GBLINC Volume 2 Chapter 7

Let’s return to one month ago.
The newest generation of the Nakamura family is composed of one son and one daughter.
Nakamura Rin, as the only daughter of the family, could be said to have received the care of the entire family — to the point of being overprotected.
But she herself didn’t return that sentiment.
Born into a well off family, yet not at all interested in the social and company politics.
She hated her supposed high quality education, hated day after day how aimless she felt, and that always deviously smiling older brother.
Instead, she would rather be with the branch family’s step-brother — Nakamura Yuu.
She only found out about the step-brother business by eavesdropping outside the door a certain day.
If you were to ask what part of Nakamura Yuu attracted Nakamura Rin so much, even she wouldn’t be able to say.
Were the circumstances different, Yuu would be just a simple boy. Perhaps this was what attracted Rin.
Thus, ever since Nakamura Rin was little she would often stay over for long periods with the family that was rather different from her own.
Yuu was often barred from entering the main family’s grounds after all.
Rin’s actions would often cause no amount of grievances with her family, especially her mother.
But due to their spoiling, they didn’t do too much to really stop her.
However, it was a bit different for Yuu’s family.
Even though there would be little interaction between the main and branch families, everytime there were family banquets Yuu would be asked to attend alone.
Though Yuu’s father and Rin would try to protect him as best as they could and live a good life, Yuu was a mistress’s son, and had to attend as a third party’s son. Rin’s mother and older brother would often make trouble for him.
For Yuu, he could just bear with it. The family banquets were few and far in between after all.
However, this year’s March was a bit different.

「Yuu-kun, we’ve arranged for you and the Tanaka family’s daughter to marry, how do you feel about it?」 Rin’s mother, who usually ignored Yuu, suddenly announced.

「Wha-」 Yuu’s father, who was nearby, didn’t seem to know about this arrangement beforehand.

Though Yuu didn’t know too much about the Tanakas, he did know that they were a rather well off company, and the Nakamuras had a vested interest in a merger.
But their daughter had a mental disorder. To put it bluntly, she was a bit of a retard.¹

The discussion finally ended with Yuu saying 「You’ve got to be kidding!」 and walking out the door.
Afterwards, Yuu disappeared from the sight of the Nakamuras.
A week later, Yuu resurfaced and returned to the branch family.
From then on, Nakamura Rin was forbidden from visiting.
But because Rin spent most of her time at school, she didn’t really mind.
It’s only that they can’t see each other as often during vacations after all.
What actually annoyed Rin was that a strange way of speaking Nagase Kanade appeared besides Yuu.
The position that usually she occupied was taken over by Nagase, and that really displeased Rin.
After investigating just what Yuu was up to this month, Rin became even more annoyed.
Even though she didn’t feel that possessive, she was still a bit frustrated for some reason.
Thus Rin gained some interest in the somewhat sickly looking, and more of an elementary school girl. But due to her never needing to make friends, she ended up with a rather overbearing attitude.
For bystanders, it seemed to be a deliberate act of shunning.
Most of the other students ended up with that impression.
And since it’s only the first two days of school, they settled with just ignoring the one shunned.
But today, it seemed to have worsened.
Today, Nagase Kanade’s desk had a dirty rag.
In a normal school, this probably isn’t something to be concerned about. But here, this was something unthinkable.
The cleaners at this school would not dare to leave cleaning materials on the desks of the students — losing their job would be the least of it.
Maybe Nakamura Rin would approve of me more for doing this — was probably the thought of the perpetrator.
For Nakamura Rin, her being the cause of all this was unfortunately she doesn’t realize.

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— End of Narrator POV —

「This is… a rag?」 As I understand, the cleaning of the rooms isn’t the responsibility of the students, is it?
Though a cleaner dropping it by accident here is rather unlikely…
And it had a rather strange smell on it, something that wouldn’t belong to a classroom.
Someone must have put it here.
Feeling even more certain that I was being bullied, I let out a small sigh.
It was still morning, and yet my mood was already spoiled.
I looked to Nakamura Rin, who had also just turned to look towards me.

「That’s…」 She opened her mouth, and walked over. She took the rag from my hands and raised it high up in the air, calling out. 「There’s no way something like this would be in the classroom! Who put this here?」

Wait wasn’t it you?

「Huh?」

Eh, did I say that out loud!?

「Yep you did, Nagase-san. Though I do want to ask, why would you think it’s me who put it there?」

In my eyes, Rin seemed to be mocking me even more.
It was already nearly time for lessons to begin, and everyone in the class was present.
And so I felt the entire class staring nervously at me.
(What the heck! Wasn’t it you the entire time?) I really wanted to shout that at her.
However I suddenly remembered that Nakamura Rin was part of the main family.
If I started something with her over this, right here, it would probably affect Yuu.
And so I swallowed the indignation.
I didn’t say anything, took back the rag from Rin and threw it in the bin.

「I’m feeling a under the weather, I’ll be heading back to the dorms.」 And like that I walked out of the classroom.

As I walked out, I could still hear Tohno-san shouting 「How odd! How could it be like this!?」
I was inexplicably frustrated.

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Translator Notes:

As requested, I’ll keep my notes out of the main body of the story. The notes are anchored, meaning you can click or tap to move to them and back. I hope it will make the reading experience cleaner.

TN1: 是个zz. Slang for a something like a Pig. Contextually decided to make it retard as that’s the closest approximation.