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CHAPTER 1 – ISN’T IT VERY FRUSTRATING WHEN YOU MISS OUT ON A FREE GACHA?
Quick heads up:
【】 = Alisa speaking in Russian
() = Inner monologue
“()” = Talking in whisper
“Huh?”
After searching the inside of his desk, peeping at the inside of his bag, and finally checking the inside of his locker at the back of the classroom, Masachika felt a little impatient.
The reference book for the next lesson couldn’t be found. Checking the clock in the classroom, the next lesson would start in less than two minutes. Even if he went to borrow the reference book from his little sister in the next class, the time might be a little inconvenient.
Out of necessity, Masachika questly leaned close to his neighbor to the left, Alisa, and whispered quietly while putting his palms together.
“My bad, Alya. Can I see your chemistry reference book?”
At his words, Alisa turned around with an expression half in surprise and half feeling troubled.
“What? Did you forget it again?”
“Yeah, probably I forgot to bring it from home”
“Haah… Well, I guess it’s fine”
“Thanks!”
As Alisa sighed and gave her consent, Masachika hurriedly brought his desk side-by-side to hers.
“Kuze-kun…. You, aren’t you carelessly forgetting things too many times? Even as a high school student it doesn’t seem to be decreasing at all”
“I can’t help it, can I? In the first place, there’s too many textbooks”
This Seirei Private Educational Institute, was a private school centered on preparing students to get into university and as a result had an unusually large amount of textbooks.
It was natural to have multiple textbooks and reference books for each subject. Some lessons even used the teacher’s original book.
Not known if it’s because of valuing tradition but, the standard for student bags has remained unchanged for decades. If a day worth of textbooks and notes were put in the bag, it would be filled to the brim.
For this reason, all of the students were leaving all of their textbooks behind in their lockers but, from Masachika’s view, this was tricky.
“Yesterday I didn’t see it on top of my desk, so I thought it was in the locker…. Unexpected”
“You didn’t check properly, right? That’s what happens when you don’t have a good grasp of what you brought home and what you left behind”
“I have nothing to say”
“For that you’re all talk”
“Ueeh, how haarsh”
Alisa shrugged her shoulders and was completely amazed as he didn’t seem particularly remorseful and said that in monotone.
Alisa took out a complete set of chemistry textbook from inside her desk. Glancing suspiciously, she turned her eyes towards Masachika.
“So, which textbook?”
“Ah, that that. The blue one”
At Masachika’s words, Alisa opened that textbook and placed it on the gap between two desks. He said his thanks for that, and lent his ears to the teacher’s lecture….. But, from there it was a battle between Masachika and drowsiness.
(no good, sleepy)
In addition to the lack of sleep, the fact that the second period was physical education added to the problem.
Nevertheless, he was able to fight off the drowsiness while the teacher wrote on the blackboard but, as soon as the teacher started to address the students for questions, his sleepiness accelerated at once.
The interaction between the teacher and his classmates somehow completely sounded like a lullaby to him, and just as he was about to doze off…..
“Ngutsu!”
….The moment he did, the head of a mechanical pencil was screwed into Masachika’s side.
(rib, rib cage…. My rib cage’s, gap…… kuh!!)
Being in silent agony at the painful surprise attack, he sent a protesting gaze to his side… Counter-attacked by a gaze with 100% pure scorn, he ducked his head.
Those narrowed blue eyes were more eloquent than anything else, it’s as if it said, “You have the nerve to ask me to show you my textbook and then fall asleep”.
“(I’m sorry)”
“Hmph”
Masachika, who had lost all of his sleepiness, apologized in a whisper keeping his gaze fixed to the front.
What came back was only a snort full with scorn.
“Well then, What goes to the next blank space? Let me see, Kuze”
“Eh, ah, yes”
Suddenly called by the teacher, Masachika stood up hurriedly.
But, since he almost fell asleep until just before, there’s no way for him to know the answer.
In the first place, he didn’t even know what the question was. Even when he was sending gaze to his side asking for help, Alisa with an indifferent face didn’t even look at Masachika.
“What’s wrong? Be quick”
“Ah, umm….”
Let’s honestly say I don’t know. At the moment when such thought came up in his head, with a tap tap, Alisa tapped a section of the textbook with her finger.
“!! Option ②, copper!”
While thanking Alisa in his heart, Masachika answered with the option pointed to him. But…
“Wrong”
“Eh?”
Masachika leaked out an idiotic voice at the immediate denial.
(Isn’t it wrong!)
Although he shouted with a bang on the inside and looked down to his side, Alisa’s indifferent face remained unchanged. No, on a closer look her mouth was smiling a little.
“Well then, Next to you.. Kujou”
“Yes, It’s option ⑧, Nickel”
“Correct. Kuze, listen to the lesson seriously, won’t you?”
“Ah, yes….”
Masachika sat down at his seat in low spirit in response to the teacher’s reprimand. However, he immediately made a protest in whisper towards Alisa.
“(Don’t tell me the wrong answer so naturally!)”
“(I was just telling you where the question was, though?)”
“(Liar! You were clearly pointing at option ②!)”
“(What a terrible accusation)”
“(Don’t laugh with your eyes!)”
Alisa sneered and floated a smile laughing scornfully at Masachika who seemed to shout, : Ugaaaah!”, at any moment.
【Cute】
At her sudden sweet side, Masachika fought to keep her cheeks from twitching. He managed to feign ignorance while enduring her shaking hands as a result from the recoil.
“(What did you say?)”
“(Idiot, was what I said)”
On the inside he screamed, “Liiiiiiaaaaaaar!!!!”, but he didn’t show that on the surface.
Masachika understood Russian because of her paternal grandfather, who was a great lover of Russia.
It all started around elementary school, when he was under the care of his grandfather’s house for a time and his grandfather made him watch a lot of russian films.
Masachika himself had never been to Russia, nor did he have any relatives who were Russian.
He never mentioned it at school, so the only person at this school who knew that Masachika understood Russian was his little sister in the neighboring class.
And he forbade his little sister to talk about it too, so there’s no one else who knew.
At this point in time, he thought he should’ve come out to her earlier, but it’s too late to regret it.
This mysterious shameful play in which a beautiful girl in the neighboring seat who was sweet only in Russian, too; everything was a seed that he had sown, so he had to accept it.
He could feel the indescribable embarrassment welling up in his chest, his face reddening. He was trying his best to hold his breath while pursing his lips tightly. Thereupon, Alisa who mistakenly believed that he was holding in his anger, muttered in amusement from the bottom of her heart.
【You look like a baby】
Masachika’s mind conjured up images of himself transforming into a young child, poked at the cheeks by Alisa with a smirk on her face.
(I see, you want war, huh)
Masachika understood he was completely being looked upon and played with, and his face became serious at once.
(Who’s the baby, you bastard…. Let’s see what I’m really made of, shall we?)
With a glance he looked towards the clock and checked the time remaining until the end of class.
(Eleven forty. Ten minutes left, huh…. During the time, I’ll try to fight back)
And that’s when Masachika’s eyes widened as he realized an extraordinary fact.
(Damn it! I didn’t roll the free gacha in the morning!!)
A painful mistake. Normally, he would have rolled it before he left home or before homeroom, but he was so sleepy this morning that he wasn’t thinking to that extent.
(That’s cloose, how could you not realize, me. It can’t be helped, let’s roll it in the next break time)
Because his thought has completely shifted to the otaku side, he no longer cared about the fact that Alisa treated him like a baby. It couldn’t be helped to have the feeling that his simple mind was called as on the same level like that of a baby’s, too. Though, the person in question wasn’t self-aware of it.
The teacher properly performed his duty for the remainder of the lesson, and left the classroom. As soon as he saw the teacher left, bringing his desk back to its original position he quickly took out his phone and launched the game app as fast as he could.
Alisa who found fault at that knitted her brows and gave him a warning.
“It’s against school regulations to use your phone within school except in emergencies and when used for study. You have the nerve to use your phone in front of me, a student council member”
“Then, it’s not a violation of school regulations, right. It’s an emergency after all”
“I’ll listen just in case, what’s the emergency?”
Under Alisa’s scornful eyes, which like it’s saying, probably for the wrong reasons, anyway, Masachika said with an unnecessarily crisp face.
“Free gacha. Ten minutes left until it ends”
“Do you want me to confiscate your phone?”
“I believe you you wouldn’t do something like that-ZE☆”
“Maybe I really should confiscate your phone for once”
Masachika gave a thumbs up with lame wink, and Alisa’s eyes on him increasingly becoming darker. Masachika didn’t seem to respond in particular, and with his eyes looking down on the phone, he said.
“Now~, if a rare one comes up I’ll be happy…. Now I’ve noticed, I haven’t done a wink or anything like that in a long time. It surprisingly has a high degree of difficulty, huh. Winking”
“What are you saying all of sudden….”
“I mean, idols, like, do it sometimes, but there are not many celebrities who can wink beautifully, isn’t there”
“Do you think so?”
“Eh? Isn’t it difficult? Doesn’t it make your cheeks and the edges of your mouth twitch in a weird way no matter what, making it feel more like n ‘mmm’ than a ‘snap’?”
“It doesn’t, you know”
“Ooh? Then how about you show it, a really beautiful wink”
Masachika raised his head, and smiled challengingly. With a sour look, Alisa’s eyebrows twitched and the classmates in the surrounding who were listening to the conversation lightly buzzed.
In a moment all of the attention from the surrounding were on her; she faced Masachika with a disappointed look on her face and let out a big sigh once.
“Haah… Look, like this, right?“
And then, while tilting her head she did an extremely brilliant wink.
Without applying any extra force to the rest of the face, her eye closed naturally with a snap.
At the precious scene of the aloof princess winking, “Ooohh!!”, the surrounding raised the sounds of commotion and cheers, and there was even sparse applause.
But, as for Masachika, the one who made the request…..
“Yeaaah! SSR Tsukuyomi came!! ….huh, aah sorry. I wasn’t looking for a second”
“Confiscated”
“Nooo!”
Masachika screamed as his phone was mercilessly taken away. At that, Alisa looked down on him with a daunting pose.
Whether out of anger or even shame, her face reddened slightly,
It wasn’t like he felt doing an unexpected counter-attack from banter in the lesson earlier, Masachika had no intention of doing so. Precisely because he had no bad intentions that it’s a bad character.
And there, Alisa’s ears picked up voices of three male students facing each other conversing in a whisper.
“(He-hey, did you get that?)”
“(No, the angle is a little….)”
“(Fuuh, leave it to me. I got that wink moment down perfectly)”
“(Oooh! seriously, aren’t you super talented!)
“(Give me that picture! I’ll even give you up a thousand yen!)”
“Confiscated”
“““Geh!? Kujou-san!?”””
The three boys screamed in unison when the phones they were secretly using to take photographs were taken away.
“What the heck Kujou-san! We’re not doing any-”
“Not doing anything?”
“Ah, no, it’s nothing….”
They tried to play dumb but they instantly shrinked back at the gaze that was directed at them.
However, it’s understandable. In fact, The figure of Alisa raising her chin and looking down at them in the argument was so powerful that even a big man would have flinched.
Her cold, hard gaze was exactly tundra-class.
As if a blizzard was blowing powerfully behind them, the other classmates who had been excited by Arisa’s wink all looked away quickly and held their breath so the aftermath wouldn’t reach them.
As if going through an uninhabited snowfield, Alisa returned to her seat with four phones in her hands.
The classmates waited for the blizzard to pass, face down. However, there was about one boy who wasn’t at all afraid of her imposing appearance
“Please forgive mee~ Have mercy~”
Masachika threw himself down at Alisa’s feet as she returned, clasping his hand together and pleading pathetically. Masachika hasn’t abandoned his light-hearted mood this late in the game and the surrounding eyes turned to this idiot.
“I really can’t help it~. If an SSR came from a free gacha, of course I’m going to look at it~”
Furthermore, he even defended himself. While words such as, “Is this guy for real”, came from the surrounding and their gazes gathered at masachika, Alisa kept her tundra-like expression and looked down at the phone she had taken away from Masachika.
“…SSR, Tsukiyomi? Tsukiyomi is the goddess of the moon in Japanese mythology, right? Why is her hair not black but silver?”
“Eh… who knows? Isn’t it because the image of the moon? Well, she’s cute so don’t bother with tiny details”
“…Fuun”
As Masachika floated a really nice smile Alisa quickly partly closed her eyes.
At the same time, the atmosphere around Alisa lowered in temperature several degrees, becoming arctic grade. Masachika muttered his inner thought, “Eh? Why?”, and his smile twitching.
“First of all, I’m going to turn it off and hold onto it until after school”
“Wait a sec!! If you turn it off just like that it may not be saved, though!?”
Masachika was seriously in panic when Alisa mercilessly tried to turn it off.
“It’s me you don’t like, right!? She is innocent! I don’t care what happens to me, just let her go!!”
“Why am I looking like the villain now”
Masachika was so desperate that one would wonder if his beloved girlfriend had been taken hostage, and he tried to talk her out of it.
Alisa looked down at him with a condescending look, and together with a sigh Alisa returned the phone back.
“Thank you, thank you”
“…hmph”
As Masachika took the phone in both hands and worshipped her, Alisa snorted, not even trying to hide her displeasure. The other three phones were also returned to their owners.
After she made sure that the photographs taken sneakily were deleted, she sat down at her seat roughly.
“Uwaah~ It’s seriously Tsukiyomi-sama. I thought I will never get her…”
“…..”
Wrapping her own hair around her finger and playing with it, Alisa glanced at Masachika who was looking at the screen of his phone with sparkling eyes and pouted her lips.
【Even I also have silver hair 】
Masachika froze at the surprise jealousy attack that came flying suddenly.
“….What did you say?”
He naturally didn’t fail to hear it and Masachika raised his head with his face twitching. She glanced at him with a cold gaze, stopped playing with her hair and said as if to spit out.
“I just said, ‘This game addict”
“Hey, it’s rude to talk like that, isn’t it”
“Wha-what is”
Alisa flinched a little when Masachika raised his voice with a rugged voice donning an unusually serious expression. But immediately she said, “I’m not saying anything wrong”, and strongly glared back at him. Masachika cautioned her with a deadly serious expression, and the overflowing tension around them , once again, the eyes of the surrounding gathered at them.
“Don’t you think it’s rude to the true addicts with a heavy-paying life, to call me, with a non-paying life, as a game addict?”
“Certainly, whoever it is, they must not want to be lumped together with you”
“Kuuh!?”
As if she was looking at trash, Alisa’s gaze pierced Masachika, who said something stupid with a uselessly crisp face. As if it physically pierced him, Masachika let out a “Guhaa” and held down his chest.
Alisa just couldn’t deal with Masachika’s theatrical demeanor that had no bounds anymore, and sighed grandly.
“Good grief…. You look unusually serious so I wondered what was going on”
“Hey, that’s absurd. I’m always serious at any time, you know?  It’s no exaggeration to say that seriousness is my good point”
“It’s the biggest exaggeration of the century”
“There’s still 80% left in this century though!?”
“Haah… Enough already and put your phone away”
“Good grief”, she shrugged her shoulders and she rested her chin in her hands with an exhausted look.
Looking at her, Masachika said, “A little too much fun, huh”, and shrugged his shoulders. As he was about to put his phone away and decided to leave it at that…. Immediately, he stopped moving at the Russian words that reached his ears.
【If you were serious you’d look cool, though】
He spontaneously turned around at the murmur that really made his spine tingle.
“What did you say?”
“I said, ‘I lost hope’”
“…Aah that so”
“Yes, that’s right”
Not leaving his mouth, Masachika screamed his inner thoughts loudly, “Liiiiaaaaaaarr!!”, and Alisa, “I~diot. Humph”. Accurately understanding what she really thought, Masachika’s face was twitching.
(All . of . it. are conveyed you knooooww!!)
How refreshing it would be if he could shout it out as loud as he could. But, the only one who would lose out by revealing it would be him.
(Nu, how foolish…)
He knew he couldn’t reveal it but, he just felt pent-up. One way or another he wanted to reveal the nose of this hidden tsundere-girl. He was grinding his teeth, but at that moment, suddenly the door in front of the classroom was opened.
“‘Ello~, it’s a little early but lesson will start okay~ …. Huh, Kuze. Why are your taking out your phone”
“Ah…”
Being pointed out by the teacher who came in, Masachika realized after all this time that he was still holding his phone.
“Well, just a little research for an assignment….”
“Is that right, Kujou?”
“No, Kuze-kun was playing game on his phone”
“Hey!?”
“I knew it. Come here, Kuze! It’s confiscated!”
“No, what do you mean you knew it!”
Masachika protested to the teacher as he reluctantly went to the teacher’s platform. As she watched his back, Alisa shrugged her shoulders.
“Haah… He’s really an idiot”
She muttered in a completely dumbfounded tone but, contrary to her tone, her lips slightly smiling. However, her classmates, Masachika included, didn’t notice this.
“(Uwoah! Princess Alya is smiling!?)”
“(Uooooo! Photo chance!)”
“(Take it take it! Shit, the camera won’t start!)”
“Sensei, the three over there are also using their phone”
“““Nooouu!!”””
…..Except for these three real idiots.
TL note:
This one is somehow easier to understand than the prologue, and the readability should be a notch better than the prologue too. Though, there are many lines which I think it’s better to do in first-person perspective, but I decided to keep it as third-person. There is one sentence where it must be as first-person perspective no matter what, however. And I might do some editing for prologue after this one.
On a slightly unrelated note, while reading this chapter I came up with a better word for
”デレ/dere”. Previously I TLd it as “affectionate”, now I think the word “sweet / being sweet” is more appropriate especially after seeing how Alisa is in this chapter. Thus I made one tiny change at the end of the prologue and the TLd title of this LN in this site. I’ll worry the one on NU in the future. And I hope you can tell who is talking to whom. I’m not sure if I could translate the appropriate way of talking in English.