr. Arkwright. A gentleman would never peek at lady"s letter, you know?”
“You"ve never thought that I was a gentleman anyway, right? Besides, why"re you writing it in the cla.s.sroom? You"re practically asking me to look. That"s just human nature.”
“I"ll say it yet again, Oswell, but can you not talk to me unless absolutely necessary?”
I try to give him my best mature smile as I say this and he, my cla.s.smate Oswell Arkwright, just gives me a huge roguish grin in return.
“Aw, you say such cold things. You don"t have any other friends at school, right? So doesn"t that make me your only one?”
“I don"t remember ever becoming friends with the likes of you,” I say firmly.
Since in one of my bad endings, I ended up being stabbed by one of my followers, I have decided not to gather any followers or make any friends. I need to stay isolated if I am expecting to live through my school life. Since I do come from a family of comparably high rank though, there were of course young ladies and gentlemen from various families who had taken the initiative to try to get close to me, but I always made sure to maintain a certain amount of distance between us during our interactions. After I did that, none of them seemed inclined to try harder to become better friends with me. They all stopped at being just acquaintances so I don"t have any friends. I"ve successfully managed to put just the right amount of distance between me and the rest of my peers.
However, Oswell Arkwright is the one exception to this rule. He"s the super amicable sort of guy who has tons of friends, and yet for some reason he still refuses to stop coming over to pester me all the time. Maybe he"s the sort of guy who can"t leave others alone? But the truth is, I really don"t want to get involved with Oswell.
“The thing is, Oswell, I don"t want to have any sort of interaction with ikemen.”
“What"re ikemen?”
“Beautiful people… An ikemen is basically a handsome man.”
“You don"t want to interact with handsome guys…. So you"re saying…. that you have bad taste in men?”
“No! Don"t be ridiculous! Of course I like ikemen.”
In fact, in my past life, I went to an all girls school, so even just thinking about attending this coed academy made me feel so excited. I mean, even just looking at ikemen gives me that nervous, fluttery feeling. But that"s all I want to do: just look. If I were to get close to the wrong hotty, and he turned out to have yandere tendencies, that could really only end in a huge disaster for me. I"m not really willing to stake my life on that chance.
Even worse, what if he wasn"t simply a yandere, but actually the hidden capture target? With that looming possibility in mind, there really is no good reason to recklessly go and interact with them. There"s only one thing I know about the hidden character with absolute certainty, and that is that he will undoubtedly be an ikemen. If he wasn"t, what players would even bother to attempt his route? He wouldn"t even make it into an Otome game if he wasn"t at least drop dead gorgeous. With the other capture targets, since I know all of their faces, it"s pretty simple for me to avoid interacting with them… but with the hidden character, with nothing else to go on but his a.s.sured handsomeness, in order to be truly safe, the only thing I can do is avoid all the good looking guys in school. So I guess I"ll just have to kiss my rose-colored school life goodbye…. But I"ve accepted that. I won"t throw away my life just for a moment alone with a hunk.
There. Fore. I want to have nothing to do with Oswell Arkwright. Oswell has red hair with bangs that come down to just above his eyes, is much taller than Ashley, and has a simple-minded, innocent looking face. Just by looking at him, you can tell that he"s the active type who would excel at just about anything that has to do with moving your body, though whether he would be good at magic or not remains to be seen. But just the fact that he"s a sporty guy alone makes him seem 30% more handsome.
Honestly, as one of the hidden capture target candidates, that attractiveness of his makes me feel even more suspicious of him.
“Then, in summarization: you like my face, but I"m so good looking that every time you talk to me, you end up getting fl.u.s.tered and that"s why you want me to be more careful around you?”
“How did you manage to come up with that….? Uhhh, yeah…. So…. Ummm let"s see….. You know what? It"s actually fine if you don"t understand.”
It"s useless to try to explain this situation to him anyway.
“But there is no one in our cla.s.s who is anywhere near as pretty as you? No need to be shy.”
“Thank you for that veeery heartfelt flattery but would you look at that? In the cla.s.s next to ours there just happens to be an even more peerless beauty.”
The absolutely gorgeous Leila Morton, that is.
Oswell"s eyes widen as if in surprise.
“You couldn"t possibly be talking about Leila Morton, right?”
Has he already checked out all the other girls at this school as well? It"s looking more and more likely that Oswell really is the hidden capture target.
“How did you know I was talking about her?”
“I"ve heard some people talking about it. How there is a beautiful lady, you Miss Cecile Alldington, who has seemingly no interest in anyone else except for when she is staring pa.s.sionately at one Miss Leila Morton. And then they can only sigh, lamenting the fact that your tastes run in the more feminine direction.”
“!?”
Seriously? There"s no way my preferences lean that way!
“That"s just a huge misunderstanding!”
“Well, I figured as much,” Oswell says, trying to calm me down after I had stood up in indignation. “But isn"t it fine? Thanks to that rumor, ikemen(?) are no longer trying to get close to you, just like you wanted, right?”
That is true. None of the my beloved ikemen have been trying to approach me anymore, other than Oswell of course…. Darn! I should have just let him continue to misunderstand….! But, well, I guess with this sort of guy, it doesn"t really matter what I do, he"ll just keep sticking to me….. Since he"s the sort that likes to take care of other people. If he sees anyone being isolated he won"t be able to leave them alone, insisting that he give them his help, even if it is unwanted and unwarranted.
“That"s not the problem. It may stop people from approaching me, but just think about how it affects my reputation! I may not care about what other people think of me, but Ashley is going to enter this school next year! What will I do if he happens to hear that rumor and somehow ends up believing it!?”
“Ashley? Ohh, that servant you are always talking about?”
I"ll not only lose all respect in his eyes as his master, but he"ll also probably start putting a huge distance in between us!
“…. Do I really talk about him that often?”
“Yeah. If I"m putting it bluntly, if I ever just ask you, ‘How is that servant of yours doing lately?" then your personality will do a complete 180, and you"ll suddenly be all too willing to talk to me.”
Now that he mentions it, why do I find myself talking to Oswell so often? It"s a complete mystery to me. I"m sure that every time he approaches me, I do my best to push him away, and yet I seem to find myself talking to him more and more. We shouldn"t even have anything to talk about….
But I guess in my subconscious, I"m just too proud of that boy and feel the need to brag about him to someone… I hadn"t realized!
“You seem quite devoted to your servant, Cecile. Makes me jealous.”
“Well it can"t be helped. He"s just too perfect. He has silky platinum blonde hair that he is always tieing back, which is a bit of a waste if you ask me. And he has just the tiniest amount of childishness left in his lovely face, though it seems that he has a complex about that so he"s started to train his body in order to compensate. But because he doesn"t seem to be the type to build muscles easily, even though he is quite strong already, you can"t tell by looking at him. The fact that this worries him too, is just too adorable.”
Oh…. I really do talk about him too much. But once I start, I just can"t seem to stop. Looks like Ashley ended up becoming my pride and joy without me realizing.
“It"s fine as long as you are just thinking of him as cute. But the people around here don"t look kindly upon relationships formed between master and servant.”
“Relationship….? As in romantic? He"s like a little brother to me!”
“Oh? Then that means I still have a chance then.”
“I have no intention of giving a chance to anyone who will just toss out those lines to any and every girl that takes his fancy.”
I wonder just how many people he"s already tried that line on?
“What are you saying, Cecile? Isn"t that my duty as a man to agressively go after attractive women?”
“It"s because you say stuff like this that you still don"t have a girlfriend, you know.”
Even though he"s this handsome, there"re no girls that will seriously go after a guy that practically tells you in advance that he"s going to cheat on you. Probably only a girl who"s equally promiscuous would really be able to match well with Oswell.
“Did you say that your servant is going to come here starting from next year? Then I"ll have to work extra hard to capture your heart before then, Miss Alldington.”
“Impossible.”
I say confidently. I have absolutely zero interest in frivolous guys after all.
“Never know if I don"t try.”
“Nope. I am sure, even without you trying.”
“Wow. That"s harsh,” Oswell says, laughing, showing off gleamingly white teeth. There"s always one in every cla.s.s, someone bound to be popular and become the center of attention. And that"s him.
Oh.
“…..Oswell….”
“Yeah? What"s up? Why so serious all of the sudden?”
Why didn"t I realize it before? If I"m worried about Oswell being the hidden capture target, wouldn"t it be fastest to just ask the person himself about it? I mean, we"ve already become somewhat close, whether I like it or not, and he already knows who Leila is so…. That"s right. This is the perfect opportunity to ask him directly. If I have to stay guarded against all the good looking boys in this school, I"ll start to feel depressed. And if I can find and understand the mentality of the most dangerous character in the game, that will take a heavy weight off of my shoulders for sure.
“Do you want to do…. this and that… with Leila Morton?”
“What a thing to ask. Do you really have a thing for her after all?”
“No!”
I mean, I do love cute things. And, when I was playing this game, I had always thought to myself that it would be nice if, maybe in the last route of the game, Leila was the capture target. I had thought that. And it"s not like I"m completely against girl"s love…. But it"s a different story when it"s actually you who"s doing the pursuing.
“I"m talking about you! Whenever you look at her, do you ever feel…. something?”
“Well, she is cute, I"ll give her that. But rather than cute girls, I definitely prefer beautiful women.”
“If you don"t stop staring at my chest, I will hit you.”
I say, holding up my fist menacingly, making Oswell take a step back.
“Well, anyway, I don"t feel anything for her. I swear to G.o.d, Miss Alldington.”
Oh, but wait, this doesn"t really tell me anything. There was one, at most two, capture targets that had already liked the heroine before the game officially started. It seems like all of the other capture targets gradually fell for her as the game progressed. And that one spot has already been filled by Lufrey. So, if Oswell is the hidden capture target, doesn"t that mean he"s bound to fall in love with Leila in the future? His opinion now is kind of irrelevant. With just this, I can"t completely rule him out as the hidden character.
“Hmm….”
“I have talked to Leila Morton a few times before, but she"s not my type. I can"t bring myself to even see her as a woman.”
“You"ve already talked to Leila Morton? A few times?”
If he still hasn"t fallen for her even after interacting with her, that means the chances of him being the hidden character are almost nonexistent. They"ve already had their important first encounter and yet he doesn"t feel anything for her.
“Doesn"t that mean that Oswell is safe….?”
I mumble to myself under my breath, but Oswell must have caught what had I said because he snorts and tells me, “Men are all wolves. None of us can be considered safe.”
“That wasn"t what I was saying at all. Besides, that hardly matters. I have no intention of trusting you anyway.”
That"s right. Just because he isn"t the hidden character, doesn"t mean that I"m all the sudden going to turn boy crazy and start batting my eyelashes at him.
“But, just one thing. You shouldn"t lump all men into the same category. Ashley isn"t the least bit frivolous; he"s absolutely nothing like you.”
“Oh, poor Ashley. It must be so painful having to hold himself back in order to not betray your trust in him.”
“Don"t try to compare him to you!”
Ashley doesn"t have those sorts of impure thoughts.
＊＊＊
Dear Cecile Alldington-sama,
You should worry about yourself, Ojousama. Such strong, burly men like us won"t fall to little, trifling colds.
It seems you"ve decided to stay in the dorms and focus on learning magic over the next break. That"s probably for the best. You"ve been struggling with magic ever since way back. Feel free to work hard, but don"t forget to take enough breaks and get some rest while you are on vacation as well.
About the postscript that you wrote in your letter from the other day…. I was initially so astounded that I had no idea what to make of it, and so I didn"t know whether I should answer it or not, but considering I am your servant, in the end I decided that I should reply.
The type of girl that I like has brown hair rather than black, instead of having a short stature is just a bit taller than average, has a voice that is strong and clear, likes to take matters into her own hands to a fault, is a natural airhead, and is unfathomably dense. To give you a more specific example, the type of girl that I like would do something absolutely crazy and unexpected in order to reconcile with someone after a fight. Such a girl is always fun to watch and gives me an extremely favorable impression.
That"s all for now. I"ll be praying that when I next get to see you, I won"t have anything I need to scold you for.
Sincerely, Ashley Carlyle
T/N: I"m sorry that this came out so late!!! Life got in the way ? I"ll be aiming to release another chapter this week as well, since this is last week"s chapter.
For this chapter, I would love to hear what you all think of the new guy! Honestly, when I read the chapter, I got so fl.u.s.tered reading his roguish lines, but I"m worried that I didn"t do him justice…
I had initially thought this chapter would come out before the manga, so I made my rendition of what Oswell Arkwright might look like ? I have zero artistic skills, so I made this on Rinmarugames. I"m kind of sad too, cause I wanted to ask readers to submit their own ideas as a fun little game. If anyone still wants to submit fanart, I will definitely display it though!!
AND LASTLY funky translation part 2! Since a lot of people enjoyed the first one haha. I"ll leave it up to imagination to guess what line this became in my version of the translation ;p
Hint: it"s in the paragraph with a link to baby animals. XD