The Truth Behind the Grinder
I splashed water on my face from the bathroom sink. The sound of the grinder seemed to echo inside my skull, and a wave of nausea surged up, but after having already emptied my stomach more than three times, nothing came out. I rinsed my mouth, turned off the faucet with trembling hands, and stepped out of the bathroom.
Yoon Siwoo must have been waiting nearby; he approached cautiously, his face etched with worry. "......Scarlet, are you alright?"
"......Yeah, I'm fine now." I replied in a small voice. But as soon as I answered, Yoon Siwoo’s expression darkened. ......This is why talking to this guy was such a chore.
"......Fine, actually, I'm not fine. How could I be, damn it......"
I spat out the profanity-laced reply and took a deep breath to calm my heart. Inhale, exhale. But it didn't seem to have much effect, so I sank to the floor, curled up, and buried my face between my knees. A lament slipped out of my mouth before I could stop it.
"......I was so sure that he was the culprit. I didn't know what he might do if I just left him alone, so I thought I had to catch him quickly......"
The brief silence before he answered when I asked if there were parts of his memory that were hazy. And the way his tone shifted when he finally spoke, as if he had suddenly become a different person. At that moment, I had known, somehow. If James really did have a split personality as I suspected, then the one answering me was the culprit.
That was why I had shouted in anger. My classmates and my precious friend could have died because of him if things had gone slightly wrong. I thought that if I didn't catch him quickly, there might be another victim. I had acted simply on that thought.
"I didn't want it to end like this......"
The scene I had witnessed in the kitchen wouldn't leave my mind. When I entered, the food was laid out inside. I remembered James’s face as he smiled and said he had to make food for the people who were struggling without even being able to eat lunch today. James was that kind of person.
I had succeeded in finding the culprit. But the culprit, cornered, had chosen an extreme path, and because of that, James had died too. It felt like it was all my fault. The whirring sound of the grinder seemed to keep echoing in my head. The sound of the grinder. The sound.
Then, I felt that something was off. I lifted my head from my knees and asked, "Yoon Siwoo, the sound you said you heard before breaking down the door. It was the sound of a grinder, right?"
"Huh?! Oh, yeah. It was definitely that sound."
At my question, Yoon Siwoo, who had been sitting in front of my crouched form with his arms spread out, scrambled to correct his posture. I didn't know what he had been trying to do, but that wasn't important right now. I asked him again.
"When you heard that sound, did you hear anything else?"
"......I don't think I heard anything else besides that."
My expression hardened at his answer. No matter how I thought about it, it was strange. The kitchen and the dining hall. Even though the door was closed, they were close enough to converse through the wall; there was no way Yoon Siwoo, whose senses were keener than an ordinary person’s due to his Radiant Holy Sword, could have missed it if there had been a loud noise. Yet, Yoon Siwoo replied that he hadn't heard the sound that should have been obvious.
I retraced the events one by one. The dining hall, the kitchen, the split personality, the questions, the grinder. The sound. And the next moment, with a shock that felt like being struck in the head with a hammer, my hands began to tremble.
"......It wasn't that."
The realization escaped my lips. The premise itself was wrong.
"......It wasn't a split personality."
I bolted up, startled by the worst-case scenario I hadn't even imagined. "Scarlet?!"
I shouted urgently at Yoon Siwoo, who was looking at me in confusion. "The real culprit was someone else!"
A split personality meant that, regardless, the body was still their own. No matter how insane someone was, they wouldn't choose to die in such a horrific way just because they were caught. There were so many kitchen tools; if they were going to commit suicide, they would have used a knife. Furthermore, there was no one who could be ground up in a grinder without letting out a single scream. There was only one answer that could explain all of it.
It was that the body wasn't their own to begin with.
I twisted my face and shouted, "He was being controlled!"
In the kitchen where the horrific incident had just occurred, several teachers were conversing with grave faces.
"......To think James was the culprit."
"To be precise, it wasn't James, but his other personality. The student who first identified the culprit said it was a split personality. To think that was the reason he didn't trigger the lie detector......"
"James, he really is dead, isn't he? How could something like this......"
The teachers twisted their faces in shock at the fact that an acquaintance they had known for a long time was involved in the incident, and in the sorrow of no longer being able to see him. But since resolving the incident completely was more urgent than grieving, Eve, the representative of the teachers, spoke up.
"......It’s a tragic event, but we’ve found the culprit, so we must first figure out how he was able to use Mana to commit terrorism inside the barrier. You heard about the intermediate-class monster that appeared in the school last time, right? If there’s a problem with the function that blocks the entry of Mana, this isn't just a simple terrorist incident that happened today."
If that were the case, it was a grave matter that could bring great chaos to the city inside the barrier, which believed itself to be safe. Another teacher asked Eve, "You said you requested support from the Public Safety Bureau investigators, right?"
"We’ve identified the culprit, and there’s no reason to control access anymore. None of the teachers here have that as their specialty. It’s about time they arrived."
As soon as Eve finished speaking, a woman with short hair wearing the uniform of the Public Safety Bureau entered the kitchen door with a stiff expression and opened her mouth.
"I am Rea Abella, an investigator from the Public Safety Bureau. Teachers of the Academy, I ask for your full cooperation in the investigation."
Eve looked at her for a moment, then sighed and said quietly, "......Rea, you were close with James, weren't you? You don't have to pretend to be okay in front of us; it's alright to cry."
At those words, Rea, an Academy graduate with reddened eyes, wiped her eyes with her sleeve and smiled with difficulty. "......I'm on duty, so I'll do it later. If I start crying now, I don't think I'll be able to stop."
"......Right, even the troublemaker Rea is an adult now."
"......I’ve been mature for a long time, you know?"
At Rea’s words, a faint smile touched the lips of the teachers present. They were all people who remembered her from her student days. Eve also smiled slightly and asked Rea, "Can you really call yourself an adult when you can't even take care of your own body? What’s that scratch on your neck? You’re not still fighting with cats because they stole your snacks like in the old days, are you?"
At the mention of her dark history from her school days, Rea’s face flushed bright red, and she shouted, "I didn't get that from fighting a cat! I... I’m going to start the investigation now! Everyone, please head out!"
"Alright, alright. We’re counting on you, so check every corner."
"It really wasn't a cat!"
Rea, who had been shouting at the teachers leaving the kitchen, wore a gloomy expression once they were all gone. She had heard a rough explanation through messages, but it was hard to believe. That James was a split-personality terrorist. In her memory, James was a good person who always made snacks for her whenever she asked. Thinking that she must uncover the truth of this incident he was involved in, even while grieving his death, Rea placed her hands on the items in the kitchen.
Psychometry, the ability to read the memories of places or objects. Knowing that it took time to read old memories, Eve had been waiting for Rea to come out. And when Rea, who had been alone in the kitchen for a while, came out with a stiff face, Eve asked her, "Did you check everything?"
Rea slowly looked around and then said to Eve, "......I don't think this is a conversation for a place with many people; would it be alright if we talked somewhere where we are alone?"
There were several students in the dining hall. Since it might not be a story that was good to be known, Eve nodded at Rea’s words. As soon as they entered the duty room attached to the faculty office, Eve asked Rea, "So, what on earth happened?"
Rea, who received the question, silently looked around the duty room, sat on a long sofa, and gestured slowly as if telling Eve to come closer, saying, "I'll tell you, so sit next to me, Teacher."
Eve sat next to Rea and smiled. "In the past, even when I told you to call me Teacher, you called me 'Teach' until the end, but now you call me Teacher quite well."
"Did I?"
"You did. You don't remember already? Well, regardless of that, can you tell me what happened first?"
Then, Rea leaned her body against Eve and whispered, "You made another mistake."
Thrust. A kitchen knife was buried deep in Eve’s neck. Soon, the light vanished from Eve’s eyes, and her body slumped to the floor. Rea slowly scratched her neck while watching the sight, then unfolded a blanket in the duty room. Rea, who had sprinkled oil brought from the kitchen onto the blanket and covered the fallen Eve, slowly crawled inside. And inside the oil-soaked blanket, she took out a lighter. Whoosh, the flames rose. The ones who were once teacher and student burned to death in one place like that.
And Eve was watching that illusion, letting out a groan. Eve, who had detached Rea—who had been lost in an illusion with a knife held to her throat and had lost consciousness—from her body, rubbed her neck. A trace of blood was faintly visible on the hand that had wiped her neck.
"......That was dangerous."
Because she was her own student, she had trusted her completely. The only reason she had been able to react even narrowly was thanks to what Scarlet had told her yesterday: to never let her guard down, anytime, anywhere.
"......I’ll have to thank Scarlet."
Muttering that, Eve looked at Rea with cold eyes. Rea Abella—she was a troublemaker, but she was a kind child who made everyone laugh. She was absolutely not a child who would do something like this. That meant she was being brainwashed or controlled. Both types of magic were strictly prohibited for ethical reasons, and a powerful one that wouldn't wake up until the victim burned to death was not something possible with human ability. That meant there was only one type of existence capable of such a thing.
"......A Witch."