News of the practicum incident spread far and wide.
It was the first incident in decades to result in fatalities, and when the public learned that it had happened nowhere other than the academy itself, they could not help but be shocked.
After repeatedly bowing his head to the reporters, the President wiped the sweat from his forehead.
Public outrage was one thing, but the damage to the academy’s honor seemed to cut him even more deeply.
There was another reason the academy had come clean instead of trying to quietly bury the incident.
“They really tried to cover this up even though people died.”
“…They had their reasons.”
Aisel pulled the newspaper taut as though she were about to tear it apart and glared at it.
The paper carried a photograph of the President holding his face in his hands as he expressed his condolences over the incident and promised full support.
He looked thoroughly worn down.
He seemed considerably more haggard than when I had first seen him.
“Still, they couldn’t have covered it up with me involved.”
I had been at the scene, rescued the students, and was the first professor to identify what had happened.
If the front page covered the President’s disgrace, the next page was filled entirely with praise for me.
Hearing that, Aisel exclaimed as though she had finally realized something.
“So that’s why you left such unmistakable evidence behind! You blew away part of the mountain! As expected of you, Professor!”
No.
That was because I failed to control my strength.
That was not my intention.
“…….”
I simply let her misunderstand on her own.
It felt strange to criticize my own mistake, and admitting that I had done it because I was irritated would be embarrassing.
Just let it go.
For now, simply let it go… whatever it might be.
Let everything follow the prevailing current…….
Do not attempt to block a flowing stream with the palm of your hand…….
“As expected, Professor, you’re incredible!”
Beside her, Ellin gave me a sharp look that clearly asked whether that was really what had happened, but I desperately ignored her.
Please stop looking at me like that… I am very sorry.
After swallowing a long silence, I sipped my coffee.
Peace had returned, but my heart was hardly light.
Rather than feeling that the worst was behind us, I had a growing premonition that something far worse was approaching.
No.
At this point, it was closer to certainty.
“I heard the Imperial Family is urgently dispatching an Investigation Team. Do you think they’ll actually uncover anything?”
Ellin phrased it as a question while directing her gaze toward me.
Aisel joined her, silently adding pressure with her eyes.
“Professor. We want to know too. We were dragged into this.”
“…….”
“Professor.”
Unable to withstand their gazes, I sighed.
Two pairs of bright, expectant eyes were threatening to subject me to petty, insignificant acts of revenge if I refused to tell them anything.
One honey badger—no, one person like Ellin was more than enough.
“The investigation won’t amount to much. They’ll probably discipline and dismiss a few people deemed responsible and leave it at that. Most likely, the President will step down, and that will be the end of it.”
“Why?!”
Aisel shot to her feet.
Her expression was filled with disbelief.
Ellin, however, narrowed her eyes as though she had already expected something like that.
“Is the Imperial Family in league with them too?”
“They want to conceal the truth. Especially now that they’ve heard from me who was responsible.”
“I think I already know, but I’ll ask just in case. Who was it?”
When I remained silent, Ellin furrowed her brow.
“…The Heretic Mages after all? And they want to hide the truth because they’re worried about social unrest.”
“Yes. But there are many different groups among them. Their objectives vary, so we merely lump them together under the convenient label of Heretic Mages. It isn’t actually a precise designation.”
“Then do you have an idea which group it was?”
“More or less.”
Ellin’s gaze intensified.
She clearly wanted me to reveal that as well, but I drew a firm line.
“Nothing good comes from attracting the attention of terrorists. You two are still weak.”
“Does that mean you’ll tell us once we’re stronger?”
She lunged at the opening immediately, just like a honey badger.
You are supposed to be a person, not an animal.
I closed my eyes with a sigh.
That runaway train would never stop until she reached an answer she could personally accept.
Starving her of information entirely was not the best approach.
“…Ellin.”
“What?”
“I suspect this was the work of an insider.”
Both of their faces went pale at those words.
That was precisely the reaction I had wanted.
“Do not investigate it.”
When I firmly drew the line, countless emotions flashed through Ellin’s eyes.
After biting down on her lower lip, she finally nodded.
“You believe I’m incapable of protecting myself.”
“Even after contracting with Elise, that remains true. Until her power becomes familiar to you, remain silent. This is not the time for you to involve yourself.”
“…All right. But how did you know about that?”
“Who do you think was watching your fight from nearby?”
Once I said that, Ellin appeared reasonably convinced.
Admittedly, the timing of my intervention had been rather perfect.
I looked at Aisel.
Now that Ellin’s questions had been answered to some extent, the look was meant to ask whether Aisel had anything else she wanted to say.
She had told me that she had many questions, so I should at least give her the opportunity to ask them.
“You said it was an insider.”
“That is correct.”
“And knowing who it is would put us in danger.”
I did not want to frighten her too much…
After wondering how I should answer, I sighed and nodded.
“This incident targeted an unspecified number of people. That was why we were able to find clues. If they had singled out one particular individual with needlepoint precision, the scale might have been smaller, but discovering the truth would have been far more difficult.”
I had deliberately phrased it indirectly, but the implication was the same.
We would not be able to stop it.
There probably would not even be any evidence left behind.
Unlike Ellin, Aisel gave up cleanly after hearing that.
“That’s enough, then. A truth I can’t handle is frightening.”
“A wise decision.”
Just as I thought we could finally relax in peace, Aisel dropped a bomb.
“Then why did you stroke my body back then?”
My hand stopped halfway to lifting my coffee.
What?
I stroked someone?
Who?
You?
That sounds like sexual harass—
“I did no such thing.”
“Ehh?!”
I denied it immediately on reflex.
“No, when you rescued me! You stroked my head and everything to calm me down.”
Ellin alternated between looking at Aisel and looking at me before her gaze settled entirely upon me.
It was sharp.
I stroked her head to calm her down?
Resting my chin on one hand, I sank into thought.
Using Aisel’s gestures telling me to remember as a clue, I retraced my memories.
‘Ah……!’
The reason was nothing remarkable.
To me, Aisel looked like a cockroa—no, some kind of chitinous insect.
Naturally, even if she was injured, it was difficult for me to determine the severity with my own eyes.
At the time, I could tell that there were scratches, damaged skin, cracks in the shell… that she was hurt, at least.
But I could not tell how serious those injuries actually were.
I had needed to decide whether to prioritize Aisel or Ellin, and there had been no other way to assess Aisel’s condition.
‘She was human.’
My mysophobia made me recoil from touching her in the first place, but once I actually did, she had the shape of a human being.
Of course she was a person.
But what I saw was a cockroach, so it was a perfectly reasonable doubt to have!
I rubbed my lower jaw as I recalled how she had felt beneath my hand.
Hair that was slightly coarse yet soft.
Clearly defined facial features.
Soft flesh with a faint give beneath my fingers.
Skin that was unmistakably human.
To put it more intimately, it was the body of a woman.
Though the only part I had touched was her face.
“Do not twist it into something strange. I was channeling Mana through you to assess your injuries. It was difficult to determine their severity by sight alone, and I could hardly strip off your clothes.”
“Oh, I see… What?! Strip my—why? Why would you do that?!”
Aisel recoiled in shock.
Before her gaze could sharpen again, I immediately continued.
“If your organs or internal tissues had been damaged, there could have been internal bleeding, a hernia, or other complications. For a comprehensive diagnosis, I had no choice but to channel Mana through your body and examine you that way. Removing your clothes and checking visually as well would have been more accurate, but……”
I could not afford to be embarrassed about this.
If I left room for misunderstanding, they would inevitably interpret it in an indecent direction.
I had only acted to provide emergency treatment!
I had nothing to be ashamed of!
“But there was no time for that then, so I did what I could. It was an emergency. You should be understanding.”
From my perspective, I had carefully examined the face of a cockroach.
If anything, I wanted compensation for the psychological damage.
As I maintained an air of perfect composure, Aisel began grumbling.
Something about how she had gotten excited for nothing.
Give me back my excitement! she complained, but that had nothing to do with me.
Surely it had nothing to do with me?
Ellin lowered her voice and asked seriously once more.
“So the possibility of an insider still bothers you, Professor?”
Bothers me……
It might.
Or it might not.
But the important thing was that the insider still had value.
‘The insider is necessary.’
For now.
I could think about everything else when the time came.
‘Dealing with her won’t be difficult anyway.’
After swallowing a low groan, I nodded.
“I would be lying if I said it didn’t.”
“Then!”
“But I cannot turn the university upside down based solely on suspicion.”
Ellin chewed on her lower lip.
‘Was she seriously planning to investigate it herself?’
Does this honey badger have no sense of danger at all……?
I had drawn a clear line only moments ago and told her not to interfere.
Had she already forgotten?
“Honestly, not knowing who it is is frightening. Whew.”
Leaving the sighing Ellin behind, I looked out the window.
Ellin needed trials.
And for that purpose, the insider was indispensable.
The greater the adversity, the more the protagonists would rise to overcome it.
‘But there’s no reason to provoke her right now.’
There were still many things I needed her to do in the future.
Mostly things I would rather not handle myself.
Things like that.
While Ellin and Aisel looked elsewhere, I quietly smiled from outside their field of vision.
***
A dim research office.
A man shuddered violently as his teeth chattered.
Every so often, the sound of his breath catching mingled with screams leaking through his lips.
The man whimpered as though anxiety itself had swallowed him whole.
“I can’t. I… I can’t do it.”
Haggard and exhausted, he repeated the words like a broken radio.
He crouched with both hands clutching his head, resembling a terrified herbivore.
His breathing caught painfully in his throat until he frantically swept his gaze around the room as though searching for help.
Heavy curtains were tightly drawn.
Wooden planks covered the windows.
The door had been barricaded.
The mirror had been smashed.
Broken shards of glass lay scattered carelessly across the floor.
Wilted plants on the shelves only added to the eerie atmosphere.
Sunlight slipped through a narrow gap between the curtains, faintly illuminating the office enough that it was not completely dark.
It was not absolute darkness.
Only a slightly dim room.
And that was driving the man insane.
The shattered full-length mirror distortedly reflected his figure.
“Urgh… No. I didn’t do anything wrong. It wasn’t my fault. It wasn’t my……”
The man suddenly screamed in the middle of his sentence.
“So!! Stop looking at me like that!!”
He panted heavily before fear overwhelmed him again, and he brought his hand to his mouth.
He gnawed at his fingers as though intending to bite every nail completely away.
It plainly revealed just how unstable his mind had become.
“It was impossible. I couldn’t… I couldn’t do it either. That wasn’t… my field of expertise.”
CLATTER.
A fallen wooden box shifted, and the man screamed in terror before sprawling pathetically across the floor.
“EEK! EEEEK! I’m sorry. I’m sorry! I truly am!!”
The man clasped his hands together and begged desperately.
It was nothing more than a shadow cast by the fallen wooden box, but to the hallucinating man, it looked as though darkness were creeping upward and gathering into a human form.
The fragmented mirror reflected the man’s desperate cries.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t save you. I’m sorry I stood by. I’m sorry I ran away. But I didn’t have a choice either.”
Fresh tears poured from his swollen eyes.
“I don’t have that professor’s abilities. I’m only a Botany Professor.”
So abandoning all of you and running away was a choice I had no alternative but to make.
After saying that, he sobbed for a long time.
─Really?
The mangled corpses that had crawled out of the darkness questioned the professor.
─Did you truly lack the ability to save us?
“E-Eek.”
─You were only afraid, weren’t you? That was why, while we were being eaten… you turned your back and ran away, didn’t you?
“No!”
Disbelief and terror clouded the professor’s eyes as he shouted.
“No! That’s not true! If I’d had the strength, I would have saved you! I would have!”
As the professor screamed desperately, the students who had been torn apart by the Demon Wolves smiled.
─If you truly possessed the strength, then could you have saved us?
“Of course! I-I gathered everyone I could and brought them back to the clearing! It was the best decision I could make! But, but the world only…… Professor Aiden!”
Overwhelmed by resentment, he curled into himself again.
─Then we can give you that strength.
At those words, the professor slowly uncurled and stared.
─You said that if you had power, you could save us… didn’t you?
Had he thought about it carefully, the words were obviously strange.
But the Botany Professor no longer possessed enough reason to judge that.
─This is a gift from us, your dead students, Professor.
Please use it in place of those of us who died.
The professor slowly crept forward and clasped the hand of the Black silhouette.
Behind him, a woman watched with a broad, sinister smile.