an unfortunate change in genre

Part 39

"I really don't like romance novels."

Cale looked up from where he was currently beating the crap out of a training dummy less out of a desire to hone his swordsmanship and more so because it relieved his stress. "...that came from nowhere. What's going on?"

Roksu frowned. It hadn't come from nowhere at all. But Cale would be pretty pissed to know that a significant portion of this pivotal time in their lives had been summarized in a trashy romance novel that depicted him as a villain. He definitely didn't want to bring up the main couple out of consideration for Cale's feelings.

"...I just don't like the cliches and tropes." Roksu grumbled. "Contrived moments cooked up so that the author can forcefully shove people into situations where they'll have no choice but to fall in love? It's dumb."

"You're being unusually verbose about it." Cale pointed out. "It's gotta be bothering you quite a bit. Did you read one with a bad ending or something?"

"...the worst ending. But honestly, the entire thing was a bit shit."

Despite Roksu's fondness for [A World Without a Hero] in the years preceding his rebirth into that world, he'd come to hold the novel with a certain amount of contempt now. For starters, it was definitely written by someone who knew intricate goings on of this world but chose to frame them in such a trite way and focus on a damn couple instead of the ridiculously overpowered villain who could fucking reincarnate. why did they spend several pages on Rosalyn's prepration for a fucking ball when they had a practically immortal enemy.

Oh, Roksu totally needed information about the specific colors of gems on Rosalyn's burned into the back of his eyeballs and not, oh I don't know, a method for killing the unkillable.

Cale put down his sword and sat down next to his brother, a frown taking over his expression. "...is it one of the things you won't talk about?"

Won't was an interesting choice in words. Roksu sort of resented it. It wasn't like Cale didn't have all sorts of things he won't talk about as well. Saying it like that implied that Roksu was just being secretive and stubborn.

...he might be behaving a bit secretive and stubborn... but there was still a lot of information he planned to take to his grave. It would only complicate matters further if he talked about his past and experiences.

"What do you think of romance novels?" Roksu changed the topic abruptly, making it obvious that Cale was correct in his assertion.

Cale blinked and scoffed, looking away. "...used to like them."

That was a somewhat unexpected reaction. Roksu glanced at his brother curiously.

He didn't really want to know the details, in fact he hadn't even been curious about the answer to the question, he'd just asked it impulsively. Maybe if Cale liked that sort of thing he wouldn't hate the novel written about this world so much. Or if he hated them, they could join forces in their hatred of the trite and contrived.

But this was an answer somewhere in between.

Cale apparently decided to elaborate on his own before Roksu made up his mind over whether he even wanted to know more or not. "When I was younger. I used to think stupid shit like that'd be nice or I want that. Then reality fucking happened and I realized how stupid they really were."

Oh.

Roksu hadn't realized that his feelings for Rosalyn had impacted him in such a seemingly mundane way. He supposed it made sense though, the main couple played out like a romance novel so it would be a bit intolerable to read novels with similar subject matter.