[Hated Hero, Flirting With His Childhood Friend-Cum-Fiancée]

I was despised.

Utterly despised, in fact, by the Protagonist Raul.

After Raul left, I returned to Tayte and explained the situation.

――However, I hid the matter with Raul.

I would surely tell her about it one day, but not now… because, honestly, it scared me.

I was afraid that if I revealed the truth, Tayte would immediately keep her distance from me, even though I’d finally managed to get closer to her.

Of course, I didn’t think that keeping on hiding it from her was okay, either.

However, what do I do…?

As I walk side by side with Tayte, I tried to remember the academy arc in the original storyline.

Come to think of it, Raul came from a commoner background, a rarity in the academy. Not that there were no other commoner students, and their number was by no means small, either.

However, Raul’s origin was a little complicated.

The important bits hadn’t been revealed—maybe to prevent spoilers—but if my memory served me right, Raul should have no memories prior to he was five, and for all he knew, he’d always been all alone with no one else to rely on. As to how he managed to enroll in this academy, it was described that the principal happened to notice his potential as a swordsman when he was passing by the slums, so he gave him a special recommendation, and—

“Um, Barrett… you look as if you have something on your mind… is something bothering you?” Tayte worriedly looked into my face.

With that, I finally noticed that I’d been facing down with a deep frown on my forehead.

……Mm.

That decided it. I would focus my thoughts on Tayte whenever I was with her so as not to needlessly make her worry.

“Nah, it’s nothing.”

“I-is that so…”

Mm?

Tayte seems to be acting strange—no sooner had the thought crossed my mind than I felt a warm sensation on my left hand.

What! Tayte held my hand.

“! T-Tayte!?”

“Ah, I-I’m sorry! …Did you dislike it?”

“No way!” I immediately denied. “Just a little surprised, is all.”

“I-in that case.”

“Let’s stay like this.” I held Tayte’s hand back.

When I did, she loosened her cheeks, squinted her eyes, and giggled.

Nice.

Her smile looked very beautiful.

“Hey, Tayte. Why don’t we sit on that bench over there?”

“Sure!”

I felt a little tired from walking, so I suggested that to Tayte, and then we sat down on the wooden bench.

All we could hear was the sound of water flowing out of a nearby fountain and the chirping of small birds.

So soothing.

It felt like all my accumulated fatigue would melt away if I were to take a break here.

“You sure are amazing, Barrett,” said Tayte out of the blue.

“Where’s this coming from?”

“Well, you predicted you’d become the wielder of the Holy Sword, and then you actually went and did.”

It’s because I knew the future—there was no way I could tell her that, so I decided to play dumb with an embarrassed smile.

“In that case, the same goes for you as well, doesn’t it? Becoming a Saintess is an amazing feat itself, you know?”

“Ah, it was just a coincidence…”

“No, God must have chosen you, Tayte. I’m sure of it.”

I honestly felt that this was the case.

The reason being, Tayte was a really good girl.

If you said: “Actually, she is a saintess,” to people who knew the girl named Tayte Ehrenberg, I had no doubt that their responses would be, “Oh, I knew it!”

……Seriously, what did the original Barrett dislike about her?

Well, maybe he was simply a lustful guy.

Anyway, from then on, Tite and I had a lively, trivial chat.

I had Barrett Albers’s memories, but surprisingly they held little to no information about people whom he should be acquainted with.

For example, Cornell whom I had met at the Divine Gift Ceremony.

She didn’t appear in the main storyline of 【The Rise of the Weakest Holy Swordsman】. Perhaps the author planned to have her make her entry into the story later down the line, but I doubted she was hiding an important secret or something.

Barrett was a careless guy who wasn’t really interested in others, to begin with, so he knew practically nothing about her, and I didn’t have any information on her because she didn’t appear in the original storyline.

So, taking advantage of the original Barrett’s character, I honestly confessed to Tayte that I didn’t know much about her. Knowing Barrett’s past behavior, Tayte showed her understanding and gave me a lot of supplementary information, which saved me.

We had a good time chatting, but before we noticed, it was already dark and it was time for us to return to the dormitory.

The dormitory was of course split by gender.

Even Barrett wouldn’t get special treatment in this regard.

So, after having dinner together in the dormitory cafeteria, we’d only be able to meet again the next day.

“I wish we can stay together longer.”

“Me too.”

This time, we held each other’s hands in a natural manner while returning to the dormitory.

Alright, I will think about how to deal with the Protagonist Raul after having dinner and returning to my room.