Notice: After re-reading chapter 1, I decided to remove it because it does not line up with the direction I decided to take this story with. So I rearranged some scenes from chapter 2 to make this the real start of the story. Hopefully, this won't confuse returning readers.

You know, it's been a long time since I last had someone run up to me with their phone out, screaming for a selfie.

In the weeks following Ginza, there was never a lack of them after the media mistakenly took my incredibly ability to point people away from obvious danger to be some great heroic feat. Being the lazy weeb I am, I never bothered to correct them, and it was from there that things spiralled out of control.

With my smirking face plastered across screens all over Tokyo, perhaps even all of Japan, it became near impossible to walk the three blocks distance between my home and the closest convenience store without having a rampant mob dogging on my heels wielding selfie-sticks like pitchforks. Getting my daily cup of decaf also began including pieces of paper shoved under my nose with requests to autograph them.

I'd like to say that I came to enjoy all the extra attention, but no. After shaking hundreds of hands from people who evidently thought I had nothing better to do but shake hands all day, I quickly made the decision to move out of my apartment and onto Narashino base to regain some much needed privacy. Thankfully, the men and women in base were much more reserved, understanding that I had merely done my duty, and with a few exceptions generally did not bend head over ass to lick my boot, allowing me the peace to read my mangas in my room.

Unfortunately, the media misunderstood this relocation effort on my part and began broadcasting headlines across news stations such as: "Hero of Ginza leading preparations to strike back at the Empire!" To which, the public swallowed up like whales with plastic, making occasions when I had to necessarily leave the base even more hectic and it wasn't long before I had to start petitioning fellow officers to help me run basic errands. This did little to endear me to the people who thought my heroic act was merely a product of right place right time, a notion I whole heartedly agree.

Needless to say, my taste of fame was a bitter one and I did not for one moment miss it when we finally deployed to the Special Region and the flashing paparazzi's cameras became blasting artilleries. The novelty of my achievement did not take long to dissolve soon after as men and women settled into the jobs which they came to do. And as the days passed spent exploring this whole new magical world, I too eventually forgot most of what happened on that fateful afternoon, even less so of what I did.

So it was to my complete surprise when this morning someone with a MP badge came sprinting towards me, waving his phone furiously. At first a sense of dread welled up inside me as I thought that the MP had somehow discovered my contraband volumes of Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid XXX edition. But as he came closer, I noticed he had a huge smile across his face, and it turned out that he had a much friendlier purpose than to expose my peculiar fetishes.

"Can I take a selfie with you please, sir? It would be something to send to my daughter."

Like I said, it'd been a while since I last had someone ask me for one, so it took me a bit of time to register his request. But I eventually did and indulged him, even signing on a picture of his nine-year-old daughter.

Accordingly, he was a part of the newly arrived units rotating in to aid in the policing of the growing refugee camp in Alnus, which would explain his eagerness to meet me when most on base were already accustomed/tolerant to my presence.

We talked for a bit about the situation back home and apparently, to my utter dismay, my undeserved heroic reputation hadn't faded away like I expected it to but rather, have gone up even more considerably in the eyes of the public as greatly exaggerated rumours of my feats in the Special Region trickled in.

I was unaware of this fact even though I'd made the short trip back home last month for my address at the Diet, possibly because I was constantly shipped around locations by Public Security and all that other shambles. If I had been, I would have explained that in everything I did I had only strived to do the bare minimum; it was purely accidental that I actually managed to save some lives.

Not quite feeling up to telling the MP all that, I then shifted the conversation to about other things, but eventually my limited depository of small talk topics ran out and I made the weak excuse of needing to attend to something else. Naturally, he somehow took that to mean that I was likely off saving more lives of oppressed species and he heaped more praises onto me before leaving me to it.

"Damn, imagine if there's more heroes like you in the world," he said in a passing note.

I almost burst out laughing. If there was just two people as lazy as me, this entire expedition would have failed. Three of me, and we would all be speaking Saderan right now.

Unfortunately, I never got the chance to correct him as he walked away before I could. I guess it will just have to wait till the next time I see him, but already I'm forgetting what he looks like; that alone should be proof that I'm no hero because what kind of hero forgets people's faces.

With that said though, his passing words has got me thinking. If not me, who then is the true hero who saved the refugees of Coda village, who lifted the siege of Italica, who rescued Noriko from slavery, who delivered the dark elves from extinction, who finally stopped Zorzal at the foot of the Imperial throne?

It didn't take me long to come up with an answer for that one. There was no true hero. It was a joint effort by the entire Task Force with some friends that we managed to do some heroic things. However, if I'm really forced to give a definite answer then I would say that it's the enlisted men of the RCT3. They were there for most of my so called 'deeds' and deserve more of the credit than I do. Hopefully, they know that. If not, maybe I should tell them.

Either way, I'm writing all of this down now because it's possible that some journalist back home would be willing to pay a kidney for this sort of stuff. That's one benefit of fame, I figured, you at least get to make some money off it. All the better if they also manage to take my word for it and not dismiss it as some hero's modesty. Hopefully, once they see the type of person I truly am, it will put an end to my false heroic image and all that other nonsense that comes with it.

But I guess to convince them I should give a more detailed account of what really happened throughout my time in the Special Region. For that, I guess I have to go back to the beginning. Back to when I first met the members of Recon Team 3…