By the time class ended and lunchtime rolled around, I realized one shocking fact.
"My lunchbox... is gone!"
I’d left it at home.
What an unbelievably stupid mistake.
My four-tier lunchbox was huge. There was no way I could forget something that bulky, so why the hell had I left it behind...!
No matter how hard I searched my memory, I couldn’t find any trace of it.
Wait. Did I never even make it in the first place?
"Is that really something to be that upset about?"
"Of course it is."
If I didn’t eat my lunch, I couldn’t feel like I’d properly made it through the day.
Honestly, I probably looked pretty pathetic right now, but my lunchbox was important to me, so there was nothing I could do about it.
In the world of Dark Souls, there weren’t even proper ingredients to make real food, and after spending every day in pain, there was no way I’d had much of an appetite either.
The first thing that made me feel alive after escaping that place was eating, so of course lunchboxes had become important to me.
"Ah, I didn’t bring mine either...."
With the Fire Keeper in the seat next to me also looking dejected because she’d left her lunchbox at home, Mayuri let out a long sigh and opened her bag.
Then, after a brief pause of confusion, it seemed Mayuri had forgotten her lunchbox too.
"In that case, should we go to the cafeteria or something...."
Just as I was thinking it might be better to buy some bread from the school store, Tohka’s voice rang out.
"Shido! It’s lunchtime! I’d been looking forward to this today too!"
Tohka never had to worry about forgetting her lunch, since Itsuka-kun always made it for her.
I was a little jealous of that.
Of course, there was no way a normal lunchbox alone could fill Tohka’s stomach, so it was basically more like a snack anyway.
Still, something seemed off about Itsuka-kun’s expression, so it looked like some kind of problem had come up.
"Uh... sorry. I actually forgot to make lunch today. Want to go to the store instead?"
At Itsuka-kun’s sheepish words, scratching his cheek, I was genuinely shocked.
The same guy who always made lunch even when he woke up late had forgotten just because he got up early?
People changed when they were about to die, they said, but Itsuka-kun was not someone who should be dying right now.
So I walked up to him and put both hands on his shoulders.
"Hieta...?"
"...Itsuka-kun. You still have time left. You can’t die!"
"...?"
"What! Shido! You can’t die!"
"W-what are you talking about!"
"Itsuka-kun! The world is still worth living in! You can’t give up on life yet!"
Itsuka-kun tried to break free from my grip, but there was no escaping the strength of someone whose power stat was over 99.
As I kept telling him he couldn’t die, that he had to live, that the world was still worth it, the people around us started whispering.
"What’s going on? Wait, is Itsuka trying to kill himself?"
"At school?"
"That’s seriously messed up...."
"No! It’s not like that!"
At the Amami Trio’s words, Itsuka-kun screamed like he was having a fit and shoved both me and Tohka away.
"Why the hell would you say something that ridiculous!"
"Isn’t it obvious? People act differently when they’re about to die!"
"Because I woke up early and forgot to make lunch!?"
"Yes."
Nodding with a serious face, I watched Itsuka-kun stare at me like I was a complete lunatic.
"I’m a person too! Things like that happen sometimes!"
"Hmm...."
At Itsuka-kun’s words, I fell into deep thought.
Whether he was really a person—that was the question I was considering.
"Why are you even thinking about that!?"
For one thing, Itsuka-kun had the power to seal a spirit’s abilities.
That alone made it hard to call him an ordinary person.
And if you asked what I was, well, from this world’s perspective I wasn’t exactly human either.
Not to mention the fact that, according to the bizarre rumors floating around school, he was a high school student with a child.
"Itsuka-kun isn’t human."
"Why!?"
When I shook my head and said that, Itsuka-kun looked genuinely shocked.
"Come on, Hieta. Even so, saying he isn’t human is a little much."
"Hmm.... Is that so?"
When Rinne, the only one in the seat next to Itsuka-kun who had actually brought lunch, said that, it almost sounded convincing.
"Why are you only agreeing with Rinne!?"
"Well..."
I pointed at Rinne and answered in a careful little voice.
"Rinne isn’t really human, is she?"
"...True, I guess?"
Rinne was a spirit born not as a human who received some power from Phantom and became a spirit, but as a spirit from the start, created with the purpose of protecting Itsuka-kun and bringing him happiness.
If you wanted to be strict about it, she wasn’t really a person.
Though now that her power had been sealed and I’d made her a body out of souls, she was basically no different from a human.
"Ahem. I can hear you, you know? Isn’t that a little harsh to say in front of me?"
"If we’re talking about harsh, then what you did to me...."
Now then, let’s think about what Rinne had done to me.
For starters, the moment she learned my true identity, she tried to kill me. Then, after succeeding, she met Gyeongsik for a bit, and after that she used her powers to send me off to dreamland.
Yeah, if you looked at it that way, she was basically a world-class villain.
"I said I was sorry about that...."
"I wasn’t bringing it up to complain. And Rinne, your lunchbox is empty."
"Eh?"
Rinne looked down at her lunchbox with wavering eyes.
It was so completely empty it looked as though it had never held rice or side dishes at all.
"Wait, Rinne too...?"
"...Looks like I didn’t make lunch either."
"Well, now that Rinne’s human too, I guess she can forget things."
"That reaction is way too different from how you treated me!"
At Itsuka-kun’s words, I shrugged.
"It can’t be helped. Itsuka-kun is Itsuka-kun."
"Is that really your reason...?"
"You’re quite noisy!"
As I snickered at Itsuka-kun’s utterly baffled face, two people I knew well burst into the classroom, opening the door wide.
"Excuse me. We’re coming in."
Kaguya and Yuzuru from the neighboring class had come carrying something in both arms.
"Kukukuku. This uproar is the roar of starving beasts. Very well, I permit you to call upon the name of this Princess of the Nine-Tail Wind! Then I shall bestow offerings upon you!"
"...What does that even mean?"
Unable to make sense of the words, Mayuri, who had been watching from the side with a deadpan look, asked what they meant.
To roughly translate it, it was surprisingly simple.
"I think she’s saying that if we ask nicely, she’ll give us one of the things in that bag."
"Really? I forgot my lunch too, so that’s a relief. But what did you do to end up with that much food?"
Mayuri pointed at the bag Kaguya was holding, her face full of curiosity.
Yuzuru nodded and explained.
"Explanation. Today’s competition was so intense that we bought too much bread from the school store. We came to share it with Hai and the others, so it’s fortunate that you forgot your lunch."
"I see. I do feel a little bad, but I’ll gratefully accept it."
My stomach wasn’t exactly screaming for fuel in real time... but at the very least, I wanted to feel full.
"No need to worry. We are always treated to delicious food. More importantly, our competition is not over yet. We shall have Hai decide the winner of our contest."
"Affirmative. We’ve already repeated the school store competition several times, but buying bread before anyone else is only natural if you use the Yamai sisters’ speed. It is not a fair contest."
The last time I went to the school store, all the bread had been cleaned out, and I felt like I knew exactly whose doing that had been.
I still didn’t really understand why they used their spirit-level physical abilities for something like that, but since those two always competed over ridiculous things anyway, I’d long since given up trying to make sense of it.
"So today’s new contest is that the person who buys the bread I choose out of the two of you wins?"
"That is correct. So, Hai, choose quickly!"
"Huh...."
Apparently, choosing bread carried more responsibility than I’d expected.
But I was also desperate to eat, so I had no choice but to decide quickly.
"I choose..."
I picked the pork cutlet sandwich from Kaguya’s bread.
It wasn’t like I was siding with Kaguya or anything. It was just the only bread with meat in it.
"Excellent choice, Hai! I knew Hai would choose the bread with meat!"
"Regret. It seems my prediction was off. I will accept defeat cleanly today."
"Ahaha, then everyone else can come and eat too."
The moment I said that, Tohka was the first to rush in.
She grabbed whatever bread she could and started eating like crazy, and seeing that, Itsuka-kun must have felt his own share was in danger too, because he hurried over and grabbed a yakisoba bread.
"Then I’ll gratefully take one too."
"I will also gratefully partake."
While Mayuri and the Fire Keeper each chose a ham sandwich and a melon bread, Tohka had already finished off all the bread she’d taken.
Where had all the bread that had just been filling her mouth gone, and how was she already eating another one?
As I always thought, Tohka really might be the reincarnation of an elephant.
"Mmm! Thanks, Kaguya! Yuzuru!"
And just like that, Tohka devoured all the bread that had been there a moment ago.
Yep. Definitely an elephant.
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