Lady Anri’s Diet
Time to celebrate! Still pitching our protagonist!
There's a new serialisation that's going to have an entirely different, title, protagonist, and general perspective; "Evil God at Random - A Fairly Average Evil God Girl and a Summoned Hero". It's going to go public by the twenty-fourth of October.
Also, I know I just went on about still pitching for the protagonist, but this version's going to have a few revisions to Anri's main character status.
I'll use this opportunity for another announcement. I've been told that, since it's been over a year since the initial publication of Volume One, it's okay to post the store-limited short stories. Which I'm about to do.
I found myself face-to-face with great misfortune. It wouldn't have been far-fetched to denote it as a tragedy, either.
"My stomach… It's… Just Squishy… Uh-oh."
I attempted to assuage my worries by giving my gut a light pinch, only to realise, and with utter horror and despair, that it was all too easy for me to grab a whole chunk between my fingers. If I had to find some sort of comparison that might adequately describe the way I felt, it would probably be something along the lines of realising that you were out of toilet paper while you were on the can.
The assumption I'd had, namely that I wouldn't lead any sort of luxurious lifestyle when I came to this world, had led to my own negligence. The general lack of physical activity on my part had been my downfall.
I couldn't even recall any event in recent memory where I'd become that active. Actually, that might have been an understatement. I've barely even stepped outside the dungeon, not since Tena had come here.
If I took all of that into account, it certainly wasn't difficult to imagine why I'd gotten fat - pardon, I misspoke. I'd just put on a teeny-tiny bit of weight, that was all. Regardless, now that I'd finally taken notice, I really had no excuse. I had to take some counter-measures. I still considered myself a fine young maiden at heart, even if that wasn't always apparent.
"Maybe I should just start wearing loose robes. Maybe no one'll notice…"
Temptation whispered sweet words into my head, but I did my best to ignore it. This really wasn't a matter of being noticed or not; this was a matter of pride. A maiden's pride.
"Exercise is such a bore, though…"
True, that much I agreed with - no, stop. That was close. I couldn't give in to the temptation. I steeled my resolve, my mind completely set on seeing this through to the end.
There were two specific ways, I thought, which would help me pull through this new dieting plan.
The reason people got fat in the first place - sorry, misspoke again. The reason people put on a little weight could be traced back to the idea that some people took in more calories than they could burn off. Whatever remained in excess would turn into these sorry clumps of flesh that would stick to your body. Following that strain of logic, dieting could be divided into two rather broad definitions. One could either focus on burning away more calories, or one could try and tone down their calorie intake.
"Uh… Am I just being a bother…?"
"No, I was just a little surprised. Didn't think we'd get to eat something like this. Down the hatch."
I couldn't do it. Not with Tena looking up at me like that, not with her eyes tearing up. Telling her that I was on a diet and that I wouldn't eat this seemed nothing short of needless cruelty. Besides, telling Tena that I was going on a diet sort of felt as if I was already admitting to the world that I'd put on just the tiniest bit of weight. I wanted to avoid that. I wanted to be a bit more nonchalant about the whole thing.
Alright then, I could always start my diet tomorrow. It was just one day off, after all. It wouldn't change much. Starting tomorrow, I just had to take things more seriously.
You know what, what ended up happening with me and the meat could just stay between us, couldn't it? But there's probably just one more thing I had to mention… Tena may or may not have thought that the whole thing made me really happy, so she'd come up with the idea to make steak our go-to main dish. It was a big miscalculation on my part, I had to admit.
Please, just… Just give me a break…
I'd been stuck in plenty of binds even since I was chucked into this world. That didn't mean that I hadn't made any pleasant experiences, obviously. Among those pleasant experiences was the noticeable lack of that fiendish device that sunk women throughout the world into the deepest throes of despair. Yes indeed, the accursed device we knew as 'scales' didn't even exist in this universe. And, in my humble opinion, any person who had the sheer gall to ask me what bathroom scales even were should fall prey to their reviled machinations.
Anyway. Without bathroom scales, I had no way of measuring the minute fluctuations in weight I might have gone through. Even if I did gain a little weight, I had nothing beyond the scope of my own erroneous calculations to make use of. Which was why I really shouldn't dwell on the issue.
Plump and round… No. I couldn’t do it. It still gnawed at me.
The very next day, I finally swallowed my shame and asked Tena to stick to meals that would benefit my diet. And so began my dietary struggle.
And there you have it, that ends the first of several special side-stories released with the publicised version of Volume One. I should mention that I wrote four different types of short stories. (It's the first time I write them out here, though).
The publication of Evil God At Random is about four weeks away, so one short story every week seems sort of fitting. Yeah, I think that's the pacing I'll stick to when I upload these.