Several hours ter during lunch time, my friend Lisa noticed me trying to sneak out of the staff cafeteria while carrying a wooden bowl of porridge. My original pn was to eat in one of the broom closets, but Lisa had extremely sharp eyes and she pounced on me at the doorway with her lightning-fast reflexes before I had a chance to escape.

  There was a bright smile on her face as she dragged me over to her table of friends.

  Well, technically they were my friends too, but from Zhang Guiyu's perspective, they didn't qualify as friends and they were more like acquaintances. Actually, now that I think about it, my former self on Earth had incredibly strict criteria for who qualified as a "friend". Guiyu was always nervous, mencholic, and anxious, so it didn't matter if she always ate lunch with someone or celebrated every single birthday with the same group of people. Guiyu would never call anyone a friend unless she was happy to jump on a grenade for their sake.

  ...Which consequently meant that Zhang Guiyu didn't think she had any friends.

  It was a rather extreme way of thinking, wasn't it?

  At least, Hana would think that kind of mentality is a little bit tragic and sad.

  ...

  ...Wait a minute...

  I was starting to become self-aware of the cognitive dissonance inside of my head.

  Who was currently thinking right now? Was it "Guiyu" or "Hana"? Perhaps it was a mixture of both?

  Evidently, there was no way to fuse two strong personalities together without producing a few contradictions, and it was more-or-less inevitable that my behavior was going to be a little strange given that Guiyu and Hana are entirely different kinds of people. The new 'me' was the product of the my two older selves, and I could self-reflect on my past personas much in the way that many people often cringe when they re-read the trashy self-insert fanfiction they wrote five years ago as a horny teenager.

  My old selves were unquestionably me, but at the same time the current 'me' was nothing alike either of them.

  ...Or was it... not?

  All of this was incredibly confusing right now.

  + + +

  "Hana, you just have to tell us everything! Absolutely everything about the Emerald Prince!" Mari was practically salivating at the mouth as she wasted no time in dragging me into the circle of intense gossip.

  "Yes! Tell us! Tell us!" Nene and Francesca echoed as Lisa quickly pushed me into a vacant seat.

  Incidentally, there were almost fifteen maids crowded around a rectangur table with only six chairs, and the atmosphere was incredibly stifling given that they were all huddled up trying to whisper discreetly enough though this was definitely the exact opposite of discreet. Anyone walking into the cafeteria could instantly see that the group of us were up to no good, and it was quite easy to overhear what we were saying even if you were sitting at a table some distance away. From Guiyu's perspective, not-so-secret public gossip like this was one of things that she absolutely despised, although the current me somehow managed to act normally despite being roped into an unpleasant situation within a small pack of thirsty hyenas.

  I took a moment to look around the table.

  Out of everyone here, exactly three of us had been assigned to the Otherworlders:

  First, there was my friend Lisa, who had ultimately chosen to pair up with Hong Baiye in the Imperial Room. If I had to describe Hong Baiye, she was essentially the female version of Kang Jiesu. She was the vice president of our css, student council treasurer, captain of the archery club, and #2 on the school ranking in terms of grades (incidentally, Kang was always #1). Hong and Kang generally made a picture-perfect pair as model students. You could practically pster their faces on promotional magazines for the school and they would look absolutely wonderful together like a perfect teenage couple. In terms of personality, Hong Baiye is exactly what you would expect from a teacher's pet. She was kind, altruistic, sociable, pretty, and universally well-liked because she made efforts to befriend everyone with her sweet angelic ugh. In other words — Hong Baiye was essentially my por opposite and virtually perfect in every way. Naturally, I absolutely hated her and couldn't listen to her high-pitched Cinderel voice without feeling like I needed to vomit.

  Stel was another one of my friends acquaintances who had been paired with an Otherworlder in the Moonlight Room. Stel was a senior maid who helped with my training as a new recruit when I first arrived at the Royal Pace four years ago, and she was something like a gentle older-sister figure to me. As for the cssmate she had paired up with, she had picked Lu Liwang, who was basically a useless otaku from the computer club. Honestly, I actually felt sorry for Stel because that guy was definitely not a good choice. Back in elementary school, I remember there was one time when the principal was searching all of the boy's backpacks for cigarettes and drugs, and he pulled out an ero comic (To Love Ru) from Lu Liwang's bag. After that, every single girl in the entire school found out that Lu Liwang was a total pervert who was addicted to Japanese pornography, and then there were many wild rumors about how he allegedly brought his little sister's panties to school in order to masturbate in the girl's bathroom on the fourth floor. Obviously, no one wanted anything to do with a disgusting guy like that, so he was permanently shunned as an untouchable weirdo throughout all of middle school and high school. On Zhang Guiyu's standardized personal hatred scale (SPHS), Lu Liwang was approximately equivalent to 0.12 Hong Baiye units (I hated him about 12% as much as I hated Hong Baiye), which was actually a somewhat mild score.

  The third maid was me (Hana), and I had originally been paired with Kang Jiesu out of sheer coincidence. Obviously, he was the worst of all my cssmates who boasted an unfathomable score of 217.3 Hong Baiye units on my standardized personal hatred scale (SPHS). In other words, I would rather be stuck on a deserted isnd with 217.3 clones of Hong Baiye rather than a single Kang Jiesu. My ex-childhood friend was genuinely that horrible of a person, especially when you consider that a single Hong Baiye unit is equivalent to 38 gēgē (哥哥) units (note: I absolutely detest my older brother), which roughly calcutes out to "I hate Kang Jiesu about 8257 times more than I hate my older brother."

  In case it wasn't clear already, I really really really really really despise Kang Jiesu, the person whom I consider to be public enemy #1.

  I honestly should have just used my reincarnation wish to make him disappear.

  There was a crushing feeling of despair in my soul as the crowd of eager maids surrounded me at the table, threatening to suffocate me with their pestering questions and utter naivety about the superficial good looks of my ex-childhood friend. If they knew anything about the truth, they would definitely realize that his shining sweet smile can never be trusted — that he was the single most dangerous man who very likely posed more of a threat to my future than even the Demon Lord of this universe.

  ?