Wait, My Classmate is the Wicked Mage Who Bullied Me in the Game?
"Ahh, finally home" Mochi said, walking into Sora’s house and leaving him at the entrance with the key in hand.
"I don’t remember telling her this was her house too," Sora murmured, watching Mochi settle onto the sofa.
Mochi went from happiness to curiosity. "Huh? Sora, where are your parents?" she asked, looking around as if expecting someone to appear. But all that answered her was silence. "Did they go on a mission or something?"
Sora let out a sigh, dropping his backpack on the floor with a dull thud. He walked toward the kitchen without turning on the main light, moving through the darkness as if it were his natural habitat.
They're not here," Sora replied, his voice lacking emotion. "They're almost never here. They travel for business, or so the messages they send me say. Basically, I'm the admin of this empty server. At least they keep the bills paid for rent and food, so... I guess I don't lack anything." As soon as he said this, Sora let out a light laugh, though it felt more like a grimace than laughter.
Sora stood staring at the refrigerator, which contained only a couple of energy drinks, instant noodles, and products about to expire.
The silence of the house seemed to mock him.
Suddenly, he felt a sudden warmth enveloping his back. Two slender but firm arms wrapped around his waist, and mochi's face pressed into his back.
"So…" she whispered softly, close enough for him to feel the warmth of her body. "From now on, I’ll be part of your family. I won’t allow our guild leader, and especially my husband to ever feel lonely again."
Sora froze. The feeling of loneliness that had accompanied him for years was struck by a wave of feminine affection. However, his teenage brain didn't take long to send a system error notification: he could perfectly feel mochi's chest pressing against his back with every breath she took.
"Wait, wait, wait! What was that for?! It’s warm… comforting… but her chest is against my back, this isn’t good. I need to get out of this!" Sora thought, trying to find a way out of a situation that felt way too much for him to handle.
Sora stood there for several minutes, paralyzed, his face burning in the darkness of the kitchen, while the cleric's remedy began to have a strange effect on him that he didn't know how to handle. He was about to say something when, suddenly, the monitor of his computer in the living room turned on by itself, reflecting the apartment in a cold blue light.
A notification sounded on the computer. Sora tensed up by instinct, carefully pulling away from Mochi to look at the screen. A dialog box was flashing, a message blinking constantly on the screen.
[System Warning]
Unusual silence detected, along with an elevated heart rate in the administrator.
The message disappeared as quickly as it had arrived, but another one immediately appeared.
Are you playing a new adult dating sim without your firewall protection?"
"What is all this?" Sora asked out loud. The name Aegis wasn't one that just anyone would know aside from mochi, nobody knew that nickname, at least not in the real world.
And that was what worried him most.
"What's wrong, sweetheart? Is everything okay?" mochi said, watching from behind Sora, more intrigued than concerned. She felt a sudden surge of jealousy; Mochi even began to wonder if he was talking to another girl.
Sora felt his body tremble. "I only know one person with the skill level for this kind of thing..." Sora said as he tried to regain control of his computer.
However, before he could touch the keyboard,the sound of something sliding through the front door made both of them jump.
There, leaning against the doorway, was a girl with gray hair falling over her shoulders and glasses that reflected the hallway light. She wore an oversized hoodie and held a phone in her hand.
It was Shiori Inoue. From the same academy as him.
"Well, well, Aegis…" Shiori said, lowering her glasses slightly as she fixed Sora with a malicious, sarcastic gaze. A slow, wicked smile curled on her lips. "I knew your security was mediocre, but I didn't know you were so... preoccupied."
Shiori entered the apartment without invitation, walking with a calmness that bordered on insolence. She brushed past Sora, deliberately grazing his shoulder, and stopped in front of mochi, examining her from head to toe.
"And this is the reason for your tachycardia?" Shiori asked, glancing back at her phone, which now showed she had control of his devices. "Interesting. Quite a... voluptuous affection-processing unit. No wonder your personal system crashed, Sora. With hardware that close to you, anyone would suffer from overheating."
"Shiori!? What are you doing at my house? Wait, no, how did you even get into my computer in the first place?" Sora said, pointing at the computer while Mochi pouted and clung to his left arm.
"Oh, come on... Have you already forgotten your trusty mage so easily?" Shiori said, adjusting her glasses as a mischievous smile lit up her face.
"Trusty... mage?" Both Sora and mochi were confused, unsure what those words meant.
"Seriously… how have you survived with so little memory in that brain of yours?" Shiori said with disappointment, noticing they didn't recognize her.
"Nevertheless..." Shiori emphasized, "Intelligence was never really your strong suit, was it, Chief?"
Sora finally understood what those words meant.
Memories of long nights grinding, violet magical explosions, and a dark-robed avatar that always mocked his lack of magic resistance merged with the figure of the girl now invading his living room.
"You're... Zero?" Sora said, his jaw practically hitting the floor. "You're the Mage Zero?! The one who used all her mana on explosion spells just to watch my armor fly through the air?!"
Shiori let out a little laugh that seemed innocent but carried an intention that made Sora step back. She approached him, completely ignoring mochi's murderous pout, and used her Phone to give Sora a soft tap on the chest.
"The one and only! Though I see my suspicions were correct—in person, you don't seem so imposing, Aegis." Shiori deliberately lowered her gaze toward mochi's hand, still clutching Sora's arm. "And I see you finally got your personal Healer. Though, from the data I received, it seems she's inflicting more damage per second on you than she can heal."
"Hey! Stop confusing my Darling with your weird words!" mochi intervened, stepping between them with her face flushed with jealousy. "I'm the only one who can be near Sora! You're just a noisy female mage who always ran out of mana at the worst possible moment!"
Shiori didn't flinch. On the contrary, she adjusted her glasses and looked at mochi with indecent curiosity.
"Oh, so you're the group's cleric, huh? Interesting..." Shiori leaned in so close to mochi that their faces almost touched. "You have quite... impressive front-line equipment. Tell me, does the Chief know how to handle such a heavy load, or does he just freeze up like he's doing right now?"
Sora felt his brain about to collapse. He had the girl who took care of him emotionally and the girl who knew all his digital secrets fighting in the middle of his living room.
"No way... this isn't a guild anymore, it's a battlefield where two of my former guild members seem like they want to kill each other. This is almost like a romantic comedy written by a rookie," Sora thought.
"Well,"Shiori said as she walked into the kitchen and opened the fridge like she owned the place. "Since your security is a disaster and your nutrition is a complete mess, I've decided I'm staying for dinner. After all, a Chief needs his Mage to... illuminate the dark areas, don't you think?"
Shiori grabbed one of Sora's energy drinks and opened it with ease, winking at him through her lenses.
Sora sank into the sofa, covering his face with his hands. The silence he had longed for was gone forever. His house was no longer an empty server; it was a private server where he was the only one without admin permissions.