episode_0006

Holding my hungry stomach, I turn left at the restaurant building. I feel my gaze expanding slightly… Luckily, a large, familiar building catches my eye.

The store was originally a place frequented by students and professors, but since there were no other schedules besides the entrance ceremony, it felt like there were even more people. If I remember correctly, the restaurant inside the store was on the third floor, so let’s go up to the restaurant first.

Entering the store and looking around, my impression was that it was just a medieval version of a large mart. I slowly climbed the central stairs, wondering if there was such a great system.

The entire left side of the third floor of the store was made up of a restaurant. However, since it was past mealtime, it was quieter than expected for its size.

I try to ignore the glare from the female employee at the entrance of the restaurant who takes my order and look at the large menu board. Unfortunately (as expected) there is no Korean or Japanese food, and most of the food is Western. After thinking about it for a while, I order shrimp pilaf, which is similar to fried rice, and then I take the order sheet and go inside the restaurant.

While I was wondering where to sit, I felt an eerie gaze from my right, so I turned around and saw some familiar faces…

There, before the entrance ceremony, Duke Lulu’s young lady was glaring at me so hard that I was worried my eyes would turn bloodshot, and Marquis Ion’s young lady was trying hard not to laugh at the sight, placing the order sheet on the table.

…I took a deep breath at an angle that the two could not see, and took reluctant steps, sitting quietly on the chair opposite them.

“You have a good sense, junior.”

As I sat down, Ion smiled and muttered. Lulu, who was sitting next to me, stopped glaring at me with a slightly blushed face only after she saw me approaching.

“No, I felt your gaze.”

I swallowed the thought, “If you don’t come when I glare at you like that, how can you be human?” and forced a smile to smile at the two of them.

“Oh, it’s my first time seeing you smile, junior. You’re prettier?”

As Ion said that, Lulu began to glare at Ion. I also felt that Ion’s words were a joke, because Ion, who said that, smiled and looked at Lulu.

“…Why are you here?”

I couldn’t help but feel bewildered by Lulu’s words that came out so casually. Why was she asking why I came when she had been glaring at me to come?

“I missed the time to go to the restaurant while I was packing my bags. I had no choice but to come here.”

At my soft words, Lulu purses her lips and nods slightly.

“You’re lucky… No, I see.”

I don’t know what she’s trying to say, but Lulu keeps looking at me from the corner of her eye as she pretends to look around. If she’s going to look at me like that, wouldn’t it be better to just stare at me directly? If she’s going to grab my chin and tear at my face the first time we meet, then anyway. Even if Lulu or Ion were rude to me, I don’t have the ability to do anything about it.

“What did you order, junior?”

When asked about Ion, I simply replied, ‘It’s shrimp pilaf.’

“Is one pilaf okay? Well, males don’t eat much.”

As she said that, I sneakily checked Lulu and Ion’s orders. Lulu ordered two meals, and surprisingly, Ion ordered four.

“…That’s right.”

Ion is a knight in training, so he uses his body a lot and has a high basal metabolic rate, but it’s a bit surprising that Lulu ordered two meals.

“Using your head is also work. It requires that much nutrition.”

As if she had read my mind, Lulu made that excuse. Since it didn’t really matter to me whether she ate three meals a day, I just nodded in response.

“How was the dorm, junior?”

“Well, it was huge.”

At my simple answer, Ion’s eyes widened and she burst into her signature hearty laughter, which we’ve seen many times in games.

“Hahaha, yeah, that’s right. Your review is bland. My brother complained a lot, saying things like the dressing table was ugly, the bed was uncomfortable, and the blackout curtains were cheap.”

What are you talking about? The bed was a luxury item I’d never seen before, the dressing table was fancy, and the blackout curtains were shiny, so they looked incredibly expensive.

“Of course, the Baron family… Oh, sorry. I don’t mean to say that your junior’s rank is low. To a young sik from a decent family, the male dormitory would look pretty good. But my older brother is quite picky.”

If Ion’s older brother is any indication, it would be ‘Pray Moratium’ from the 6th grade. Aside from his handsome appearance and tsundere personality, he doesn’t have any major strengths, so I remember him as a character that is not sought after by many female users other than those who enjoy playing games.

“I understand.”

“But the male dorms are all huge, right? Damn, they need to give a genius like me a room that big so I can decorate my research desk more properly. ”

“You understand, Lulu. Originally, the male dormitory and the female dormitory had the same room size, but since there were so few male students, they expanded the dormitory to accommodate the number of students.”

As Ion said, the male and female dormitories were set to have rooms of exactly the same size. However, due to the gender imbalance, the number of male students was far less than the number of dorm rooms, so the rooms were combined and expanded to match the number, resulting in the current size difference.

“I see.”

It’s something I already knew, but I just nodded my head quietly because it would seem strange for me, who just entered the academy today, to know such trivial facts.

As she sat quietly in front of the two, Ion poked Lulu in the ribs. However, when Lulu only flinched and did not respond, Ion sighed slightly and opened his mouth.

“Junior, are you good at healing magic and medicine?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

It wasn’t a big secret anyway, and Lulu would have figured out what my special talents were while talking to me, so I nodded without hesitation.

“Then please take good care of me in the future. You are the one who specializes in recovery magic.”

“You don’t have to say that…”

I waved my hand when I saw Ion bowing while sitting down. Since I knew that the two people in front of me had the power to make any noble child do anything with a chin gesture, there wasn’t much I could do even if they dragged me away, let alone asking for favors. In the actual game, Lulu often drags players around like that.

“What about the North?”

It’s a sudden question from Lulu, but it’s not a particularly difficult question.

When creating a player character, if you set the background to ‘automatic’, it will create and attach plausible content. When I checked in the dormitory, I confirmed that I was set as a noble family under the Northern Count.

The character’s own settings were set as having a good nature and genius abilities, having used healing magic and medicine while traveling to and from the operational area fighting northern monsters since a young age. (Unless the player sets the background themselves, it is usually created with this feeling.)

There, the northern part of the Perion Empire is a good place to raise your specs through combat activities when you reach a certain level of specs due to frequent invasions by monsters and liberators, and you can also go for items. Since it is a battlefield, there are also many events, so many players visit it without fail unless they have a build that doesn’t engage in combat at all. I used to do that too.

So just by looking at the background setting, I got an idea of how to explain it.

“There was nothing special about it. I was always fighting monsters and getting injured. I did what I could. ”

“That’s amazing, junior. A male body that’s not even an adult yet, going to the operational area? Baron Frostgarm must have been in a lot of pain.”

“…I’m embarrassed.”

Since what Ion said wasn’t exactly wrong, I just answered like that.

“This is so annoying…”

“Huh?”

I thought Lulu said something, but I couldn’t hear it clearly, so I asked her again. Lulu’s face was bright red through her fur.

“Ah, ah, ah, nothing.”

Why is that, I looked at Ion, and he was looking at Lulu with an expression of bewilderment. However, since I didn’t want to ask questions, and Lulu’s expression was not normal, I decided to just stay still. If you stay still, you’ll get through the middle, because I’ve felt in life that it’s never wrong.

After a brief awkward moment, the meals of the two people in front of me and my meal, which I ordered late, came out all at once.

“Eat well, junior. If you need anything, tell me.”

“Yes, thank you.”

I don’t know what I said earlier, but Lulu still had a bright-eyed expression on her face and started eating quietly, so I also scooped up a spoonful of pilaf and put it in my mouth.

“Hmm.”

This is amazing. The rice grains are chewy and just the right amount, showing a good texture in the mouth. The rich and fragrant aroma of rice, vegetables, and shrimp further whets the appetite.

‘But have you ever been able to eat something in VR?’

That question came to my mind, but I can’t find a way to check it now because it’s a bug and I can’t quit the game. So I just keep putting pilaf in my mouth to satisfy my hunger.

“Eating is so blissful, how about you, junior?”

When I raised my head slightly to look at her after hearing Ion’s words, Ion had an unexpectedly absurd expression on his face. Why was he making such a bewildered expression after saying something I myself?

“Oh, I was a bit… rude. It was because the sight of him eating was so pleasing to the eye. My brother is always nitpicking.”

She blushes slightly, which is out of character, and says that while burying her face in her steak and concentrating on eating. It’s not something that can’t be said, but it’s pointless.

“Thank you for the compliment, senior.”

Ion’s reaction, which I had never seen before even in a game, felt so cute that I smiled and said that, and she looked flustered as if she had made a mistake and started to stuff the steak in half at once into her mouth. And why was Lulu glaring at Ion as if she was going to kill him?

They weren’t my favorite characters, but since we were already involved, I felt like I was getting closer to them, my hunger was satisfied, and my tension was slowly easing, so I opened my mouth and started talking to them first.

To be honest, I wanted to ask about things that are in the settings of the two but cannot be confirmed in the game. Academy Story 2 is a great game, but the various settings that the developer put out were quite interesting, and I enjoyed watching them too.

“Senior Lulu, do you really know all the magic except recovery magic?”

“I pride myself on being able to do everything when it comes to magic. I can use recovery magic, but I can’t do it because I know all the theory.”

“That’s amazing.”

Lulu’s expression quickly became triumphant at my words. She was a third-year student, 14 years old by Korean standards, but in reality, she was about 21 or 22 years old, so I smiled at her cute appearance, but she gave me a strange expression in return.

“Senior Ion knows how to use many weapons other than swords.”

“Ah, how did you know? To be honest, I prefer blunt weapons over swords, but since I have to focus on swords, I guess that’s a complaint.”

Ion also answers in surprise. In the game, Ion is a character who always uses a sword, so many players think of Ion as a knight who simply uses a sword, but she fights well no matter what melee weapon with good specs you give her.

“Ian, have you memorized the entire Imperial Noble List Guide?”

I shook my head as I thought about Lulu’s question.

“I only know to some extent.”

“Well, we’ll probably be right at the front of the guide…”

“Well, I think it’s great just from looking at it.”

Lulu agrees, but Ion shrugs and refutes.

“Well, I can’t really think of anything to refute what you’re saying… and he’s a male.”

To someone who hears it, it might sound like a belittling remark, like, ‘There’s no way a male would see that,’ but I know that’s not what Lulu meant.

Since females do most of the social life, female noble children need to be familiar with the noble list guide, but male children are in a position to assist females, so the general consensus here is that they only need the minimum knowledge necessary to promote friendship.

First of all, since there are far fewer males than females in the guidebook on the list of nobles, it is not difficult to see and learn about them… Of course, female nobles also look at them more out of curiosity about male nobles than female nobles.

‘You could almost say it’s the feeling of a male fan who is obsessed with reading idol profiles.’

I thought that as I put the last spoonful of pilaf into my mouth.