I Became the Final Subjugation Target of That Era’s Light Novel

Chapter

Japanese high schools have swimming classes in the summer.

Actually, I’m not sure if all Japanese high schools have swimming classes. I’ve never lived in Japan, after all.

I mean, I do live here now, but who knows if a story that works in Japan in this world would work in the Japan of the world I lived in? At least, as far as I know, there weren’t any Yōkai or ghosts in the world I came from.

Even if it’s different, there’s no way to check now. Well, I can’t complain about it. Have I thought that I’d rather live in a fantasy novel than in this crappy reality just for a day or two?

…But then again, this world has its fair share of crap too, so whatever.

Getting back to the point, this school has swimming classes.

On the 17th, I was sprawled out on a hospital bed, munching on Hage Dazs after skipping school, and the next day.

It started with one hour of swimming class during gym on Friday, followed by twice a week for a total of 10 hours of swimming curriculum until July.

I had already prepared my swimsuit, but I completely forgot about the swimming class. I was jolted back to reality when I saw my notes.

Changing clothes in front of the girls in my class? Of course, I’ve done that.

I turned around and changed while looking at my locker. It didn’t take long. I didn’t need to take off my underwear.

But… you can’t wear a swimsuit over your underwear.

While swimwear in the 2020s has changed to short-sleeved tops and shorts, it’s still the early 21st century now. It’s not blatantly a ‘school miz’ style, but the one-piece swimsuit you think of when you say ‘student swimsuit’ is pretty much the same.

That’s right.

Now, I have to wear a girl’s swimsuit with a girl’s body, something I hardly ever wore when I was a guy.

Before I had a chance to be mentally prepared after being bitten by a Yōkai!

No, no. That’s not such a big deal. Right?

It’s not much different than changing into gym clothes. Besides the fact that I’m not wearing anything underneath, it’s not a huge difference. Sure, it’d be embarrassing in many ways.

The real problem is the magic circle on my left wrist.

This is a tattoo.

I don’t know what a tattoo means in Japan, but at least no one would look kindly on a teenage girl with such an ambiguous tattoo.

Until now, except for Teacher Suzuki, everyone who has seen my tattoo knows what it does. So there’s no one who could blame me—

…But what about the other girls?

Isn’t it a bit strange to put a hair tie on my left arm while wearing a swimsuit?

That said, it felt a bit off to use something like a patch. I mean, who would think I was trying to hide a wound? They might even see it as more serious than revealing the tattoo! Was there a term for ‘landmine girl’ in this era?

“……”

It’d be better if I just had it on my belly.

While I pondered that—

“Kurosawa, are you worried about something?”

Miura asked me.

She always seems to be very aware of the feelings of people around her.

She’s pretty, has a good personality, a nice figure, great grades, yet she strangely doesn’t have a boyfriend.

“……No.”

I answered like that for now, but since my expression didn’t change much, Miura still seemed worried about me.

Miura… she probably saw the tattoo on my wrist.

She was with me when I first got admitted to this world.

But Miura doesn’t seem like the type to have any prejudice about such things.

Gym class was the fifth period.

In about five more hours, I would have to change into a swimsuit in front of the kids.

Would I be able to come up with a countermeasure in the meantime?

Hmm, I don’t really think I have much hope for that.

*

“Tattoo?…… Ah.”

Just like Miura, Yuuki immediately noticed my gloom.

It was still raining outside, so we couldn’t use the rooftop. As usual, Yuuki and I were sitting side by side in the literature club room, eating bread.

“I see. You have a tattoo on your wrist.”

Yuuki said with quite a serious expression.

“I hate to say this, but the kids are probably going to look at you a bit… strangely. You hardly ever see anyone our age with a tattoo. Plus… ”

Isn’t the perception of tattooed people still not great in Japan?

Plus it’s 2004. That’s 20 years before I lived in, so people would naturally be more conservative.

Thinking about how Kaneko’s underclassman was bullied, it wouldn’t be strange if I got ostracized for this tattoo.

As I nervously tore a bit of bread, Yuuki, sensing the seriousness of the situation, chewed on his bread with a stiff expression before finally speaking.

“Then… why not tell the teacher?”

After saying that, Yuuki immediately shook his head.

“Ah, no. That’s a bit.”

“……No.”

I shook my head.

“Perhaps Teacher Suzuki might take it seriously and listen.”

It seemed Yuuki was thinking of ‘breaking school rules,’ but Teacher Suzuki was a bit different.

She knew my situation well.

“Umm… but I can’t think of any other method. Hah, at least it’s better that you’re not with Goto.”

Goto is Yuuki’s homeroom teacher. He’s ten years older than Suzuki, and the more mature he is, the stricter he seems.

“……I’ll eat this and go.”

“Should I go with you?”

I shook my head.

Yuuki is just another student like me. If it was someone with a high position related to the school, they might view Yuuki differently, but to a normal teacher, he’d just be seen as an average high school girl.

Looking at the time, I hastily shoved the bread in my mouth a little faster than usual.

*

“Ah… I see.”

After listening to me, Teacher Suzuki immediately put on a serious expression.

“By any chance… how did that tattoo come about?”

When the teacher, lowering her voice significantly, asked, I pondered for a moment before answering.

“My mother….”

“……”

At my words, Teacher Suzuki’s eyes widened.

“……Do you not come home these days?”

Ah, right.

Teacher Suzuki hadn’t heard about me being chased by a stalker. The day I met Kagami was just shown to the police and that was that.

“……”

I didn’t want to worry her unnecessarily, so I shook my head.

With her hand covering her mouth, Teacher Suzuki looked serious.

“Would you like to lie down in the nurse’s office? I can tell them you’re not feeling well.”

For a moment, I seriously considered doing that, but I shook my head.

“……I can’t just skip all the classes like that.”

“That’s true, right?”

In response to my answer, Teacher Suzuki spoke with the eyes that showed she found me endearing.

How did I look in her eyes?

A child suffering from neglect and abuse, somehow studying hard to get into a prestigious high school, with a memory of being maltreated by my mother, trying to survive on my own. Wow, there’s probably not even a tragic heroine like this in a story.

If you had to look for one, maybe I’d be a heroine in a Korean morning drama.

When she lightly bit her lower lip while thinking, Teacher Suzuki quietly looked down at the hair tie still wrapped around my left wrist and spoke.

“Ah, wait a minute. Can you wait here?”

Teacher Suzuki immediately stood up as if she thought of something.

Leaving me sitting in the teacher’s seat, she hurriedly went somewhere.

“……”

As I watched her leave with my mouth slightly agape, Teacher Suzuki started talking to the male teacher I saw in sportswear last time.

Surprised, Teacher Suzuki looked back at me, and for some reason, the male teacher’s face turned slightly red. He listened intently and eagerly nodded along to whatever Teacher Suzuki was saying before taking something out of his desk drawer and handing it to her.

Teacher Suzuki took it and, holding it, returned to me.

It was… skin-colored tape. It had a slightly rough texture that was somewhat like a bandage.

Ah, I’ve seen people use this. It was a sports tape used for minimizing injuries by conforming to the shape of muscles.

Teacher Suzuki cut a piece to a suitable size, removed the hair tie from my left wrist, and applied it.

It wasn’t exactly neat. It was quite apparent that I was trying to hide something.

To be honest, it didn’t seem too different from using a patch… but still, it wasn’t white.

“For now, that’s all I can think of. I’m sorry.”

“……No, thank you.”

Still, she worked hard to come up with something for me.

As I bowed my head slightly to thank her, Teacher Suzuki nodded back at me.

Her face was still full of concern.

…Did I say too much?

*

But… well.

In the first place, I’m not someone who stands out that much in class. The number of people I’ve talked to in class could be counted on my fingers.

The kids in my class don’t particularly fear me. At the beginning of the semester, I was labeled as a delinquent who skipped an entire week, but after seeing me hanging out with Miura, Fukuda, and Yamashita, they didn’t treat me as someone to be afraid of or awkward with. At most, they’d just say a light greeting.

In that sense, Teacher Suzuki’s judgment was very accurate. It was her who paired me with Miura.

Until the time to change clothes, no one paid any attention to my left wrist.

I stared hard at my locker while changing, standing still until I couldn’t hear the other kids changing anymore.

Thus, until we headed to the indoor pool, there wasn’t much of a problem.

In this school, the swimming classes are separated by gender. Given that there are often many immature kids with a lot of sexual curiosity, it seems they’ve done that out of consideration.

That’s… should I be grateful or not?

The gym teacher didn’t line us up by number; she just left us to mingle enough.

In fact, swimming class doesn’t seem to involve strict training. It’s more of a ‘we have to teach you’ situation rather than being scored.

Maybe it’s something like disaster preparedness or something? From the attitude of the teaching teacher, it seemed closer to teaching CPR rather than academics related to grades.

I mean, in Japanese manga, there are often teenage characters who can’t swim. It can’t be completely fictional.

If they graded swimming skills, those kids would probably be in deep water.

That was… a relief.

Plus—

“Kurosawa, over here.”

Miura was really looking out for me. At first, she didn’t seem to notice that I was a bit nervous, but upon seeing the tape on my wrist, she seemed to snap into action and immediately pulled me into her group.

Thanks to that, I could safely hide among the three taller girls and pass the time.

“Haha! You look like a middle schooler!”

Fukuda laughed loudly when she saw me like that and patted my head several times. Well, with a swim cap on, it probably felt nothing more than rubber.

“I want to take you home and raise you like this.”

…Don’t say scary things all of a sudden.

Well, it was probably just Fukuda’s typical harmless banter, but with her considerably taller than me, having her hand on my head felt a bit intimidating.

“If you pet too much, you’ll stress her out and she’ll lose her fur.”

Am I a cat or something?

Yamashita, speaking casually, had a talent for giving off a vibe of scrolling through her phone even without one in her hands. Seeing her expression, which seemed to show she found everything troublesome, made me feel languid too.

Well, while the atmosphere was relatively free, swimming ‘class’ was still ‘class.’

The kids who couldn’t swim practiced splashing in the water, or overcoming their fears of water.

Those who could swim were already gliding across the pool under the teacher’s guidance.

“Kurosawa, can you swim?”

“Yeah.”

I nodded in response to Miura’s question.

“Oh, really?”

Fukuda asked, genuinely surprised. Even Yamashita seemed the same.

“I can only picture you floating around on a pink tube.”

Fukuda bluntly said something rude. Damn, but I couldn’t really rebut that because the image of me on a swan float was too fitting.

Despite this look, I was someone who couldn’t afford not to know how to swim for work reasons. Just because I know how to put out a fire doesn’t mean I only put out fires. On the contrary, when you count all the incidents happening in the city, the ratio of causes of fire may not be as high as you think.

I mean to say that it’s not that the absolute number is small.

“……I’ll show you.”

“Oh, oh. Good luck.”

Even as Fukuda said that, Miura slapped her arm lightly, but Fukuda didn’t flinch an inch.

Well, fine. Then I only have to prove myself directly.

As someone who could swim, the moment the teacher blew the whistle, I jumped straight into the pool.

Though my body had shrunk, the parts of my memory remained wonderfully operational.

Swimming the proper crawl stroke, I splashed my way across the pool, and the teacher’s eyes widened as she looked at me.

The other kids also stared at me with somewhat surprised expressions.

Feeling a bit worried if someone had noticed the tattoo on my left wrist, I quickly moved to hide between Miura and the other two girls.

“I can’t believe I’m getting embarrassed over something like this.”

Fukuda said while messing up my hair again.

It probably just felt like a wet rubber touch because of the swim cap.

Well, because of those three, I got through that day’s swimming class without much incident.

*

Looking back, it didn’t seem like something to worry about after all.

It wasn’t my first time having physical education classes since June. The summer gym clothes of this school were the types of uniforms that were trending in novels of that period, and the upper part was a short sleeve.

Since I didn’t have to get wet, I wore the hair tie on my left wrist at all times, but no one has really paid it any mind. Ironically, I was the one anxious about whether the tattoo would be revealed.

But who would really care about a single piece of skin-colored tape?

With my worries dissipated, I ascended the stairs with a relatively lighter heart.

The news that I had been admitted to the hospital had reached the cafe owner through Shii, and he told me to take the weekend off to rest. He said he wouldn’t cut my pay.

He’s quite a good person in strange ways. If only he could improve the parts that are a hassle a little.

Well, not everyone can be perfect. It’s not like he didn’t say to get permission from my parents.

So as I was climbing the stairs, I… discovered a hotdog in the hallway.

“……”

Ha.

What’s this person up to again?

With my heart feeling light, I followed the hotdog.

Truth be told, it wasn’t really that I wanted to eat it, but it bordered on a prank between Kaneko and me. Of course, I was thinking I’d eat it if I caught it.

Even if it was a hotdog straight from the factory, it still had bread and sausage. Eating it would fill me up.

As always, I almost grabbed the bread a few times before missing, passing by the literature club room.

And just as I lunged for the bread, it hit me.

Oh.

But the thing is, all the members of the literature club knew that I was working part-time.

Today being Friday naturally meant I wouldn’t be in the literature club. Both Ikeda, the club president, and Kaneko, a friend of Ikeda, as well as my friend Yuuki all knew this fact.

So Kaneko wouldn’t pull a prank like this on a Friday.

“Hey, this is really going to get caught.”

When I crouched down, holding the bread and looked up, there were three girls looking down at me.

One of them was someone I had seen once.

She was the one who criticized Kaneko when Ikeda ran to the track field to complain.

She was probably a second-year student.

And judging by the two next to her, they both looked as fit as any track team member.

“It seems I made a good choice listening to her talk to that goody-goody.”

The girl, with a buzz cut who looked like she could’ve easily passed as a guy without a sailor uniform, said that.

“Good job, good job.”

The club president said, praising her junior like that.

I immediately stood up and tried to run to the side, but—

“Where do you think you’re going?!”

The track club manager grabbed me and covered my mouth.

No way.

Can a person really be this dumb? Aren’t third-years supposed to be a bit careful? If they took track club seriously, wouldn’t they worry about how their behavior could affect university admissions?

“Damn, of all times…”

That manager grabbed me and pulled me into an empty classroom.

“I was hoping you’d quietly vanish for good. I got a call from my dad last night. So, if you wish to report me later, feel free. I have no worries now.”

Oh, I see.

So, she thinks she’s invincible and is trying to show off her bravado since she thinks she won’t be held accountable. I could commend her on her decisiveness as she attempted to act so boldly again just three days later.

…This is bad.

*

But then I thought, maybe this isn’t something to get so serious about.

After all, it wasn’t like I was being ostracized by my classmates. Being specific, it was only three of them, right?

So, if we put it into numbers, it’s no different than being targeted by a few bullies. And what they could do to me is probably not much worse than what I faced against Nue.

They wouldn’t stab me with an awl or anything, would they?

Being dragged into an empty bathroom far from sight and stuffed into the last stall was a bit scary, yes, and—

Knock knock.

When I heard that sound, I felt a chill go down my spine.

From the door, the noise created by the cutter knife was a bit frightening, but—

“Should I decorate your uniform a bit more elaborately?”

Seeing a knife raised towards my uniform made me feel like I was in a zen moment.

How many times have I had my uniform ripped off like this?

If this were a game, I would’ve already been eligible for achievements like “Uniform Slayer” by this point.

“Oh? Did the little frail girl just deflate?”

“Maybe she gave up.”

The ones grabbing my arms on either side said that.

“Hey, hey. Pull yourself together.”

Looking at the club manager slapping my cheeks, she finally broke into a laugh.

“Yes, yes. Now it feels like I’m doing something. You don’t have to resist too much. After all, it’s not like it matters if Kaneko sees this.”

“……”

“……Should I cut a bit? Not your uniform, but your skin.”

Something about that made me feel… strange.

Maybe I was just desensitized from wielding something much scarier just days ago, or it was just that light wounds heal easily, but in any case, it didn’t feel that frightening.

Am I starting to lose my sense of reality?

“Oh, senpai. Looks like something’s stuck here?”

One of the girls holding my left wrist twisted my arm.

“……Ah.”

That.

The sticker Teacher Suzuki had put on.

“Hmm? What’s this? Have you shown your wrist to anyone? What are you hiding?”

Being from the track team, they would easily recognize that this was not an ordinary way to tape something down.

I hastily tried to wrest my arm away, but the track club manager easily peeled off the sticker.

“……”

For a moment, the three members of the track club were speechless, and then burst into laughter.

“Hey, what’s this? A girl from the literature club walks around with something like this?”

“Pretty cute, huh?”

I could hear the openly mocking voice.

Even amid all this, I began to worry that they would spread rumors about this. That was scarier than the cutter knife in their hands.

Just as things seemed to be improving at school, I had started to make friends I liked.

But—

Knock knock.

“……”

Suddenly, I heard that sound again.

The laughter froze in an instant.

…It seemed like very few people came into the first-floor washroom of the old school building. There had been ghost stories surrounding it before, and most of the first-floor classrooms seemed to have mostly been used as storage. Most of the remaining desks and chairs were piled up, collecting dust.

Well, with those heavy things, it did seem a bit off to put them on the second floor.

Though it was a public space, the washroom was maintained, but that didn’t mean there were people around—

Knock knock.

While thinking that, I heard the knocking sound from the neighboring stall again.

The track club manager and the two lackeys next to her both froze.

“……”

Did they all think of ghost stories?

Yuki had said that the ghosts wouldn’t show up for a while.

Click.

They heard the sound of the door from the adjoining stall opening.

Then the sound of someone walking towards our stall followed, and someone’s knocking came on our door.

“……What are you doing?! Get out!”

The track club manager yelled boastfully, but—

The person outside waited a moment, then—

BANG!

Kicked the door with their foot.

“What, what!?”

The track club manager yelled in a panic, and as the door opened in the original direction where it shouldn’t, the person there was—

“….Yamashita?”

Yamashita stood with a bag in one hand and a phone in the other.

Considering the phone was glowing white, she may have been texting someone.

“……”

Yamashita’s eyes shifted between me, the two girls who were twisting my arms, and the track club manager who had dashed out the door.

Yamashita looked… extremely pissed off.

Maybe she had been angry even before she had kicked the door down.

Yamashita’s pupils circled, seeming to signal a thought.

‘What the hell are these idiots?’

That look was directed straight at the track club manager.

‘F*ck, this is just annoying.’

That felt like she was really having a bad day. Well, it looked like whatever she had been texting about was causing her frustration. She probably wanted to be left alone, especially because Fukuda and Miura, who would usually hang around her, weren’t there.

So maybe she’d chosen to dwell here to get away from everything.

…As she walked in, it seemed she hadn’t noticed the three of us in there.

After a moment of silence—

Yamashita threw the bag into the face of the track club manager.

---