“Hey, are you sure you’re OK with this?” 

“I’m fine. You’re doing all the talking. I’ll just be listening.” 

“Well OK then.” I’m walking with the cute boy throughout the city now. Blood eyes guy is running around job hunting because he was super adamant on us having some sort of source of income.

While he’s doing that, we agreed that the cute boy would go around gathering the most basic of information. The date, the year, the name of the city, if any kinds of monsters exist in this world etc. He plans on achieving this by walking up to random people on the street and just asking them those questions.

My job is to listen to this and put up with it. In case you hadn’t noticed already, I have a real crippling case of social anxiety. In order to try and fix this, I’m following the cute boy around and listening to him ask random people what the year is. The second hand embarrassment will probably drive me insane, but I’ll have to put up with it for now. 

Hopefully the sheer embarrassment will help me forge connections to perform magic later, as well as exposing myself around strangers. Compared to what happened in the castle, this exercise should be nothing, right?

“Uh, hey, excuse me, what day is it?” 

“Huh? It’s the 26th.” Is how the first conversation begins. 

“Of what month?” 

“What?” 

“Of what month?” 

“Um, Beltane?” 

“No, month.” 

“The month is Beltane!”

The cringe rocks me to my core. Oh God I hate this, why did I insist on following you around again? But that’s useful information I guess. Their months are different from our months, we’ll have to keep that in mind.

“OK, so the month’s Beltane… would you mind telling me the year?” 

“What’s wrong with you? Did someone rattle your brain too hard in a duel?” 

“Yes, actually. Can’t remember a thing.” The guy he’s talking to looks noticeably upset after hearing that. 

“Oh really, I’m sorry to hear that. I apologize for being so rude, something similar happened to my little brother actually, so I hope you’ll accept my apology.”

Huh!? That’s something that happens regularly!? How is this country even still standing if that’s the case!? Thinking back, Cherilyn did say this country respected strength. Maybe everyone here is a muscle brained moron? 

The king looked really strong, too. Maybe the reason he survived Nilus’ slaughter was because he was strong enough to fend him off? I’m kind of basing his strength off of his clothes though, and those seem like the kind of things a ruler of such a country would wear, even if they weren’t all that strong. Not enough information to work with, so I’ll put it aside for now.

“So, would you mind telling me the year, then?” 

“Of course not, it’s 856. Anything else you need to know?” 

“No, that’s all for now, sorry for taking your time.” “Oh, don’t worry about it.”

And with that, we’re off walking somewhere else. “So it’s the 26th of “Beltane”, and the year is 856.” 

“Also he totally believed you when you said you lost your memories in a duel. Maybe we could keep using that excuse?” 

“Yeah, I think so too. I’m kind of playing the part of a huge idiot right now, so that could really work with that.” You don’t say…

“Oh, the months are different! Maybe the days of the week are different too.” Oh right, I hadn’t thought of that. 

“But the innkeeper mentioned there being 7 days in a week, so that hasn’t changed.” 

“Yeah, but I should probably ask anyway, hey, sir! Sir!” Oh God, at least give me a heads up before you do this! 

“Hey, can you tell me what the days of the week are?” 

“What?” 

“What the days of the week are.” 

“...Is this some sort of prank?” 

“I just dueled somebody and hit my head really badly, now I can’t remember what the days of the week are.”

“That must’ve been a hell of a duel then.” 

“Yeah, can’t even remember what it was about, can you help me out here, then?” 

“Yeah, of course-”

This process goes on for a while. Me and the cute boy suddenly thinking of a new, super basic thing we should know, him just asking some random guy on the street, me cringing, him giving the “hit my head in a duel” excuse and everybody being super understanding about that and telling him everything he asked to know.

The summary for the information we’ve gathered so far goes like this: The calendar this country and the surrounding ones use  has 8 months which each have anywhere from 45 to 47 days. This city’s name is Heafdes, and it is indeed the capital. There are all sorts of monsters in this world, including dragons. The names of the surrounding countries are the Aflian empire, Blulia, Eshea, as well as the pseudo states referred to as Monster Country & the Demon Lord’s territory.

We admittedly spent way too long asking around about the Demon Lord. The only really important takeaways from that were that both demons and angels existed in this world, and this “Demon Lord” wasn’t one of them for some reason. Also, apparently Uclait invaded the Demon Lord’s territory a couple of years back and over a million people died. Cherilyn also seemed to have been involved in this.

Getting back on track, we learned the names of all the Royal Selection candidates and their basic backgrounds. Rhectia Royther is a general who commands troops at the border of the Aflian empire, Alibas is a historian & demihuman, Ebenel is a dryad who lives in the “Great Ulfur Forests”, Amiel Leon is a noble & adventurer, Pitiful Girl is an escaped slave who led a slave rebellion in the Emednes mountains to the east, and Raphael Kaer seems to just be a normal guy.

That’s about the most important stuff. 

“The sun’s about to set. We should meet with blood eyes guy now.” I say. We did agree to eat at sunset, and I’m starving. 

“Blood eyes guy?” Oh no, I never said this to the cute boy before.

“Is that what you’ve been calling the blonde in your head?” I turn away from the cute boy out of embarrassment. 

“Y- yes…” 

“Huh, I’ve just been thinking of him as ‘The blonde’. Your nickname is a whole lot cooler than mine.” 

“T- thanks…”

“Huh, we still don’t know each other’s names, right? We were about to tell each other but then ‘blood eyes guy’ interrupted us. Yours started with a K, right?” He started calling him ‘blood eyes guy’. And he remembered what my name started with. 

“I’ve been calling you ‘void hair’, what have you been calling me?” Oh no. I don’t realize it at the time, but I start blushing and messing with my hair. 

“C- cute boy…” 

“Huh!? Really? You honestly think I’m that cute?” 

“Y- yes…” 

“Well, we obviously can’t keep calling each other void hair and cute boy. We should get to know each other’s actual names before ‘blood eyes guy’ interrupts us again.”

Yeah, I guess we should. Wait, we don’t know each other’s names, and we still have no idea what each other’s previous lives were like. That gives us an opportunity. Will he like my idea, though? Of course, he would totally be into that sort of thing, but it’s still making me nervous. Let me just make sure.

“H- hey… before we do that, can I ask a bit of a… personal question?” 

“Hm? Personal question? Sure.” 

“Did you… did you enjoy your last life?” The cute boy freezes at the question. Yeah, that’s a really difficult question, isn’t it?

“I don’t know? Not really, I didn’t hate it either though. I kind of just wasted up until I died. I was kind of just there. Even calling it ‘my life’ is a bit strange to me.” Alright, that’s all I need to know. I shouldn’t pry further.

“It was the same for me. I wasted all my time. I had so many great ideas and so many things I wanted to do and experience but I did nothing. I had so much time yet I wasted it all away. Honestly I can’t help but hate myself because of it.” The cute boy remains silent. I really shouldn’t be dumping all of this on him, I need to change the subject.

“Well at least you actually had anything you wanted to do. Now that you died once though you won’t waste another life, right?” He says to me before I can. 

“That’s what I wanted to talk about. Even if we didn’t choose this, let’s not waste our new lives, OK?” 

“Of course.”

“So then… let’s just leave our past lives behind.” 

“What?” 

“My past life was full of nothing but procrastination and failure. I don’t want to be associated with the ‘me’ of that life. So since no one knows my name in this world, how about I just take another name instead?” 

Cute boy remains silent at my proposal. “How about we just forget our old names, if they’re nothing but connections to lives full of wasted potential?”

“Alright! I get what you’re saying! I like it!” Oh thank God he’s OK with it. 

“Alright then, for now on I'll be… Kiaran! Kiaran is fine, right!?” 

“Of course, I quite like it.” Alright, cute boy is Kiaran now! I’m so happy this is actually happening! 

“Alright, call me Azariah from now on. OK, Kiaran” 

“Of course! Nice to meet you, Azariah!”

Aaaaahhh! This is making me so happy! Alright! My name is pretty much officially Azariah now! No one in this world knows my old name! I’m a completely new me! No more procrastination! No more not asking for help! I’m going to be a real go-getter in this life! No one will ever have to know just how much of a miserable failure I was in the last one!