【I met a strange middle-aged man while working part-time at an izakaya. He stared at my ears for a while, then handed me a big, golden orange. It looked so tempting, but Father told me when he was alive that girls should respect and love themselves and never accept things from strangers, so I refused.】

【When I got home, the orange appeared in my bag. So weird, but I just put it on the table and didn’t eat it.】

【The next day, I resisted.】

【The third day, still resisted... Won’t the orange go bad?】

【The fourth day, still resisted... Poor orange, no one to eat it.】

【The fifth day, I woke up at night, thirsty and hungry, so I ate the orange. It was so sweet!!!】

【I think I’ve awakened an ability! Amazing! Could this be the Academy City’s ability fruit?】

【......】

【Lately I’ve been feeling strange. At work, while eating, when I go to bed after work... I always feel like something is watching me. Um... am I just dizzy from hunger?】

【No, I’m not dizzy from hunger! There really are eyes watching me, every day, all the time, never stopping. Are they planning to murder me? Charlotte doesn’t want to die! Tokyo is so scary! Someone save me!】

【Today, the izakaya owner told me a customer wanted to make friends with a Tmall-tribe person and would even treat me to a meal. Um, Father seemed to say we’re from the Tiger-tribe... Whatever, as long as there’s food, I’m in, hehe.】

【Crap! That guy’s a pervert! He had a bunch of girls locked up in his basement. I taught him a lesson and let those girls go. He threatened to throw me in jail, but I’m not afraid of him. Still, I felt like those eyes were watching me the whole time.】

【New Tokyo is no good at all! I want to go back home! If I take some worthless stones from his house, maybe I can exchange them for travel fare?】

【The jewelry store owner gave me five million yen. Haha, I’m rich! Turns out those stones are actually valuable.】

The following scenes and monologue are about being on the run as a wanted fugitive for the past week. The feeling of being watched by a pair of eyes grew stronger, and on several nights, she even had nightmares.

Until today, Charlotte found she couldn’t get into the train station, but she could still take a long-distance bus to detour home. That night, she excitedly found a “helpful uncle” to help her buy a ticket.

Unexpectedly, she was targeted by Edward Harris and finally caught, ending her week of muddled escape.

Huh?

Edward Harris felt a bit numb after reading the report.

Those jewels only got her five million yen?

Didn’t the Tokyo Metropolitan Police’s wanted notice say at least eighty million yen worth of jewelry and jade was stolen?

Wow!

Tokyo’s shady merchants really rip off country folks, one worse than the next!

So her 【Crimson Eyes】 came from the ability fruit?

Wasn’t it said that the ability fruit is still in clinical trials, extremely unstable, and less than one in ten survive?

And this girl just awakened after a nap?

Seriously... unbelievable.

And those eyes... what exactly are they?

Side effects from taking the ability fruit?

...

Lying on the tatami, after exiting the character analysis, Edward Harris pondered for a while but couldn’t figure it out. The drowsiness from his internal body clock and the muscle soreness from fatigue hit him one after another, and before long, he fell into a deep sleep.

If you can’t figure something out, just leave it for now. Anyway, it doesn’t have much to do with him at the moment.

......

The next day, dawn was just breaking.

No alarm clock, but with a regular routine and a well-established biological clock, Edward Harris woke up at five thirty.

Sitting on the tatami, he rubbed his shoulders. Sure enough, last night’s “exercise was too intense,” and he was a bit sore. He really wanted to stay in bed a bit longer, but that thought was just a fleeting wish.

Speaking of which, two years ago, the original “Edward Harris” only awakened a sequence number 98 ordinary speed-type ability, but was still recommended from a rural junior high in Koshimizu Town, Shari District, Hokkaido, to the new Tokyo Takehara South Private Academy.

But the frustrating and tragic thing is, up to now, the original “Edward Harris” has repeated two grades in Takehara South High School and is currently in the class for repeaters. In most esper academies, students in such classes are usually seen by upperclassmen as “weeds”—meaning they’ll be “weeded out” (expelled) sooner or later.

If he still can’t pass the first-year academic test and move up to the second year by the end of next February, according to school rules, he’ll be pitifully advised to return to his rural hometown in Hokkaido.

Just thinking about that made any lingering drowsiness in Edward Harris vanish.

Damn it!

What a mess.

This totally doesn’t fit the laws of transmigrators!

He wasn’t like the original, who was afraid of being sent back to Hokkaido and shamed, so he trained himself to exhaustion trying to improve his ability, only to exceed his teenage body’s limits and die suddenly at night.

Fate really plays tricks on people.

At least it benefited him, who came from Azure Star.

But even now, Edward Harris still worries about being expelled.

What he worries about is, after finally spending half a year getting used to life and study in this country of Wa, which is somewhat similar to his original world’s Japan, if he’s expelled and sent back to some rural hometown in Hokkaido, a completely unfamiliar environment, that would really be unbearable for him.