Ryouta finally manages to get some good enough sleep. The date has changed when he gets up and limps over to his computer to check on the time. Going by how low the sun is outside and the time on his computer, he got a solid fourteen hours of sleep. Sure, that’s a bit overkill, but his body and mind needed it. He feels refreshed! So refreshed, in fact, that he’ll continue his goal of improving himself for his girlfriends by going on a run with his leg supports on.

Of course, the run only lasts a few minutes before he finds himself far too exhausted to continue. Running right after waking up without eating or drinking anything probably wasn’t a smart idea.

Ryouta slowly walks back to his apartment. His calves feel like they are on fire and anybody he walks by can surely hear the grumbling of his stomach.

He looks up at the sky. It’s a pretty beautiful day outside. It isn’t too hot yet since it’s the morning, clouds obstruct the sun from annoyingly shining on him, and there is a gentle breeze to help cool him down from the run.

However, he learns that looking up at the sky while walking on a sidewalk with other people on it isn’t a very smart thing to do when he bumps right into somebody. “Sorry!” Ryouta apologizes, looking at who he bumped into.

He can’t tell the gender of whoever he bumped into, nor can he see their face since they are wearing a hat and shades, but they look shorter than him and petite. Of course, he could be wrong about that as well given how they are wearing a heavy coat.

The only identifying feature he sees of them is their shoulder-length, brown hair.

“I didn’t hurt you, did I?” Ryouta asks.

He learns that they are a she when she looks directly at him. Well, maybe she’s a he. Spencer looks just as feminine when he’s in-game as Oleander. Either way, with this girl looking up at him, he sees her brown eyes poking out from behind the oversized shades slipping off of her nose and freckles extending from cheek to cheek and going over her nose.

Her small, feminine facial features and the subtle gloss on her lips are all that make him think that she’s a girl.

If she is a girl, she is a very strange one as she just stares directly at him with wide eyes and not a single word leaves her lips.

Ryouta assumes that he must have really offended her by bumping into her. Or she’s just creepy. Either way, he apologizes again and leaves.

His apartment isn’t too far from here.

Somebody is watching him.

That’s the feeling he gets, anyway. Maybe people trying to follow him in games has trained his intuition, but it feels as if somebody is following him – watching him.

He turns around and catches a glimpse of that girl’s hat from earlier. The hat disappears behind the corner of a building as soon as he looks in that direction.

There’s no way that Ull doxed him, right? He doubts that Blackstache told Ull his personal information, and he doesn’t even remember if Blackstache knows where he lives now to accidentally slip up about that.

Is it somebody from the old days who found out where he lives?

No, he can’t be paranoid about this. The chances of him just accidentally bumping into somebody who knows who he is from a game that wants to stalk him is ridiculously low. She’s probably just really angry at him, or something.

He hopes.

Ryouta checks behind him every now and then for the rest of the walk back to his apartment. While the feeling of being watched never leaves him, he doesn’t see that girl again. He also makes sure that nobody is watching when he gets into the elevator to go up to his floor.

If they want to find out where he lives, that’s going to be next to impossible now. There are a few hundred apartments in this building and no identifiers as to who lives where aside from room numbers. The apartment staff won’t give out that information to anybody, either.

That was actually one of his concerns when he moved here since the move happened around the time when doxing was a concern for him. The management assured him that nobody would be able to ask and find out where he is unless he called them ahead of time to let them know that he is expecting somebody.

Ryouta reaches his apartment, looks left and right, and sighs a breath of relief. Nobody around. There is still an uneasy feeling that he has, but that feeling goes away when an amusing thought pops into his head.

What if that girl was Alexander in real life? Alexander, this tall and masculine looking blonde asshole, is actually a small girl in real life? Ryouta knows how extremely unlikely that is, but it’s still a funny thought that he knows would piss off Alexander.

“I wish Rock was here to come and greet me, or go on runs with me,” Ryouta says, closing the door behind him.

Time to eat some food left by Cassandra’s shopping trip and then be lazy at the computer.

Once he’s done eating and cleaning himself up, Ryouta plops himself down in his chair and shakes his mouse to wake the monitor up.

Oh boy.

Fiscord has a lot of new messages. Opening it up, he goes to his direct messages and sees that they are almost all from Nell.

>Hero’s Princess: My hero! I hope that you have slept well! Here are some presents for you for when you wake up!

The next… twenty-three messages are all pictures of her. She is wearing anything from princess-esque dresses to Gothic Lolita fashion. She has a bunch of differently colored and styled wigs on, different makeup styles, and she makes all sorts of expressions that girls who are addicted to taking pictures of themselves usually use.

The one picture that stands out the most has her wearing a pastel dress that gives him the first glimpse of what she has underneath her clothes. Her breasts are pushed up and show him that she has a pretty nicely sized pair under the usually-covering clothes that she wears, but what really grabs his attention in this picture is that he can see some of her wheelchair in it. Every single picture has been her either sitting on her bed or on the stool at her vanity, but this one picture shows half of her wheelchair in it at the edge of the image.

What little he can see of her wheelchair lets him see that it is brightly colored, has a bunch of cute stickers all over it, and – his eyes end up going back to her cleavage.

>TheMemeStruggle: Hey. Just woke up. Thanks for the presents lol. You look nice in them. By the way, here’s the invite to our server. Everybody’s in it but you and Corwin. And Rock.

Ryouta checks out the server after sending her the invite.

The member’s list looks shorter than it should, and when he looks at it, he notices the Viktor isn’t in it anymore. He checks out his friends list. Viktor isn’t there. Ryouta tries sending Viktor a new friend request, but it says that the account doesn’t exist.

“Dude, what the fuck? Seriously? You’re just going to completely cut us out like that? I thought we were still going to be friends and talk outside of the game,” Ryouta says to his monitor. He was in a good mood thanks to Nell’s picture spam, but now he just feels hurt. Their friendship has lasted for so long – it’s one of his two longest friendships alongside Spencer, but now Viktor is just throwing it away because he got bored of fishing and wanted to go off on his own? “Asshole.”

A new message pops up in the Fiscord server by the latest member to join. It’s a picture of Nell puffing her cheeks up and holding up a piece of paper greeting everybody with cute little drawings on it. Either she’s had that prepared for some time, or she’s really fast at making pretty nice doodles.

Another message pops up.

>Hero’s Princess: Am I cute, my hero? Am I, am I?

Ryouta has to admit that she’s pretty good at cheering him up without even trying to.

>TheMemeStruggle: You are

>Holy Justice: I’m cute too, right, Ryouta?

Oh boy. The yellow mark next to Cassandra’s profile picture has turned green.

>TheMemeStruggle: Of course you are, Cass Cass.

>Serra Berra: I’m cute too, right?

The beehive has been poked.

>TheMemeStruggle: Definitely. You’re all cute

He knows that Serra is just teasing, but Cassandra’s jealousy shows when she posts a picture in the chat. Ryouta claps his hands together and thanks whatever higher power there may be up in the sky for the gift of seeing Cassandra in a black sweater.

But then Nell retaliates with a picture of her in a pastel sweater.

Ryouta claps his hands together again and thanks the god of sweaters for this holy day.

Serra joins the fray by posting a picture of her wearing a sweater a few sizes too large for her. It’s large enough that her hands don’t even poke out through the sleeves and the front of the neck hangs down to her chest, and just – perfection.

Ryouta is a religious man now.

>Da Best Engineer Ever: You girls know we can read all of this, right? Take your competition to a private group chat or something. Me and the other guys don’t want to see any of this

>Da Best Engineer Ever: Where’d the big guy go? Don’t see him on the list anymore.

>Ryouta’s Favorite Slut: i like the pics, u all look so cute<3 ryouta is a lucky boi

Spencer’s new nickname and change of subject tell Ryouta that he already noticed Viktor’s leave.

This morning has been an odd one. It started off great, then it got weird, then it got great again, then he felt hurt and betrayed, then he felt nice again and became religious, but now he’s just left feeling… meh.

>Hero’s Princess: When is our first date? I can fly to you if you’re far away, so we can go whenever!

And now he’s back to feeling weird. Just how much disposable income does Nell have if she has all those wigs, fancy clothes and furniture, and now can just easily fly to him whenever he wants her to?

>TheMemeStruggle: Im going to start thinking you’re an actual princess pretty soon

>Hero’s Princess: Oh! I am.

Huh?

What?

Did she misread his message? Maybe she’s just roleplaying or calling herself a princess to be cute.

>Da Best Engineer Ever: I’m calling bullshit. No way you’re a princess. Royalty isn’t even a thing anymore.

>Hero’s Princess: You’re technically correct! However, my great-uncle was the last king, and he never had children, so I would technically be the princess if the royal family was still considered legitimate!

>Hero’s Princess: I may not be legally considered a princess, but I come from the old royal bloodline!

First, Cassandra and Serra ended up living in the same city as Ryouta. Then he managed to pick up a fishing rod from a random shop that is worth way more than he bought it for and has powers yet to be unlocked. Now he’s finding out that the latest entry to his relationship may not technically be a princess anymore, but has royal blood in her and could potentially become a queen if that archaic system ever comes back. He’s seen protests on the news before of people overseas wanting the royal family to be restored.

“I’m going to start thinking I’m some anime protagonist at this rate.”