Friend Zone - Chapter 5

“Come on!”

“Let’s go out.”

“It’ll be fun.”

I finally returned to my dorm after spending countless hours cleaning and looking up stuff in the library. If it was a school night, I’d immediately crash. I had a lot to think about, so I just wanted to lie down and reset my mind for a bit, but no sooner did I enter the building than I encountered three girls all dressed up to go clubbing. It was clear that they were all waiting for a ride. As soon as they saw me, I could see the excitement in their eyes, and they ended up following me up to my dorm room.

They were all dressed in short skirts and skimpy blouses. Their hair was up and they were in full makeup. While attending our academy, we lived in coed dorms that were split by sex. The girls had the two lower floors while the guys got the upper floors. It was arranged this way so that people could meet with and grow close to other knights and magi. Eventually, once a mage graduated, they would select one or more knights who would then serve the mage for the rest of their lives.

Knights were sworn to give up all material possessions upon being selected by a mage. This is one of the reasons knights were so desperate to enjoy themselves before graduating. It wasn’t like they couldn’t have sex after becoming knights, but if they got the wrong mage, it could become a big problem. Some mages married their knights, but that depended on the order. Some orders of mages wanted complete celibacy, and if you ended up with such a mage, they might forbid their knight from also engaging in any nightly activities for life. Others simply grew jealous of their knight having fun and forbade it. There were loose knights, but they were considered failures and could rarely complete difficult missions.

The bond between a mage and a knight wasn’t all that different from the bond between the demoness and me. A knight gave their life in servitude, protecting the mage when they couldn’t protect themselves, and in exchange, the knight gained strength, immunity to illness, resistance to poison, long life, and the power of sword arts, which allowed them to infuse vita into their sword.

As for why the school didn’t worry about their mages being defiled by their knights, it was pretty simple. Every female mage had a magical spell protecting them. As long as they attended the academy, this spell made it so any guy who tried to stick it in a girl, his thing would wilt and fall off. They showed every man images of this grisly scene on the first day. Now, if the girl was at least C rank, she could deactivate the spell herself, but that would lock her at C rank forever, and the school would know she deactivated it and expel her. Few girls so close to graduating would throw away their futures, and few guys would risk their penis in such a manner either.

Of course, that didn’t stop mages or knights from partying and releasing steam. Although mages couldn’t have sex, they could still give head, handjobs, or just make out. Their magical protection only seemed to make some of them bolder. After all, they could act as slutty as they wanted to, and no one could doubt their purity. Guys didn’t have that leeway. They couldn’t cross the line without severe repercussions, and no one could doubt the school’s ability to protect these women, so the girls didn’t hesitate to dress as provocatively as possible and even flirt aggressively.

So, where did I come in? Somehow, I had become my dorm’s designated driver. One day during my first year, a girl got drunk and stranded, and as one of the few guys on campus with a car, I volunteered to go save her. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a bit hopeful that a drunk girl might make out with me. I was still depressed after being abandoned by my childhood friend, and it was before I had grown close to Denise.

Before we could even kiss, she ended up vomiting all over my car. As soon as I got to speed, she erupted like a fountain. It smelled so bad that I lost all interest in her. When I brought her home safe and sound, I had gotten a reputation for being a good guy. Having a car and a license only seemed to seal the deal, although I had to pay to get it professionally cleaned after.

Immediately, a dozen girls in my dorm started to play buddy-buddy with me. I quickly learned that it wasn’t my phase of being popular, but rather my phase of being used. They had no interest in me whatsoever, but they wanted me to drive them places, and perhaps more important, make sure they got home safely. The worst of them tried to get me to pay all their expenses while they partied. That way if they failed to con a guy into paying for their evening, I became their backup wallet.

At first, I served my role excitedly, even thinking that I might be able to get in their good graces. I figured one of the girls would eventually want to make out and maybe I’d find a knight who wanted to go further. At least, maybe I’d find a mage who wanted me as her future knight. I eventually learned that all of their flirtation was just skin-deep. Not a single girl ever treated me as anything more than a friend or little brother.

A few situations arose where I could have taken advantage, but I knew these women too well, and by that time, I had seen them at their worst. I had seen guys who had been in similar situations who decided to take things to the next step, only to be accused of sexual assault the next day. Even if the school didn’t do anything, the girls would spread heinous rumors and the guys would be pressured until they dropped out. It taught me to always be careful, not just for myself, but for them too.

That’s because the girls could always blame me for not stopping them from making a bad decision. Mind you, if the situation was really bad, I’d step in, but even in the borderline cases they expected me to interfere. Even more maddening, other circumstances felt like the got angry at me for even getting involved. I realized that their desires were arbitrarily based on how hot the guy was. If he was hot, she was into the dubious stuff, and if he wasn’t, she was not. Thus, I made a habit of only stepping in when the guy looked average or worse.

It wasn’t easy either. I walked a thin line which sometimes got me in trouble with the girls. At the moment, I was in the clear, but despite how long I’ve hung with these girls, and all the compromising situations I’ve seen them in, there wasn’t an ounce of loyalty toward our supposed deep friendships. They would turn on me with a single word, and not look back.

Yet, some guys in the dorm chose to envy me. They saw me going out to the club with various pretty women and they thought I was lucky. To them, I look like one of those protagonists from a harem anime. After all, in most of those shows, sex isn’t even available, and the male lead still got to experience the joy of women hanging all over him. How could they even understand how shitty it was hanging out with a bunch of girls who just wanted to use you? Only someone who lived in the friend zone could truly appreciate just how crummy such a zone was.

I hadn’t wanted to go out. I was tired and I had a lot on my mind. I wanted to think about how I was going to seduce Gwen using what I knew. As for Sophie, I’d have to deal with her sometime too, although it wasn’t like I had fantasies about banging that bitch. Either way, I had information on both of those girls, and I had to come up with a plan. Especially when it came to Sophie. The ball was already rolling with her, so I couldn’t just pretend nothing happened.

That wasn’t even the end of my worries. Tomorrow would be Denise’s fated date. That’s why I originally told the girls no. However, they started following me while begging right in the hallway, calling me a ‘meanie’ and ‘no fun’. They certainly didn’t respect my feelings. The guys in the nearby dorms poked their heads out of their rooms, and seeing three scantily clad girls begging me to go out, their expressions immediately darkened.

Maybe… getting out and clearing my head would be a good thing.

There was just too much that had happened today. My hand instinctively rubbed my arm where the mark of the devil was. I also considered the grimoire. These girls would be drunk, and this time I would know their kinks and insecurities. Assuming Andromeda wasn’t lying, then all I needed to do was take their virginity and that spell would kick in and she’d be mine!

“Fine, I’ll go,” I responded, hiding my interest.

“See, I told you he’d turn around.”

“You’re a great friend!”

“We’ll set you up with a girl tonight, promise.”

“Yay… yay…” I had heard it all before.

If they did set me up with a girl, she was rarely a ready and willing slut, but their ugly friends with great personalities, although more often they were bitch queens who wanted nothing to do with men and no one else would date. Then there were the traumatized sexual assault victims who were told I was as harmless as a flower so they could work on their trauma. I did try to date one once, and after ten dates and hundreds of dollars of no physical contact, six weeks into it I walked in on her sucking another guy’s cock. It turned out her trauma only existed around men she didn’t want to fuck.

Suffice it to say, I didn’t want to be set up with anyone. As far as being a friend, that lasted as long as I paid for their drinks. As soon as I refused, they’d take off, usually finding their way home in the passenger seat of whatever Chad managed to pick them up. I always like to laugh at those guys, especially the ones unaffiliated with the school. I wondered what their faces were like when they finally got her home and found the mage mark, which was placed on the small of every female mage’s back.

Well, only two of the three girls begging me tonight were mages. The third girl was a knight. They were taking her out because she had just passed the Knight Valour exam. With that, she was a Chevalier, capable of forming a bond with a mage. The two other girls wanted to drag her out for one last night of debauchery before she settled down and became a mage’s knight.

Well, she had been sowing her oats every week for the last year. I had already seen her enter her dorm room with at least ten different guys. I pitied whatever man ended up becoming her mage. To finally get a knight and have them be heavily used goods was pitiable. Then again, knowing how few female knights there were to male, she’d be snatched up by a male mage instantly.

Suffice it to say, I wasn’t interested in banging her, and her mage friends were off-limits too. However, if I brought them, I might be able to use them to get someone else. I wouldn’t make any shots I didn’t take. Plus, since I hadn’t eaten, I was hungry. It’d be nice to get something to eat while I was out.

“Let me get ready. I’ll be down in a bit,” I told the girls once I made up my mind.

“Ahh… Fine…”

“Hurry up!”

The girls didn’t look pleased, but I didn’t quite care. None of them wanted to come into my room or anything. That was no surprise. I closed the door and leaned against it, taking a deep breath. Being friendly with such vacuous people was exhausting. However, maybe that would change.

It was Friday night, so my roommate was already out. He was nearly as popular as me, however where my popularity was a façade of friend zones, he was loved by a lot of women. His name was Lance, and he was one of the most promising knights in my grade. He wasn’t a bad guy and even sympathized with me a bit, but we lived in different worlds. It was also probable that a lot of girls became my friends with the hopes of getting closer to Lance.

Either way, he was out. I still made sure 100% that his computer was off, and his bed was empty before I dared bring out my grimoire. As soon as I brought it out, it gave off a dark light. I opened it up, and after passing the pages of the first three girls, I turned to the first blank.

“Patty.” I gave the name of the knight from outside, but when nothing happened, I added the next. “Cindy?”

Still, nothing appeared. I frowned, picking the grimoire up and trying to say their names several different ways. Why wasn’t it working? I sat down on the edge of my bed, feeling confused.

“I’ve already explained it once. You can only add women who have some kind of relationship with you. They must have either a positive or negative impression of you.” A voice came not from the book, but right behind me.

I jumped up, dropping the grimoire. The book never reached the ground though. Right before it hit, it disappeared. When I turned, Andromeda was lying on my bed. She was on her side, leaning against one arm while she flipped through the open grimoire sitting on my bed with the other.

“Andromeda? You’re here?”

“You’re the one who keeps summoning my grimoire. You need to be more careful with it, by the way.”

“Uh… what do you mean no relationship? I’ve hung out with those girls many times!” I declared, trying to cover up my mistake.

She smirked. “Yet, those girls don’t have a single impression of you. They neither like you nor hate you. They are completely indifferent.”

I frowned. “Those… bitches.”

She giggled. “They call us evil, but the women of your species can do things that even make my vile heart go cold. I’ve even said before that women will sleep with people without attaching any emotion to it. You’re just a wallet and wheels to these women.”

At that, I let out a sigh and sat down on the bed at her feet. I lowered my head in my hands. “I can’t say that I’m surprised.”

“Hey…” I felt her nudge my back. “Don’t be getting so upset with me now. We’re just getting started.”

I pulled my head up and forced a smile on my face. “I know, I will succeed. I promise.”

She looked at me a moment and then looked away. “Don’t smile at me, it’s creepy.”

“Eh? What do you mean, creepy?”

“You’re creepy! Don’t be creepy!” She kicked me in the back.

“You little brat!” I grabbed a pillow and then threw it at her.

I assumed she’d disappear, but the pillow slammed her right in the face. When the pillow finally fell, her expression had changed into one that looked somewhat malevolent.

“Hmph! Attacking your master? Punishment!” Her body disappeared, and then my arm started to burn.

“Ahhhhh! I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” I rolled around the bed for a bit until the pain subsided.

However, when I finally started getting dressed, I did feel a little better. I removed my school uniform and quickly cleaned up. I put on something more casual and then sprayed on some cologne. By the time I entered the dorm lobby, the sun was just starting to set, and the night was still young. The girls immediately pounced on me, unwilling to wait any longer to get to the club.

In many ways, it felt the same as every other night, but one thing did change. I had made a deal with a demoness. I wasn’t the same pushover I used to be. In time, everyone in school would realize it.