There was once
An anime that was known for
boobs.
The anime that dictated fights on boobs.
Though underneath it there was a world dictated by the strong
and the weak.
But.
We never had a vote in this world.
Mind control, death, enslavement.
It was always one of these.
But this world was dictated by one person.
Even though I wanted to deny it,
It was the truth.
The person in front of me
was the person that this world dictated as the True Protagonist.
An utter pervert.
He had brown hair and brown eyes.
Issei Hyoudou.
But.
There was a problem with being in this world.
It wasn't the devils.
Nor the fallen angels.
Or the perverted protagonist standing in front of me.
The problem was me.
I had reincarnated
as a Nobody. not even known in this world.
with a ridiculous System.
[The Erotica System]
I stared at the blue screen in front of me
for a long time.
A very long time.
"..."
[Welcome to The Erotica System.]
[Your path to power is paved by what this world was built on.]
[Experience.]
[And you shall be rewarded.]
I closed my eyes
and opened them again.
But.
It was still there.
I had known this anime.
I had watched it
many, many times.
Not because the plot was deep or amazing, or that it brought me to tears.
It was for one reason:
because I was 16, and bored, and it was just there.
And now I was inside of it.
With a system that wanted me
to essentially
live as a pervert.
I was not going to do that.
[You don't have to do anything.]
[Just exist here.]
[The situations will come to you.]
"..."
[Current Erotica Points: 0]
[Current Power Level: Weakest Person In This School.]
[Note: This includes the first years.]
Did it just... call me weaker than first years?
[The first years have potential.]
[You have zero points.]
[There is a difference.]
Ding!!
Class ended there.
Even though it wasn't anything special.
Just a normal high school. I barely even remember what it was about.
Math, science, history.
Who knows.
But as I made my way through the hallway,
as I made my way outside,
there was a short person there.
Sitting atop a grass field.
Small.
White hair.
Dead eyes.
The kind of eyes that looked at everything
and cared about none of it.
Toujou Koneko.
She was eating alone.
A small bag of chips in her hand.
One chip at a time.
She was expressionless.
Eating was just simply a task she had been assigned.
...
I had watched her for some time.
A long time.
Maybe too long.
[Detected main cast Koneko]
[Task being assigned]
[Pick 1 of the 3]
[Charm Koneko.]
[Reward: Fate series Magecraft]
[Kiss Koneko.]
[Reward: Swordsmanship of Arthur Pendragon.]
[Steal Koneko's chips.]
[Reward: Cursed Technique: Shrine]
There were three options for me to choose from.
And I already knew that all three options were almost impossible to do.
At least.
Normally.
I had chosen the most obvious and easiest one:
to steal her chips.
But...
How would I even steal a cat's treats, especially one that could move at speeds that I couldn't even fathom?
I had one thought.
A chocolate.
I had one inside my bag.
It was the one I had gotten at the grocery store, the one I had walked to before coming to school.
Maybe it was fate.
I pulled the chocolate bar out of my bag.
I looked at it.
It was a chocolate Pocky Bag.
Multiple Chocolate pocky's lay assorted in a small, green square box.
I walked towards her.
But.
Koneko didn't even look up. She didn't even acknowledge me.
She just reached into the bag and pulled out a chip.
And ate it.
One at a time.
Like she had all the time in the world.
Like I wasn't even there next to her.
I sat down beside her.
But.
She still didn't look.
I placed the chocolate Pocky box on the grass between us.
Then.
Slowly, and gently, I reached over
and picked up the bag of chips.
I had
just taken it
right out of her own hands.
There was a pause.
An extremely long pause.
The kind of pause where she was examining what to do to me. It was as if she were thinking of doing something extremely bad to me.
The intent was clear.
Koneko's head turned.
Slowly.
Like a security camera that had just detected movement,
Her dead-like eyes found the chip bag in my hands.
Then her eyes found themselves glued onto my face.
And for the first time I had seen her,
there was something inside those eyes. The dead-like eyes were replaced by an emotion.
It wasn't anger,
nor was it a surprise.
It was quieter than both of those emotions.
It was like something had said I had done something incredibly stupid, and she was deciding what to do with me.
Whether or not I deserved to survive.
I held up the Pocky box and placed the chips on the grass between us.
And said the only words that I had prepared.
"Trade."
The silence stretched out.
Long enough that I genuinely considered running.
Long enough that I started calculating the distance between me and the school gate.
And then.
Koneko looked at the Pocky.
Then the chips.
Then at me.
Then at the Pocky once again. This repeated multiple times.
Until she picked up the box
and turned it over in her small hands.
She inspected it
the way that a jeweler inspects something before they decide its value.
And then, without a single word,
she opened it.
And pulled out a stick. And she ate it.
One small bite.
And she pushed the chip bag back towards me.
There wasn't a single word other than me signifying a trade. But she had still agreed to it.
It was just an acknowledgment that there was an actual trade.
DING.
[Task Complete: Steal Koneko's Chips.]
[Reward Unlocked: Cursed Technique — Shrine]
[Cursed Technique: Shrine has been integrated.]
[Current Erotica Points: 1]
[Current Power Level: Weakest Person In This School.]
[Note: You now have a very powerful technique and are still the weakest person here.]
[These things are not contradictory.]
[A weapon is only as strong as the person holding it.]
[You have a long way to go.]
"..."
**
— Rias Gremory —
Inside the occult research club room,
It was silent.
The kind of silence that settled in the late afternoon,
When the rest of the school had emptied out,
When all of the hallways stopped carrying voices, and the only sound was the wind pressing softly against the stained glass.
Rias sat at the head of the long table, her crimson hair catching the light.
A book was opened in front of her. Though she hadn't read a single word in the last ten minutes.
She was thinking
about a boy.
She had noticed him about two weeks ago,
which was abnormal for her, as she knew when new students came and when they transferred, as she was the one currently in charge of Kuoh.
But.
He hadn't existed on that list.
Nor did she know who he was.
His presence was undetectable.
Which meant this boy
had no demonic energy,
no sacred gear signature,
nor any latent power beneath his skin, the kind that Issei had.
But.
He still was undetected.
But.
Today she had seen this boy sitting beside Koneko.
Rias closed her book and laced her fingers together as she looked across the table.
"Koneko."
Koneko was sitting in her usual chair, leaned back, legs tucked beneath her,
a new bag of chips on the table.
She hadn't even looked up.
"The boy who sat with you today. What was his name?"
"He didn't tell me."
"But you let him take your chips?"
Koneko reached into the bag and pulled out a chocolate Pocky, and ate it.
"He took it... and traded for it."
Rias studied her.
Koneko's face was the same as it always was, flat and unbothered, delivering information like you'd read off a grocery list.
She had known Koneko for a long time and had come to understand what that face meant.
It meant Koneko had already decided how much she would actually share.
From the window seat, Akeno laughed,
the soft kind, the kind that sounded like wind chimes.
She set her tea down and tilted her head,
that smile already upon her face.
"My, my."
"So a boy took your chips, Koneko-chan, and then you let him sit with you afterwards...?"
"..."
"He was already sitting. And the grass was comfortable."
Silence.
A very long silence.
Until the silence was broken by Koneko.
She grabbed another piece of the chocolate Pocky that was inside the bag.
Could it be~... don't tell me, did Koneko-chan foun—
But before Akeno could even finish her words,
Koneko interrupted her.
"He's just a normal human."
The words came out flat, like it was the conversation equivalent of a door closing in their faces.
The room went quiet.
Akeno blinked.
And Rias leaned forward slightly.
"But... even so. You ate his Pocky, no?"
Her golden eyes moved.
"That may be so, but he smelled like any other. He was just the kind of person who exists in every class. A normal human."
Rias and Akeno went quiet for a moment.
She had already ruled out the fact that he could have a sacred gear.
Ruled out that he couldn't be a devil either.
Nor could he have been an angel, a stray, or even a hybrid of some sort.
Not even a human with latent talent. It didn't even seem that he had any potential.
He was completely ordinary.
And that was the problem.
In a school where nothing was ordinary,
and the fact that even she herself didn't know that he existed, and the fact that he wasn't even listed on the school list as a student,
made it very odd.
"Then why did you stay?"
Koneko didn't answer right away.
"He didn't try to talk to me. People who usually come up to me usually want something. They always want to ask about Buchou. But he didn't even ask anything. He just sat there and ate chips. Then, when the bell rang, he left."
She answered honestly.
Akeno had gone silent.
So had Rias.
But when
Rias had looked at Akeno once again.
It was plastered on Rias's face:
a smile. The kind of smile that meant that she had already filed this away somewhere important for later, to go over this information once again at a later date.
"Keep an eye on him. The fact that he isn't even registered in the school list is weird."
"Understood..."
A/N: side idea to keep things fresh, will update when I feel like it, just wanted to post etc.