Episode 37
Translator: RaidenTL
Episode 37
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Smiling coldly at the stiff-faced Rayner, Elysia explained in a monotone.
“That day, after you tore the painting, you threw Violante’s canvas down the waste disposal chute. Then, you retrieved it just as the garbage wagon arrived at the main gate.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“You did see Siene Reve enter the workspace, that part was true, but you cleverly concealed the rest of the truth. You also saw her come back out empty-handed, but you never mentioned that part.”
“I—”
“You went in right after Siene. Thanks to that, a total of three sets of footprints were left in Violante’s workspace. Violante’s own, Siene’s, and finally, yours. Since the types of shoes allowed on campus are regulated, and you and Violante have similar builds, the cleaner couldn’t tell your footprints apart from his.”
Rayner anxiously clenched and unclenched his fist before forcing a relaxed smile.
“That’s all just your speculation. Do you have any physical evidence?”
Agh! That damn evidence, evidence, evidence! I felt my head spin. Growling, she gritted her teeth and snapped.
“Yeah, you crazy bastard! You shipped all the physical evidence off with the trash, so what else can I do but speculate? Fucking hell! The student council president, this bastard, everyone’s bitching about evidence! And I’m not done talking yet.”
“El. Calm down.”
Evan’s placating tone as he said her name brought Elysia back to her senses. Her eyes went wide, and she snapped her mouth shut with a gasp before letting out a soft sigh.
Elysia, who had been about to blatantly pull something from her inventory, glanced furtively at the people surrounding her, then hid herself behind Evan’s back.
“...What are you doing?”
“Ugh, just a second. This thing’s a bit big, it’ll look weird if I just pull it out.”
A moment later, something heavy was dragged out with a soft scraping sound. Peeking over Evan’s shoulder, she stepped out triumphantly, waving something in her hand.
“What I’m saying is that I worked my ass off to find this. You seem to have underestimated my persistence. I’m tougher than I look.”
Dangling from Elysia’s hand was none other than a Minerva male student uniform jacket.
*
So, what exactly was this “diligent suffering” of hers? To find out, we must go back three hours.
After sending Evan to the uniform shop, the first thing Elysia did was hail a wagon. The coachman, who had just unloaded a delivery of plaster models at the Art Hall and retaken the reins, stared blankly at the female student casually hopping up beside him.
What the? Is this girl crazy?
“Where to?”
“...Excuse me?”
“There’s a place that buys trash around here, right? I want to go there.”
He wondered what kind of nonsense this was. The man, who needed to get back to the quarry as quickly as possible, was not pleased by her request.
Judging by her uniform, she seemed to be a Minerva student. Considering that the vast majority of students at this school were nobles—and while the girl’s attire didn’t scream nobility, there was always the possibility of an ‘if’—it was difficult to just kick her out.
Just then, enough gold coins to instantly end the man’s dilemma poured into his hand.
“Double this when we arrive. Just so you know.”
The calculator in his head didn’t take long to finish its work, and the coachman pulled the reins without hesitation. He drove the horse with more care and dedication than he ever had in his entire life.
Leaning against the back of the rattling wagon, Elysia organized her thoughts as she watched the scenery pass by.
Even though Rayner was the most suspicious, she hadn’t suspected him because of the testimony from Thomas, the cleaner. He’d said there was one set of a man’s footprints and one set of a woman’s...
But seeing Evan’s clothes earlier had sparked another possibility.
‘What if he was mistaken?’
The Minerva uniform included the shoes. This meant that the soles of the shoes worn by the male students were all identical.
Once she realized this, a strange point in Thomas’s testimony that ‘the floor was covered in footprints’ became apparent.
‘Only two people went in and out, but that was enough to cover the floor in footprints?’
Two people weren’t enough to leave that many tracks. But what if a total of three people had entered that space? It was a shame that she could only rely on testimony. If she had seen the footprints herself, she would have noticed right away.
Elysia recalled the build of the bastard who’d pushed her to the floor, then the build of the other bastard who’d sneered about telling the student council.
‘They’re definitely similar.’
A man strong enough to easily rip thick canvas, who wants Siene Reve to be confirmed as the culprit, and who, despite being a noble who values decorum, doesn’t wear his uniform properly.
Was it that he didn’t wear it, or that he couldn’t? She had sent Evan to the uniform shop to find that out.
The rattling wagon came to a sudden stop, and her body lurched forward. Elysia, who was nearly thrown to the ground, barely managed to grab the railing of the coachman’s seat to steady herself. The coachman, realizing his last-minute mistake after an otherwise smooth ride, gave an awkward laugh and said.
“We’re here.”
Elysia leaped down from the wagon, took out gold from her currency window, and stacked it neatly on the seat she had just vacated. The coachman, too busy counting each coin, didn’t notice the woman he’d brought frantically bunching up her long skirt in both hands and starting to run for her life.
*
The acrid smell, as if something was burning, made it difficult to breathe. Elysia urgently ran, chasing the scent.
When she’d caught the wagon, she had taken the time to leisurely go over her thoughts, knowing there was no time she could cut. But from now on, it was a race against time.
“Am I too late?”
To be honest, she hadn’t come here with high hopes. She was simply betting on the possibility that only three days had passed since the incident.
“Pant, pant...”
So out of breath she couldn’t even curse, Elysia kept running until she saw a vast expanse of countless piles of trash and her face twisted in dismay. A giant mountain of garbage filling the yard stretched out before her.
“In-insane. Why is there so much?”
From a shabby house in the back of the yard, where smoke was billowing, came the sound of something being broken. Elysia followed her intuition, and immediately spotted a one-legged easel and a statue with its top half broken off.
Smeared hideously over them was paint, as if a still-wet painting had been smudged. It was the same shade of blue that had filled Lucian’s painting.
Before she could even form a coherent thought, her hands were already moving. Elysia shoved aside every obstacle in her path, frantically tearing through the mess.
Beads of sweat began to form on her forehead, and the black dust rising from the objects stained her clothes.
“Pant, haa... You... bastard! Just you wait until I get my hands on you. I’ll kill you! Ugh!”
As she was kicking useless items out of her way, Elysia was startled nearly to death by someone’s voice calling out to her.
“Who are you?”
“Aaaah!!!”
“Who are you?”
“Me? I’m, huff, well, I’m...”
Elysia, who had been bent over with her hands on her trembling knees, gasped for air and lifted her head. A small boy with curious eyes was sitting on a discarded chest of drawers, his legs dangling.
In that instant, her gray eyes flashed.
“...Found it.”
A beige jacket. The Minerva male student uniform jacket. Stained clearly near the right wrist was the same blue paint used in Lucian’s painting.
“...Miss?”
“You, where did you get that?”
The small-statured boy, who looked like he had picked up and put on the clearly discarded piece of clothing, stood before her.
Forgetting her own exhaustion, Elysia strode hastily toward the boy. She grabbed the collar of his jacket and asked.
“You, where did you get this jacket?”
“I-it was thrown away, and it looked cool, so I picked it up and put it on. Wh-why? That’s not a bad thing! I didn’t steal it!”
“Who said it was? You did great, kid!”
Elysia went so far as to hug the boy. Placing her hands on the shoulders of the child, who was much shorter than her, she bent down to meet his eyes and said.
“Here, give it to me.”
“N-no way! I found it, why should I give it back? Finders keepers!”
The boy cowered, clutching the jacket he was wearing as if to protect it at all costs, and trembled. Without a moment’s hesitation, Elysia took off her own jacket.
“You, uh... what’s your name? Kiddo?”
“I have a name, you know.”
“I’m sure you do. What is it? Spit it out.”
“It’s Peter.”
Wiping her glistening, sweaty forehead with the back of her hand, Elysia began to gently coax Peter.
“Right, Peter. You’re right. It was thrown in the dump, you found it, so it’s yours. But does that jacket even fit you right now? It doesn’t fit at all, does it?”
“So?”
“Let’s trade for mine. How about it? The design is the same, the only difference is the size. Besides, that one’s a little dirty, isn’t it? Mine is cleaner than that.”
The boy’s eyes darted back and forth as he considered her offer. After desperately searching for a flaw in the deal, the boy spoke up.
“You smell like sweat.”
Ah, this little brat? She felt a vein pop in her forehead. Elysia squeezed her eyes shut for a moment before opening them and growling.
“...You can just wash it!”
“If you ignore the sweat smell, your clothes do look cleaner and better...”
“Peter? Is someone here?”
Just then, a middle-aged man in even worse shape than Elysia—who had just been shamed for smelling too sweaty—walked out of the house. His eyes grew wary as he saw the sharp-featured woman holding onto his son.
“What’s going on?”
Now in a complete hurry, she decided to be direct.
“Please give me the clothes your son is wearing!”
It was a cliché line she felt like she’d heard somewhere before. Of course, the genre would have been vastly different. She held out her own jacket and gestured to Peter. The boy hesitated for a moment, then snatched her jacket and quickly shrugged off the one he was wearing, holding it out to her.
A system window popped up with a red exclamation mark.
SYSTEM: Evidence Acquired! (Progress 1/3)
The evidence has been collected in your inventory!