Fortunately, I made it to school without being late, and Miss Maria and the other students were chatting away as usual.
Seeing everyone act like nothing was off about this situation made me feel like my head was really starting to go bad.
"Sigh..."
When I let out a long, frustrated sigh, Itsuka-kun, who was standing beside me, looked at me with concern.
"Hieta. Are you okay?"
"Yeah, I’m fine. It just feels kind of like when someone first appeared somewhere, so I’m a little dizzy."
"Ahem."
Apparently realizing I was talking about her, Rinne cleared her throat a few times and gave an awkward smile.
"W-Well... I don’t really have anything to say about that."
"Thanks to that, my memories even got manipulated."
"Sorry. Let’s not talk about that anymore."
Rinne actually apologized in the end.
Thanks to that, the eyes of the other classmates turned this way.
"Hieta’s getting an apology from Rinne..."
"Did he catch her in some kind of weakness?"
"That’s so gross."
Honestly, I had a feeling most of the bad rumors at this school were the work of those three.
They were taking a single apology and spinning it into a whole novel...
Seriously, unbelievable.
"Um, how exactly do you even reach that conclusion...?"
"Huh? Well, if it’s Rinne’s personality, she wouldn’t have done anything wrong, right?"
Great.
Rinne’s reputation at school was better than I expected.
Well, when she first appeared, she was acting for Shido’s sake, after all.
Her heart was in the right place, even if her methods were wrong, so of course her reputation at school would be good.
"Ahaha, guys. I really was the one in the wrong, so don’t be too hard on Hieta."
In the end, only after Rinne stepped in and said she’d been in the wrong did the non-controversy around me finally die down.
"Oh my, Hai. You’re rather late today."
Before I knew it, the young lady had come over beside us and looked back and forth between Miss Maria and me with a truly surprised expression.
"And not only did you arrive right before class... you even brought a flower with you. So you’re a boy your own age after all, Hai."
"Cough!"
At her words, calling Miss Maria a flower, I stared at her as if to say what the hell are you talking about?
But the young lady only laughed softly and met my eyes without saying a word.
"No, I mean, why say it like that...?"
"...Hai. Am I really not that attractive?"
Maybe she’d been listening in on our conversation, because Miss Maria came over with tears in her eyes.
I broke into a cold sweat and waved my hands frantically.
"No! You’re more than attractive enough! I only said it like that because I thought Miss Maria might be offended."
"Hehe. You’re cute when you panic."
The young lady, who had created this whole situation and was now just watching from the sidelines, was incredibly irritating, but that wasn’t what I needed to worry about right now.
I had to calm Miss Maria down first.
"Really?"
"Of course!"
Only after I kept nodding over and over did the look of tears finally disappear from Miss Maria’s face.
And the eyes of the classmates who had watched the whole thing were full of contempt.
'That kind of hurts...'
I hadn’t really done anything contemptible, but those looks still stung.
At this rate, I was starting to worry I might end up with some weird nickname like Itsuka-kun, maybe something like a sexual beast.
'Still, no way I’d get a nickname like that, right? Not like Itsuka-kun.'
Given my usual behavior, I figured the odds were low.
"...Hieta. Why does your gaze toward me feel so indecent? Are you thinking something weird?"
"Oh, dear. Caught me."
"It was true!?"
"No, no. That slipped out wrong. I was just thinking about how infamous Itsuka-kun is."
"That’s the same thing!!"
Itsuka-kun’s overreaction to my words was pretty funny.
He had such a satisfying reaction that, as always, he was easy to hit.
It was kind of like watching a streamer who puts up resistance when you just start beating them.
While I was thinking those pointless thoughts, I turned my gaze toward Miss Maria.
There she was, chatting cheerfully with people her own age just like before.
Watching her made me smile on its own.
It was something impossible without Eden.
Maybe having Eden appear wasn’t entirely a bad thing after all.
"Grr! Hieta, you enviable bastard!"
"No, Tonomachi-kun. What is it now?"
I was grinning to myself while looking at Miss Maria when Tonomachi-kun suddenly came up to me.
He grabbed my shoulder with tears in his eyes.
"Your behavior is the problem, you idiot!"
"Huh?"
I tilted my head, unable to understand what he meant, and the grip on my shoulder only got tighter.
"I thought it was Sachi-chan, Mayuri, and even the Yamai sisters from the other class, but now it’s some girl who came here as a homestay guest too!? You pervert! Total pervert!!!"
"Seriously, what kind of person do you think I am in your head, Tonomachi-kun?"
I let out a dry laugh in disbelief.
What exactly did Tonomachi-kun think Hieta was, to call me a pervert?
In real life, I was terrible around women and just kept my mouth shut and behaved myself.
The me he imagined and the real me seemed like completely different people.
Otherwise, there was no way he’d call me a pervert.
"Honestly, you’re very popular, my dear guest."
When the Fire Keeper muttered that, the young lady beside her picked up on it.
"Yes, because Hai belongs to everyone."
"Saying it like that makes it sound a little weird..."
They were talking about me like I was some kind of public property.
"Oh? Is that so? Hehe..."
My headache came on strong because of the young lady’s unusually irritating behavior today, and I pressed a hand to my forehead.
I had no idea why she was acting like this all of a sudden.
Did something annoying happen yesterday, maybe?
As I lowered my head and tried to make sense of it, I heard footsteps approaching from this way.
"...Hai, this is bad. Tohka and Origami’s argument has gone off the rails in a pretty bad direction."
The owner of the voice was Miss Maria, and after talking with Tohka and Tobiichi, she had come over here.
At her words, I looked up and over toward Tohka and Tobiichi, only to see that what had started as a fight over whether Rinne had won or lost had now turned into a brawl over whether it was red bean paste or red bean filling.
"Compared to before, this is a very wholesome argument."
Saying that, I gently patted Miss Maria’s head, who looked a little worried.
It was meant as a way of reassuring her, but somehow the boys in the class took it the wrong way and their eyes turned fierce.
That, Tonomachi-kun, isn’t blood dripping out of his eyes, is it...?
"Bad girls, Tohka-chan, Tobiichi-chan. You can’t do that, okay? Class is about to start, so you need to sit down."
"Okay. I’ll go back right away."
"S-Sorry, Rinne... I’ll head back too."
In the end, it was only after Rinne, unable to watch any longer, stepped in and stopped them before class began that their argument finally came to an end.
Seriously, to fight that long over a single filling.
Their bond was so strong I could practically feel it.
"If both of you understand, that’s good enough. Come on, Shido, you should sit down too."
"Yeah. Having Rinne around really is reassuring."
"Eh? ...Ah, well, it’s not really anything that impressive..."
Rinne blushed at Itsuka-kun’s praise.
What was this? This had definitely happened before, but today Rinne’s reaction was way too much.
Was this also because of Eden?
"...Yatogami Tohka. You should remember this. This is Sonogami Rinne’s technique."
"I see... So this is how she gets praise from Shido."
Those two really were impossible to stop.
How did they even come up with thoughts like that in the middle of this?
"This is nice."
"...I hate to say this, but I don’t think Hai is the one who should be saying that."
"Huh?"
"No, nothing."
I was sure Miss Maria had muttered something beside me, but her voice was too low to hear clearly.
And even if I asked again, she probably wouldn’t tell me.
'Well, maybe I misheard.'
I decided to dismiss it as my imagination.
"I’ll return to my seat now."
"Ah, yes."
So, before the bell rang, Miss Maria returned to her seat, and the other students began sitting down one by one as well.
Watching that, I didn’t feel any sense of wrongness at all.
It was as if this had been the way things were from the very beginning.
Miss Maria, who had no physical body in reality, was blending in with the rest of the class.
For once, I found myself thinking it might be okay if Eden stayed in this form.
Of course, I knew very well that lies would eventually be exposed, so this thought of mine could never come true.
'I need to figure out some way for Miss Maria and Marina to get bodies.'
For example, maybe forming a body out of souls and then putting their consciousness into a device or something like that.
While I was indulging in that meaningless fantasy, the front door of the classroom opened and our homeroom teacher, Tamae-sensei, came in.
'Huh, it feels like I haven’t seen her in ages.'
Even though I saw her all the time, for some strange reason it felt like it had been a long time.
"Okay, let’s begin homeroom~"
My pointless thoughts vanished with the start of homeroom.
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