Chapter 37: My Feelings Are Not Mine to Control

Dolores realized what Green had done. She wouldn’t, and couldn’t, have felt an increase in favorability toward Green after a conversation like that.

It was even more impossible for it to jump directly from 50 to 70.

Therefore, it was clearly the system’s handiwork.

Was it an item from the main quest, a side quest, or even a favorability quest?

Dolores didn’t know, but she understood one thing intuitively: her heart was once again being forced to harbor feelings for Green that should not exist.

It was an “involuntary” and “irreversible” sort of “love” for him.

A massive wave of sadness suddenly surged into her heart, its impact far greater than the time in the palace gardens.

She forced herself not to show any abnormality as she spoke to dismiss Green. In the end, the person closest to her was the blonde-haired, green-eyed Albecco.

Dolores knew she couldn’t run for long. Her heart and her reason felt as though they were being squeezed by a giant hand. She could clearly feel parts of her own thoughts changing abruptly, against her will.

There was no need to agonize or wonder where the change was happening, because there was only one answer…

She didn’t even need to think about it; that part of her feelings for Green had been tampered with. She estimated that she would never be able to maintain her guard against him again.

However, the more clearly she realized this, the more the urge to cry washed over her. She tried to restrain her logic to avoid losing her composure, but her voice still carried a slight sob when she spoke to Albecco.

Dolores told herself she couldn’t cry. Otherwise, it would be too embarrassing, too weak.

While being supported by Albecco, Dolores felt a strange sense of familiarity for no reason.

She felt an involuntary urge to speak to the other girl.

It was as if a good friend were by her side, and she naturally wanted to chat, pouring her heart out to her without any reservations.

It was just like when she was with Little Flower Fish; they would chat about stories they liked and talk about their respective hobbies and worries.

By the time Dolores realized what was coming out of her mouth, it was too late for regrets.

Dolores could only hope that Albecco didn’t understand those words. Fortunately, the latter’s next sentence met her expectations perfectly.

“Princess, what you just said… did that fellow Green do something to make you angry?”

Albecco blinked her curious eyes, seemingly full of confusion regarding Dolores’s words.

In her eyes, it seemed Dolores’s words were merely complaints and confusion. She didn’t seem to understand anything about “becoming,” “modifying,” or “liking.”

“…Yes… a little bit,” Dolores hedged.

“Then he really is a bastard, especially to our kind and gentle Princess,” Albecco said, appearing to be indignant on her behalf.

From Albecco’s perspective, perhaps Dolores and Green were simply having a lover’s spat. After all, Green’s pursuit of Dolores was common knowledge, and Dolores was such a noble princess; Green had aimed high but didn’t cherish her.

Dolores breathed a sigh of relief, yet she also felt a hint of disappointment. Was she actually expecting Albecco to understand things like Green’s reincarnation and his system?

She must have been so rattled by the shock that she held such unrealistic ideas. However, this also made Dolores think about a critical problem she faced.

Having no one to talk to would only worsen her psychological state. Regarding matters like reincarnation, she couldn’t find a single soul to confide in.

And faced with the system in Green’s hands, she had no means of resistance. At the same time, even her determination to resist was about to be stripped away by the other party using that system.

“Princess, let me take you to my dormitory to rest for a bit. It’s not far from here, it hasn’t been attacked by monsters, and I live there alone.”

The supporting Albecco suggested with a normal expression.

However, her internal monologue was no less intense than Dolores’s. After all, the information contained in the Princess’s previous outburst was simply too much.

She had practically written the most likely answer — reincarnation — clearly on her face.

But Albecco couldn’t show any abnormality yet.

The two of them, both holding secrets, believed they had deceived the other. But Dolores was the lone loser in this regard, as her perspective was the most limited.

Albecco opened the door to her single-occupancy dormitory. Although there were no feminine decorative elements, the various books piled up and the experimental equipment were all neatly arranged, exuding an atmosphere of cleanliness and efficiency.

The single room was quite large, with an area of over 100 square meters. The threshold for universities in this other world was extremely high, and the environment reflected that.

However, a single room was still much more expensive than a shared one. This was one of the reasons for Albecco’s poverty. It wasn’t that she felt awkward sharing a room with other girls, which forced her to live alone.

Rather, most of the time, she needed a private space to create and write certain things, as well as a completely quiet environment.

Of course, the fact that she could bring Dolores inside meant there was nothing shameful in Albecco’s room at the moment.

Dolores looked around curiously and found nothing special. If she had to say something, it was that there were many instruments she didn’t understand and a large pile of books with titles that sounded very dry.

Looking at it this way, Albecco seemed to be a very studious child, which matched the first impression from their meeting in the Royal Library.

Veseriane followed them in silently and stood behind Dolores. Even though Albecco greeted her, she had no intention of sitting down, so Albecco let her be.

While Dolores was occupied with her curiosity, Albecco was integrating all the information she had gathered to prepare for the upcoming conversation.

Actually, the first time Albecco noticed something off about Dolores was during their first meeting, when she asked Dolores if she wanted to eat some Velvet-melon strawberry candy.

In Albecco’s memory, that was one of the few desserts Dolores was set to like. However, Dolores’s response at the time was that she wasn’t interested.

At that moment, both Albecco and Veseriane had shown slightly surprised expressions. But Albecco simply thought it might be a change caused by the real-world setting; characters didn’t necessarily follow their settings like machines.

The reason she remembered it so clearly was that she had written several side quests, and part of them involved this favorite food, which was later linked to Dolores’s mother in a memory sequence.

Albecco and Green shared a common trait: they had both traveled to this world six months ago. Both had changed the development of certain events through their overlapping disturbances.

At the same time, they had witnessed things from their “previous lives” failing to happen in this life because of their own changes.

Naturally, they would self-rationalize any slightly unreasonable occurrences. Green, who spent more time with Dolores, saw even more abnormalities in her.

For instance, her inexplicable reactions and words. However, they were all smoothed over by the filters in his memory and his own mental gymnastics.

Albecco, on the other hand, had noticed a few abnormalities because she had less contact with Dolores, but it hadn’t reached the point of suspicion.

Albecco was responsible for most of the plot, so knowing so much of the story gave her a natural sense of “experiential inertia.”

She didn’t think it was possible for a romanceable character like Dolores to remember the past. Aside from a few very specific characters who could self-reflect later on, the only way for Dolores to recall the past resided in the punishment section of Green’s system.

Specifically, it was part of a series of punishment functions opened after favorability was maxed out.

Dolores wouldn’t understand what she had done to make Green hate her so much upon their first meeting, and the system would make her remember. That way, Green could see her reaction and get the feedback of his revenge.

Aside from that, Dolores was not among the queue of characters who would “gradually recall the past due to certain reasons.”

This was the disadvantage of being a tutorial character; she had high favorability stats but lacked complex mechanics.

It was because she knew and understood this so well that Albecco instinctively ignored those few abnormalities in Dolores.

For example, she wasn’t as foolish, and she wasn’t as purely kind and gentle — yes, while Dolores did indeed perform kind acts, she was somewhat lacking in gentleness.

But once Albecco considered the possibility that Dolores had reincarnated, the unreasonable points she had felt earlier were explained. Confirming it would be even easier.

Why did Dolores appear exactly when she first met Silbel? And why did Dolores know Silbel when, according to her memory, they shouldn’t have known each other at this point?

And why was she uninterested in Velvet-melon strawberry candy?

Albecco could quickly get the answers to all these anomalies from Dolores herself.

When Dolores had stabilized, Albecco threw a lethal question at her.

“Princess, you knew from the start that Hilbert would become the Saintess, didn’t you?”

This time, not only was Dolores startled, but even the usually calm Veseriane behind her froze for a moment.