"But really, Mikado, it's been years—you've changed a lot…"
Tearju looked Mikado Ryouko up and down carefully before nodding thoughtfully.
"Hmm… you've become much more mature."
Tearju's remark immediately drew Mikado's attention away from Eriri. She sighed and rolled her eyes helplessly.
"Years? It's been over twenty years since we last saw each other, alright? I'm not that teenage girl anymore. Maturing is kind of expected."
"Ah… right! I almost forgot—we came from more than twenty years ago. So for you, it really has been decades."
Mikado's brow furrowed slightly. "Hm? What do you mean? Tearju, you said you came from over twenty years ago?"
"That's right. Back when Eriri rescued me, Eve, and Nemesis from that lab, we spent more than two months surviving the final stages of the thirteen-year Galactic War. Then we stayed on Earth for another two months before leaping ahead ten years to the present."
Though her airheaded nature had made her momentarily forget, Tearju hadn't truly lost track of time.
Recalling all she had experienced with Eriri over the past six months, a nostalgic look crossed Tearju's face.
Hearing the explanation, Mikado's eyes widened in disbelief, her calm demeanor starting to falter.
"Is that for real?"
She swallowed hard and instinctively turned to Eriri, who had been quietly watching.
"Yep! It's true. Tearju really is someone I brought back from twenty-three years ago—and she's still eighteen and as youthful as ever~"
Eriri smiled as she confirmed the shocking truth.
Although the Galactic Federation had advanced tremendously in both military and technological terms, with Deviluke's king capable of destroying planets, FTL spaceships cruising across galaxies, and tech capable of teleportation or consciousness transfer—it had never achieved time travel.
There were indeed many labs researching the concept of time, but none had made any real breakthroughs.
"...It's kind of hard to believe, but I can tell you're not lying."
Mikado let out a deep breath.
She still had doubts, but she trusted her friend. She knew Tearju's personality well enough to know she wouldn't fabricate such a thing.
"No wonder I couldn't find any trace of you on Earth years ago… And no wonder you still look so young. At first, I thought maybe you'd developed something to preserve your youth."
"Eh? Mikado, did you come to Earth looking for me?"
"Well… not exactly. More like a coincidence." Mikado walked over to the consultation desk and pulled out a chair, sitting down elegantly. "I just wanted to relax for a while on this remote planet, and it so happened I received intel that you had been spotted on Earth, so I thought—why not try to meet up?"
"Oh, I see," Tearju replied with an understanding nod.
"Still, it's kind of strange now. I'm over twenty years older than you! We were best friends back in school, and now we're like people from two completely different eras."
Gazing at Tearju's face—now even more beautiful than it had been at fourteen—Mikado touched her own cheek with a wry smile.
But Tearju took the comment seriously. She frantically waved her hands in protest.
"That's not true at all! Mikado, you look really young too—we're still best friends~"
Tearju wasn't wrong. Though Mikado Ryouko was in her early forties, she looked barely older than her early twenties.
Her dark red shoulder-length hair fell smoothly around her face, and her collagen-rich cheeks were delicate and well-shaped. Her tall and flawless figure rivaled Tearju's, and her light, revealing outfit made her appear particularly alluring.
As the universe's top doctor, it wasn't surprising she could maintain such youthful beauty.
"Alright, alright, I was just teasing. You really haven't changed one bit." Mikado said with a helpless smile.
She then turned to Eriri with curiosity in her eyes.
"By the way, Eriri, I hope you'll indulge my curiosity—how exactly did you bring Tearju from more than twenty years ago? Was it with a time machine?"
"Nope, no time machine. Just a bit of simple time manipulation. Nothing special." Eriri waved her hand nonchalantly.
Her offhand, boastful tone left Mikado mentally flooded with question marks.
"Time manipulation? Simple?" Mikado muttered in disbelief. "That's a time-based ability—far more advanced than spatial ones…"
"Well, it really is simple for me. No need to think too much about it."
Eriri lightly patted Mikado's crossed thigh and flashed her a charming smile, stunning her for a second and making her forget to press further.
"Tearju, Mikado-sensei, you two keep chatting." Eriri glanced at both women as she stood. "I need to step out for a bit. Let's go have lunch together during the noon break."
Hearing this, Tearju quickly stood up and grabbed Eriri's hand. "Eriri, do you need any help?"
"Nope, just stay here and catch up with Mikado-sensei. It's been decades since you last met—don't you want to reconnect with your best friend?"
Right in front of Mikado, Eriri affectionately hugged Tearju, then rose onto her toes and touched her cheek against Tearju's—before gently kissing her lips.
Noticing Mikado's slightly perplexed gaze, Tearju blushed a little, but then obediently nodded.
"Alright then…"
"Mikado-sensei, I'll leave my Tearju in your care."
"Don't worry, I'll take good care of this scatterbrained one."
...
After leaving the nurse's office, Eriri strolled leisurely along the campus paths.
It was still class time, so the campus was fairly empty, with only a few faculty and staff occasionally passing by.
At that moment, a short, pudgy middle-aged man came hopping around a corner ahead. He wore a flamboyant suit, sunglasses, and had a receding hairline styled in horn-like tufts—his face plastered with a greasy, perverted grin.
The sight of him instantly wiped away most of Eriri's relaxed mood. Her expression turned cold and full of disdain.
That man was the principal of Sainan High School—and in the original story, Eriri's most hated character.
Though To LOVE-Ru was partly a comedy manga, having a principal who constantly thought about lewd things, spied on and followed female students, and even attempted physical harassment was absurd.
Even more outrageous was that, despite his frequent harassment, the police never intervened.
Yes, he often ended up beaten by the girls he harassed—but that didn't erase what he had done.
Since the corner he emerged from wasn't far from Eriri's current location, he spotted her almost immediately after stepping out.
In an instant, the principal let out a bizarre shriek, and the lenses of his sunglasses turned into heart shapes.
Normally, Eriri's innate noble aura would intimidate most people from approaching her, but this perverted principal seemed completely unfazed.
From the way he raised his hands, Eriri could already predict what his next move would be.
Having read the original story, Eriri knew this degenerate would often strip down to just his underwear upon seeing a pretty girl and then lunge at her.
So, to spare her eyes the trauma, Eriri didn't wait—she immediately froze him in place.
Ordinarily, Eriri would have erased such a person from existence without hesitation.
But this time, for a pervert whose entire brain was consumed by lewd thoughts, she decided to try something different.
"When you gaze at a girl with impure thoughts, your eyes will suffer the pain of having your eyeballs burst a hundredfold."
"When you attempt to sexually harass a girl, your body will endure the pain of a hundredfold total skeletal fracture."
"When you mentally fantasize about a girl, your brain will suffer the pain of a hundredfold neural maelstrom."
Eriri calmly spoke these three terrifying word-spirits and cast them onto the perverted principal.
It was clear what kind of future awaited him. Bound by these three curses, his life from now on would be filled with unending torment.
The only way to lessen the pain would be to completely abandon all lust toward women and become a man of pure thoughts.
Who knows—perhaps someday the suffering might drive him to even change his orientation.
With that amusing thought, Eriri glanced at the principal with a mocking smile before lifting the immobilization.
The moment he regained control of his body, the effects of all three word-spirits triggered at once.
He immediately crumpled to the ground, convulsing in agony. The pain was so intense that he couldn't even scream—only rasp out intermittent gasps.
Eriri had never claimed to be kind. She could give infinite warmth to her family, show kindness to people or things she liked…
But everything else? She could ignore it completely.
Humming a light tune, Eriri walked forward in a cheerful mood.
She didn't pause for even a second as she passed the principal, who lay twitching and contorted on the ground.
His hoarse moans formed a stark contrast with Eriri's silvery humming—like hell and heaven intertwined.
...
About ten minutes later…
In that short time, Eriri had walked around most of Sainan High School.
Eventually, she made her way to the edge of the sports field, slipped through the iron-wire fence and a small grove of trees, and arrived at the old school building—long abandoned by students.
The old school building had nearly a century of history.
Built during an era when concrete architecture was not yet common, its structure was made entirely of wood, and its design was vastly different from the modern school buildings.
Time had taken its toll—the stairs and hallways were damaged in many places, and even the intact sections were brittle and at risk of collapse.
With no lighting and shaded by surrounding trees, the interior of the building remained dark even during the day—like a haunted house.
Places like this often became the origin of urban legends.
And in the case of Sainan High School, calling the old schoolhouse a haunted house wasn't an exaggeration.
After all, it really was home to a beautiful ghost girl.
And that ghost was the reason Eriri had come here.
...
Shizu Murasame, a ghost who had died over 400 years ago.
The old school building had been built on the site of her former home. From its construction until its abandonment, she had lived there the entire time.
Even though she had spent nearly a century in what became a school, her knowledge remained frozen in the era she came from—400 years ago.
If there was one thing she had gained during that time, it was learning to play the piano.
On quiet nights, she would often play an old, barely-functional piano that had long been abandoned.
Thankfully, few students ever came to the school at night. If they had, rumors of a haunted building with piano music might have spread like wildfire.
Instead, there were no such ghost stories yet.
Shizu's personality was cheerful, carefree, and just a bit airheaded. Despite centuries of isolation, her character remained unchanged.
She spent most of her time napping, and the rest amusing herself in solitude.
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