The Protagonist’s Party is Too Diligent

……Alice has been reading my expressions more often.

No, it’s not just more often; she’s been reading my expressions daily.

In fact, it’s not been long since she started focusing on my expressions. Alice, who viewed me as a kind of ‘rival,’ wasn’t very skilled at reading my emotions. To be precise, she had no interest at all. She was interested in me, sure, but she never showed much curiosity about what I was personally up to.

However, at some point, she seemed to start feeling a personal fondness for me, and now she’s reached a level where she can even guess my expressions.

If I were to ponder over when that “point” was…

Was it during that triad meeting?

I had felt a bit more “friendly” since then. Maybe that’s only natural. No matter the circumstances, I was the same age as Alice, and I was the only peer she could talk freely with in the Imperial Palace.

There were other maidens around Alice’s age, but considering they were ‘maids,’ they must have been daughters of noble houses at least at the Count level to act as maids in the palace. They were aware of how distant they were from the Crown Princess, so there was no way they would get close like friends.

Alice herself might have also been reluctant to act overly friendly.

And above all, I had been very kind towards Alice.

Since she’s the game’s main heroine, and having seen her face throughout the game—although it was just a polygon mess in reality—I felt a certain closeness internally, and that attitude showed every time I interacted with her.

Moreover, she was a bit pitiful.

Claire, who was the source of Alice’s inferiority complex, had disappeared, but I popped up instead. Even though I didn’t tease her like Claire did, my abilities were almost similar. No, considering how the Emperor and his associates viewed me, I might even be seen as a superior backup.

If I started to bully and look down on Alice too, I thought her personality might just break.

Whether I was a genuinely mature person or not was a different issue, but I didn’t want to stoop so low as to severely tease someone who was more than ten years younger than me.

I had been trying to help build some of Alice’s confidence by doing various things, and if she felt a barrier with me, it would have been quite disappointing for her.

Disappointing, but…

“Did you not sleep well last night?”

“…”

When she asks that with such a worried expression, I get curious about how she reads my face.

It’s not surprising; I checked my face thoroughly in the mirror before stepping out this morning. I thought hard about how to not look tired, how to not appear worn out.

And my expression was successfully turned into a rather blank one. It wasn’t just a simple ‘I have no expression,’ but I corrected my face bits by bits whenever someone pointed it out until I crafted that blank expression.

So, what I’m saying is, my poker face was unreadable even to myself.

How on earth is she able to figure it out? I thought, no matter how much I think about it, it’s bizarre.

“Sylvia?”

Looking at Alice, who was asking with a concerned demeanor, I pondered how to respond.

Her statement was certainly valid.

This morning, I had woken up at four.

*

My true nature is that of a nerd.

In the past, I tried to deny it in any way I could, but no matter how hard I tried, my hobbies inevitably reverted back to their original state.

If I quit reading Japanese manga or watching anime, I’d end up moving on to Japanese dramas or American dramas, and if I tried to stop collecting figures, I’d be building model kits instead, and even if I tried to quit nerdy games, I still ended up buying and playing western games.

Plus, I eventually circled back to square one. I would shop for military model kits, move on to Gunpla, buy cute girl model kits again, and finally revert to collecting cute girl action figures and statues. The same pattern happened with movies. After purchasing some movie Blu-rays, I would unknowingly buy theatrical animation Blu-rays, and eventually end up with TVA and OVA Blu-rays.

After repeating that kind of life for about a decade from my late teens, by the time I hit thirty, I simply gave up and decided to embrace my true nature.

Furthermore, during those ten years, I had continued playing Chronicles of Aetherna, so I should say I didn’t even attempt to escape in the first place.

Anyway, since I was a nerd, naturally, I read light novels and web novels all day long.

And I believe I was well-versed enough to understand the clichés of protagonists in isekai stories.

You know the one, right? When a character who wasn’t the protagonist ends up hoarding the legendary items or advantages that were originally meant for the protagonist, ultimately becoming a much stronger and more important character than the actual protagonist.

I had no intention of going that far.

Leo, Claire, Alice, Charlotte, even Mia Crowfield and various other characters who hadn’t joined the protagonist party yet. I had affection for all those characters.

I had no intention of stealing the spotlight from all those amazing characters.

I merely thought of myself as a safety measure against any of the main characters dying. That’s how I viewed it.

The problem is—

“…Are you saying that the request has already been completed?”

“Ah, yes. I-I’m sorry, Crown Princess…”

Well, it’s not like you should be sorry.

I turned my head to look at the clock, leaving the trembling attendant who stood before me behind.

The large mechanical clock working with weight was signaling that it was six in the morning.

That’s right. Six in the morning.

“…I believe the working hours start from six in the morning.”

Indeed. The working hours for the academy’s internal staff primarily begin at six a.m.

Of course, not all staff start at that time. I heard there’s a morning shift assigned separately.

And there are also positions, like security for the dormitory, that work through the night.

Today was Sunday.

Yesterday and today were days off. Naturally, all the students had no classes.

Even though there are no classes, there were voluntary service activities.

In this world, there’s often no common part-time jobs like those found in adventure guilds as seen in fantasy novels. The Empire is fundamentally a centralized nation ruled by the Emperor, and other kingdoms are similar. There are places like the noble republics, but even there, order isn’t left to adventure guilds.

The era of modernity is slowly when the concept of ‘nations’ began to sprout. The fact that Alice and Charlotte argued after school on Friday was also evidence of kids starting to be influenced by such thinking.

And the best way to prove the superiority of that ‘nation’ was, of course, to demonstrate how livable the country is for the people living there.

Security falls within that.

…Though, coming from the perspective of someone from an orphanage, the level of security isn’t that great, but hey, it’s still a decent country for middle-class folks, so I’ll roll with it.

Anyway, that’s why there’s no adventure guild. But that doesn’t mean they could totally exclude the ‘quest’ function, the flower of RPGs.

Thus, the system in this world was the ‘volunteer work.’

Students who entered the academy are strong, and certain areas of the Empire have unstable security. There are risks for both human and material damage from beasts that sometimes appear around the back alleys, and between cities.

The job of preventing and solving such damage is, simply put, volunteer work… but since giving no rewards for quests feels a bit unfair, the people applying for volunteer work would prepare some kind of benefit which could be seen as a ‘gift’ given out of ‘goodwill.’

I had already received a reward from Jennifer before. If it was something to be received outright, I could secure it even more reliably.

“Ah, that’s….”

However.

“I usually come out around five-thirty to get ready for work. But….”

But here’s the twist.

“There are students waiting right at the door, so I thought it was commendable…”

“….”

So, in other words—

At a place where the work shifts begin at six in the morning.

The students had completed their requests and were waiting there for me, conscientious enough to come in thirty minutes early to get ready for work.

I slowly raised my hand and pinched the skin between my eyes.

Waking up at six in the morning was hard enough, but those crazy students were already hard at work even before that.

“C-Could I know the names of those students?”

At my words, the staff hurriedly rifled through the paperwork on their desk.

To be honest, it isn’t usual for a staff member to divulge student personal information just by asking like this, but if a ‘Crown Princess’ clearly made such a displeased expression, it’d be hard to refuse.

“So, um… it’s Leo Grace and Claire Grace.”

“……”

Is that so.

I took a slight breath and murmured quietly.

“…Again.”

“Pardon?”

“Again!”

*

Six in the morning.

Yeah, it is six in the morning.

What that means is they must have completed their tasks earlier and had been waiting for some time.

According to the staff, they had already come to wait thirty minutes prior, which really means they wrapped up their work before five-thirty.

…Right, so the starting time for their volunteer work was today at the stroke of eight. The person who put up the request might have been someone who worked yesterday evening. Since it starts at exactly eight, it’s likely they posted the requests right before clocking out.

The requests were aimed at addressing issues that residents and government offices might encounter, something students could handle reasonably well. So, if they wanted to resort to a loophole, they could have technically started their work yesterday evening.

However, I didn’t think Leo and Claire would go so far with such tactics.

Isn’t ‘fair and square’ the motto of the Grace family?

So they must have started acting only after the day had turned.

And regardless, it wasn’t something worth staying up all night for. It’s still the beginning. The main story just kicked off, and side quests shouldn’t be affecting the main storyline now, should they?

So I had chosen the time of five in the morning.

Turning back to yesterday, I set my alarm for 4:30, got up early to prepare, and headed out. Otherwise, I’d appear disheveled from just waking, and I didn’t want to ruin my image.

And I failed to wake up.

I did manage to wake up, but by then it was already ten past four. Being grateful that I didn’t have long hair but kept my hair in a bob, I quickly washed up and got ready before bolting out of the dormitory.

And then I realized.

To get to the quest’s scheduled destination would take at least two hours on foot.

In a game, you skip the process of moving from one area to another, and time doesn’t pass until you start a certain event, but reality is different.

The quest destination is a path outside the Imperial Capital. It involves hunting beasts causing issues there.

…And of course, the capital itself is unimaginably vast.

So, Leo and Claire woke up this early to take a carriage and head out to handle the quest.

…Why?

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