Chapter 2. The Background Character Who Refused to Stay in the Background

Chapter 2: 2. The Background Character Who Refused to Stay in the Background

And then... that was also the day for Tomas, the baker’s son, who awakened a fire talent and set his own eyebrows on fire in front of everyone.

The whole crowd cheered for him. And no... I’m not feeling bitter about it...

Well, okay, fine... I’m a little bitter about it.

Thereafter, I did the only thing I could think of, which was to train... and I know that there were tons of main characters who got to be overpowered through training.

Maybe it’s just me right here... living not in a story where the character gets to be OP in an instant, and so I had to pull another main character move, which was training hard every fucking day.

I got up before sunrise and swung a sword until my arms stopped working, then went to the forest and fought small monsters until I could manage the bigger ones.

I studied how the veteran knights moved, I ran with stones in my pack, and I got my ass kicked by twelve-year-olds who’d awakened something useful.

I never became a prodigy at the start... but I became the person who kept showing up, which is a much less cool thing to be and a much more tiring one.

And I knew that one day... the result will be satisfying, just y’all wait.

But I had to be honest about something, though... Even in my second life right now... it turned out that I couldn’t fix my luck.

...

The blow caught me in the ribs and flung me across the road like a sack of grain.

I landed hard in the mud, and my sword went skidding somewhere out of reach. For a second all I could hear was a high ringing in my ears, and all I could taste was blood and dirt.

Somebody screamed my name... I think it was the girl that I admire, which was Alicia.

It might also have been me... I was being delusional.

’Get up,’ I told myself. ’Come on, you stupid bastard, get your ass up and show something cool...!’

I thought about Alicia, because when my life is falling apart, my brain apparently likes to show me the positive parts first. And Alicia was one of the positive parts that came through my second life.

We grew up in the same village, two houses apart. She was the kind of kid who’d tell you that your plan was dumb and then help you do it anyway.

When I failed the first physical exam for the knight training program, I walked out of the hall and found her sitting on the fence outside, holding a wrapped bundle of bread and cold meat she’d saved from her own lunch.

A really... really dreamy girl that maybe I could turn into my wife someday.

And of course... She didn’t say anything about the exam. She just handed me the food and let me complain for an hour.

What I love about Alicia is that she’s always been there for me... even at my lowest. She keeps hearing my complaints while also patting my back, shoulder, and, the best part... my head that keeps me sane.

When I pushed myself too hard on one winter and collapsed with a fever, she sat beside my bed all night, scolding me in a whisper so my mother could sleep peacefully without hearing her.

"You are the stupidest person I’ve ever met, you know that?" she said, and wrung out a wet cloth and put it on my forehead. "If you die from this... agghh! I’ll be so... so angry with you!"

And the end... she was the best because she stayed until the fever calmed down, and I woke up to find her asleep in a chair with her head on the blanket.

I know that moment is the moment I should’ve cherished for the rest of my life. Maybe I’m not destined to get a harem, but at least I can get a girl who’s loyal to me all day.

I have to show her the day where I become the strongest... just so that I can marry her right away and we’ll have tons of kids.

Moving on... when the other villagers started saying that a guy without an awakening had no business dreaming of becoming a knight, Alicia was the one who told them to shut the fuck up.

She was sixteen at the time, and she said it in front of the entire market. And my god... can she become any better than this? I almost feel guilty for being the one who receives all the defense from her.

Maybe someday... I’ll be the one to defend her at any cost.

Later that night, while I was pretending not to be upset... she sat next to me and said, "If you really want to be the strongest knight in the world, then I’ll become a knight strong enough to stand beside you."

That word... honestly, can make any man at their lowest cry their hearts out. But I managed to stay strong just by looking at her face, which was full of determination.

Goddamn... I feel so fucking useless standing beside her... It gets to the point that I should’ve just left her alone and let her find someone better than me.

And so... I told her she’d regret that promise.

She said she probably would, and she did it anyway.

...

We trained together for years after that. I instructed her in the footwork I had acquired from observing every veteran I could, and she corrected my posture, timing, and my unfortunate tendency to lean back when I became anxious.

She had real talent, the kind that made instructors pay attention. She could have spent her whole life looking down on me, and she never once did.

And that was the part I’d never found a way to repay her somehow...

It just keeps getting worse for me to keep standing by her side, and if only I got an ability to read her mind, then I’d be ready at any time that she starts to diss me and say how useless of a man I really am.

So when I finally got the invitation to take the royal knight selection, we both went together. We had a stupid, simple dream... get the title, protect people who couldn’t protect themselves, and prove all those years had meant something for us both.

...

"Roland...!"

Alicia was trying to push herself up from the ground. One of the knights was blocking her path, and she was pale in a way I really didn’t like.

"S-stop it," she called. "You don’t have to do this alone!!!"

"Nahh... of course I do," I said, spitting red into the mud. "You’re the one who’s supposed to be the famous knight... hehehe."

"If I let you get beaten up here... I’ll never hear the end of it..."

She bit her lip so hard that I thought she’d draw blood from it. She knew I was joking to keep her calm, and she also knew something that probably hurt her more.

Nothing she said would ever change the fact that I always prioritized everyone else’s life over my own.

I got to my knees, grabbed my sword, and found out that the blade had cracked further down the middle. It was held together mostly by habit now.

And of course... I’ll do this to prove all my years’ worth of training and also to prove that I’m worthy enough to be Alicia’s first-ever boyfriend.

I HAVE TO STAND STILL AND KEEP MY HEAD’S UP!

"Finish him," Brannoch said, bored. "We’re wasting time on a man who has no future."

That one word... stung more than the hit to the ribs, because it was just so casual... Years of my life, and he said it like a man ordering lunch.

Fucking hell... is this how my second life is supposed to be? A fucking background character who’s really a failure at anything...?

Two of the knights came at me together. I did what I’d always done, which was to cheat with the terrain.

I slid to the left so the mud sucked at one rider’s horse, knocked a spear aside with the flat of my blade, and got close enough to hook one man’s stirrup and pull. He fell off with a yell and hit the road like a dropped anvil.

For about three seconds, I actually thought I might win... based on my previous luck.

Then the next guy slammed his shield into my chest.

"GUGGGHHHH!" I manage to spit a lot of blood from my mouth because of that hit.

My breastplate split down the center with a crack I felt in my teeth. The cracked sword finally gave up and snapped in half, leaving me holding a handle and a few useless inches of steel.

Every muscle I owned felt like it had been taken out... it also felt stretched and put back in the wrong place.

"Fuck, gagghhh..." I said, with feeling. "Fucking shit...!"

They kept coming. A sword slashed across my shoulder and another clipped my thigh, and I kept moving anyway, dragging them away from the wagons one step at a time.

I couldn’t win... but at least I could be annoying, and annoying turns out to be a decent stalling tactic when you have nothing else to win this battle.

Brannoch watched all of this with growing irritation. At last... he sighed, raised his blade, and nudged his horse forward.

"You’ve got guts, boy," he said. "That’s the only thing you’ve got... and I have to give you a tiny bit of respect because of that."