Even Exusiai, who had been the most handsome among us and a certified lady-killer, had never experienced this level of attention before. Naturally, we were a bit uncomfortable. I even craned my neck to look over our group, a paranoid fear gripping me that we might have forgotten to put on pants in our morning rush.

As I saw it, Exusiai, with her striking red bangs covering one eye, had continued her pre-transformation fashion sense and looked incredibly stylish. She wore a pair of loose, dark black shorts that reached her knees, revealing a section of slender, captivating calves. The plaid pattern on the shorts was printed with black and white photos, though it was impossible to make out what they were of. On top, she wore a white T-shirt under an open, black short-sleeved shirt adorned with various English letters and mystical symbols like alchemical compasses. Paired with simple white sneakers and a confident, almost cocky smile, Exusiai didn’t look like a girl at all, but rather like a popular young male star who had just stepped off the cover of a fashion magazine.

Saber, likewise, stuck to her former tough-guy style. Leather shoes with navy blue trousers, a crisp white shirt under a matching Western-style vest. Her golden hair had been tied into a lazy bun at the back of her head with the help of Yukino, who had plenty of practice from doing her girlfriend’s hair. She gave off the exact same impression as the cross-dressing Saber in Fate/Zero, an aura of regal competence that was both intimidating and alluring.

Compared to these two dressing as men, Yukino’s overly delicate features made it difficult for her to pass as male. She didn’t force it, simply dressing in an artistic, almost ethereal style with canvas shoes, cuffed straight-leg jeans, and a light-colored, thin woolen sweater over a pale shirt, worn purely for aesthetics. With her long, waterfall-like hair blowing in the wind, she looked exactly like a dreamy literary maiden, the kind you’d see on the cover of a poignant coming-of-age novel.

As for me, I was wearing a pair of dark sweatpants with a crazed giraffe pattern that screamed “I have questionable taste.” The long-sleeved top had a high collar that hid my slender, pale neck, and a demonic-looking eye was drawn on the front, like something out of a chuunibyou’s fever dream. I had simply tied my long hair into a low, slender ponytail. When I looked at myself in the mirror, I was captivated by my own androgynous charm.

This might sound a little crude again, but at that moment, I…

Why am I so crude?! Is this a debuff from the transformation?!

In any case, looking at the four of us, I could understand why the surrounding students and teachers couldn’t tear their eyes away, even to the point of walking into trees. We were just too eye-catching. Our combined visual power was off the charts.

Although it’s a bit embarrassing to praise ourselves, our group really didn’t look like ordinary students walking from the dorm to class. The impression we gave was probably equivalent to the dashing male and female leads in an idol drama, except we were even more stunning than those idols. We made it impossible for people to look away, even causing onlookers to wonder if they were dreaming.

After all, anyone who saw 2D characters break the boundary of fiction and appear in reality at their own school would rub their eyes in shock, stare intently to confirm, and then promptly walk into a tree.

I heard a freckled girl standing by the roadside whisper in amazement, her voice filled with awe, “Hey, look at those four over there! Are they celebrities from somewhere? They’re so beautiful, it’s like they’re glowing! Their character models are SSS-rank!”

A skinny boy, probably her classmate, looked over at her words and his gaze immediately went vacant, his jaw dropping. “Exusiai, Yukinoshita Yukino, Kiriko, Saber… Am I dreaming?? Is this a new event for the school’s anime club? No, none of those guys are this ridiculously good-looking… Could it be, a virtual projection?!”

“A virtual projection?!” the freckled girl, still staring blankly at us, asked in a confused tone.

“That’s right, it must be a virtual projection. Those four must be projected using some kind of next-gen virtual projection technology,” the skinny boy said, his eyes overflowing with amazement and technical speculation. “This virtual projection tech is insane! The resolution is perfect! It’s just like they’re real people, and they’re so good-looking! The rendering is flawless!”

Pfft, virtual projection…

Being described as a virtual projection made me let out a small laugh. The playful Exusiai took it a step further. With her one visible, ruby-red eye, she winked at the freckled girl and the skinny boy by the road.

“We’re not virtual projections, you know~”

I watched as the two of them froze on the spot, as if petrified by Medusa’s gaze, their faces turning beet red.

Bang!

Another sound of someone hitting a tree came from nearby. This was getting dangerous.

“Are we being… a little too conspicuous?” Yukino, a sliver of her breathtakingly beautiful ankle showing below her cuffed pants, looked us over, just as I had done, her brow furrowed with concern.

“Can’t be helped,” I said, spreading my hands, which were now much paler and prettier than before. “With our current looks, we’d be conspicuous even if we wore nothing at all.”

My words made Saber laugh. She let out a very tough-guy-style chuckle and said, “Forget our current looks. Even with our old looks, if you really dared to wear nothing, you’d be just as conspicuous.”

We laughed and joked our way into the academic building, ignoring the stares that followed us like bees to flowers, and turned into the classroom for our first lesson.

The classroom was filled with familiar classmates; nothing had changed. The moment we entered, I could feel the other three tense up. I was just as nervous, worried about what we would do if our classmates didn’t recognize us. It wasn’t that we cared so much about whether they recognized us, but it could become very troublesome.

Fortunately, apart from the same admiring looks as the students outside, our classmates’ gazes were mostly filled with a sense of familiarity. Some of the girls who had been on good terms with Exusiai even waved at her casually.

Exusiai curved her lips into a smile only handsome guys could pull off and whispered to me, “Looks like reality really has been changed. Everyone thinks we’ve always looked like this. The patch installed successfully.”

We entered the classroom and found a row of four seats in the middle towards the back. We ignored the classroom slowly quieting down as the teacher arrived and began discussing our next steps in low voices.

First was Yukino. The aura she projected was as otherworldly as the original Yukinoshita Yukino, but inwardly she was ecstatic. She opened her thin lips, her elegant eyes wide, and leaned in to whisper to us, “To help us play the roles of beautiful girls, System-Hime completely modified reality. All evidence of our former identities is gone, from people’s memories to physical objects like our student IDs. Following this logic, the baby in my girlfriend’s belly must be gone too! Two women can’t have a child. If my girlfriend were still pregnant, it would create a loophole in the reality that ‘I am Yukinoshita Yukino.’ System-Hime definitely wouldn’t make such a major mistake. I’ll go find my girlfriend after my morning classes to confirm!”

A huge weight was finally lifted from Yukino’s shoulders. She had been constantly worried about the dual problems of abortion and what would happen if their families found out. She let out a long, shaky sigh of relief, a sound of pure, unadulterated liberation.