Mob Heroine - Chapter 41

Chapter 41 - Is This a World-Type Story, Metafiction, or a Story-Within-a-Story?

After chatting at the café, we walked together for a while before parting ways at an intersection.

“Sato-kun, see you tomorrow. Goodbye.”

“Yeah. See you tomorrow.”

I waved and turned my back to her. After walking for a while, I happened to glance back without any particular reason... and Mogami-san was still there, looking at me.

“—Ah.”

When she noticed me turning around, her face lit up with a joyful smile, and she waved again. I waved back one more time, and only then did she finally seem satisfied, smiling happily before she began to walk away.

(...She’s so cute.)

It was almost as if she was reluctant to say goodbye. Even after I'd started walking, she just stood there, watching me. And then, just because I glanced back, she broke into that huge, beaming smile. 

It was exactly like a scene straight out of a romantic comedy.

I used to love reading scenes like this in manga. I loved seeing the cute, heartwarming gestures from the heroine that melted your heart. But now, I wasn't in a position where I could just be a spectator. Because this time, I was one of the characters inside it.

(I thought I was reincarnated to support Mogami-san... but was I wrong?)

My very reason for existing was starting to feel shaky. Up until now, I’d avoided talking much about my own backstory, since it seemed irrelevant to the plot surrounding Sanada and Mogami-san, and I didn’t want to clutter things with unnecessary information. But, now that I'm in a situation where I'm standing right in the middle of the plot, I probably need to explain at least a little of it.

(I regained my memories a little before summer break. My hazy consciousness suddenly cleared, and out of nowhere… my memories from my past life came flooding back.)

Until not long ago, Sato Satoru had truly been nothing more than a side character.

Mogami-san, on the other hand, though technically a mob heroine, actually had a proper design and profile. She existed firmly within the setting, probably because the author had a soft spot for her. She almost always appeared in at least one scene per chapter, and she even got a color illustration once.

After actually interacting with her, I could tell. Mogami-san had indeed been a character loved by the author.

She was secretly stacked, had a sweet tooth, loved books, was surprisingly tolerant of dirty jokes, and did I already mention that her chest was huge? Her plain appearance and long bangs hid her face, but she had the potential to become a beautiful girl if she ever wanted to. That had probably been part of her hidden backstory, I guessed.

In other words, her ‘glow-up’ was something the author could have decided on at any time. Or perhaps the author had intended her as a reserve plotline—a character whose development could be explored if the romantic comedy ever got serialized for a long time, and hadn’t been cancelled early. Maybe if the story had progressed, she would have had more arcs centered around her.

But, unfortunately, the series was cancelled partway through, and as a result, all of those planned settings just vanished along with it.

My own existence, on the other hand, was completely different from hers.

(I mean, really... all I had was a name.)

A side character. Sato Satoru. That was all. Nothing more. No other settings, no hidden info

If even I, who's read this manga obsessively, didn't know him, it probably meant his name never even appeared once during its serialization. He might have been printed somewhere in the corner of a panel, but he was such a trivial existence that he left no impression at all.

That was the biggest difference between Mogami-san and me.

She was loved by the author, this world’s ‘God.’
Me? Even 'God' didn't seem to know I existed.

My existence was a blank sheet with nothing but a name. Maybe that was why it wasn’t strange that my past self’s personality carried over perfectly into this world. Thanks to having tastes and preferences that were extremely close to my previous life, I genuinely, from the bottom of my heart, still thought Mogami-san was cute, and I was happy about that.

But at the same time, having this strange, meta awareness made it hard for me to define why I existed here in the first place.

…Up to now, I've tried not to think too deeply about it. But this world, this story, had one fatal flaw.

(If this series gets cancelled…)

What happens after that? Even thinking about it scared me. Because I knew that when a story was cancelled, everything after that simply ceased to exist.

And, there was one other thing that deeply concerned me.

(If, hypothetically, I were to have a romantic comedy with Mogami-san... will that cause the story to be cancelled? If that happened, would everyone disappear? If so, then should I just remain as a mere side character and focus on supporting the plot so that Sanada's romantic comedy becomes interesting??)

Was this what people called a world-type story?
Or was it just metafiction?
Or am I just trapped in a story-within-a-story?

(Just what role have I been given in this world?)

What could I do to make Mogami-san truly happy? 

I kept worrying about these things, so much that, in the end, I couldn’t bring myself to reciprocate her feelings—.