The Idiot Beside Me

Haruto walked to the window beside the playground and sat down. His seat was toward the back, allowing him a view of the beautiful cherry blossom trees and the playground outside.

"Quiet, let's continue with class now..."

At the podium, the middle-aged teacher, Sato, slowly sipped his wolfberry tea and resumed his hypnotic work.

The beauty of mathematics is its ability to confuse people.

In short, most of the students were sleepy.

Haruto took out his book and glanced at the silly girl sitting at the desk to his right.

She was a very dignified and beautiful girl.

She had long, soft, slightly curly burgundy hair with a star-shaped hair accessory at her temple. Under her bangs, her pure blue eyes were as clear as the sky.

From the side, the girl's posture was very upright, with her waist straight, her eyes wide open, and she was listening intently to the lesson.

This seriousness was enough to make everyone feel embarrassed.

Her uniform was meticulously cared for, though a single strand of her ahoge stood up straight and swayed slightly.

She should be the top student, right?

That's what Haruto initially thought, until the math test papers were handed out yesterday.

The girl's score truly shattered his worldview!

Nakano Itsuki.

A transfer student this semester.

Her strengths? She could eat... ahem, she had a serious and firm personality and paid super close attention in class.

Except in math class, which she could only follow for a short while, she listened carefully to every other lesson and took notes diligently.

However...

Her test score was only a single digit!

You didn't hear that wrong—it was a single digit!

Haruto was shocked.

To be super serious in class and super serious in the exam.

And the result is a single-digit score?

Is this a joke?

Even an average fool could score more than one digit, right?

Therefore, Itsuki successfully ranked last in the class through her own efforts!

Of course, it wasn't because Haruto was paying attention to the silly girl at the desk next to him, nor was it because the girl next to him was beautiful, or because her round and slender legs, wrapped in black stockings, were quite attractive.

In fact, Haruto had noticed something unusual about Itsuki.

It was an abnormal phenomenon that ordinary people couldn't observe.

In Haruto's observation, dark and unpleasant black energy was gathering around Itsuki's head, like the monster, which was quite alarming.

Haruto had to be more cautious.

If he remembered correctly, due to being shocked by Itsuki's score on yesterday's math test, he had observed the situation closely, and he was certain this didn't happen yesterday.

A simple analysis meant that Itsuki had either experienced something abnormal yesterday or come into contact with something that led to this situation.

Moreover, this was the first time Itsuki had encountered such a situation.

Perhaps because Haruto had been staring at her for too long, Itsuki noticed the strange gaze from the desk beside her, frowned, and stared directly at him.

'He's still staring. This is very rude!'

"Ahem..."

Haruto quickly looked away, embarrassed, and dismissed his thoughts. He decided to take a good nap under Teacher Sato's hypnotic lecture. Surely, he could sleep well.

Then, he would find an opportunity to contact Itsuki and figure out what was going on.

Huh?

Not long after lying down, Haruto suddenly felt something strange. The monster's barrier was touched.

He opened his eyes, now serious.

In fact, he had grown stronger recently. Monster had become much more stable, and the frequency of its appearances had significantly decreased.

But this time, it had been three full days since the last monster appeared.

But it couldn't be controlled.

Haruto raised his hand: "Sato-sensei, I need to go to the bathroom."

Sato had a dark expression.

'He just slept in class, and now he needs to go to the bathroom again... Even you wouldn't believe that excuse, would you?'

'The key is, he always uses the same excuse... At least give me a different one!'

Sato weakly waved his hand: "Go ahead, but make sure you come back early..."

For a top student, ranked second in the school, special treatment was quietly allowed.

As long as his grades didn't drop.

"Thank you, Sato-sensei."

Haruto stood up, ignoring the looks around him, and walked out of the classroom.

If possible, he definitely didn't want to deal with any monster.

Unfortunately, he couldn't escape the reality of this world due to the oddity invasion.

Since there was no way to escape, he had to eliminate the hidden danger and stop all crises in their infancy!

After experiencing despair, witnessing terror, and escaping from reality, he made his decision.

Entering the bathroom, Haruto's figure slowly blurred, then disappeared, entering another world.

The oddity.

Under the blood moon, there were the ruins of a city.

Upon closer inspection, one would find that this city was very similar to Chiba City, like a reflection of it.

"Hah..."

The air was cold and grim, and Haruto slowly exhaled a white breath. Every time he came to this place, he felt a very bad omen.

Depression, coldness, and despair!

This was a world that had been utterly destroyed.

Filled with all kinds of nuclear radiation.

All living things had disappeared.

Except for the occasional monster, this world was always dead and cold, with no life.

*BOOM*

A building collapsed, and a humanoid monster emerged from the dust.

"Little monster, has your soul fallen and been absorbed by the crack in the sky, then turned into a Hollow?"

"But... this aura is very similar to Nakano-san's, yet different..."

Haruto squinted his eyes slightly, deep in thought.

He raised his hand and made a gesture of drawing a bow, firing an arrow. In the next moment, a longbow and an arrow of light slowly condensed.

The holy white light gradually illuminated the dark sky.

"Go!" The arrow, entwined with white light, shot out like a bolt of lightning, piercing through the monster's head in an instant.

In a flash, the newly born Hollow vanished into nothingness.

Low-level Hollows posed no threat at all.

Haruto's superpower was a kind of idealistic power. In short, he could have any power he wanted.

Perspective, walking through walls, flying, time suspension, space blockade, sensory enhancement, teleportation, dimensional travel, hypnosis, fantasy manifestation... etc.

What he had just used was the ability to manifest fantasies!

With his current ability, time suspension, space blockade, dimensional travel, and even time reversal were theoretically possible.

But if he used them, Haruto felt he would die from excessive consumption.

As for how the invasion happened...

Perhaps it was because the two worlds were too close, and due to the invasion of oddities, the barrier between the two worlds had become very thin?

Haruto only needed to use a few spatial abilities to directly enter.

By the way, oddities were also the only otherworldly dimension he could travel to.

"Hah..."

Haruto sighed, and the bow and arrow disappeared. He paused for a moment, then turned and left.

He didn't want to stay in this place for even a second longer.

Despair, silence, coldness!

If he didn't intervene, monsters would invade the world, leading to an even greater invasion of oddities.

Don't ask him how he knew.

The crack in the sky was originally just a barely noticeable fissure, but now it had grown into a crack thousands of meters long...

This was all because he hadn't intervened.

It's easy to imagine how serious the consequences would be if the monsters were allowed to invade the human world.

Perhaps another world nuclear war would break out!