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Chapter 9
*’Imprinting…?’
It didn’t sound good.
The word itself made it seem like once something was imprinted onto your body, it could never be erased.
“What is that?! What did you do to me?!”
My voice echoed loudly throughout the wrecked room.
The guy who had been running his hands through his hair with an expression that looked like he was at his wit’s end suddenly stood up.
Why are you getting up…?
I had only wanted an explanation.
I flinched at his sudden movement and backed away.
“W-Why… Why don’t you stay there and talk…”
Although he was smaller than when he had been a beast, he was still a threatening sight.
The alien was over two meters tall, with a body made entirely of solid muscle.
And now that I knew he could turn into a beast at any moment, he was even more intimidating.
I slowly backed away to keep my distance from him, but my back soon touched the wall.
Why would those GM guys give us such a tiny dorm when they have so much money?
And in this day and age, they’re making two people share a room!
How are contestants like me, who don’t have traits, supposed to survive?!
He destroyed the safe distance I had created and walked right up to me before leaning his face close to mine.
Without realizing it, I squeezed my eyes shut.
“The mark isn’t complete. It’s a half-imprint.”
“What…?”
“You don’t need to worry.”
His gaze was lowered toward the back of my neck, where he had bitten me earlier.
His expression was complicated, as if he felt both relieved and regretful.
He ran a hand over the back of his neck and hesitated for a moment.
“If I don’t touch you again.”
Acan Argo
Contestant No.: B-75
Planet: Moonscania
Trait: Beast Transformation
Age: 19
Height/Weight: 216 cm / 130 kg
Preferred Position: None
Special Skills: Swordsmanship, hand-to-hand combat, anything involving physical ability
Right.
So his trait was beast transformation…
Lying in bed in the middle of the night, I opened my roommate’s profile and gained a major realization.
I should have checked beforehand.
No, wait.
Even if I had known, who could have predicted that my roommate would turn into a beast and attack me the moment we met?
I glared at the empty bed beside me with a resentful look.
I’m the one who got bitten, so why is he the one acting all troubled?
Acan had looked extremely complicated as he gave me something that was barely even an explanation about the half-imprint and all that.
Then he roughly got dressed and left.
And now, even though it was past midnight, he still hadn’t returned.
‘Yeah, he must be embarrassed too! After all, he imprinted on me.’
At first, he had clamped his mouth shut as if he would rather die than tell me anything.
But I threatened to tell the production team that he had bitten me and relentlessly questioned him about the imprint.
After hesitating for a long time, he finally managed to explain.
On Moonscania, Acan’s home planet, an “imprint” was a special ritual performed only for one’s lifelong partner.
When two people were bonded through an imprint, the same mark appeared on both of their bodies, and they devoted themselves to each other until death.
Because it was such an important once-in-a-lifetime ritual, it was normally performed carefully with the mutual agreement of both parties.
Something happening impulsively like it had today was extremely rare.
So Acan seemed deeply shocked as well.
He had performed such a precious ritual, something a person might only do once in their entire life, on a roommate he had never even met before.
And on me, whom he believed to be a man.
It was understandable that he was shaken.
I wasn’t a Moonscanian.
And I wasn’t even the opposite sex.
“Let’s keep it a secret.”
Acan had let out a long sigh as he said that.
His shameless attitude annoyed me, but I was also hiding an embarrassing secret by disguising my gender.
I didn’t want to attract attention because of something like this either.
So I reluctantly agreed to keep his secret.
Without meaning to, Acan and I had become people who shared a secret.
According to Acan, the mark he had left on the back of my neck would naturally disappear after about three months unless he bit my neck again and completed the imprint.
He also said that the mark was barely visible during the day.
The problem was after the moon rose.
While the moon was in the sky, the mark would take on a blue glow and shine faintly.
Fortunately, it was on the inner side of my neck, so it wasn’t easy to see unless I pulled down my clothes.
I was incredibly lucky that the Space Idol League uniform had a turtleneck design.
Still, just in case, I decided I would cover it properly with tape starting tomorrow.
I should go to sleep now.
I turned over and pulled the blanket over myself, but something didn’t sit right with me.
It kept making me toss and turn.
What is this unpleasant feeling?
I struggled around in the darkness for a long time, as if wandering through a dream.
Then, the moment I realized what that vague feeling was, I suddenly sat upright.
“Come to think of it, that bastard didn’t even apologize!”
“You swindler!! What did you do to our Isseo?!”
It seemed that Mr. Han had chosen the wrong time.
He had deliberately waited until the charcoal-grilled ribs restaurant closed before coming over.
But he hadn’t expected Isseo’s father, Tamra, to come charging at him with a charcoal poker simply because there were no customers or witnesses around.
Mr. Han ran around the dining area to escape Tamra but eventually got grabbed by the collar.
“Ghk… F-Father… Please calm down first…”
“You think I can calm down?! My daughter… My daughter…!”
The holographic screen inside the restaurant continuously replayed Tamina’s face.
It had been playing on an endless loop ever since the first broadcast of the Space Idol League began.
-I’m not your type! Your type of star~
Isseo’s first impression mission was becoming a meme and spreading throughout Earth.
The reactions were divided, but regardless, the hottest person on Earth at this moment was Tamina.
“Why did my daughter become a man…!!!”
Tamra threw Mr. Han to the floor, pouring out all his anger and frustration.
The more he thought about it, the more absurd and helpless he felt, as if something precious had been stolen from him.
He had watched the first broadcast of the Space Idol League live, eagerly waiting for his daughter to appear.
Then a strange boy appeared instead.
The shock!
Had his daughter somehow changed gender while crossing through space?!
“Cough, cough… Ah, Father… I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you beforehand.”
Mr. Han quickly stood up, straightened his disheveled clothes, and bowed to Tamra.
“It was decided while we were on our way to Starlight. And of course! Isseo made the decision herself!”
“Why would my Isseo do that?! She’s so kind that she can’t even lie! And you’re telling me a girl like that would lie to the entire universe like that?! You expect me to believe it?!”
This time, Tamra grabbed the meat tongs and swung them.
Mr. Han quickly shouted before the tongs could come flying at him.
“Th-Then! Let me ask you one thing!”
“What?”
“Did anyone recognize who Isseo was?”
“What?”
“I mean… Did anyone recognize that Tamina was Isseo?”
Tamra rolled his eyes for a moment as he retraced his thoughts.
Then anger returned to his face.
“Of course there were! Why wouldn’t there be?! I knew she was my daughter the moment I saw her!”
“Well, that’s because you’re her father…”
At this rate, Mr. Han was definitely going to get hit.
Even though Thalesians couldn’t see their own future, he knew that much with absolute certainty.
Before Tamra’s anger boiled over, Mr. Han quickly continued.
“Think about it, Father! If anyone had recognized Isseo, would this restaurant really be this quiet?! Her friends would have come looking for her first. And the entertainment company she used to train at would have come too. They’d be making a big show of how they had raised such a talented trainee!”
Come to think of it, he wasn’t wrong.
The meat tongs that Tamra had raised above his head slowly lowered.
Until now, not a single person had asked why Isseo was acting like that.
Even the regular customers who knew Isseo very well didn’t seem to realize that Tamina was Tam Isseo.
“Isseo made this decision herself, Father.”
Mr. Han didn’t miss the turmoil on Tamra’s face.
“You know better than anyone how desperately Isseo wanted this, enough to change her gender. This time, she will definitely achieve her dream of becoming an idol.”
“…But what if she gets caught later?! What if something happens to our Isseo?!”
“That will never happen. I’ll stay by her side and make absolutely sure it doesn’t!”
Clang.
The tongs fell from Tamra’s hand and landed on the floor with a weak sound.
The anger and questions still hadn’t disappeared from his heart, but faced with the fact that his daughter had made the decision herself, Tamra’s strength left him.
Perhaps the fact that his handsome genes had played a major role in Isseo’s decision to become a male contestant also weighed heavily on his mind.
“You need to help Isseo, Father. This secret is known only to Isseo, me, and you. Even if the universe itself were to collapse, you must keep it.”
“If it’s our daughter’s decision… what else can I do?”
Tamra slumped his shoulders and sat down.
“I just have to trust her.”
On the holographic screen, his daughter’s face continued playing on an endless loop.
She was so beautiful that he could never get tired of looking at her.
He couldn’t understand how anyone could possibly think she looked like a man.
As Tamra sadly thought about his daughter, who was far away somewhere in the universe, his expression suddenly hardened.
A dangerous thought had occurred to him.
“Um, Supporter…”
“Yes?”
“If our Isseo is a male contestant… she eats and sleeps together with all the boys, right?”
“Yes. Her roommate has probably already been assigned by now.”
“Roommate?”
Mr. Han took out his hand screen to check the notices for supporters.
He failed to notice that Tamra’s voice had begun rising strangely at the end of his words.
“It’s one of the rules of the Space Idol League. They share rooms with other contestants so they can naturally build teamwork…”
“Roommate~?!”
Tamra slammed his fist onto the table and shot to his feet.
“F-Father…?”
“So our Isseo is sharing a bed with some other guy?!”
“They have separate beds, of course! They probably use a shared shower room to bathe, though…”
“A shared shower room…?!”
Mr. Han’s unnecessary additional explanation only set Tamra’s imagination on fire.
“Our Ina is showering together with those dark, wolf-like bastards?!”
Damn it…
The more Mr. Han explained, the more he felt like he was falling deeper into a trap.
He had only intended to tell Tamra the simple fact that Tam Isseo had entered the boy group league.
“F-Father! I’m in a hurry, so… I’ll contact you again!”
“Wait! I haven’t finished talking yet—”
Mr. Han used his busy schedule as an excuse and escaped the restaurant.
If he delayed even a little longer, he felt certain Tamra would grab him by the collar again and interrogate him all night.
He hurried toward his spaceship and immediately tried to contact Ina.
Beep-beep-beep. Beep-beep-beep.
A signal sounded from the hand screen, and Ina’s face appeared on the display.
“Supporteeeer~!”
Even though it was only a face on a screen, I was so happy to see my supporter again after only one day.
It had only been a few days since I had met him, but after suddenly being thrown into this unfamiliar world, he was the only person I could trust to be on my side.
That made me feel surprisingly close to him.
-You did well on the first broadcast. Not bad.
The supporter told me that I seemed to have definitely made an impression on the people of the universe.
Not everyone necessarily liked me, but simply making people aware that someone like me existed was already a great achievement.
-Did anything else happen?
Of course something happened.
I wanted to tell him in detail about the terrifying and horrifying incident from last night.
But I remembered Acan’s request to keep the imprint a secret, so I forced myself to hold it in.
Besides, the imprint would disappear without a trace after three months anyway.
After going as far as disguising my gender to participate, I didn’t want to give him another unnecessary thing to worry about.
-By the way, I heard your roommate has been decided?
“Yes! I don’t know if we’ll get along, but… I should become friends with him.”
-It’s good to get along with your roommate. There are some nasty people who deliberately manipulate others to create drama for their own stories, so be careful.
Still, he’s probably better than my roommate.
He almost killed me.
Those words nearly came out of my mouth, and I had to struggle to swallow them back down.
-Who’s your roommate?
“Acan. He’s a Moonscanian.”
Hello?
The supporter’s face on my hand screen froze.
Was there a problem with the connection?
I raised the hand screen higher to try to catch the signal, and then the supporter’s face moved again.
The connection hadn’t been cut.
The supporter had simply been speechless for a moment.
“What’s wrong?”
-Don’t they teach space history on Earth?
“We do learn it. But I always happen to get sleepy during that class…”
On days when I had practiced until dawn, it was hard to stay awake at school.
Especially during space history, which went back hundreds of years.
My eyes would close almost immediately, as if I’d been hit with a tranquilizer dart.
-You must have at least heard his nickname…
“What’s his nickname?”
-Never mind. There’s no need to develop prejudices beforehand, right? In fact, this is good.
“What is?”
-Try becoming friends with him.
“Yeees…?”
The image of my roommate twisting his joints and transforming into a beast last night flashed before my eyes.
Was this supporter really telling me to become friends with someone like that just because it wasn’t his problem? How could he say it so casually?
-I’m saying you should make use of his popularity. His ability to attract attention is practically guaranteed. As his roommate, attention will naturally come to you too.
That is a little tempting.
As I thought over the supporter’s words, I continued walking.
Then I suddenly bumped into something, and my hand screen shut off.
I was walking down the hallway after leaving the dormitory.
There had been nothing in the hallway just a moment ago, so what had I bumped into?
I casually raised my head.
And my eyes met Acan’s.
His face looked thinner than yesterday, making him look even sharper and more fierce.
“…Is burying your nose in other people’s chests your hobby?”
“……!”
The moment I met those bright yellow eyes, I remembered something I had vaguely heard during that half-asleep space history class.
A famous nickname for the Moonscanians suddenly came back to me.
The Slaughterers of the Moon.
Why did I only remember that now…?
That infamous planet!
