Chapter 32
Chapter 32
Sixth floor of the magic department building.
A brutal punishment session was in full swing right in the middle of my lab.
"Again. Straighten up. If your arms drop, you're out?"
"Hiiing……."
Lily was making a teary face, arms stretched straight out in front of her.
She held a thick introductory magic textbook in one hand and fanned her own face with the other.
I was the one who made her do it, but I still thought it looked unbecoming of a saintess.
But both Lily and I were desperate.
I had nowhere to go except here, and Lily had nowhere to go if she was kicked out of here.
"M-my arms hurt a little……."
Swoosh.
Her arms started to droop slightly, unable to resist gravity.
How dare you!
"Hey! Did gravity say it wanted to be friends with you? You're about to high-five the ground, aren't you?"
"H-hey! I'm sorry!"
At my barked order, Lily jumped and promptly threw her arms back up.
I nodded with a satisfied expression, then turned my gaze to the side.
Beside her stood a brown ball of fur, a white ball of fur, and a gray tuft of feathers, lined up neatly.
A squirrel, a rabbit, and a sparrow.
Those jerky-bandit bastards were no exception.
They were standing on their hind legs, forepaws pressed together, serving their punishment in their own way.
Instead of a perch, the sparrow was sitting on the end of a chair back, wings folded and head bowed.
Then.
The squirrel furtively glanced around and tried to lower its front paws.
This little shit?
I pulled a bag of jerky from my pocket and shook it.
Rustle!
The moment it made a sound, their eyes flew open.
"Move an inch and you can forget about jerky from now on. Don't expect even crumbs."
Thwack!
The effect was incredible.
The squirrel snapped back to attention at once, the rabbit perked its ears and stood perfectly still, and even the sparrow clamped its beak shut and froze like a statue.
Unbelievable.
"You little brats…… I keep indulging you and giving you whatever you ask for, and now you think I'm a pushover?"
Professor Iris had already been sent back.
If it were up to me, I'd have put her at the very end of the line and made her hold her hands up with the rest.
Still, she was my teacher and a professor in name at least; it would be a little much to punish her side by side with animals, wouldn't it?
'Knight Extermination' is supposed to be for 19+ scenes only.
So I told her, "Professor, if you don't want to stand here with them, go wait outside," and kicked her out. Iris left with a soft, "Thank you……."
Watching the socially anxious saintess silently scream for Iris not to go as she headed out of the lab was quite a sight.
"Um, Cassian……."
Lily called out in a trembling voice.
"What is it."
"T-there, the squirrel's drooling……."
"Leave it. That's its karma."
"I think I'm drooling too…… because of the jerky smell."
Ridiculous.
You're twenty years old, and that's something to brag about now?
"Bear with it. What kind of saintess can't even resist a little appetite?"
"Uu……."
Lily pouted in grievance, but she didn't dare defy me.
Because I'm the crazy dictator of this place.
* * *
How much time had passed?
It was around the time Lily's arms were trembling like aspen leaves and beads of sweat had begun to gather on her forehead.
The rabbit was already losing its balance and swaying.
I waved my hand magnanimously.
"Enough. At ease."
"Haaah……."
Lily let out a deep breath and sat down.
The three balls of fur also flopped down flat on the floor.
Lily still looked up at me with relief rather than resentment, even while rubbing her numb arms and groaning.
She's really a character I can't get used to.
I pulled over a chair and sat down in front of Lily.
"Now you look ready to talk."
"……That was the preparation?"
"Yes. I figured I needed to cool off before I could listen to your story."
If not, I might have tossed her out the window the moment she opened her mouth. We're on the sixth floor.
Lily pouted in protest, but quickly flattened herself.
"I'm sorry…… for barging in without any warning."
"Good to know. But I noticed earlier that you came in with a pretty ridiculous grin, didn't I?"
"……."
"You were trying to brush it off without even realizing what was going on, right?"
At my sharp remark, Lily flinched and looked away.
But soon she shook her head and dropped a bombshell.
"I-it wasn't that I was trying to brush it off…… I was really just happy to see you, Cassian……."
"What?"
Ah, I really wish stuff like this would stop surprising me.
"Me? Why?"
Lily fidgeted with her fingers and answered bashfully.
"Well…… I thought you were the one who had guided me here…… so……."
"……."
Ah.
That's creepy.
A foreboding chill ran down my spine.
Just how twisted does your brain have to be to come up with something this absurd?
"Guided you? Me? Are you insane?"
Have you lost your mind?
When I asked back, dumbfounded, Lily opened her mouth in a voice that was nearly a whisper.
"I-I really…… thought you were the one giving me a problem to solve…… or maybe I was wrong……?"
"When did I ever give you a problem to make you think that? Who do you think I am, the Sphinx?"
"No, not like that……."
Lily darted her eyes around, then started reciting her reasoning with a thoroughly disillusioned look.
"Um… do you remember? You told me, Cassian, that there would be no point in me staying in the lab, and that I should live as if I didn't exist……."
I did.
Because your circumstances were pitiful.
"After hearing that, I thought about it a lot. Why would it be pointless? Why did you tell me to pretend I didn't exist? And then……."
She swallowed hard.
"The conclusion I came to was…… t-that maybe you already knew. That I, um, was avoiding someone and desperately running away from them……."
……What the hell?
"Actually, I had guessed as much before too……"
"What. When."
The thought of being pried open made my words come out sharper than I intended.
But Lily didn't notice my reaction at all and kept rattling on with her deduction.
"When we met that person at the incinerator… when you covered for me by saying you'd never seen me before……."
Ah.
Putting aside the whole 'that person' business, since she still couldn't say the name.
Ah.
Aaagh!
"So I thought that if I had a private lab… the moment that space was identified, that person would come looking for me, and that you were indirectly warning me that then I'd have nowhere left to run……."
Wow.
That's chilling.
That's exactly right.
I was speechless.
This oblivious sunfish is sharper than I thought.
That much was fact.
But Lily didn't stop there.
She went beyond the facts and started taking wild logical leaps.
"Then I kept wondering how you knew, and after thinking about it, I figured the rumors about Princess Rosenberg were probably the answer. I'd heard you and the princess were quite close……."
"No, wait. Stop. Why is that name coming up there?"
I waved my hands in alarm.
"I'm close with who? Elysia? We're not close at all. If I play in the dirt, she's just the one watching from the side?"
"……Liar."
"I'm serious."
"Then you said you weren't close with me either, but you knew all about my situation."
"……."
That hit hard.
I was left speechless.
"That was…… just because I have a good instinct."
"See? Because your instincts are good, you'd figured out my situation through the princess or through the count, or through various channels……!"
"……"
"……right?"
Lily flashed a wide smile like someone who had stumbled onto the right answer, then met my eyes and slowly looked away again.
I couldn't exactly say, "Does the count look like he has that much free time?"
It was true that the engaged crown prince getting distracted by another woman was something the count would worry about.
"So… I took your warning as a problem to solve…… Since a private lab would be dangerous, I thought you meant for me to find the answer myself—where a safe place would be……."
Lily's gaze slowly drifted down to the floor.
"……And the answer was right here, your lab, Cassian……."
"……Somehow, you seem embarrassed the whole time you're saying that?"
This level of deduction was outright overkill.
This is the kind of crime logic you'd see around volume 88 of a long-running detective manga, after the author had to keep inventing new ways to kill someone without anyone calling the pattern repetitive.
……I nodded.
"……Yes, very much."
Geez.
"……S-sorry……."
So why did she go and take it this far?
I was dumbfounded.
No, how was I supposed to take in this thought process, which sounded logical yet was somehow completely unhinged?
When I stayed silent, Lily seemed to take my silence as agreement.
Her face began to burn red again.
This time, it was from embarrassment.
"Of course…… I know I probably overinterpreted it because my social anxiety is so bad."
She scraped at the floor with the top of her foot and lowered her head as if looking for a hole to crawl into.
"You might not have been being considerate that deeply, Cassian…… I know I'm overthinking it……"
"……."
If she kept dragging this out, I'd lose my mind,
but how humiliating must this be for her.
"O-of course, I don't think that way now, and I'm so sorry and embarrassed. I really got ahead of myself, didn't I?"
Lily looked like she might burst into tears at any moment.
From the shame of having her delusion exposed, and the guilt of putting me, who had just been minding my own business, in a difficult spot.
Ugh.
It was basically a full holiday gift set.
'So what am I supposed to do about it?'
The damage was already done.
Her bags were unpacked, and the animals had infiltrated.
I let out a long sigh and pressed a hand to my forehead.
I didn't like the conclusion much, but I couldn't refute it.
The pieces fit together too neatly.
'Fuck…… I dug my own grave.'
The snippy advice I'd given her had definitely been rooted in goodwill, though.
And she managed to read it like this, connect it all, and write a whole story out of it?
'That's fucking scary.'
There was a reason the original story had an awakening episode.
This sunfish turned out to have a surprisingly deep personality.
Isn't this some menhera yandere crap or something?
If she'd been born in Korea, she'd probably have done pretty well with a line like, 'You had all the time in the world, and you picked the wrong person to mess with.'
"……Ah, damn. My own fault."
When I muttered that, Lily jumped and shrank her shoulders.
"S-sorry…… for thinking so selfishly……."
She looked like a rain-soaked puppy, and my conscience pricked at me.
After all, I'd been the one taking care of her, and this was the result.
I decided to go for one last confirmation.
"Let me ask you one thing."
"Y-yes?"
"Was the decisive reason you specifically asked Professor Viscountess Müller to send you here perhaps
I looked Lily straight in the eye.
"that if it were my room, that stalker…… no, 'that person' wouldn't be able to come barging in so carelessly?"
"……."
Lily's pupils wavered.
Theoretically, it was perfect.
Even a crown prince couldn't just storm into someone else's lab, especially one where the Great Mage's disciple was openly present.
'If we're going to have our little secret rendezvous, could the room owner please step out?'
If he did something like that, he'd be sure to earn a reputation as an obnoxious power-abuser.
But Crown Prince Louis was the type to stake his life on image management. He wouldn't make such a reckless move.
His best move was to drag his escort knights along and casually swing by the incinerator for no reason.
At a time when he should've been watching the people at the Victory Day banquet, he'd sneak a lingering look at the one person he wanted to see.
That's about it.
At my sharp remark, Lily moved her lips, then obediently nodded.
"……Yes."
Her face turned red as a beet.
"I'm so sorry…… I was way too creepy, wasn't I?"
She was embarrassed, realizing just how persistently she'd dug into my intentions and attached meaning to everything.
She was on the verge of tears, ashamed, and guilty.
Beneath it all was the instinct to survive.
That was the practical answer.
If she locked herself away in her own lab, she'd have to meet him with a hundred percent certainty, but if she stayed with me in my lab, then even if the crown prince found some excuse to come by once or twice, she'd only have to bump into him a couple of times instead of twenty times on her own.
That was the realistic survival strategy she'd come up with.
I should've been annoyed that she was trying to use me.
……The problem was that I was the one who handed her the clue.
"Haa……."
My head was pounding, so I pressed hard at my temples.
I had lost my excuse to kick her out.
Judging by how things had turned out, this shield role was something I'd brought on myself.
* * *
'W-what do I dooo…….'
If there were even a mouse hole around, she'd want to shove her head in it and hide right away.
Because the way she'd failed to take my goodwill at face value and had instead analyzed and dug into it on her own felt horribly sleazy and sordid.
It really hit her that she had done the exact same thing as the stalker she despised so much.
How had she ended up this deep in her delusions?
She wanted to explain herself.
But she couldn't.
'I'm upset. I'm so upset, but…….'
How could she possibly say that she'd made such a mistake because she was struggling desperately just to stay alive?
That she had trauma from having trusted someone carelessly and being killed for it?
It was true that she'd been killed after carelessly trusting just anyone.
But she was very much alive now.