Chapter 112
Recently, Charlotte had developed one particular worry.
“Jenny.”
“Yes, Charlotte?”
“I think you’re an intelligent and cautious person, Jenny.”
“Thank you, Charlotte.”
“But why…?”
Charlotte’s gaze moved to Jenny’s desk.
Amid the jumble of scattered dice and game pieces.
An antique typewriter sat on Jenny’s desk.
At the sight of it, Charlotte furrowed her brow.
“…Then why are you planning to waste that virtue of yours on satisfying people’s vulgar curiosity?”
“Do you not like the idea of me publishing the case as a novel?”
“Yes.”
Charlotte nodded.
“If criminals imitate Jenny’s novels, it would probably make for excellent teaching material.”
“At the same time, it might produce excellent police officers and investigators who imitate Charlotte.”
Jenny grinned as she took the seat opposite Charlotte.
She pointed to the corner of the bedroom, where the traces of the two of them playing TRPG late into the night still remained.
“And you don’t need to worry about copycat crimes. I’m not copying the case into a novel word for word. I just play that board game based on the case, then write down the experience of the play session.”
“I think you’ve misunderstood. I’m not worried about copycat crimes. If anything, I just dislike how much the novel fails to match reality.”
“Ah, so that’s the issue.”
Jenny stiffened her expression.
She realized that Charlotte’s earlier remark about “excellent teaching material for criminals” had been Charlotte’s own brand of irony.
Reinterpreted, it meant this:
— “If criminals look at this junk and commit crimes, they’d never get caught.”
In fact, Charlotte was glaring disapprovingly at the manuscript sitting on the typewriter.
Jenny gave a bitter smile and defended the lovely manuscript she had barely finished after a week of working around the clock.
“I think Charlotte’s observations and deductions are an art in themselves. They’re more than worth learning from.”
“A discipline has to be cold and precise. But that manuscript is a little…”
Charlotte hesitated briefly before continuing.
“It seems to be carrying far too much personal bias. I don’t even like the first sentence: ‘the academy city swathed in an unusually eerie fog that day.’”
Charlotte pointed out the window.
Outside, the academy cityscape lay beneath smog-diffused reddish sunlight and ocher dust.
“It would be faster to first find a fog-free region among the lands where humans live. Did that sort of description really need to be there?”
“There’s romance to it, romance.”
“That’s exactly why I hate novels like that.”
Charlotte’s beautiful face twisted in disgust.
“To me, deduction is an art. Like the Great Sage’s Thirteen Theories of Magic.”
“Or like your betrothed’s black magic class?”
“Exactly. But Jenny’s novel makes it sound like Professor Julian is suddenly explaining how to successfully run away together for love.”
“That is a little strange.”
Charlotte nodded vigorously.
“That’s why I hate that manuscript. I don’t want my deductions to be turned into something mystical.”
“Um… then should I stop writing from now on?”
“There’s no need to go that far.”
Charlotte pointed to the stack of manuscripts in the corner.
It was the stack Jenny had not yet sent to the newspaper club.
“Before you send anything to the newspaper club, let me always review it first.”
“Boo. Don’t trample on creative freedom.”
“When have I ever trampled on creative freedom? This is only to weed out absurd deductions like <With skin this thin and blue veins showing, he must be of noble blood> and the like.”
“Huh? Aren’t nobles’ veins actually blue? I heard it was because of mana…”
Without a word, Charlotte rolled up Jenny’s sleeve.
Spiderweb-like veins stood out clearly along the thin forearm.
Jenny is a commoner and a healing cleric.
That means her body has no mana flowing through it.
And yet the veins on Jenny’s arm were blue.
Just like a noble’s.
Jenny clamped her mouth shut.
Charlotte looked at Jenny with an exasperated expression.
“Jenny, you’re in the healing department, right? What are you doing believing such nonsense?”
“Hehe… I got in through the special admissions track for divine power, so…. And I never really thought to look at my own veins.”
“Sigh….”
Charlotte brought a hand to her forehead and shook her head.
“In any case, from now on I’ll verify it once before you submit anything.”
“Okay…”
Jenny muttered as she handed the stack of manuscripts over to Charlotte.
As Charlotte’s eyes skimmed over the manuscript.
Jenny opened today’s academy newspaper and tried to check the piece she had submitted.
“All right, today too….”
But before she could even open the newspaper’s novel submission column.
Jenny’s eyes had no choice but to stop at the front page.
“…Huh? Charlotte?”
“What is it?”
“You should really take a look at this.”
Jenny pushed the front-page newspaper toward Charlotte.
Charlotte set down the manuscript she was holding and moved her gaze to the newspaper.
The print burned itself into her eyes.
『Several Hero Department students heading to the demon realm for their graduation exam were attacked by a black mage.』
Charlotte’s fingertips slowly lifted the corner of the newspaper.
The subheading followed beneath the main headline.
『—According to survivor testimony, many students identified Black Magic Defense professor Julian Nihirit as being behind it.』
『Accordingly, the Imperial Academy Academic Committee, with Professor Julian’s consent, resolved to place him in temporary detention.』
“…?”
Charlotte tilted her head and looked at Jenny.
“Is this the novel submission column?”
“No. Look carefully. It’s the front page.”
“Then because of the novel I wrote…?”
“Uh…?”
Jenny pointed at herself with a face that seemed to say, Me?
Seeing that dumbfounded expression, Charlotte let out a snort of laughter.
“Don’t worry. I’m joking. There’s no need to be so shocked about temporary detention.”
“Does that mean they’re suspecting him as the culprit?”
“Procedurally, yes. But at the same time, it’s also to protect the witnesses.”
It was a world where transformation magic existed.
Administration doesn’t work by recklessly identifying the culprit from eyewitness testimony alone.
“Even setting aside whether it really is Julian, it means the culprit is either related to Julian or targeting him, so they’ll interrogate him in temporary detention while protecting him at the same time.”
“Ah.”
Charlotte casually closed the newspaper.
“Still, let’s go visit him. Judging by the paper, it seems he requested temporary detention himself, so asking what he was thinking sounds good.”
Charlotte put on her coat.
Meanwhile, Jenny sat in her chair and watched Charlotte closely.
Charlotte paused in the middle of putting on her coat and said to Jenny.
“What are you doing?”
“Huh? I’m coming too?”
“Of course you are. We have to investigate this case. Jenny needs to help from the side.”
“I thought we were going to see him because you were worried about your betrothed.”
“We’ll investigate right after the visit.”
“Okay.”
Jenny also stood up, feeling a little excited.
This was the first time Charlotte had ever told her to come along first.
That also meant Charlotte trusted Jenny as an assistant that much more.
But that misunderstanding didn’t last long.
“…What is it, Charlotte?”
“What is it, Jenny?”
“Didn’t you bring me along as your assistant?”
“I don’t know what you mean. To visit the detention center without an appointment, you need to be a cleric, so I only brought you for that.”
“….”
Jenny glared at Charlotte with half-lidded eyes.
Whether she understood the meaning of that look or not.
Charlotte paid it no mind and simply strode through the detention center entrance with Jenny leading the way.
*
“Charlotte. It looks like it’d be better if you stepped away from this case.”
Inside the temporary detention center.
It was what Julian said to Charlotte, who had come for a visit, from beyond the iron bars in a classically decorated room.
“One of the students in my class turned traitor. Miss Charlotte could end up on the suspect list too, so for now it’d be better if you stayed quiet.”
Sip.
Beyond the iron bars, he was leisurely sipping tea as if he had all the time in the world.
I was worried sick when I heard it was temporary detention.
Instead, Jenny even felt a pang of envy at the sight of the nobles’ private detention room, which was more luxurious than her own dorm.
‘Is this really a visit?’
Leaving Jenny to her own devices.
Julian and Charlotte talked just the two of them.
“Give up the case? What do you mean?”
“The way the black mages attacked the graduates in this case was an application of the methods I mentioned in class. Ah, before that, do you know how the incident unfolded?”
Charlotte shook her head.
“The newspaper didn’t have the detailed circumstances written in it, so I came to hear them.”
“Good. Then I’ll explain it step by step.”
The full story of the incident was as follows.
6:00 a.m.
The graduates boarded the airship leaving the academy at dawn.
7:00 a.m.
Suddenly, the airship crashed.
Fortunately, the supervising professors were accompanying them, and since all the passengers were students on the verge of graduation, defensive magic was successfully deployed just before impact.
Thanks to that, no students died instantly.
The only problem was that it happened in the demon realm.
And not just any demon realm, but one whose danger level was one rank higher than the planned one.
There were injuries from the crash too, but the students and professors had to deal with the monsters right away.
7:30 a.m.
Thanks to the triage system (*emergency classification system) devised in the past by Director Shun, the injured were quickly tended to.
New injuries were caused by monster attacks, but thanks to the same triage system, they were able to get back into action quickly as well.
8:00 a.m.
Reports came in that, oddly enough, the bleeding wasn’t stopping properly.
Even so, the professor from the healing department thought it was nothing and didn’t revise the triage system.
9:00 a.m.
Divine power was exhausted.
Normally it would have been fine, but because the bleeding had been unusually hard to stop that day, divine power was wasted.
People who should have been classified black ended up classified red instead.
10:00 a.m.
By the time the rescue team arrived, only about half the students and professors were still alive.
“Having heard that much, how do you think the culprits succeeded in this attack?”
“First, the airship crash seems to have been caused by an ether leak.”
“That’s right. I kept stressing that sleep magic using ether can only be countered with an antidote potion or, at the very least, ammonia, the easiest awakening stimulant to get.”
Ammonia can’t block ether’s effects.
Instead, it could wake you with a horrible stench terrible enough to rouse even a consciousness sunk to the depths of the underworld.
“Then you understand why the students’ bleeding wouldn’t stop properly?”
“…Heparin.”
An image of a little girl flashed through Charlotte’s mind.
A boarder of the Nihirit family with her red hair tied back.
The name of the medicine that girl had been taking regularly was heparin.
“It was a medicine that keeps blood from clotting.”
“Yes. I said to be careful using it, because if an accident happens, it can prove extremely lethal.”
“Especially since heroes who fight monsters are bound to get injured often, I warned that it would be quieter and deadlier than arsenic.”
“You remember.”
“You emphasized it so many times in class that I couldn’t help but remember.”
Behind Charlotte, Jenny nodded.
Even Jenny, who hadn’t been paying much attention beside Charlotte, remembered that clearly.
“Then the culprit is simple. Someone who can get at the students’ ration meals. And someone who can tamper with the airship in advance. If you investigate people who fit those two conditions, you’ll find them quickly.”
“And when you combine the eyewitness accounts, the one who fit all those conditions was me.”
“Ah.”
Charlotte nodded as she grasped the full story.
In other words, the culprit used Julian’s face to wander around and tamper with the airship and the ration meals.
Having sorted it out that far, Charlotte tilted her head.
“But why does that mean I can’t investigate? All the more reason to trust me over that stupid investigation bureau….”
Julian looked at Charlotte in silence.
Meeting his eyes, Charlotte had no choice but to close her mouth.
Because she thought she understood the meaning of that look.
“…All right. I’ll stay put in the dorm.”
“Thank you for understanding, Charlotte.”
Julian waved a hand.
“Take care on your way back.”
“Um… do you know how you’re supposed to greet someone after a visit?”
Charlotte said, looking back at Jenny.
Jenny greeted Julian on Charlotte’s behalf.
“Then we’ll head back now. Please let us know if you need anything.”
“I’d appreciate it if you could slip in a tasty lunch box every now and then.”
“Understood.”
Charlotte and Jenny turned their backs on the bars where Julian was confined and left the detention center.
Inside the tram heading back to the dorm.
Charlotte didn’t say a word to Jenny.
Charlotte didn’t speak again until they returned to the dorm and set up a barrier.
“Jenny. You can’t trust the academy investigation bureau.”
“They’re accomplices?”
“We’ll have to investigate to know that. Whether they’re as downright incompetent as someone, or active accomplices. Either way, that’s what I meant by saying not to trust them.”
Charlotte hung her coat on the rack and sat curled up in her chair.
“Then what are you going to do from here on out, Charlotte?”
“Didn’t I say so at the detention center? I’m going to stay put in the dorm.”
“What?”
Jenny looked surprised.
“It’s surprising that you’d turn down a case.”
“I enjoy peeling back the veil on a case, not solving something that’s already out in the open.”
“Then what about your betrothed? Who else is going to prove that person’s innocence besides you?”
“…?”
Charlotte looked at Jenny with a puzzled expression.
“Prove it? Why would I?”
“Huh? Aren’t you the one who’s betrothed?”
“No, no. That’s not it….”
Charlotte hesitated for a moment, then spoke again.
“You know about the academy high school division kidnapping case, right?”
“I do. The whole curriculum was reorganized because of it. Black Magic Defense Arts were created because of it too.”
“Then do you know why I didn’t step in back then? No, wait. More importantly, do you know what happened to the culprits then?”
“Hmm… weren’t they dealt with by Director Shun’s private troops?”
Jenny didn’t know the details of that incident.
To the public, all that was known was that Julian traced their trail and Director Shun treated the students,
and the black mage’s detailed whereabouts were never made public.
But Charlotte shook her head, saying that wasn’t it.
“Hmm… the details are classified, but the black mages didn’t fare well.”
“That figures. They were illegal black mages, after all. But why are you bringing that up now?”
“Because this is similar to that time.”
“Similar?”
“It means I don’t need to move myself. Rather…”
As if to show that Charlotte truly had no intention of moving,
she took off her coat and threw herself onto the bed still in her pajamas.
And, as always, she picked a silver coin and clutched it tightly, hugging the blanket as she said.
“It means that if I interfere, there’s a high chance it won’t end neatly.”
Jenny tilted her head.
What on earth could that mean?
That question didn’t last long.
— 『Academy Investigation Bureau chief missing after yesterday’s visit.』