Translator: Haruto.

They noticed her. What should I do…?

“Why do you think it’s a girl? This is the men’s bath!”

“Come on, who is she?”

“I think she’s got silver hair, and there’s only one girl I know with that hair color…”

“D-Don’t tell me…!”

Realizing where this is going, Amane decides to come out of her hiding spot behind me.  

She’s covering herself with a towel.

“…?!”

“I-It’s the Snow Princess!”

“Quiet.”

“Eeeek!”

“Now that you’ve seen me, I may have no choice but to erase you,” Amane whispers quite a scary thing while walking toward the five boys.

“Haa… Or maybe you can keep this a secret? You can, right? ♡” She asks them sweetly.

Hearing the cute voice of such a beautiful girl while she’s just wearing a towel is a little too much for the young boys to endure…

Blood spurts out of their noses and they drop unconscious to the floor.

Amane puts her hands on their heads and pours life energy into them for some reason.

“W-What are you doing?”

“I’m modifying their memories. In order to do this, I’ve had to surprise them and make them lose consciousness so that life energy can flow more easily through their brains.”

“That sounds kind of dangerous.”

“Their memories of this past week will get fuzzy, but it won’t have any lasting effects on their brains.”

“Where did you even learn to do that…?”

“That’s… a secret.”

(I can’t tell him I learned it when I couldn’t control myself anymore and had a bit of fun with Shuu-kun’s body.)

We decided to leave right away.  

We changed quickly and returned to our room before our classmates woke up.

“Haa… I’m beat.”

I let myself fall onto the sofa.

Amane sits on the one in front.

She’s wearing—you’ve guessed it—a yukata!!

Because of how great things were going between us earlier, my Excalibur is still lively.

It’s kind of embarrassing so I’ll step outside to get some fresh air and buy some bottles of milk.

“I’ll go get a couple of bottles of milk. What flavor do you want?”

“I’d love some fruit milk.”

“You got it.”

I leave the room and buy the bottles of milk.

I really like drinking coffee milk after enjoying a nice bath.

Without forgetting Amane’s bottle, I make my way back to our room.

“I’m back!”

“Welcome! Hehe…”

Amane greets me cheerfully.

“What’s the matter?”

“It’s just, for a second there, it felt like we were a married couple greeting each other…”

“Yeah, I know what you mean.”

I went outside to cool down but my boy is fully awake again.

“In that case… Welcome home, Dear! Would you like to have dinner? A bath? Or perhaps… me? I highly recommend you choose me.♡”

And just like that, my self-control is gone.

“I’ll always choose you,” I say, pushing her down gently.

After that, Amane and I enjoyed our milk, though not exactly the one you’ve got in mind.  

Sharing is caring, as they say.

Amane’s was kind of fruity.

Morning came in the blink of an eye.

Feeling kind of groggy still, I raise my body and notice Amane sleeping beside me, without any clothes on.

She must be tired from yesterday. The smell of sweat is still lingering on our bodies.

From the bottom of my heart, I hope this happiness will continue forever.

***

A certain dark place… inside a deserted building…

A young boy appeared by himself.

The boy retained memories of his previous world.

Back in that world, he belonged to the species known as the class’s loner.  

His hair was long enough to cover his eyes, he had terrible posture, and he avoided human contact like the plague.

One day, however, when he was looking for a new game that’d help him soothe his anger and frustration, he stumbled upon a certain Eroge…  

He fell in love at first sight with the serious girl displayed on the cover.

No, that wasn’t quite right. The emotion he felt at that moment was far too sinister to be called love.

Calamity, Seven Heroines and Me. That was the game’s title.

The boy bought the game without thinking it twice and booted it up.

He entered the silver-haired girl—Himeyuri Amane’s route, joined her group, and lost over and over and over and over and over again.

Each time he lost, the heroine met a terrible fate.

He disregarded the whole plot and just kept watching those same scenes endlessly.

At first, he experienced wrath and disgust, but as he watched more and more of them, he began to find pleasure in the way she’d be filled with ecstasy and, eventually, lose her sanity.

Sometimes he would take her by force, sometimes he’d betray her.

The boy desired to force someone into submission, which is why that serious girl and her demise provided him with the greatest delight he could have experienced.

Only when watching those scenes was he able to forget all about his suffocating life.

He was intoxicated by the idea of dominating girls far out of his league.

And, as days passed by, the game became his only refuge.

He’d go to school, return home, torment the heroines, relieve his stress, and go back to school.

The day he reached the bad ending for the ten-thousandth time, however, a message he had never seen before popped up on his screen.

“A special gift will be bestowed upon you for reaching the bad ending ten thousand times.”

Together with the strange message, a gift box icon appeared on the screen.

The boy clicked on the box without hesitation.

“Would you like to venture into a more real world?”  

Under the new message, two boxes showed up, offering him two options: Yes or no.

The boy clicked on the “yes” button.

He did it out of curiosity, nothing else.

He didn’t believe that he could actually say goodbye to the awful reality he lived in.

When he clicked on it, a last message emerged that said, “Have a nice trip!” and the boy’s mind blacked out.

The moment the boy remembered his previous life was when he saw Hina, the protagonist’s childhood friend and one of the game’s heroines.

She was a bright, cheerful girl; the complete opposite of his previous self.

However, things had changed. His appearance was now that of the game’s protagonist.

The same good-looking guy he once hated and envied.

I win…

That was the idea that infested the young boy’s mind as he looked at the radiant smile of the beautiful girl.  

She would look so beautiful with an expression of terror on her face.

From that day on, the boy dedicated his entire existence to one purpose only: subjugating the heroines.

He began with the girl in front of him.

During one of their missions, he let Hina be attacked by a calamity.

He moved out of her sight while she was distracted and watched how a calamity attacked the girl without lifting a finger.

He wanted to do it himself but he also wished to avoid the blame.

Hina yelled in dismay while tears fell down from her eyes.

He remembers vividly how much he enjoyed hearing her ask for his forgiveness, even though he had been the cause of it all…

After a while, Hina’s tone changed.

The pleasure was infecting her brain.

He waited for the right time to save and console her.

He treated her kindly to make her dependent on him.

He felt fulfilled like never before.

In high school, he strove to grow stronger.

He went as far as to approach rank-one calamities and form an alliance with them.

He desired their power to subjugate the heroines and the intelligent rank-one calamities wanted to corrupt the shrine maidens, so they decided to work together.

At school, he met the Ruthless Ice Princess, Himeyuri Amane, just like in the original storyline.

She was now known by the epithet “the Snow Princess,” though.

He loved her stone-cold expression and wanted to transform it into one of ecstasy with his own hands.

For that purpose, he approached Amane and began carrying out his plan.  

However, someone got in his way.

A man he suspected of being another reincarnated soul, Shimizu Shuu.

He was an NPC that was supposed to have died in the early stages of the game.

A mere NPC dared stand in his way.

Kusanagi Hayato believed that NPCs only lived to be jealous of him, the protagonist, as he gathered more and more heroines.

Thankfully, it seemed like the NPC hadn’t taken his relationship with Amane far, so he planned to have his way with her in front of him.

But, alas, this never came to pass.

The NPC possessed an impressive amount of strength.

Hayato wasn’t able to win against him and he lost the chance to subjugate Amane.

And what was worse, Amane had no need for his strength anymore.  

Out of ideas, he decided to back away temporarily, and consult a rank-one…

“Hey! That thing didn’t work at all!”

Hayato yelled to the void.

“It was working, though. My Charm skill was working just fine.”

All of a sudden, a tear appeared mid-air, and a calamity, resembling an incubus with horns and a tail, emerged from it.

It was as small as a child but there was a wicked expression on its face.

“Love is quite complex, you see… Think of it as a tower of blocks. The more blocks you stack on it, the taller it gets. Similarly, my Charm builds up over time, little by little, until eventually, it becomes something resembling love,” the Calamity explains proudly.

“However, things get tricky when the tower gets taller and taller. And if you make a mistake, the entire tower can come crashing down easily.”

“So, what you’re saying is that that guy’s tower was too tall for us to rival it?”

“Something like that. It’d have taken an eternity for my Charm skill to overshadow the feelings the girl you were after still had for him. But that’s not all… As I mentioned, my charm was definitely working. It would have taken a long time but chances are that we could have been able to corrupt her one day. Nonetheless, things went in a different direction, and the reason is simple…

“The boy she genuinely loved appeared before her. My charm can corrupt a person’s heart only when their loved one is not around, and since he appeared before that happened, our plan failed.”

“So, we won’t be able to corrupt her anymore?” Hayato asked.

The calamity answered him, seemingly entertained.

“My Charm skill won’t work on her as long as Shimizu Shuu keeps loving the girl… You see, my skill is just an illusion that forces the subject to confuse the Charm with love after a certain period of time. If the real thing is around, well, my Charm has no chance of beating it.”

“Damn it. Is it really impossible?”

“I never said that. We’ve got two possible courses of action. The first one is to take the girl by force and make her lose her sanity, although, I highly doubt Shimizu will allow that… The second one is to use my eyes.

“My eyes are called “the Eyes of Bewitchment”, and as their name entails, they allow the user to implant feelings of attraction into the depths of a person’s heart in a far superior way than my Charm, effectively bewitching the target. With that being said, being such a forceful method, there are some cases where the subject is capable of reacting to the skill and rejecting it. The user is still able to take control of their bodies, though…

“So, what will you choose?”

The Eyes of Bewitchment…

That was the power that Hayato had been seeking all this time.

The calamity even said that the subject could try to oppose the skill, and to Hayato, that just made it even better.

I’ll destroy everything you hold dear, Shimizu. This is what you get for standing in my way—in the way of the protagonist!

“I’ll take the Eyes of Bewitchment.”

“Alright, I’ll lend them to you.”

A terrible grin appeared on Hayato’s face when he imagined Shimizu’s expression of despair.

***

After Hayato had left, the calamity smiled.   

“Perfect. Let your heart rot and bring down the shrine maidens with you if you can. Be the good puppet you’re meant to be, Kusanagi Hayato!”

The calamity laughed eerily before opening another tear in space, disappearing into the darkness…

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