Published: March 21, 2026
Is it shameful to feel jealous?
Then what about hating a friend?
I know it’s not hard for envy to turn into despair, and despair into hatred.
It had always been that way.
Our relationship never changed, no matter when or where.
I knew even before coming to this world that I couldn’t measure up to Shiori-chan.
“Shiori-chan can do anything and she’s so cute, but Yuki-chan isn’t like that, right?”
“Why is Yuki-chan Shiori-chan’s friend if she can’t even do this?”
“Yuki sounds like a boy’s name, and she talks weird, doesn’t she?”
Those innocent questions from kids cut deeper than I expected.
Back then, Shiori-chan and I were always together, doing everything together.
She was my first friend after I transferred from Kansai because of my parents’ work.
But Shiori-chan was everyone’s idol, their object of admiration, and I who stood beside her wasn’t special, always being compared.
So in middle and high school I tried not to be with her and avoided talking to her, and only after all that did I finally get back to my old, energetic self.
I took a long time to understand that we’re different people, and that it’s natural for each of us to be able to do different things even if we’re together.
After I realized that, I was able to talk to Shiori-chan like before.
Besides, the last thing was something beyond my control, and the dialect was just a quirk — so what are you gonna complain about, huh?
Even thinking that, rumors ran ahead on their own and nobody bothered to listen to what I actually said.
Except for this person.
“Ueno’s funny. Being with her makes you feel energized.”
“Her way of talking? As long as we understand each other, who cares? It’d only be a problem if we couldn’t understand her.”
Everyone squealed that Shi-kun was so cool, but the one who gave me the words I needed wasn’t him.
“Oda-kun! Were you consulting Shiori-chan about something?”
Even in this situation, I didn’t want to lose the person I liked, so I called out to Kazuki, who was talking with Shiori-chan.
Kazuki had been downcast since watching Shiori-chan’s fight yesterday.
There it is again—Shiori-chan.
“Oh! I was asking Hosoyama for tips on how to acquire a skill. Ueno, did you know about that?”
I felt my smile twitch.
Of course I didn’t know.
As a curse removal specialist, I’d been agonizing, not knowing what to develop, and then I’d come here as I was.
Probably, apart from Oda-kun, who pretended not to notice, I was the only one without a knight order member or a specialist assigned to me. Oda-kun had Commander saran looking after him, and he’d probably sneaked into the library too.
I hadn’t known anything.
While everyone else trained for their professions, I shut myself in my room.
Even if I wanted to look for specialized books on curse removal, I couldn’t do anything when access to the library was forbidden.
Commander saran, who had helped me with my worries, was busy with Oda-kun’s training, and even if not, a commander would have many duties. I was grateful he had gone out of his way to come see me.
Come to think of it, did I ever thank commander saran?
Probably because of the princess’s curse, my memories from returning from the labyrinth up to just before leaving the castle are fuzzy.
“No, I don’t really know. When you were at the castle you used to slack off, didn’t you? So you’d skip stuff.”
A lie.
But I couldn’t think of any other explanation in the moment.
Commander saran had said he’d bring someone specialized in curse removal, but that would have been squeezed into his busy schedule, so not right away — and in the end that promise was never fulfilled because he died.
Could I tell the person I liked that I’d just locked myself in my room, doing nothing until commander saran came through? There’s no way I could.
Would Kazuki scold me for slacking off while he worked hard?
I was terrified, but the words he gave were bright.
“So even without being taught that much you lifted the curse Sato had!? That’s amazing!”