Love Is a Light~ So Green It Makes You Panic~

Influenced by their gazes, I suddenly felt how beautiful Exusiai’s slender fingers were in my palm, how delicate her fair skin was. A dangerous thought sparked in my mind. I subconsciously began to caress the back of her smooth, soft hand with my thumb, a gesture that felt both natural and alarmingly intimate.

She was wearing a short-sleeved shirt with mystical patterns. When she raised her arm to hold my hand, my eyes could travel all the way up her fair, beautiful arm to its end, to the inside of her sleeve, to her clean, hairless underarm, my gaze lingering on every delicate little fold. I could even see the edge and strap of her bra from the sleeve’s opening—a tantalizing glimpse into a forbidden zone.

To be honest, I had already seen her completely naked this morning, but seeing these half-hidden areas and pieces of fabric that girls so carefully conceal still managed to captivate me for a moment. It was the difference between seeing the whole map and discovering a hidden, treasure-filled area.

Then I suddenly realized that Exusiai’s delicate fingers were also caressing the back of my own smooth hand. Her one visible, beautiful eye held the same entranced expression as mine as she stared at my delicate Kiriko-face and fair skin.

I heard the sound of liquid dripping from the next table. I hoped it wasn’t their nosebleeds.

I sensed the atmosphere was turning a little pink, like a shoujo manga filter had been applied to our corner of the restaurant. If this continued, we might just end up doing it right here and now. Doing it in a restaurant, surrounded by students from our own school… that was a little…

…too exciting!

I feel like I’m a relatively shy person. Maybe most people could handle it, but I definitely couldn’t let go while being surrounded by a crowd. My stats weren’t high enough for that kind of public play. So, I reluctantly let go of the handsome girl’s small hand, only to find that she was still holding onto mine, her grip surprisingly firm.

I had to force myself to look away from her intoxicatingly beautiful red eye and shift my gaze across the table to Yukino.

It was strange. At noon, she had been ecstatic, thinking that because she had become a girl and reality had been modified, her girlfriend’s pregnancy would disappear, solving the problem that had troubled her for days. But now, dressed in a woolen sweater over a light-colored shirt, she was propped up on the table with one hand, her pale palm—so pale you could see the veins beneath the skin—heavily covering half her face. The sorrow displayed by this pose, reminiscent of a certain chuunibyou character sealing away their demonic eye, was no less than my own despair from being rejected before confessing, or Exusiai’s misery from not being able to get with her lovers.

I asked her, “Yukino, how come you’re all dejected like the two of us? Did you roll a bad gacha?”

Yukino sniffed lightly with her small nose, a sound closer to a sob. Her straight-jean-clad legs shifted restlessly under the table, and her clean canvas shoes accidentally bumped my foot. A small impact from Yukino’s girlish foot was transmitted through the side of my shoe.

“Ah, sorry…” she apologized softly in her snow-like voice, then raised her head, revealing red-rimmed eyes and moist, long eyelashes that glistened with unshed tears.

Whether it was because she was my good brother or simply because of her tear-streaked, heart-wrenching appearance, my heart ached. I reached out with the hand that Exusiai wasn’t holding, stretched across the table, and gently patted her cold little hand. “It’s okay, it’s okay, we’re all here for you. What happened?”

Her slender, ink-stroke eyebrows under her airy bangs furrowed together. Half-crying, she said, “My girlfriend… is still pregnant.”

“Huh?!” I could hardly believe it. “Reality was modified so that you were a girl from the very beginning, and your girlfriend can still be pregnant? What kind of medical miracle is that! Is this immaculate conception?!” I pointed a hand at Saber to my right. “Or is it like how this one got Mordred, through some kind of high-tech, magi-tech means?”

Saber looked at me with her crestfallen, forest-lake-green eyes. “Could you not use me as an example… I haven’t had any kids yet!”

Haven’t had any kids… yet?

Does that imply she’s going to have them in the future??? In that case, as her good brother, I hope that child is mine.

Faced with my question, Yukino raised a small hand to rub her increasingly red eyes and choked out, “That’s what my girlfriend told me at first, too. Something about a medical miracle, that two girls could have a child together. I actually believed it at first. But then I saw her phone light up next to her; she’d received a message. The sender’s name was [That Guy~]. The first message was asking my girlfriend, [Did you get that sucker to believe the baby is hers?]. It was immediately followed by another message, saying, [If she doesn’t believe it, show her the latest news from America about female-female reproduction]. Seeing those two messages, how could I not understand?! It was a critical hit to my soul!”

Tears streamed down her face.

Watching Yukino, dressed as a literary maiden, tremble with betrayal, I couldn’t help but marvel at the unpredictability of life. The situation was clear now. The baby in her girlfriend’s belly belonged to the man who sent the messages, and her girlfriend had conspired with this man to trick her, trying to make her believe the child was her own.

I sighed. “This System-Hime… really has made a mess of our lives.”

Unexpectedly, Yukino, tears tracing paths down her pretty face, shook her head and cried, “It has nothing to do with System-Hime. I’ve been recalling many details from before the transformation. I’ve realized that even in the unmodified reality, my girlfriend had already been cheating on me. I just hadn’t discovered it yet. Thinking back on all the suspicious things from before, even if I were still a man, the baby in her belly wouldn’t have been mine. It would have been this man’s! From the very beginning, this child was never mine! Sob sob sob…”

She started crying, and then she even started singing, her voice trembling, “Love is a light~ so green it makes you panic~~”

She’s lost it. The guy’s completely lost it. Her sanity points have hit zero. Green… the color of being cheated on, a status effect more debilitating than poison.

I knew that in this situation, no amount of consolation would work. The best thing was to let her have a good cry, to vent all the frustration in her heart. Only then could we find a way to help her move on.

So I looked at Saber, at this beautiful girl with her blonde hair tied up, dressed in trousers and a vest like an English butler. Like the three of us who had met with misfortune, she also had a look of utter despair. I was confused. When we were discussing our afternoon plans earlier, hadn’t she said herself that she didn’t have so many “normie” troubles and was just going to stay in the dorm all afternoon? Could lazing around for an afternoon make her this depressed?

I was a bit puzzled. “Saber, why do you look so gloomy and listless too? Did something happen in the dorm this afternoon?”

She shook her head, the strands of hair by the side of her delicate face trembling like golden marigolds in the wind, exquisitely beautiful. She lifted her pure, verdant eyes, looked at me, and said in her heroic voice, “Nothing happened… I just spent the afternoon playing with myself and got a little dehydrated.”

My confusion instantly froze on my face. I never would have expected such an answer. It was a line of dialogue that broke my brain.

Saber was still talking, her expression deadpan. “When we get back later, if you find that my bed isn’t dry yet, don’t be surprised.”

Stop talking! Stop saying such outrageous things with that cute, pale pink mouth of yours!

I have to admit, right now, you’re the bigger animal! Or rather, all along, you’ve held the top spot on our dorm’s leaderboard of animals. And I, a pure boy who just wants to have a more-than-friendly relationship with his transformed brothers, can only be at the very bottom! I’m just a slime-level monster in a dungeon full of demon lords!