Chapter 2: Arrival at Rosemont
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The bus stopped alongside several others just past the gate. A squeal of the brakes and a hiss of air signaled the end of our journey. With that, the students began to shuffle out.
After I reached the front of the line and stepped down, I couldn’t help but gape at my surroundings. Spread out before me was an idyllic view straight off the title screen of the visual novel. The real Rosemont Boarding Academy was every bit as striking as its fictional counterpart.
A white stone path cut through an immaculately kept quad decorated with rose bushes. It wound around a sakura tree in full bloom with benches underneath perfect for couples to picnic together. Pink petals danced on the breeze while lovebirds flitted about cheerfully.
The air was filled with the ambience of spring, and the chattering of young students only added to that atmosphere. There were a few other buildings such as the dormitories and the administration office dotted around, but the centerpiece of the campus was undoubtably the academy proper.
While the auxiliary buildings were fairly modern, the academy used a gothic style of architecture reminiscent of a cathedral from the medieval era. Intricately carved arches adorned the sides of the impressive stone edifice. It was topped with flying buttresses and a steep green roof.
Looming overhead, its clocktower cast a long shadow, ensuring that its watchful presence was felt all across campus. A short flight of steps led up to the entrance. Above the oaken double doors, an inscription read “Alma Mater In Aeternum”.
I had seen an image of Rosemont on my computer screen, but being here in person was something else entirely. It was certainly more impressive than a gray rectangle like my old public school. You could practically feel the aura of the institution’s long and storied history.
A horde of students flowed out from the buses, while a few more trickled in through the gate. Some clearly knew their way around already. Upperclassmen, I guess. They split off into various groups, while the freshmen like myself just sort of ambled aimlessly. Before long, we had formed a mob in the grass. There didn’t seem to be any directions yet, so I figured we were just supposed to wait.
As I was beginning to let my thoughts wander, a chime like a notification sound pinged in my ears.
[Initializing quest system… Please wait.]
…Um, excuse me but what the fuck?
[Tutorial Quest: Entrance - Difficulty: Very Easy]
[Objective: Attend the entrance ceremony.]
[Reward: Unlock the attribute system. 1 free attribute point.]
Could this… no. Was this really what I thought it was? Hohoho, it seemed that the old gods heard me talking shit earlier and finally decided to cough up the goods. Now this is what I’m talking about! A real life system! They had a golden finger ready for me after all.
Perhaps your average normie would be utterly taken aback by this development, but I took it in stride. As expected of a genre-savvy genius such as myself. It took me a few moments to calm down and stop my shoulders from shaking. I breathed deeply until I got a handle over my emotions.
So, an attribute system? It must mean it would give me access to something like the RPG stats present in the original game. If that was the case, it made sense. Well, I mean as much sense as a disembodied voice talking in my head could make.
In the game there had been five main stats: Physique, Perception, Intelligence, Charisma, and Willpower. While the player had to follow the main story, they also had free time that could be used to raise their attributes, complete side quests, or deepen relationships with the love interests.
The relevant bit in this case was raising attributes. Through certain repeatable activities, the player could raise any of the five stats. For example, if you went to the gym to work out, you could improve the Physique stat. If you went to the library to study, it raised your Intelligence. Et cetera.
Based on which route you wanted to complete (meaning which love interest you wanted to woo), certain thresholds were required. Some events were locked behind prerequisites and a high attribute score often opened up extra dialogue options.
The tricky thing was that the game didn’t tell you what the prerequisites were. At most you could get hints like, “This would be easier if you were more athletic.” Since there was a limited amount of free time, it wasn’t possible to raise everything to max. This was a common way to increase the replayability of games like this. It stopped the player from completing everything on the first playthrough.
The attribute system was actually something I didn't like about the game. At the time, I thought it was way too basic and boring. But now, what were the implications of having RPG stats in real life? Did this mean I could improve myself by ‘grinding’? How was that different from regular self-improvement? Naturally, if you continuously repeated something over and over you'd get better at it.
Also, the names of the attributes were too vague. What did they mean by ‘Intelligence’? Was it just the speed you could calculate? So improving it would make me better at mental math and chess? Or would I have new knowledge directly downloaded into my brain?
Were there limits? If I raised my Intelligence enough, could I become the next Albert Einstein or go even further until I was superhuman? If I went the sigma male route and specced everything into Physique, would I become a hulking gigachad bodybuilder or stay the same size but have supernatural strength like a wuxia protagonist? I had so many questions, but there were no easy answers. I could only experiment on my own.
It suddenly occurred to me that maybe a system was something everyone had in this world. I glanced around at the other students nearby. As far as I could tell, none of them seemed bewildered like they were reading invisible text in front of their face. At least for the moment, I chose to believe I was the only person given a ‘quest’.
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At first, I thought my new life would be fairly mundane since I had been isekai’d into a story with a modern setting. Not that I had any complaints. Thankfully, I wasn't sent to a fantasy world. I didn't think I would have been cut out for the adventurer lifestyle. I've grown rather used to flush toilets and microwave meals. As far as I was concerned, not being sent to the technological dark age was like dodging a bullet. But now, given the existence of the system, it seemed that my new life would not be entirely ordinary after all.
While I was lost in thought, the crowd swelled to its critical mass. With the students all gathered, the buses departed one by one. Once the last had turned out onto the road, the gates started to swing closed. That was when a panicked shout came from somewhere on the other side of the wall.
“Waaait!”
A male student came charging in at the very last second. He had spiky black hair and a slice of toast in his mouth. His uniform was messy and the messenger bag thrown over his shoulder flopped around as he ran.
image [https://i.imgur.com/LFv0Buf.png]
The boy twisted sideways to slip past the gate just before it latched shut. His frantic eyes darted about until they spotted us assembling on the quad. With the subtle grace of a golden retriever who’d just seen a squirrel, he continued his mad dash towards us.
This small commotion didn’t get more than a passing glance from my peers, but I certainly took notice. Half-Japanese descent, late for the first day of school, and he even had the classic Toast of Tardiness. Who else could it be? Of course, none other than Tatsuya, the protagonist. If he was here, then that meant a certain event was about to occur.
When starting a new game, the player was shown three girls and got to decide who to pursue first. Would it be the geeky childhood friend, the popular class idol, or the hotheaded tsundere? This was basically the same as selecting a difficulty setting. Even though I could guess roughly what would happen, the event differed slightly for each choice. I didn’t know which version it would be. When I played, I remember saving and reloading several times to see all the different variations.
In any trash romantic comedy, what comes after the Toast of Tardiness was naturally a Crash-Into Hello. For some reason, this was an absolute rule. It just wasn’t possible to write a school life romcom without including this cliché.
It was similar to the Law of Large Numbers or how entropy always increases. As the time a protagonist goes without meeting a love interest increases, the probability of a collision with a beautiful girl approaches one hundred percent. Let’s call it the Contrived Meet-Cute Conjecture.
Sure enough, I watched as Tatsuya barreled towards a female student. The girl faced away from him, minding her own business and none the wiser. For a moment, I believed that there was no way he wouldn’t notice her. She was standing perfectly still in plain view. It simply wasn’t possible he'd accidentally crash into her. That's what I thought, but I was too naive.
“Watch out!”
Tatsuya full-on tackled this chick and sent both of them tumbling to the ground. She cried out in surprise and tried to save herself from landing face first. At the same time, Tatsuya ducked down to avoid knocking heads against her. This lead to an implausible sequence of events that ended with Tatsuya landing on top of her and his face buried straight in her chest.
Unbelievable. I was in awe. Was the universe itself conspiring to place these two in an ecchi situation? To make matters worse, Tatsuya floundered about even after knocking the girl over like a bowling pin.
“Mmph mm!”
Without removing his face from her tits, he leaked out muffled noises like he was being smothered. Very classy. The girl froze, apparently just as dumbfounded as I was. Slowly, a deep shade of crimson spread across her cheeks. Her expression twisted with equal parts bewilderment and wrath.
“Idiot! What the hell do you think you’re doing?! Get off!”
She shoved him aside and sprung back up to her feet. Standing over him with her fists raised in the air, she looked ready to throw down. Meanwhile, Tatsuya let out an exaggerated gasp for air, sprawled out on the ground.
Now that I got a good look, I recognized her. Alicia Ruebell. As expected, she was one of the love interest characters I remembered. The bad news for Tatsuya was that she was the aforementioned hotheaded tsundere and a difficult girl to get close to…
She was also an expert in judo and could fold a highschool boy in half as easily as snapping a twig. Tatsuya, I applaud your choice of waifu, but I can’t help but wonder if you’re being foolhardy. Remind yourself that overconfidence is a slow and insidious killer.
Alicia had long red hair tied up in a high ponytail and freckles dotting her nose. Her uniform was pulled tight over her chest, her skirt ending well above the knees. She had an athletic figure with toned legs. In other words, Alicia was a teenage boy’s wet dream and exactly what you would expect from a character in a dating sim.
“S-sorry! It was an accident, I swear!” Tatsuya finally recovered. He flipped over into a well-practiced dogeza and started apologizing profusely while gnashing his face into the dirt.
My guy, that went a little past ‘accidental groping’ and hovered dangerously close to ‘sexual assault’. I let out a sigh in my heart and mentally poured one out for the kid. Tatsuya flew too close to the sun and now I was about to witness a murder in broad daylight.
image [https://i.imgur.com/wMQE6cF.png]
Alicia seemed taken aback by the patheticness of his display. She hesitated for a moment, deciding whether or not to lay the smack down on the boy who just violated her. Eventually, she took notice of how a sea of eyes had gathered their way to them. A crowd formed a ring around her and Tatsuya. Her anger deflated into embarrassment. To punish such a loser now would make an even bigger scene.
She crossed her arms and scoffed. “Whatever. Just don’t get in my way again or I’ll pummel you into paste. Got it?”
“Y-yes! I got it!” Tatsuya nodded vigorously.
With that, Alicia spun on her heel and stalked off, her ponytail swishing back and forth with each step. The crowd parted before her like the masses making way for their messiah. Only then did Tatsuya summon the courage to rise back to his feet.
There were a few chuckles around the crowd, but everyone quickly lost interest once it was clear there wouldn’t be any violence. The students dispersed and went back to their own devices. As quickly as the commotion had come, it was over just as fast.
I couldn’t believe it. Really? He got away with fondling a girl just like that? Did this bastard roll a nat 20 on his Charisma save or something? And to think I almost felt bad for you a second ago.
All it took was sacrificing his dignity and Tatsuya shirked any consequences. This must be the protagonist’s privilege at work. Hey Alicia, I don’t have any shame either, so when’s my turn? Forget it, there was no such thing as equality in this world.
At least I had confirmed that the events from the game were still a thing. This truly was the same world as the visual novel and not just one that seemed similar. I could probably assume lots of other things would stay the same too.
Damn, now I wish I had seen more than just the first act. To be honest, I knew very little of the upcoming storyline. Still, there had to be some ways I could use my knowledge to gain something.
As I thought over how best to game the system, the bell of the clocktower tolled. The change of the hour heralded the beginning of the school day. At that moment, the doors of the academy were thrown open. I watched as someone stepped forth from within.