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

Time flowed slowly, almost too quickly.

Every day felt languid, but before I knew it, a week or a month had gone by.

Kagami and I went out for Christmas one more time, and we had two Christmas parties with Yuuki and Harumi.

We celebrated New Year’s two more times and went through summer vacation twice.

During winter vacation, I built snowmen and had snowball fights with the kids.

Should I say it was a relief? My introverted side didn’t plunge too much and managed to stay somewhat up there. Well, for now, it was fine with just studying based on my original memories.

Time passed slowly, but the kids grew up quickly.

Every time I closed my eyes and opened them again, it felt like the kids had grown. Even meeting them almost every day.

Harumi and Yuuki also grew taller than me. Among them, Yuuki was the tallest.

As time went by, the kids’ personalities changed a little, almost imperceptibly.

Harumi still liked cartoons quite a bit, but she didn’t play around as much as before. She still loved wandering here and there, and she was usually the one to decide where the three of us would go, but she had become a bit calmer than before.

The frequency of watching anime had decreased a bit compared to when she was younger. Instead of magical girl shows, she watched more romance anime, and sometimes dramas were mixed in between.

She no longer chased insects around.

She started paying a little attention to her figure. Talks of gaining weight or losing weight came up among the kids, and there were kids who were conscious of the boys.

Well, they were still just at the level of being cute.

Yuuki’s personality had changed much more than ours.

He had overall become calmer. There was always a calm atmosphere about him in the past, but how should I put it?

It seemed like he was slowly understanding the kind of world around him.

That said, he hadn’t gone off the rails. Whenever he talked with Harumi or me, he looked genuinely happy.

However, relationships had shifted a bit.

While he had admired Kagami a lot, at some point, he began to feel a bit uncomfortable with her presence.

Perhaps, in his childhood, Yuuki really identified Kagami with his own mother. At some moment, he must have realized why his mother disappeared — and Kagami’s presence became uncomfortable.

And for some reason, it felt like the relationship with Miho was also gradually getting a bit strained.

That was someone else’s family matter, so I had no intentions of meddling, but high school student Miho had been spending noticeably more time with Yamashita.

Yamashita seemed to be keeping some distance from Miho, but—well, um.

…Yeah, it’s not my place to check it out.

And, as for me—

I still spent time with Kagami.

The days of snuggling up in Kagami’s arms had decreased a bit. Kagami understood that change. We couldn’t have separate rooms, but it didn’t seem like she intended to hinder my personal independence either.

I no longer visited Harumi’s house every day. By now, I was of an age where it wouldn’t be odd to look after the house alone.

I didn’t feel lonely. It’s not like I could say something like that, having lost my entire family in my previous life and living in such a devastated state, but since my surroundings were filled to the brim, sometimes I thought that relaxing alone was not so bad.

I began to enjoy the jokes of the comedy duo on TV, and I started to have my favorite dramas as well.

It still wasn’t the year 2000.

The term “end of the century” was slowly making its way into people’s mouths. The future shown on TV looked somewhat ridiculous to me, someone who knew what the “future” would be like, and honestly, it was a bit funny.

The future would flow, yes, in a much less exciting and more convenient way than imagined. There wouldn’t be gigantic machines with countless buttons coming out, but we would be able to see everything in the world with just a small screen the size of a palm.

Looking back, it wasn’t that the past was perfectly predictable — the madness was still incomprehensible.

In America, banks that should have been solid went under while randomly lending money, and there came out a form of currency so expensive it couldn’t be used to buy anything tangible, which everyone was trading back and forth.

Hmm, maybe this era was much simpler and better.

In 1998, when I entered the fourth grade of elementary school.

I had completely adapted to this body. Sometimes when I felt bored, I would go to where Kagami worked. Perhaps not wanting to show how much hard work she was putting in, Kagami initially tried not to tell me, but when I persisted, she finally shared.

Kagami worked at a small restaurant. She helped out from the morning until noon when there were many customers, and then later in the evening, the owner would randomly serve customers.

The ramen wasn’t particularly tasty. To be honest, it had a bit of a pig smell which didn’t really suit my palate.

But still, I occasionally went there, had a bowl, and returned home with Kagami.

Well, I suppose it’s not really the age to be considered a ‘senior’ anymore. In two years, I’ll be graduating elementary school.

“Shall we eat ramen?”

While walking home together, Harumi suddenly asked like that.

Having known each other since we were very young, especially when we were little, we had almost played together every day. I often waited for my mom at Harumi’s house.

No matter how long I tried to hide the situation, eventually, it would come out.

Harumi and Yuuki knew what kind of life Kagami and I were leading.

But there were no looks of disdain or pity. Both of them had gotten so familiar with Kagami and me that there was no reason for them to be surprised anymore.

No, perhaps they just got used to seeing it from such a young age and accepted it as the norm.

It seemed like Harumi and Yuuki were enviously looking at me in their own way. Because… while I didn’t have a ‘dad,’ I had a ‘mom.’

If they were both boys, the story might be different, but they were girls. Well, still, they never openly discussed it.

Having already lost everything, I had no need to envy other families in which someone existed, nor was I the kind of person who would be naive enough to bring it up right in front of them.

“Hmm? Huh?”

In fact, the way Harumi said it was not so much that she really wanted to eat ramen, but rather that she just wanted to sit around in that place.

I opened my coin purse tied to my bag strap.

One 500 yen coin, two 100 yen coins, a few 50 yen coins. It was enough to eat a bowl of ramen.

“Shall we do that?”

I asked while looking at Yuuki.

“Yeah.”

Yuuki responded simply as always.

Seeing him getting excellent at hiding his emotions already at such a young age felt a bit bittersweet. It’s just a little kid, yet he’s already like this, um…

But, still, I didn’t want to dive too deep and hurt him. As long as I let him know that he has two closest friends with whom he can share his feelings, that should be enough.

We headed toward the ramen shop where Kagami worked.

At this time, it was a bit of an off hour, so there probably wouldn’t be many customers. It was neither lunchtime nor dinnertime, so this time often turned out to be a break; although they didn’t go as far as closing the place if there were no customers.

We often went there at such times to hang out and loiter.

Harumi and Yuuki both liked Kagami, whom they had seen since childhood. Of course, their feelings were different. Harumi saw her as a really friendly and good-cooking mom, while Yuuki… well, I wasn’t sure if he knew the whole situation, but it seemed like he was somewhat aware of something.

If Harumi liked her purely, Yuuki felt somewhat uncomfortable but didn’t want to give up on being close to her.

Kagami was still in her early twenties.

It was about the age where being seen together with Fukuda could easily lead to misunderstandings in various ways. …If they were to marry, I would strongly oppose, but if Harumi liked her, then, well.

It took longer to get from school to the ramen shop than to get from school to our house. During the walk, we talked about some aimless topics. Among them were discussions that seemed to mimic ‘love stories’. Someone from the class was handsome, or someone was liked, that sort of thing.

While chatting along the way, suddenly, I felt a bit strange.

It felt like someone was staring at me intently.

It felt strangely familiar, like I had experienced it a long time ago.

When I turned my head, I saw someone far away. Though far, I couldn’t see them well, but they had long black hair and were wearing a pretty wide-brimmed hat.

They were even wearing a white dress, so what should I say…

They reminded me of the eight-foot ghost I had seen in my previous life. Although I didn’t think they were really that huge a person.

“Koto Ne?”

“Hmm?”

I quickly turned my head at Harumi’s words.

“Hey, are you listening to the conversation?”

“Uh, yeah, sorry.”

I replied like that while stealing a glance back at the troubling place from earlier.

The person who had been there was no longer visible.

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