Chapter 27 : My Absolute Fave Is Outstanding and the Best As Expected!

Translated by: chocolalaProofread by: voeaki

It was difficult to say that studying at school was fun.

In the first place, I never really liked studying. The simple arithmetic was over by the time I entered junior high, and there were not many maths elements in junior high, so at once, the number of subjects I was good at diminished. Moreover, I could only watch on the sidelines during subjects related to magic, so I would surely fall behind. It had only been a week, but I was anxious over this matter.

However, when I swept a glance around the classroom, I broke into a smile.

The fact that I managed to enter junior high meant that I succeeded in avoiding my death flag, right? Luna’s birth was also unrecorded in any setting material I had read, so I supposed that this world was not governed by the game’s compelling force or something. Probably. 

That could also mean that the events in the game might not happen.

But still, I was feeling pretty anxious. I doodled Brother’s face at a corner of my notebook whose paper was a bit rough to the touch.

Come to think of it, I found the new herb species at the same spot as in the game. Furthermore, there were multiple times I was almost at the brink of death. If I didn’t have the memory from my past life, by now I must’ve been crying while looking over Brother from the heavens. Life is such a precious thing! If I wasn’t alive, I wouldn’t be able to sit beside Brother at lunch and feel his existence with all my being. 

Hence, there was nothing to be bothered about even if I had no one to talk to in the classroom.

.

On the first day of magic lessons, the magic instructor entered our classroom along with the school nurse—a capture target. Afterwards, he explained in detail about Launen’s disease and how I suffered from it, rendering me unable to use magic, as well as Bruno’s great achievement. 

I did have a little thought of reliving my school years like causing havoc with friends and such, but unexpectedly this explanation that was done out of goodwill ended up making me a loner. Well, I still had my lunch with Brother, which was sort of a reward for me, so I still had fun at the academy.

Like that, I enjoyably spent my school days in leisure. 

Time passed and the day of the first achievement test arrived. This was where Brother and Bruno were the top two scorers. I was so relieved after finally finishing that agonizing assessment and immediately went to have my lunch with Brother. 

“Good job on finishing your first test. How was it?” Brother asked me as he divided up my dish.

I looked at him and bitterly smiled, “I was exempted from the magic practical test. I did poorly in swordsmanship. In the written tests, I filled in all the blanks but I am only confident in half of those answers.”

“I see. There’s nothing you can do about swordsmanship, it’s an issue with your body. As for the written test, I’ll tutor you on what you got wrong later.”

“Huh? Yes! Whoa, what a reward! I hope I made a lot of mistakes then.” 

“Alba, your desires are leaking out. Haha! What’s with that? You want a lot of mistakes?” Bruno suddenly chimed in.

“Because Brother said he’d teach me! What can be a better reward than that?!”

“You see, Alba. The more mistakes you have, the less free time Orsis has.”

“Ah! That’s right… It’s not my intention to steal Brother’s free time…”

I was excited by Brother’s words but Bruno’s reminder made me feel down.

Brother was extremely busy, barely having any time to see me. I couldn’t possibly snatch his free time away.

As I hung my head low, Brother patted my head, “Listen to me, Alba. I have fun whenever I’m with you. I don’t even mind using my study time to be with you, not to mention my free time. You would barely let me baby you, so I want Alba to be spoiled with me sometimes.”

“I feel like I’m already way too doted on.”

“No, you’re not. You often say that you like me, but you won’t let me pamper you. On the contrary, you always come to spoil me, so sometimes, I want to do the same for you. So, I’ll be more than happy to teach you when you ask me, got it?”

“Brother…! Aaaaah, I love you so much, my heart can hardly take it…!”

“Yes, yes, go suck your candy before it’s too late,” Bruno popped a candy into my mouth as soon as I squealed in excitement.

He was too used to this situation.

“I also like Bruno,” I said as I rolled the candy in my mouth.

Bruno chuckled, “Yes, yes. Alba really is an honest and good boy.”

His words were laced with a sigh, making me recall his little brother.

.

Their family’s situation seemed a bit complicated. It was the game setting that gave all the major characters some kind of burden on their shoulders, but when I was actually living in this world and those made-up details became reality, it was difficult for me to bear.

I mean, who would want to be in an environment that brought up unsmiling children or where the siblings were in an utterly bad relationship? Right now it all was so real in front of me.

Bruno’s family was what you could say a family of elites. Just looking at his father’s prominent position—the prime minister—you can tell their family was heavily trusted by the royal family.

When I was learning about peerage, it felt off to me for a marquess to hold a prime minister’s post, but history had proved that when a duke filled that position, turbulent times would follow. 

With this as a background, they decided to pick prime ministers among the marquesses, which was one rank lower than a duke. When dukes were prime ministers, they held too much power in their hands; there were a lot of cases where they tried to force marrying off their daughters as the queen or trying to usurp the throne, among other messy things. 

Amidst that, Bruno’s family members were all excellent people, continuously occupying the prime minister’s seat for generations. In fact, Bruno himself had always been the valedictorian until now, never once flinching from that position… While in the game, he would intentionally rank a bit lower so as to be a foil to the second prince; in this world, Bruno never held himself back.

So, as to why only his relationship with his little brother was twisted to that extent, that had to do with their magic attributes.

Bruno’s attribute was earth. However, for generations, the successors to the family of Marquess Wald had been someone with a strong water attribute. Bruno’s little brother possessed a huge mana capacity with the water attribute. 

Their wise-looking father wasn’t particular about this matter, but their mother on the other hand, seemed to be overly concerned regarding it. She kept saying that it was their pride or something. Therefore, she was embarrassed by Bruno’s earth attribute and insisted that her younger son should be picked as the successor.

The father—the prime minister—apparently couldn’t speak much against his wife. The family she hailed from ranked higher than his. He once sternly remonstrated her but the repercussions were horrible and since then, this tense situation had only continued. 

Get a grip, Mr. Prime Minister!

After failing in all attempts to save Bruno from his own mother’s abuse, the father finally managed to let his son escape by entrusting him to our father. Bruno had cunningly made his own room in the lab and spent all his leisure time there, so he barely returned to his own house. Sometimes, Brother would also stay the night. This made me discontent–at least during the nights, I wished Bruno would return Brother to me. Well, there was not much I could complain about since I could still see Brother during mealtimes.

This was how Bruno was in this world; but if I was not mistaken, in the game he remained in that complicated situation in his family’s mansion. I didn’t remember much about him, though. I only casually glanced through all the endings for other characters and fast-forwarded those uninteresting scenes unless they involved my absolute fave—those parts, I watched again and again.

.

Then, it was the day when the results were announced.1 When I heard Brother wryly laugh off his loss to Bruno again2, I yelped about how outstanding Brother was, just like how I had always believed him to be. At the time, I was browsing the test results in my grade; I was a bit surprised not to see Bruno’s little brother’s name on the top of the list—I honestly thought he would rank first. 

Well, I’d expect that much from someone who acted cold and condescending towards his own big brother. Shouldn’t he be even more excellent or something? Bruno’s little brother—named Joule En Wald—was ranked third in our grade. I was not familiar with the names in the top two, so they were probably not in our class.

As for me, I was in 20th place. There were quite a lot of students in my grade, and I actually ranked 20th, wasn’t that great? I was feeling a bit giddy as I thought that way, but then I heard people whispering, “Isn’t that strange, even though he was exempted from the practical test?” 

Were they talking about me?

As I started to walk down the corridor to get out of the crowd and go see the ranking for Brother’s grade, I saw Bruno’s little brother looking very frustrated by the wall.

Personally, I believed the third place was also amazing, no need to mope that much.

And then, I clenched my hand as I reached the results of students in the senior grade3.

First: Bruno. Second: Brother.

Aaaaah, this was my first time seeing the result with my own eyes. Brother was truly excellent. My brother was the best! Just how could he be so amazing?

I was thrilled to have seen it with my own eyes, and I showered Brother, who had an askew smile on his face, with words of praise. Oh, and for Bruno as well. Some of their classmates were around, but I just couldn’t contain my excitement. Because, seriously, I was so moved beyond words.

I was surrounded by many people who looked over me with warm eyes. I was a familiar face here, after all. Several of them were those I got to know during my weekly lunches with Brother. I could even hear some people saying that I was the same as ever.

The ladies who used to surround my brother now watched us together with smiles on their faces. Quoting what one of them said to me: “I look forward to the times when you come, so I can finally see him smile.” I instantly responded with how I totally understood how she felt and how wonderful Brother’s smiles were. Hitting it off with that lady was an add-on. 

These days, Brother no longer puts on that stern face to avoid people. My lunch trips to the academy were indeed beneficial.

Coming back to the results, Brother was happy for me for placing 20th. That night, Father also invited Bruno over and we celebrated our test results. I was feeling a tad overjoyed.

And then it was the next day. 

I, alone, was summoned to the school chancellor’s office.

chocolala: lemme rant on the ch, this author tends to be all over the place when writing the story, I had to add here and there to make it flow smoothly. And actually everytime Alba talking about Bruno, he says ‘Bruno-kun’ but I forgot whether I wrote it as Bruno-kun or Bruno in my translation before, so now I only leave it as Bruno.
voeaki: kyaaa bruno!! the more bruno content the better… is this feeling some derivative of second male lead syndrome? and alba, please make friends your own age,

Footnotes

Honestly, I added this for smoother flowTheir school rankingA refresher: the junior high consisted of 5 years, Alba just entered school while Orsis and Bruno are in their last year here—I could only write it as senior, the raw says something like final grade.