WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Mordor
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ I Became the Second-in-Command in a Romance Fantasy Novel ◈
Chapter 43: New Semester (3)
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Why had I become Daisy’s boyfriend?
To explain that, I had to go back one day.
That morning was no different from usual.
More precisely, I was repeating the routine I’d settled into after returning to the Academy.
“Whine!”
Thanks to the living alarm clock whining from the floor, I yawned, heated the meat I’d brought yesterday in a magical artifact resembling a microwave, and set it in a bowl.
“Can’t you at least eat like a person when it’s mealtime?”
The little puppy tearing into the nicely grilled chunk of meat stared at me expressionlessly.
It was like the saying that you shouldn’t bother even a dog while it’s eating.
“Do whatever you want.”
Still yawning, I got to my feet.
That puppy was a beastkin girl who had nearly been sacrificed in the Dark Mages incident where Prince Ellen had screwed things up.
Why was she hanging around me...?
Honestly, I had no idea.
I’d treated her and planned to use the kingdom’s beastkin connections to send her home.
Instead, she declared that she wouldn’t listen to anyone weaker than her and would follow me to the Academy because I was stronger.
Of course, this canine beastkin girl, or bitch for short, didn’t even listen to me despite being weaker than me.
She wouldn’t listen to anyone weaker than her.
But apparently, she only listened to people stronger than her sometimes.
She was acting like a cat choosing a servant, but she claimed to be friends with the Caninefolk princess, so I was keeping her around for now.
If she was friends with a princess, I’d get a nice reward.
Even if it wasn’t material, gaining the Caninefolk’s favor and opening trade with them would still be profitable.
Of course, it could all be a lie.
If it was, I’d seriously have to find an imperial black market and sell her off.
I was thinking that as I was about to head to school.
“Hey.”
I grabbed the puppy chewing on meat by the scruff and lifted her up.
“Today’s Saturday.”
“...”
The bitch, still holding meat in her mouth, averted her eyes.
This little shit seemed to have forgotten because every day was the weekend for her.
“Seriously.”
Even then, she refused to let go of the meat in her mouth.
“You really are friends with the princess, right?”
She nodded, so I set her back on the floor.
There was no point going back to sleep. I might as well head to the training grounds.
“Oh, right.”
Before that, I remembered something Tinky Winky had asked, so I brought it up.
“When are you going to tell me your name?”
“Whine!”
“If you keep barking nonsense, I’m just going to call you Bitch.”
“...”
If she wanted to go with a mysterious persona, I could understand that. But she had to bear the consequences herself.
Could our little bitch bear it?
“Bell.”
After whining and struggling for a while, she finally spat out one word.
Apparently not.
* * *
Even if I went to the training grounds, I couldn’t train anyway.
I was currently putting on a perfect patient act.
The reason I still went there was for publicity.
Look at me, I was in such pain and still coming to the training grounds.
Then look, I was too sick to do anything even after getting there.
If Ellen had even a shred of humanity, he’d remember what I looked like now when he tried something later.
“Or maybe not?”
Slurp.
I drank coffee through a straw and stood up in the empty storage room.
They were busy enough that people came and went even on weekdays, so it seemed they couldn’t rest on weekends either.
“The semester starts next week.”
This romance-fantasy world used the familiar Monday-through-Sunday week.
Today was Saturday, and classes started next Monday.
Once the semester began, another standard romance-fantasy disaster was bound to break out, so I needed to share information.
“Did Uncle Aryn really get fired?”
He’d said he was with House Jeyka, so it wasn’t impossible that he’d quit after hearing from Senior Lorellia.
Still, they hadn’t officially broken off the engagement yet, and he’d said he was supporting Prince Essid and Daisy. It wouldn’t be a bad move to keep an informant connected in the meantime.
“He must really be running himself ragged.”
Come to think of it, he had one foot in the imperial family and the other in House Jeyka, so his workload was probably doubled.
Once he realized that was the consequence of his own actions and came back, I decided I’d give him work immediately.
“It’s almost time to meet Daisy.”
I’d avoided her until now, but pretending to be a patient until the semester started felt excessive, so I’d arranged to get some healing.
Daisy was currently at the level of a legendary monster, so it was hard even to run into her by chance, let alone make an appointment.
Still, Tinky Winky, our elite agent, was capable enough to get in touch with even the Saintess.
I’d get healed, hold my regular meeting with Tinky Winky, have dinner, then do a few rounds at the training grounds to celebrate my recovery.
So, not wanting to keep the busy Saintess waiting, I quickly arrived at our meeting place and waited.
Right on time, Daisy staggered into the meeting spot.
“...Are you okay?”
She clearly wasn’t, but I asked out of politeness.
“I’m not okay...”
Daisy, who normally would have claimed she was fine even if she didn’t mean it, answered weakly.
“I feel like I’m dying...”
Even the Saintess who had seen injustice and turned the Holy Kingdom upside down found the political arc difficult, apparently.
Come to think of it, Prince Essid was supposed to lead the romance-fantasy political arc.
Rumor had it that Prince Essid had been dragged to the imperial palace by the knights waiting at the imperial border, so Daisy was probably handling the political side alone.
“So...”
Daisy, who had been slumped over, looked at me with eyes full of hope.
What was this? I had nothing to do with administration or politics.
I was openly the stupid swordsman type.
Wondering what she could possibly ask of a sword guy, I listened.
“Could you pretend to be my boyfriend?”
“No.”
“...”
An assassination attempt had come out of nowhere, so I immediately executed a sharp evasive maneuver.
* * *
When I asked why she had suddenly tried to assassinate me...
“I’ve been getting requests from all over the place, asking me to meet someone or get engaged or married.”
Even with romance-fantasy male leads glaring right at them, there were apparently plenty of people trying to commit suicide.
“I get at least dozens of letters every day. I think I could end each day happily if I just didn’t have to reply to them all.”
She complained with a tearful expression, and I tilted my head.
“Can’t you just not reply?”
Why was she answering every single one?
“It’s polite.”
That confident answer made me ask without thinking.
“Is having a fake boyfriend polite?”
“...They don’t really confess because they like me, so wouldn’t it be okay?”
Unlike her earlier answer, her face was full of guilt.
She even averted her gaze. She seemed embarrassed herself.
“So you’ll heal my injuries, and in exchange, you want me to play your fake boyfriend?”
“Yes...”
“Is it okay to use divine power for such personal gain?”
“I got permission from the Goddess!”
“Wow...”
I was briefly at a loss for words when she told me not to worry about that.
It was absurd enough that Daisy had actually gotten permission, but what kind of Goddess had willingly approved it?
“So please don’t worry. We’ll only pretend to date during the second semester, then say we broke up over winter break because of the distance!”
It was a shorter period than I’d expected, so I thought our Saintess still had some conscience left.
“Then why me?”
She had plenty of men around her. Why was she doing this to me?
“If you ask people in your club, plenty of them would do it.”
There were plenty of guys who would first agree to become her fake boyfriend, then desperately try to erase just the word “fake” from that title.
So why was she asking someone she’d only greeted once?
“Well... The people in my club like me.”
“What?”
I couldn’t help making a stupid sound at that answer.
* * *
As far as I knew, romance fantasy came in two major forms.
The first was the pure-love type, where the male lead was completely decided from the beginning.
In stories like that, the secondary male leads were just seasoning meant to deepen the main male lead’s story.
No matter what they did, they could never beat the main lead, so the main plot kept rushing forward and most of those novels ended a little past a hundred chapters.
Then there was the other kind, where the main male lead wasn’t decided.
The opposite of pure love, a reverse-harem romance fantasy involving several male leads.
Some stories quickly picked a male lead and ended fast in those cases too.
But they were more likely to run for a long time.
After all, with multiple male leads taking turns fighting, the content tended to get copied and pasted.
It was hard for a web novel to become popular, but once it did, a long serialization became a steady pension. That was the nature of the market.
So there were novels that aimed to make one story successful, keep throwing in secondary male leads, stretch it out for hundreds of chapters, and turn it into a pension.
Its name was Like a Flower Blooming in a Parched Land.
The very romance-fantasy novel Violet and I had possessed.
And the heroines in stories like that usually had one thing in common.
They were ridiculously oblivious.
It made sense.
If they knew the male leads liked them but still refused to choose anyone, wouldn’t they look like total trash?
They pretended to be oblivious. Even characters who were normally perceptive became clueless when it came to romance.
They treated the affection around them as nothing more than friendship.
The male leads around them kept each other in check, unable to be the first to confess, dragging out a frustrating slow-burn plot. Then, just when readers got tired and started dropping the story, the novel would occasionally tame them with a sweet romantic scene.
That was apparently the charm of Like a Flower Blooming in a Parched Land!
...At least, that was what Violet, a devoted reader, had said.
She definitely had.
“A fake boyfriend... You can’t ask someone who really has feelings for you.”
Hey, Tinky Winky.
You said Daisy was dense.
You said she was so frustrating that you’d started giving her early romance education ages ago...
“Ah.”
I realized it in an instant.
Daisy, the Saintess whose only abilities were a bit of magic and the power of the Saintess.
Violet had turned her into someone with close-combat skills impressive enough to make even me admire her, and had somehow made her draw an unbelievably badass Holy Sword that would make even our King, a Sword Master, want to see it.
If it was Violet teaching her, even an oblivious romance-fantasy heroine could become a romance expert.
...Honestly, wasn’t Tinky Winky the person best suited to be an Instructor?
After graduation, I should seriously have her naturalized and recommend her to the Commander as the next Instructor.
“Thank you for understanding.”
Seeing the look on my face as I realized something, Daisy must have mistaken it for understanding her circumstances. She bowed her head and thanked me.
“I never said I’d do it...”
“Do you know why I’m asking you, Adam?”
Ignoring my refusal, Daisy spoke with her dark-circle-ridden eyes shining.
“First, Adam... I didn’t think you’d ever fall for me.”
That was true.
I’d sooner confess to an imperial princess than have the courage to date a romance-fantasy heroine.
“And...”
A strange smile appeared on Daisy’s lips.
It was the mischievous smile Tinky Winky might wear, one that didn’t suit a Saintess at all.
“Because if it’s you, Adam, you won’t refuse.”
“No, I will.”
I was absolutely going to refuse. What misunderstanding had she gotten?
“Ah.”
At my definite answer, Daisy blinked for a moment.
“If you refuse, Adam, I’ll ask Ellen instead.”
...She immediately started threatening me.
The Author’s Note
An illustration has been added to Chapter 18.
The illustrator who drew that AI cover said they made it while studying and were worried about it, but I got it for free, so even if it’s not great, please just let it slide with, “Wow, that’s pretty bad.”
Also, the illustrator brought this illustration saying it had to be included, so it was added here too.
Footnotes:
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