“…Eh?”
Yukina blinked.
She instinctively shrank back a little, her back pressing against the chair, and hugged the notebook tighter against her chest.
Ningning’s face was still right in front of her, so close that she could clearly see her own reflection in the other’s pupils.
“What did you… just say?”
“I·said.”
Ningning propped both hands on the desk, leaned forward, and repeated each syllable one by one.
“Are. You. Really. Little. Yukina?”
The air went quiet for a beat.
In the empty classroom, only the cicadas outside the window continued calling, one after another.
As expected, has she noticed?
Yukina hugged the notebook even tighter.
This morning, her older sister had also said something similar—that she was quite different from the previous Yukina, that her personality had changed a lot, and that she was worried whether she was being bullied at school.
Now even Ningning was asking the same thing. It seemed the gap between herself and the original owner was not something she could brush off just by keeping her head down and staying silent.
What if… she simply admitted it?
That would probably be very unwise.
The last time she tried to speak of it, her heart had felt as if it were about to be crushed. If it happened again, who knew what terrible thing might occur.
But how should I answer?
Just as Yukina lowered her head and was thinking about what to say…
Pinch.
Two hands stretched out from across the desk and precisely seized both of her cheeks.
Fingertips pressed into the soft flesh and pulled outward on either side like stretching rice cakes.
“Hurry up and say it! Who are you really? A parasitic beast? A second personality that suddenly awakened? Or the soul of some pharaoh sealed inside a pyramid a thousand years ago? Are you good at cards? Spill it already!”
“Mm… mmph… y-you let go first… it hurts…”
Yukina’s mouth was stretched out of shape, making it hard to speak clearly.
After a few seconds of stalemate, Ningning finally released her hands, yet still maintained the posture of leaning over the desk, staring down at her from above.
Yukina rubbed her pinched-red cheeks and shifted her gaze slightly to the side.
“…Ningning, have you been reading too many manga? How can you ask a question like that?”
“It’s because Little Yukina is completely different now!”
Ningning perked up her tanuki ears, pointed at the teardrop at the corner of Yukina’s eye, and flashed her tiger teeth.
“If it were the old Yukina, she would never let me pinch her face like this. The moment I dared to do it, she would hit me with an elbow strike right away, then follow up with a dozen Black Flashes until I couldn’t get up again. There’s no way she would ever make such a soft, sticky little expression!”
“…Isn’t that just a pure violent maniac?” Yukina muttered under her breath.
She truly could not do something like that, and she did not want to.
After a few seconds of silence, she thought of something. She shifted the notebook in her arms a little higher to cover her chin, lowered her eyelids, and asked softly:
“Does Ningning… like the previous me?”
“Ha? No way. Don’t make your Ning-sis laugh.”
Ningning denied it at light speed, so fast it seemed like a conditioned reflex, without even a millisecond of delay.
“To be honest, the previous Little Yukina wasn’t a good girl at all. Not cute in the slightest. Her strength was weak as hell, yet she still picked fights with people at the drop of a hat. When she lost she would throw a tantrum, and she was always stealing my snacks and throwing the empty wrappers into my drawer. One time she even called me in the middle of the night saying she found a money-making path—that working in Southeast Asia for a month could earn a million—and planned to send me over to collect the agency fee!”
Like a machine gun firing, Ningning unloaded a dense barrage of the original owner’s crimes. It looked like she had been holding it in for a long time.
As she spoke, her momentum gradually weakened, like a carbonated drink whose bubbles had all fizzed out. Her tail also drooped down by her feet.
“But still…”
She scratched at her messy bangs and let her gaze drift toward the window.
“How should I put it. The previous Little Yukina wasn’t cute at all, but there was one thing about her that I kinda liked.”
“What thing?”
“Mm, that kind of… thing she had on her…”
Ningning tilted her head and thought, scratching her ear, before finally squeezing out a word after a long while:
“That ‘small-fry vibe,’ I guess. Roughly.”
“…Small-fry vibe?”
Yukina repeated the phrase, confirming she had not misheard.
“Yeah yeah yeah, exactly the kind of ‘small fry small fry~♡’ that bratty girls always say. The previous Little Yukina just had that feeling… clearly not strong at all, yet she did things in a rough, careless way, without any brains, living purely on instinct—like a wild animal that hadn’t fully evolved into a human yet.”
“…Isn’t that just an insult?”
“It is, yeah, but… ugh, it’s so hard to explain.”
Ningning scratched her hair, her ears drooping as well. After putting in a great deal of effort, she seemed to think of something.
“That’s it!”
She took the camera from around her neck, turned on the screen on the back, and rapidly pressed a few buttons with her fingers.
“Look at this!”
She held the camera out in front of Yukina. A photo appeared on the screen.
Morning light fell across the girl’s face. Her pink-white hair was lifted slightly by the wind. She seemed to be enduring something, her brows faintly furrowed, her eyes carrying a kind of unclear sadness—as if she were forcing some emotion back down her throat.
The person in the photo was Yukina.
It was the photo Ningning had secretly taken that morning on the way to school.
“I really like the current Little Yukina, you know. Gentle and cute. But…”
Ningning took the camera back, looked down at the screen, and lightly rubbed her thumb along the edge of the viewfinder before raising her eyes.
“But look—precisely because Little Yukina has become too gentle, she keeps getting hurt by all sorts of things, so she often makes this kind of sad expression.”
She stretched out a finger and flicked Yukina’s forehead very lightly, like brushing away a petal that had fallen on her hair.
“That’s not good. I think Little Yukina should try switching back to that previous state once in a while. Do what you want to do, say what you want to say. Even if it’s something really stupid, it’s still better than holding it all inside, right?”
Yukina covered her forehead and stared blankly at Ningning.
Only then did she realize that Ningning was simply worried about her. From the very beginning, she had never intended to force her to reveal any truth.
Do what you want to do, say what you want to say.
She silently chewed on those words in her heart.
From childhood until now, she had never been that kind of person.
She was used to reading other people’s faces, afraid of saying a single wrong word, always pressing her true feelings down to the very bottom.
Sometimes she would even suddenly find it hard to breathe when she recalled certain mistakes she had made.
So tiring.
Living like this was truly exhausting.
That was why she had gradually drifted away from socializing and preferred the feeling of being alone.
Yet sometimes, she still felt a little envious.
Envious of those people who had many friends.
If she could also be like what Ningning said—doing anything and saying anything without caring about the consequences—she would probably live a much lighter life.
Completely submitting to her own desires, without considering other people’s thoughts.
Approaching whoever she wanted to approach, pushing away whoever she wanted to push away.
This kind of personality… somehow felt a bit like—
“A villain.”
Without realizing it, she spoke the thought in her heart out loud.
“A villain?”
Ningning heard it and blinked, seeming to recall something. Her tail swayed lightly.
“Oh, right. Little Yukina said something like that before, didn’t she? That if she transmigrated to another world, she would want to be a small-fry villain or something. That doesn’t sound bad either, right? Pretty free. Even if the world ends, someone else will be carrying it. No need to worry so much.”
Yukina’s breathing paused for a moment.
In that instant, the gear that had been stuck in her mind for a long time finally clicked into place.
…So that’s how it is.
She finally understood why she had transmigrated into this world with this kind of identity.
Because she was timid, cowardly, clumsy, cried easily, and constantly overthought everything, she could never become a famous, named important character in the game, nor could she stand in the light and save everyone like the female protagonist.
She was only a “small-fry villain.”
But precisely because of that.
Right now, there was one thing that only a “small-fry villain” like her could accomplish.
And that was…
“Bullying.”
Bullying without the slightest hesitation.
Like those small-fry villains in battle manga who, even knowing the protagonist had already entered a rampage state and was radiating a dangerous aura, still swaggered up to provoke them, only to be sent flying by an elbow strike.
Right now the female protagonist had already clearly stated “Don’t come near me again.” As a small-fry villain, how could she obediently listen?
She had to go against her will, do things Mashiro could not accept, and thoroughly “bully” her once.
Just like the first time she had barged into that Tin Shack.
This was the fate of a “small-fry villain.”
Ding ding ding ding—
The class bell rang.
“Crap!” Ningning abruptly jumped up, grabbed the textbooks from her desk in one motion, her tanuki tail exploding into a furry ball.
“Crap crap crap, I completely lost track of time! We’re really late now! It’s all Little Yukina’s fault—you have to take full responsibility!”
“Sorry.”
Yukina stuffed the notebook back into the drawer, stood up, and patted the wrinkles from her skirt hem.
Ningning had already run to the doorway, hopping and waving while her tail anxiously whipped back and forth.
“Little Yukina hurry hurry hurry…!”
“Coming, coming.”
Yukina trotted after her.
Summer light swept past the corridor windows in grids, alternately casting dazzling patches of light and shadow across the two of them.
Running was not allowed in the school corridors, yet at this moment their footsteps boldly struck the ground. Their white shoes stepped over patch after patch of light.
The feeling of the wind lifting their bangs was unexpectedly comfortable.
As they passed a corner, Ningning turned her head to glance at Yukina’s face, her tail lifting lightly.
“Little Yukina, you’re smiling. Has the knot in your heart come undone?”
“Mm.”
Yukina curved the corners of her mouth, reached up to brush her bangs aside, and revealed the sakura-colored eye that was not covered by the eye patch.
“It’s already undone.”
“Really? How did it suddenly come undone? Did you figure something out?”
“Well…”
Yukina tilted her head a little, a faint smile on her face, and said in a light tone,
“Maybe because I’ve already decided that next I’m going to go thoroughly bully someone.”
“Ha?!”
Ningning nearly tripped over her own shoelaces and staggered a few steps before steadying herself.
“What does that mean?! How did it suddenly jump to ‘bullying’? After all that, Little Yukina was just worrying about whether or not to go bully someone?”
“Something like that. Thanks to Ningning.”
“Don’t thank me! It has nothing to do with me! If anything happens later, don’t you dare mention my name!”
Ningning’s face turned ashen, her ears drooping into airplane mode.
Looking at the smile on Yukina’s face that was so cute it broke the rules, and listening to the crazy words coming from that small mouth, a chill ran down her spine.
Had she just… accidentally awakened a beast?
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