The Protagonist's Party is Too Diligent

"Why do you always speak so formally to me? Do you feel distant from me, sister?"

"It's not that..."

Seeing Claire getting upset, I tilted my head, not understanding why she was so frustrated. Claire groaned in frustration for a while before finally speaking.

"Then why! Why do you use formal speech with me! You talk casually with Alice! And on top of that—!"

Claire suddenly lowered her voice slightly.

"Besides, you used to speak casually to me back then too."

"Back then...? Ah."

She was referring to the time when Claire and I rewound time together.

"At that time, I didn’t have the luxury to think about it deeply."

"And now you do?"

"The situation now is much more relaxed compared to back then."

"Hah."

Claire sighed shortly, as if in disbelief, and turned around.

For a moment, I thought she was so upset that she was about to storm off home, but instead, she was heading towards the café entrance. Even though Claire usually didn’t care much about how others saw her, she was still a noble lady. At the very least, she didn’t just hop over the fence to get in.

The fact that she had stopped by the counter beforehand to order her drink of choice was rather amusing. She seemed to think that even if she was angry, she still needed to have her drink.

That was such a Claire-like thing to do.

Leo followed behind her, a faint smirk on his lips.

Claire’s angry expression... Well, I felt a little guilty thinking this, but to be honest, it wasn’t all that intimidating.

Sure, Claire could be serious when she needed to be. If someone were to stab me with a sword, she might make a truly terrifying face even in my eyes.

But she wasn’t exactly the best at acting. She wasn’t the type to convey genuine anger through mere performance.

Right now, the face she was making looked more like a child who had just had their snack or toy taken away. Honestly, it was hard to keep myself from laughing.

"You have a really terrible taste."

"..."

Alice, having caught onto my expression, gave me a sharp look.

In that illusory world, Claire and I had often bickered. Could it be that some kind of attachment had formed between us over time? Judging by how Alice was siding with Claire, it seemed possible.

"So, in the end, you’re going to start talking casually to Claire too, right?"

"I also intend to speak casually with Leo."

It wouldn’t be fair to only change my way of speaking with Claire. She was my younger sister, but Leo was also my younger brother. After my conversation with the Baroness of Grace—no, "Mother"—I had already made up my mind.

"Did you talk casually with Leo back when you were his older sister?"

"I did not."

I shook my head.

"...Then if you suddenly start speaking casually to him now, won’t he be taken aback?"

"That’s exactly why I’m going to do it."

"You really have awful taste."

Alice looked at me as if she were completely exasperated.

But her expression wasn’t entirely convincing. The slightly upturned corners of her lips and the way her eyebrows twitched upward made it clear—Alice was enjoying this situation just as much as I was.

"...I think the ones with terrible taste here are actually the two of you."

Charlotte, who had been listening to our conversation from the front, said this. Unlike Alice and me, who could read each other’s expressions and emotions quite easily, Charlotte had likely inferred the mood from our conversation alone. Or maybe, after spending the past year with us, she had picked up on some of our techniques.

Meanwhile, Mia had a bunch of metaphorical question marks floating over her head. Was she unable to follow the conversation? Or had she taken everything at face value and was simply confused by Charlotte’s comment?

Mia was usually quite mature, but the moment she started eating, she turned into a child.

As we continued our conversation, a loud stomping noise came from the other side.

Claire was stomping toward me, her ~Nоvеl𝕚ght~ movements exaggerated, as if to make sure I noticed her.

Who had spoiled young Claire when she was little? Her father or her mother? If I compared it to what I had experienced in that illusionary world, I would bet it was her father. He acted stern on the outside, but in reality, he was almost a doting parent.

"Sister, I think we need to seriously reconsider this matter."

She made a point to emphasize "seriously" by saying "reconsider" twice. If she really wanted to stress something, she should have emphasized the word "seriously" rather than "reconsider."

"And what matter would that be?"

"I mean, the way you speak right now."

This translation is the intellectual property of Novelight.

Claire pulled out a chair and sat down. Crossing her arms, she fixed her gaze on me.

"I’ve put up with it until now. I figured it was because you spent a long time in the Imperial Palace, and formal speech just became a habit."

"You’re not wrong."

At my words, Claire furrowed her brows deeply before looking over at Alice.

Ah, right. Alice was a princess, yet she spoke casually to everyone her age. Among those around me, the person of the highest status who still spoke formally was Charlotte.

But Charlotte was a bit different from Alice and me. From the moment she was born until now, she had been on a strict elite path. While Alice and I had also been raised as elites, there were times when we were left to fend for ourselves. In contrast, Charlotte always had someone guiding her. That was probably why her formal speech felt so ingrained.

"The way you speak isn’t a habit."

Claire saw through my lie in an instant.

"The only person who strictly speaks formally in the Imperial Palace is you, sister. Well, unless they’re a servant. Or a noble who isn’t of royal blood. Every royal I’ve ever known has spoken casually to me."

And that made perfect sense. Just as I had once lived as a daughter of the Grace family, Claire had once been a princess.

"Sister, you're just acting, aren’t you?"

...

Claire unexpectedly cut straight to the core of the issue.

"You don’t actually need to speak like that—you’re doing it on purpose. I don’t know why, but..."

Hmm.

The reason.

The reason...

It was a character I had carefully crafted to secure my own presence among the group’s distinct personalities—a cool beauty image I had calculated when to discard, how to exploit its flaws, and how it would even fight in battle.

In short, it was an act.

"......."

"So, sister—"

"Alright."

Before Claire could dig any deeper, I answered quickly.

"...Huh?"

Claire blinked, momentarily unsure how to react to my sudden response. I spoke again.

"I don’t see any reason to keep speaking formally in front of you anymore, so I’ll start speaking casually from now on."

"Really?"

Claire’s face instantly brightened. Maybe it was just my imagination, but it felt like the ambient light had gotten a little brighter.

"Really, really? You’re not going to suddenly switch back to formal speech midway, right?"

"Yeah."

I nodded and looked toward Leo.

"Of course, I’ll speak casually to you too. I am your older sister, after all."

"......."

Just a short while ago, Leo had been teasing me by calling me "sister" in an exaggeratedly respectful tone, but now that I had said it myself, his expression turned blank with shock.

He looked like it was going to take him a long time to get used to this.

Meanwhile, Charlotte and Mia watched our conversation with somewhat bewildered expressions.

...And Alice was narrowing her eyes at me.

There’s no way she had completely figured out that I’d been putting on an act, right?

*

After the semester started, the fact that I had started speaking casually to Claire and Leo spread through the school like wildfire.

It wasn’t surprising. I had always spoken formally to everyone.

Of course, there were times when I was blunt or harsh because of my ability to rewind time, but my default speech was still polite.

The problem was that now, there was a clear distinction between the people I spoke casually to and the people I spoke formally to.

I only used casual speech with Alice, Claire, and Leo, while speaking formally to everyone else.

At first, I didn’t pay much attention to the reactions around me. But after about two weeks, it seemed like rumors had started circulating among the students.

"Sylvia, could you maybe standardize the way you talk?"

"Is there a problem?"

"There are mountains of problems, actually."

Charlotte looked somewhat exasperated as she responded to my question.

"You’re not pretending you don’t know, are you?"

"......."

No, I really didn’t know.

Seeing my silence, Charlotte rubbed her forehead.

"Because of how you speak, the students think you’re dividing people into different groups."

...Huh?

But wasn’t dividing people into groups just common sense?