Episode 11
Translator: RaidenTL
Episode 11
So many things to be scared of. Are they all a bunch of fucking cowards?
That was my first thought. The weather had warmed considerably for spring, but a chilly wind still swept in as the sun began to set. Elysia glanced up at the man walking beside her.
He was incredibly handsome.
She wasn’t the type to pay any attention to other people’s looks. After learning that the way a man killed was the same whether his features were wild or perfectly composed, that mindset had only grown stronger.
When she’d learned of a killer who lured women with his dazzling looks before murdering them brutally, she’d even come to think of a handsome face as a heinous weapon.
That didn’t mean her standards of beauty were warped. She could easily tell the difference between handsome and ugly.
So she could say with confidence: this man was handsome.
Usually, people with exceptional looks earned the favor of others without doing a thing. Moreover, Evan’s face was the very definition of likable.
He was even a thoughtful and kind man who knew how to look after others. That’s what made the claim that people were scared of him sound so strange.
I could understand if he had a face that radiated coldness, but what was so scary about a smiling face like that?
“Hemming?”
Evan’s soft voice calling her name snapped Elysia back to her senses. She looked up at him. They had already arrived in front of the dormitory building.
“Ah, I was just lost in thought.”
“I asked what they looked like. The male students you saw.”
“About five guys, and… uh… they had ordinary faces?”
It was hard to describe them, as they all had such generic features. Usually, there was something memorable, like a distinctive nose or eyebrow shape, but they had nothing of the sort.
Ah, maybe they were designed to be unnoticeable since they’re just useless extras? I can’t believe there are faces this hard to describe.
But still, a face is a face.
“…Still, I’m confident I’d recognize them if I saw them again. If I wander around the academy starting tomorrow, don’t you think I’ll run into them?”
“Well, they must be students here, so it’s possible, but… the academy is about to get a little chaotic starting tomorrow.”
She stared at him with a puzzled expression, and Evan continued.
“The Art Department’s preparations for the Art Festival are beginning.”
*
♥ SYSTEM: Player, you have requested information on ‘Minerva.’ Would you like to continue? Yes | No ♥
♥ SYSTEM: ……loading…… ♥
♥ SYSTEM: Information for the Player is ready! ♪(^ 0 ^ )♪ ♥
With a cheerful chime, a stack of newspapers dropped onto her lap. Elysia roughly rubbed her hair, still dripping wet, with a towel and picked up the newspaper on top.
「James Reichen’s Establishment of an Educational Institution, Controversial for its Unconventional Admission Requirements…
— On February 17, 1768, the groundbreaking admission requirements for ‘Minerva,’ an educational institution founded in ‘Alea’ by the world-renowned tycoon James Reichen, were revealed.
To provide commoners with the opportunity for a high-quality education, ‘Minerva’ has set its admission fee at 100 Gold, an amount an ordinary clerk can earn in about 20 hours of work. There is no tuition.
As ‘Minerva’ will provide for textbooks and research expenses, as well as dormitory fees, the only costs students will have to bear are the admission fee and the entrance exam fee (10 Gold).
People who had anticipated tuition fees affordable only by high-ranking nobles or royalty, given the construction of such a grand and splendid educational environment, have been unable to hide their astonishment.
Minerva’s first entrance exam will be held on March 27.」
The book beneath it was a scrapbook of various articles. She picked up the tattered scraps of paper and quickly scanned the headlines.
「Minerva’s 3rd graduating class alumna Agnes Pantaleon has submitted 127 legal amendments to the Alea royal family, expected to be granted a title this year.」
「Is Minerva becoming a stepping stone for commoners? 2nd graduating class alumna Stella Himmel’s <Analysis of Celestial Motion> sends massive shockwaves through the academic world!」
The scraped articles listed one achievement after another from Minerva’s graduates. Losing interest after the sixteenth person, Elysia tossed the thick scrapbook aside and found the next article.
「Nobles shunning ‘Minerva’ a thing of the past? Entrance exam applicants reach an all-time high this year… half of them nobles.」
「For the first time since its founding, the number of noble students surpasses commoners. Reichen Foundation: “We will likely create a separate admissions track for commoners.”」
「Commoner Admissions Track Canceled.」
「Minerva’s commoner student population remains below 13% for 15th consecutive year… Amid growing suspicions, Reichen Foundation states, “There have been no cases of fraudulent admission.”」
The last article was dated 1849—the present. Having learned what had transpired at this academy over roughly a hundred years, Elysia frowned and glanced at the incredibly thick list of graduates. Ugh, I didn’t need all these trivial details…
Still, since she had the information, she figured she might as well read it. Just as she was flipping through the pages, barely distinguishing the black text from the white background, something caught her eye. She tilted her head and checked the departments of the 1st and 81st graduating classes.
The ‘Art Department,’ which hadn’t even existed at first, was established with the 23rd class. It gradually grew in influence, eventually splitting into ‘Fine Arts’ and ‘Music’ in the 58th year, and by the 81st class, it accounted for half of all graduates. Elysia gathered all the vast materials into a pile and discarded them.
No wonder the whole academy is in an uproar if this many people are preparing for something together, she thought. Just then, a banner popped up.
♥ In celebration of spring, <You'll Fall in Love>’s big event, the ‘Art Festival,’ is about to begin! ﾉ(oωo) ﾉ Stroll through the beautifully decorated campus and build your favorability with him! (D-21) ♥
Ah, so the Art Festival is an in-game event. Realizing that all of this was just a game element felt strange. That’s right. She had almost forgotten after moving to this game with its advanced technology, but this was still a game world.
Unlike <Panic in the City>, where input values were limited and NPC reactions were fixed, in <You'll Fall in Love>, she could enjoy an incredible degree of freedom.
So much so that she could feel how tremendously technology in the real world had advanced while she was trapped in the game.
As Elysia recalled the game characters’ lifelike reactions, a sudden thought gave her a troubled expression.
In <Panic in the City>, if you asked the characters, “The game is too hard, please nerf it,” or “How does it feel to live in this shitty game?” they would just look puzzled and reply, “I don’t understand what you’re saying.”
What about the characters in this game, then? What if they realized they were beings created for the amusement of users from outside this dimension?
A chill ran down one side of her heart.
*
From early in the morning, a long line of enormous wagons stood at Minerva’s entrance. Heavy stone sculptures that required several able-bodied men to lift and massive canvases were being endlessly unloaded and moved.
The neighing of horses mixed with the shouts of merchants hawking cheap paints from their stalls, creating absolute chaos.
Wow, is someone going to get crushed and die moving that stuff? She was sitting on the packed steps leading up to the entrance, watching the students come and go and the merchants happily taking their money, when someone tapped her on the shoulder.
“Why are you sitting here?”
“Because I’m looking for some absolute sons of bitches I need to find.”
“Excuse me? Who?”
“The drug addicts I saw.”
Adrian scoffed in disbelief.
“You think you’ll find them by camping out here? There are dozens of entrances to the Main Building.”
Ignoring him, Elysia glared at each wagon entering the academy grounds and replied.
“I figured it’s better to watch from a fixed position than to wander around. If you wait, they’ll show up. If you hold out, you win. Why? Because you hold out until you win…”
“What are you even talking about? We have to go. Let’s go, quickly.”
“What? Where!”
With a bored expression that seemed to say, where do you think?, Adrian handed her something.
“I brought you a present.”
Something crinkly landed in her hands. Elysia saw that it was a cloth-like object wrapped in wax paper. Wh-what is this? It kind of looks like a prison uniform. Am I imagining things?
“It’s the lab coat you’ll be wearing in the laboratory.”
Damn it, I wasn’t imagining it! This really is a prison uniform! To think I’ve actually become something like a grad student.
She fiddled with the crinkling lab coat packaging with a dejected face and muttered.
“Shit, let me drop out…”
“What happened to the person who was so motivated yesterday that they borrowed several books…?”
“I don’t know, probably dead?”
“But you’re standing right here in front of me, perfectly fine. Now, now. Let’s go.”
Guided by a hand pushing her back, she trudged along with heavy steps, as if being dragged to a slaughterhouse.
Ugh, I hate this, I hate it. I just want to run around and beat up bad guys. Ugh, studying.
As Adrian dragged her toward the laboratory, the sounds of things shattering and breaking echoed from all directions. The tremendous noise felt like it would split her eardrums, and her stomach churned.
Noticing her pale face, Adrian pushed her back more firmly.
“It’s like this every year during the Art Festival.”
“Is there… construction going on or something?”
“There actually is construction. We have a separate Art Hall, but the actual exhibition space is here in the Main Building. They go on about how the foot traffic needs to be just so, and the angles have to be perfect for their work to look its most beautiful… and then you add in the students who start wailing and smashing their own art because they don’t like it—”
“Are they insane?”
It seems there are a lot of patients in the terminal stages of ‘artistic temperament.’ Wailing and smashing the art they made themselves!
The two of them fled into the laboratory and hastily locked the door. Though the door was thick, it was still just wood, so it wasn’t completely soundproof, but it managed to block out the disaster-like torrent of noise.
As he slipped his arms into his lab coat, Adrian noticed Elysia’s state and grew concerned. She was pale and even breaking out in a cold sweat.
“Uh, ma’am? Are you alright?”
The sudden flood of overwhelming noise into her unusually sensitive sensory organs had pushed her stress to its limit.
Her five senses ran wild to the point of making her nauseous. The dull, thudding sounds from beyond the door only frayed her nerves further.
Adrian was about to place a hand on the shoulder of Elysia, who was pressing her hands tightly over her ears and breathing quietly with her eyes closed, but he froze when she suddenly snapped her head up.
With a blank expression that also seemed tinged with anger, Elysia forced out the words as if suppressing something.
“Someone’s here.”