They say popularity is a curse. I wouldn't know—I was immune. Like garlic to vampires, my sheer social invisibility protected me from rumors, expectations, and the hideous monster called attention.
But lately? Lately, it felt like someone fed me to the werewolves and handed them a list of my weaknesses.
Take today, for example. I was minding my own business—emphasis on my own—when I found the letter.
No name. Just an envelope stuck awkwardly into my shoe locker like a love-struck burglar had second thoughts mid-theft. I opened it half-expecting a glitter bomb or blackmail photo.
Instead, I found... poetry.
"In your eyes, the spotlight flickers. In your silence, I hear truth. When you speak, the script bends—not for the stage, but for me."
Gross. Beautiful, maybe. But gross.
More importantly, it referenced specific lines from my monologue during the rehearsal duel—and even noted my weird tic of tapping my thumb against my pinky when I'm nervous. Only a handful of people knew that. Koharu. Riku. Mitsuki. Maybe Ami, if she was perceptive. Or one of the creeping shadows in the hallways who suddenly saw me as "The Brain."
Popularity wasn't a ladder. It was a noose made of social threads and misunderstandings.
"Senpai!"
And just like that, the noose tightened.
Minami Fujisaki wasn't the kind of girl who called anyone senpai. She was more the type to punch a vending machine if it gave the wrong soda. She wore her sports jersey like it was armor and looked at people like she was trying to calculate how far she could throw them.
And apparently, she had a thing for brainy introverts now.
"You're kinda hot when you get serious."
I blinked. "Is this... a prank?"
"Nope. Saw you during the rehearsal preview. That monologue? I got chills."
"The good kind or the 'you're being haunted by a performance ghost' kind?"
She grinned. "Both. Probably."
Charming. In a 'please don't tackle me during lunch' kind of way.
Then, as fate would have it, the chaos fairy herself appeared.
Koharu Minami, armed with a boxed juice and the expression of someone who'd just caught her cat cuddling a rival kitten.
"Oh wow," she said, voice way too high-pitched to be real, "Didn't realize you were holding a confession seminar in the hallway. Should I book a seat?"
Minami raised an eyebrow. "We were just talking."
"Talking," Koharu repeated. "Right. You know, you've been talking to a lot of girls lately, senpai. First Ami, now her. Are you trying to unlock the harem ending?"
"No," I muttered. "I'm just cursed."
Minami laughed. "He's cute when he's cornered. Later, brain-boy." She walked off, swinging her sports bag like a weapon of flirtatious destruction.
I turned to Koharu. "You didn't have to act like a jealous—"
"Don't finish that sentence unless you want a boxed juice to the face."
Noted.
We walked in awkward silence for a bit, but thankfully—or unthankfully, depending on your opinion of academic honesty—we had another problem.
Rumors of a stolen test paper had begun swirling among the underclassmen. One of the teachers had apparently misplaced next week's math midterm, and now the top-performing class reps were freaking out.
Perfect. Another mystery. Because clearly, my skillset needed more sidequests.
The student council asked for help, and I got roped in via Mitsuki, who now referred to me as "Codebreaker-kun" like we were in a budget spy anime.
After combing through class group chats and comparing suspicious activity logs on the library PC sign-ins, I found the culprit: a student had sneakily accessed a scanned document in the teacher's shared folder during a "printer malfunction." The smoking gun? Time-stamped metadata and a leftover sticky note with the words "Don't forget to delete history."
I turned it in anonymously. Let them handle it.
"Wow," Koharu said later as she yanked me out of the library by the collar, "You're seriously raising flags like a speedrunner. What's next, the tsundere upperclassman with a tragic violin backstory?"
"I think I'd prefer that to this," I replied. "At least she'd only insult me with musical metaphors."
"You know, for someone who used to call himself a background character, you're doing a lot of main character things lately."
"Not by choice. If I had my way, I'd be home with my cat and a rerun of some 2006 anime no one remembers."
"You don't even have a cat."
"Exactly. That's how serious I am."
She laughed, the tension easing just slightly.
We sat under the sakura tree again—our spot. The blossoms were starting to fall early this year, like even nature couldn't wait for the drama.
Koharu played with a petal, not looking at me. "Hey... do you think people can change their roles?"
"What do you mean?"
"Like, if you're born the heroine, can you decide to be the side character? Or vice versa?"
"I think we all pretend we don't care about the script... but deep down, we want to matter to someone."
She stared at me.
"That's... unexpectedly wise, Senpai."
"I contain multitudes."
Koharu smiled faintly. "So... who's your favorite heroine right now?"
I blinked. "What?"
"You've got options. Ami the flirty second-year, Mitsuki the brainy kuudere, and now Fujisaki the sports girl. You're one childhood friend away from a rom-com contract."
"I'm pretty sure all of them are just confused. Or scheming. Or both."
"And me?"
"You're the chaos variable."
"That's not an answer."
"It's the only answer I've got right now."
She leaned back, arms behind her head, eyes closed. "Hmph. Typical NPC response."
Maybe. Or maybe I just didn't know how to say what I was really thinking.
That I noticed the way she faked brightness when she was upset. That I saw how her eyes lingered when she thought I wasn't looking. That her laughter made my chest feel like it had been hit with a defibrillator and filled with carbonated irony.
But if this was a game, I didn't know what route I was on.
I only knew one thing:
For better or worse, I'd stopped being a background character.
And the flags were piling up like a save file with no reset button.