I, Melissa Tachibana, was born into a clan of obsolete samurai.
We were nobles, but my family was far from wealthy enough for me to harbor any delusions of grandeur.
The Captain calls his own home "the sticks with nothing but an Agricultural Cooperative," but I don’t consider a planet with civilian flight routes and multiple daily passenger flights to be "the sticks."
The true countryside is a planet like mine.
We didn't even have an Agricultural Cooperative, and there certainly weren't any regularly scheduled shuttles. Not even cargo ships.
I had never even laid eyes on a shaping printer until I arrived at the Imperial Officer Academy.
The internet was so slow it was practically useless.
The living standard for the ruler of such a planet was no different from that of the common residents.
On a planet completely isolated from the outside world, I grew up surrounded by brothers.
...I was raised as a man.
Naturally, that meant I grew up without the slightest clue about things like makeup or fashion.
When I first entered the Imperial Officer Academy, the sheer beauty of the girls around me left me in shock.
They were impossibly, unrealistically beautiful.
Beyond that, their sense of fashion was incredibly sophisticated.
After seeing them, I went back and threw away my most cherished private clothes in the middle of the night. I spent that entire night weeping alone.
With my spirit completely broken, I intentionally started acting crude and boisterous.
I didn't have the confidence to join the girls' circles, but I could at least pretend to be one of the guys.
But then, one day... I overheard it.
"Melissa? You mean that girl at the top of the Officer Academy Ugly Ranking?"
That was the first time in my life I truly felt like killing someone.
Nothing had ever pricked my complexes so sharply before.
Yes, what I feared most was that word: "ugly."
I was aware of it, of course.
Whenever I heard the conversations in the girls' restroom, I couldn't understand a single word they were saying.
It was true—I had never devoted any of my personal resources to making myself beautiful.
But for no reason at all, I had convinced myself I had an "average face."
Deep down in a corner of my heart, I had known I wasn't blessed with good looks.
So, when the day finally came that I was officially labeled as "ugly," I simply gave up on life.
My anger evaporated into the void.
Only a cold hatred remained in my chest.
Shouldering that complex, I spent my days moving like the living dead.
I even lost my motivation for the swordsmanship I had once been so dedicated to.
Then came that fateful day.
The alien attack during our training exercise.
And following that, the speech and heroic actions of Leo Kamishiro.
Leo Kamishiro was a strange guy.
He looked down on everyone and never dropped that condescending attitude.
He was always cold, acting as if he had zero interest in other people.
He was a truly unpleasant person.
And yet, he was one of the few who had nothing to do with that "Ugly Ranking."
Among the boys, Leo and Kevin were probably the only ones who didn't participate in it.
The things Leo actually said, however, were nothing short of appalling.
That was the true nature of the man who looked down on the entire world.
I wondered what kind of wild beast he was actually rearing inside his heart.
But that same Leo declared that he saw me as a woman—that he felt lust for me.
Strangely, I didn't find it repulsive.
Even though he was such an unpleasant guy.
At the time, I indulged in a convenient delusion.
If I played my cards right, maybe I could actually get a boyfriend.
After all, Leo said even someone like me was fine by him.
But reality wasn't so kind.
Leo protected us from the aliens until the very end.
Even through the eyes of a samurai like me, it was a legendary achievement.
The Empire responded instantly to such a tremendous heroic tale.
To my shock, they married him off to the Imperial Princess... or rather, they had him marry Leo Kamishiro while allowing her to retain her right of succession.
And so, my little scheme was crushed before anyone ever knew it existed.
After that, through one thing or another, I managed to secure a spot in the mistress slot.
Life is truly unpredictable.
Even better, it turned out Leo wasn't actually an unpleasant guy.
The person I had thought was a jerk was just a persona he had desperately put on.
The real Leo was actually a fun guy.
A wild beast wearing a Jester's Mask.
That was the true Leo.
I’ve only recently come to understand that.
Now, I’m here in the subway with him.
I haven't been in a subway since I tagged along for my father's work on the Capital Planet when I was a kid.
My excitement was rising for no particular reason.
...And yet.
"Infrared sensor detected! I'm on it!"
I shouted as I pried open the control box with a screwdriver.
I inserted the nullification program I’d built with the AI and waited for the rewrite to finish.
I flipped the switch and disabled it.
"Nullification successful!"
Sigh... It's so hot.
I let out a long breath.
I popped off the headpiece of my protective suit.
Both my shirt and my hair were drenched in sweat.
Trap disposal isn't my specialty, but I wasn't about to complain.
In this environment, a single mistake without a protective suit means death.
There weren't any traps at the entrance, but the moment we stepped further inside, they were everywhere.
As we move forward, we keep finding more and more of them.
There were so many that even I was drafted into disposal duty.
Leo is taking the lead on the disarming.
For better or worse, the guy has no hidden side. He’s a hard worker.
Ever since that speech, Leo has stopped forcing himself to play a character.
Even when he was acting like a "cool" jerk, he had fans.
The current Leo is incredibly popular with the girls.
Though, since he’s a married man, everyone holds back and doesn't try to actually steal him away.
As a mistress officially recognized by Her Highness, my self-esteem as a woman is slightly... no, significantly satisfied.
"Yo, Melissa."
The man himself walked over.
The "cool" persona from before the speech was nowhere to be found.
He had become a relaxed, easygoing guy.
The gap between this and his ferocious appearance on the battlefield was far too wide.
"Captain! I'm bored already!"
I decided to act a little spoiled.
"Me too. This is just simple manual labor, but it’s exhausting."
"There are way too many traps! And they don't even work on the Zork!"
The beam weaponry used in these traps is useless against the Zork infantry units that look like crabs.
If they were going to go to this much trouble, they would have been better off using the gunpowder mines from the museum.
Were these traps meant for space pirates coming to loot the place?
No, the risk is too high.
With bad luck, they could end up fighting the Zork and the Duke Army at the same time.
They’d be dead in the blink of an eye.
The veterans in the Imperial Guard seem to realize this, but they aren't saying it out loud.
Leo probably understands it on an instinctive level, too.
I have a bad feeling about this.
So, I decided to pose the question to Leo.
"Why do you think the Duke is doing something so pointless?"
"Why? Well... probably historical reasons..."
Leo's wild instincts seem a bit dull today.
"Try thinking about it while you're sexually harassing Kevin or something. Don't you think he's doing this even though he knows it's useless?"
"...Eh?"
"What if there’s a secret weapon hidden here?"
Leo froze.
The look of pure idiocy on his face was actually kind of cute.