Leave a comment

“Here we are. This is the open-air bath!”

Ayumu, who had deliberately turned back into how he had looked back on Earth, brought us to an open-air section in the large bath. It looked normal, no one would think this was fake. Even after going in, nothing about it seemed off.

“By the way, all that scenery outside is just an image.”
“Seriously…?”

This guy just keeps shockin’ us.

“Here you go, it’s a hot springs egg.”
“O-Oh, thanks, man.”

The egg was pretty good. Incidentally…

“Ayumu. With your cross-dressin’ habit, guess it’s only natural for you to use that skill that lets you freely change gender all the time, ain’t it? But what does Mika think ’bout it?”
“Hm? She tells me when she wants me to turn back into a boy and… she understands that I’ve become a girl. That’s the reason I’d like you to get that into your heads, too.”

Even if he tells us. I’ve accepted that since the first time he put on girls’ clothes… and turned into a monster several times cuter than the other girls in our neighborhood, so it’s a bit late for that…

Moreover, he apparently wants Kanata and me to see him as Alim when he’s a girl. There is nothin’ to accept, seriously.

“Hey, by the way, do I look cute? Not now, but when I am Alim?”
“Huh…? Between here or there, your face is the same other than your hair- and eye-color, ain’t it? ‘Course you look cute… Oh, speakin’ of that, you never heard that you made it onto the ‘School-Internal Beauty Ranking’, did ya?”
“Eh, what’s that?”

The School-Internal Beauty Ranking. As the name implied, it was a list of the most beautiful girls attending our school. Of course, any woman at our school was fine, so it also included teachers and other employees.

Indeed, there was one single person added to the list, who didn’t fit the “any woman is fine” rule.

“Well, the name says it all.”
“Huh, I guess Mika was in first place.”
“Yep, you got it. You were second.”
“What?”
“You were second.”
“No way… over there, I was a boy…”
“Still, you made it onto second place.

I wasn’t lying, Ayumu had been in second place.

Mika Magarigi had been called both cute and beautiful for ages, as if that had been only natural, her beauty seen by far as the highest in the prefecture¹. Due to that beauty, she had been nicknamed “Archangel”. Of course, Mika herself had never learned about that name. When she died in that accident, most of the boys at our school grieved.

But at the same time, those guys resented Ayumu, thinking he was the cause for her suicide (even though she didn’t truly kill herself, such rumors ended up spreading). Still, the second placed on the School-Internal Beauty Ranking was that very boy, Ayumu… It was unthinkable. Such was the legend.

On that note, the first-placed received 1.5 times the votes of the second-placed. But there was a three times margin between the second and third placed.

It wasn’t even that the girl in third place wasn’t cute. When I saw her once, she looked quite lovely. At any other school, she would undoubtedly have been in first place. Although at this point, Rir was cuter.

Leaving that aside, Ayumu, holding such beauty far surpassing gender, had been stuck with the title “Little Devil”, contrasting Mika’s “Archangel”.

“By the way, I know there were several male students who were earnestly plannin’ to confess to you.”
“Eh… what!? At our school!? If someone saw me outside and fell in love at first sight, I could still understand it, but… I was wearing a boy’s uniform there, wasn’t I!?”
“True, but these guys were still plannin’ to confess.”
“What the hell… were they gay or something²?”
“Nah, the ones among them that I knew were only into girls, with you as the exception…”

Ayumu was so shocked, he couldn’t find any words.

I turned to Kanata who’d just listened quietly from the start.

“Listen to me, Kanata. Your hair is similar to Ayumu, and I think you’d end up the same if you were to put on girls’ clothes.”
“No… no way! I’m different from my brother!”

Muah-ha-ha-ha! Yep, it’s completely true.
Ah, so funny.

In truth, Ayumu, Mika, and I were occasionally joined by Kanata and Sakura. When we walked around either the three or five of us, I would always get glares. Probably out of jealousy. I this world, Rir had been added to the mix. Still, I never felt like I had some kind of harem.

“Alright, I’ve decided!” Ayumu suddenly declared, getting up from the bathtub with a splash while striking a triumphant pose.

What did he decide?

“What’s that?”
“Except when I’m in front of you guys or Mika, I’ll live as a girl. So, I won’t turn back into Ayumu outside of this house!”
“Isn’t that business as usual?” Kanata commented sharply.

After falling silent for a few seconds, Ayumu slowly turned his back to us while sinking back into the tub, then his hair turned red and he started to shrink, turning into Alim-

“Oi, stop that crap!?”
“Shuu, let’s get out of here!”

Kanata teleported us back into the earlier bath.

Damn, if that jerk had turned our way like that, it wouldn’t have ended well. I was lucky I only saw his back…
Either way, I managed to avoid feelin’ like I cheated on Rir.

Kanata and I left Alim behind, unsure of what he would do now, and got out of the bathhouse.

TL notes:
While these two chapters had a lot of funny information about Alim, Mika, and Shuu back in Japan, it, once more, feels a bit like a retcon. The more we hear about Alim’s cross-dressing habits and how everyone regarded him like a girl, the weirder everything back in volume 2 seems.

1. Even the smallest prefectures have around 500’000 people, so that sounds very unrealistic. Unless she participated in some kind of beauty contest, I guess.
2. He asks if they were perverts in the original. Why is this word used for everything sexual that isn’t 100% normal?

Support Us

Unlock Early Access ------- Select Project ------- Project Gender Bender Project Necro ∴ Support your favorite series and unlock chapters before the public release.