Clank.
A cold metallic sound rang out. It was the sound of feet being dragged.
A broom that had been standing in the corner toppled over. In the dim light, dust billowed up into the air. A dizzying sensation.
“Lift your head. We’re not suspecting you.”
The frigid air clung to cheeks.
“……”
A basement somewhere in Tane Academy.
Back in the days when magical tools weren’t as advanced as they are now, it had been a space prepared to refrigerate food ingredients.
Once ingredients could be kept cool by other means, it became a place to house dangerous monsters procured for student training.
A place far too cold for two people to face each other. It was more like a prison.
“But we have our circumstances too. We just need to check and move on.”
“……I already showed you the back of my neck.”
“Yes. You did.”
“Then I can’t understand why you had to call only me here to check again.”
“There’s an analysis saying the mark might not be on the nape of the neck. We need to examine the entire body.”
“……Analysis.”
“Yes. I don’t like this either. But it’s my job. What can I do?”
“That ‘analysis’ from your oh-so-great Special Task Knights?”
“…….”
Silence fell.
Niel lifted the visor of the helmet and put a cigarette,
“……Sasha Koskov. I’ll be honest. I trust you. I believe from the bottom of my heart that a student named Sasha Koskov is not someone who would ever commit a crime. I’m certain you have nothing to do with demon worshippers.”
“…….”
“You… you despise human sin, flaws, stains… and not just that….everything vulgar and frivolous as well. But this time, that’s exactly why we have no choice but to suspect you. Because of that very nature, suspecting Sasha Koskov is easy.”
“……If you’re human, you can’t help but hate evil.”
“……Want me to tell you more? A month ago, those demon-worshipping bastards stole the blueprints for the ‘Imperial Patroller’. Using the same mechanism, an artificial demon was created.”
“…….”
“Eleven people are already dead. It’s even more crazy than that doll that embodied excessive enforcement. A lunatic that kills people by incomprehensible standards. At this rate, Tane will suffer casualties too.”
“……So?”
“Take off your clothes, Sasha. I may look like this, but I’m a woman too. What’s so hard about two women seeing each other naked?”
“—You people really haven’t changed.”
“Sasha Koskov.”
The girl clenched her teeth. Her fiercely opened eyes, brimming with hostility, glared at the person before her.
“You’re incompetent, powerless, and incapable of doing anything properly. And to make up for that, you don’t hesitate to create scapegoats.”
“……I’ll take that criticism.”
“You’re a disgusting group. All of you.”
Sasha undressed quickly.
With just a few motions of her hands, her clothes fell away without a single piece left behind.
The cold basement. The sensation of old stone beneath her toes.
Niel examined her entire body, then nodded.
“Clean. Turn around, Sasha.”
“……You garbage of a human.”
On Sasha’s back as she turned was a large wound.
A scar that looked like it had been slashed diagonally. It was so severe it was a miracle she had survived.
“Are you satisfied? How is it…are you dazzled by your achievement of solving cases by exploiting children?”
“……You may get dressed.”
Niel covered the bowl of her pipe with her fingers.
Hiss.
The cold armor cooled the smoke……
“……You may leave. I apologize for suspecting you.”
“All bluster for someone so incompetent.”
With a crooked sneer, Sasha climbed the basement stairs.
“Know this, Niel. Showing my naked body to you is more disgusting than showing it to vulgar men on the street.”
She left behind those stiff, cutting words.
***
Sasha Koskov headed straight for the library.
The place she was permitted to exist.
A seat that suited her precisely because no one else wanted it.
– Look. That one…
– What about her?
– They say she’s Koskov’s daughter. Didn’t you hear?
– Huh? That Koskov? Seriously?
– She’s the talk of the midterms right after Adel. Apparently, she’d been hiding her surname until now.
– …Isn’t that a lie? If it’s true, that’s terrifying.
– Class D is in chaos. They say some students are even refusing to attend class because of her.
– If it were me, I would too. What if she suddenly snaps and kills everyone?
“…….”
To the library, where no persistent stares followed.
To the annex building, far removed even from the Magic Department.
Bang!
She shut the door the moment she entered. The same space as always. The smell of paper. The unmoving sight of a statue of a woman pouring out water.
The towering bookshelves loomed with an oppressive presence.
As always, Sasha sat down at the librarian’s desk.
“…….”
The clothes she had hastily taken off and put back on felt unbearably uncomfortable.
She removed her uniform coat to straighten herself out from the inside first……
And just as she finished adjusting and was about to put the coat back on—
[Sasha Nikita]
Her eyes met the name tag.
As if turned to stone, Sasha froze in place.
……How stupid.
She had thought she could hold out for at least one semester, but she’d been exposed far too quickly.
She had desperately hidden her name, even going so far as to make contact with the student council before enrollment. But all that effort had been meaningless.
“…….”
Sasha Nikita.
No…Sasha Koskov hugged her knees to her chest.
What stains her vision, layered over her closed eyes, are Niel’s suspicion and Professor Grayton’s sneer. The gazes of her classmates who confirmed her family name.
It feels as though the entire world has transformed into eyes, all staring at her. That was what she thought.
But she couldn’t deny it.
She was undeniably a daughter of Koskov. The child of a drug addict who tore apart an entire innocent knight order. The seed of a criminal who went on to trigger a chain of crimes across the Empire.
Koskov…….
She had to accept it. This was something she should have grown used to by now. Whenever a crime occurred around her, she would be the first to be suspected, endlessly.
Even if she hated it, she had to accept it. For the rest of her life, this shackle would never come off.
Bearing the cursed name, enduring all the contempt of being the child of a criminal father.
And disappearing without leaving behind any descendants….that was her fate.
“……Ugh.”
She had talent with the sword. Talent brilliant enough to be called dazzling.
But she could not take up a sword.
Because her father had been a swordsman, she had been strongly urged never to wield one.
As she grew older and wiser, she investigated the truth behind the incident.
But the more she investigated, the more she realized only that her father was a villain. There was no hidden truth anywhere to be found.
“……Ngh.”
She trained herself in magic, for which she had no talent to begin with.
She forcibly pushed aside the mana core rooted in her body with newly learned magical waves, suffering through several sleepless nights.
A sense of loss.
“……Hh… ngh.”
After enrolling, because she didn’t want anyone to find out she was a Koskov, she voluntarily applied for the librarian position that no one else wanted. And to avoid being looked down on, she shut herself away and studied desperately.
During her breaks, she searched through old tomes with a sliver of hope. Hoping that somewhere, there might be a book that could prove her father wasn’t entirely evil.
“Hic, ngh…….”
Needless to say, there was no such thing.
…Rather, she only came to understand, on a conceptual level, that the Mirage Oasis was unquestionably a drug.
“Hhng…… ugh…….”
Truly, all of it had been nothing more than an illusion.
Efforts so fragile they could be nullified so easily by someone’s whim.
……Nothing had changed.
Nothing would change.
There was no one in the library.
Even the boy who used to visit occasionally had stopped showing up after she returned his lost student ID.
That was understandable.
He must have seen the family name written on it. Changing the name on a student ID was impossible, after all.
“I’m such an idiot…….”
She doesn’t like books.
That had always been the same, now as ever.
***
Recently, about two or three days a week, I’d been spending lunchtime with Camilla.
Checking on Sally’s absence and using the lunch break as an excuse to go find Camilla.
It was barely more than an hour. Just that much time together, yet it felt unexpectedly special.
Perhaps it was because of the look on Camilla’s face, which was a mixture of pleasure and concern, whenever I went to the second-year Knight Department classroom to find her.
I’d heard that siblings close in age were practically programmed to try to kill each other, but that didn’t seem to be universally true.
“Camilla! Your little brother’s here—!!”
“So cute!! You’re top of your year and you even have a cute younger brother? Isn’t that kind of unfair?!”
I was gradually getting used to hearing things like that in the Knight Department.
Normally, an unfamiliar guy would be treated with caution, but the atmosphere here felt different.
Maybe it was because, thanks to my appearance, I looked less like a man and more like a younger kid. In reality, I might even be physically weaker than them.
Of course, if I were to transform into a demon, that would be a different story.
Anyway, the place we settled into to escape those comments was the rooftop of the Knight Department’s annex.
Naturally, it was locked, but opening it with object-manipulation magic was easy enough.
“Hey, sister.”
“Hmm?”
“This is kind of sudden, but if you saw someone in trouble while walking down the street, what would you do?”
“Hmm. Someone in trouble, you say.”
Camilla was now quite used to eating together like this.
“I see. First, I’d check the situation. Even if it looks like trouble, the reality might be different.”
“What if they really are in trouble?”
“If it’s within reason, I’d probably help.”
“That’s the textbook answer a good person would give.”
“……I’m not particularly kind.”
I placed a sausage on top of Camilla’s lunchbox. For some reason, I didn’t have much of an appetite today.
“……You don’t have to give me any more, Adel.”
“You’ve got to eat plenty to grow big.”
“You’ve been saying that and giving me food all this time, haven’t you? I feel like I’m getting weighed down…….”
“Ah. Is it because it’s something I was eating, so it’s dirty?”
“…….”
Without a word, Camilla picked up the sausage and ate it. It was an unexpectedly cute reaction.
“I don’t think I’d help much.”
“Hmm? Ah. You mean the person in trouble?”
“I’m already busy taking care of the people connected to me. Honestly, as long as you’re safe, that’s enough for me. If I look a bit further out, maybe close acquaintances.”
“……I see.”
“It’s exhausting to worry about everyone else’s misfortune or problems one by one. There’s no guarantee I’d get anything out of it. Getting involved might just turn into a hassle.”
“……That just means you cherish the people around you.”
“And the only one around me is basically you.”
“……Adel. Are you doing this on purpose?”
“So you finally noticed.”
At that, Camilla puffed out her cheeks and closed her lunchbox.
“I’m not eating anymore.”
“Hey! I put a lot of care into that!”
“……Wait, don’t tell me it’s homemade?”
“No. I carefully transferred it.”
“…….”
It was a joke I’d heard from Sally. I’d repeated it without thinking, and it left me feeling oddly unsettled.
The reason I’d suddenly asked Camilla about “someone in trouble” was, in truth, connected to that same feeling.
“This is a continuation of that conversation, Adel. I agree with you as well.”
“Right? They say helping means giving without expecting anything in return, but you’re still spending your own time to do it. Wanting at least a word of thanks is just human nature.”
“……That’s true. It’s only natural not to want to help someone who takes gratitude lightly.”
I hadn’t expected her to agree so readily.
I’d thought she might say something like, “I’m a knight, so of course I should help!”
“But even so, Adel. I hope you don’t come to dislike the idea of helping someone.”
“Oh? Is this a lecture from big sister?”
“……What someone has desperately been waiting for as salvation may not be something grand at all. Adel. Sometimes, just a single word can pull a person out of despair.”
“…….”
“It’s not a lecture. Adel. You’ve already done things like that without even realizing it yourself. This is simply my impression of that.”
For the first time, Camilla truly felt like an older sister. She was probably younger than I had been back in my original world, but still.
“I’m not saying you should go out of your way to help. That could just be needless interference. But if there’s someone who’s clearly struggling…… wouldn’t a small bit of help be fine? Your tiny act of kindness might become an event that changes their entire life…… and in fact, it already has.”
“Did it……?”
“……Your lack of awareness is cruel.”
“Huh?”
“It’s nothing.”
She was probably talking about something from before I was possessed. I had no choice but to brush it off.
Camilla was right.
I’d heard stories where what was just a small kindness to the one helping became a life-changing event for the one receiving it. How a minor good deed could become someone’s will to keep living.
“Thanks for the advice, sis.”
“Mm.”
Then… I guess I’ll go check it out after all.
Even if left alone, Sally White would eventually overcome the anxiety caused by her own uniqueness.
But overcoming it didn’t mean that the process itself wouldn’t be painful.
If my involvement could shorten that painful time for her, then……
It felt like I might receive a reward that wasn’t bad at all. Emotionally or materially.
“Since we’re on the topic, Adel. What would you do if I were the one in trouble?”
“Hmm?”
“For example…… what if I were seriously injured?”
When I glanced at Camilla, her expressionless face carried a mix of half-joking and half-serious intent.
Tension and expectation.
“Well…… I’d probably kill them.”
“Kill……?”
“I’d grab every last bastard involved, from the one who hurt Camilla to the one who caused it in the first place, and……”
“……!”
“So they’ll never be able to do it again, finger by finger……”
“Adel…… that’s far too heavy to call sibling affection…….”
Was that a pleased look? I was starting to be able to read her expressions now.
***
Once I get involved in a route, I see it through properly.
That was the ironclad rule I’d lived by after sinking twenty thousand hours into this game.
With Camilla’s approval secured, I began searching for Sally in earnest. Since I’d decided to help Sally White, I was going all out.
Finish it within three days.
The first thing to do was confirm the tavern where Sally worked. There was no reliable way to know exactly where she was affiliated within the academy.
Since she’d been freely using her trait “Innocent Purity” around the academy, there was an even higher chance that false information was floating around.
Someone I’d personally confirmed hadn’t used their trait…… asking the tavern owner directly would be the right move.
I can’t wait until the weekend…… looks like I’ll have to use the secret passage again.
In that case, the library.
But I can’t keep stealing Sasha’s student ID every time.
As I pondered, a sudden, ingenious idea came to mind.
If I used total magical structure analysis and memorized the mana pattern engraved on her student ID exactly…… couldn’t I use it like the same key card?
The pattern itself wasn’t simple, so under normal circumstances it would be completely unrealistic…… but with Adel’s intelligence, maybe. Lately, I’d felt my memory improving at an abnormal rate.
Lost in thought as I walked, I realized I’d arrived at the library.
The doors were firmly shut. Still, it wasn’t closing time yet, so I pushed them open and went inside.
“Sasha. You here?”
“……Adel. Is that you?”
She had her face hidden behind a book. It wasn’t the first time I’d seen her like that, so I spoke without much thought.
“Long time no see. How’d you do on the exams?”
“……S-So-So.”
“Really? I guess that makes sense when you think about it.”
“……What is, your business, here?”
“What’s wrong with you? Are you okay? Your voice sounds weird.”
“……Pollen, allergy…… my nose.”
“Ah, yeah, it is that season. Want me to help? I can make a potion that’ll stop it.”
“……I just, forgot my medicine…… I’m, fine.”
“Alright…… by the way, could you show me your student ID for a second?”
She froze.
“……What is your intention, Adel?”
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