Episode 45
Translator: RaidenTL
Episode 45
Adrian squeezed his eyes shut, blurted out his thoughts, then opened them, cautiously anticipating Elysia’s reaction. But what met his gaze was her nonchalant expression, as if to say, “What’s the big deal?”
“Of course I like him. We’re close, aren’t we?”
It was human nature to freeze in fear when faced with someone utterly incomprehensible. Adrian felt something quite similar. Barely clinging to his fading consciousness, he thought.
Damn it, there are two friendship-spouters?
Adrian was left speechless by this monumental waste of effort. Completely forgetting his plan to just give her a hint, he started spilling every last detail.
“N-no, it’s not that he likes you because you’re friends. Didn’t you notice last time? The look on his face when you were hurt was… No, you really don’t know? How?”
“That senior is just naturally kind.”
Elysia smiled, instantly turning a man who was simply kind to everyone into a flirt who would caress the lips of a woman he had no feelings for.
Adrian blinked.
No, Elysia, what is wrong with you? You’re sensitive enough to tell a person’s gender by footsteps I can’t even hear, so why are you being like this all of a sudden?!!
Elysia patted the panicking Adrian on the shoulder and continued.
“I thought it was something serious. Anyway, it’s not like that. You’ve got a really strange misunderstanding.”
“It’s not a misunderstanding, it’s… Ugh, ugh…! Argh, this is so frustrating!”
At this point, he was starting to miss that piece of trash who’d torn an art student’s painting to shreds right before the festival. Those two! There was definitely something between them! I wasn’t the only one who saw it! Grr, but now these two are—!
Giving Adrian a slight smirk, she recalled the last Favorability window she’d seen and muttered.
“I told you, it’s not.”
The favorability hadn’t risen; it had fallen. Moreover, there had been no route change. So there was no way he could have developed feelings for her. Unconsciously recalling the fervor in those green eyes as they looked at her with concern, Elysia flinched and shook her head.
“No.”
It wasn’t true, it wouldn’t be true, and it must not be true.
Her mind, which would normally have delved sharply into the matter to dissect every piece of the truth, lost all composure when it came to this one issue. Like someone locked in a room, she shut herself off from the problem, confidently denying it.
It couldn’t be. He would never betray her…
*
Evan burst out of the Prefect Office and walked straight ahead, aimlessly. His brisk walk soon broke into a run. A system window, invisible to him, flickered continuously.
♥ Route change detected! Commencing search for new route! ♥
♥ searching_newroute ♥
♥ error_newroute_not_found ♥
♥ searching_newroute ♥
♥ error_newroute_not_found ♥
The omnipotent system was in a state of great confusion. It couldn't even grasp the emotions of a character who was supposed to be perfectly analyzable.
Longing for the player, obsession, consideration, compassion—all of it. It was by no means difficult to gather and calculate all the minor elements that accompany the thing called love.
However, Evan Sylvester's emotions and reason were violently clashing, each asserting the opposite of the other. As a result, it was unclear what he even thought of the player.
♥ error_newroute_not_found ♥
Only when he was so out of breath that he could taste blood in his mouth did Evan stop. The pounding of his heart filled his ears.
And then, the face with the sharp features naturally came to mind. The woman who charged forward as if she feared nothing in the world, only to stop and tremble at the most unexpected moments.
His heart sank.
‘I can't do this.’
She was lonely, just like him.
He knew all too well the Elysia who showed her anxiety the moment he approached her with kindness. A loneliness so profound it chilled him to the bone, one he had experienced himself. He knew that being left alone in it was a form of torture.
Love is a childish emotion. And what's more, it's disgusting. Especially when he remembered that he had been pushed into the midst of countless deaths, all for the sake of craving another's affection.
Nevertheless, his emotions raged like a storm.
♥ searching_newroute ♥
♥ error_newroute_not_found ♥
No, that's not it. I will never betray her. She is like my everything, so I cannot harbor such selfish feelings.
Therefore, I will never, ever hold such messy feelings, such filthy love, for you.
♥ searching_newroute ♥
♥ error_newroute_not_found ♥
♥ end; searching_newroute ♥
♥ SYSTEM: Evan Sylvester's current Favorability 170 | No route change ♥
Unable to decipher his clearly changed emotions, the system eventually reverted to its initial state. Unaware of this, Evan bit his lip and vowed to himself over and over.
I can't betray her. I will never, ever…
*
Reaching the laboratory door, Elysia took a bundle of keys from the inner pocket of her school uniform jacket, unlocked the door, and stepped inside.
She moved comfortably around the tidy lab as if it were her own home, taking out flasks and arranging them on the lab bench. Then, she met the eyes of a young man who entered yawning, his face practically dripping with sleepiness, and gave him a bright smile.
“Good morning?”
“…So you’re really going to work me to the bone.”
“It won’t take long. I’ll whip this up quickly and we can go, so just be patient.”
She gave his grumbling lips a firm pinch and a crooked smile, prompting Adrian to wave his arms in protest. Completely ignoring his complaints, Elysia looked down at the ingredients laid out on the lab bench with a tense expression.
A scale, two beakers, and next to them, placed with great care, strand by strand, were…
“Elysia?”
“Yeah?”
“That’s disgusting.”
“I know.”
Elysia looked down at the twenty or so strands of brown hair with a deadpan expression, then let out a small laugh. She was remembering the horrified look on Rayner’s face when she’d come at him with a fiery glint in her eyes.
“Are you crazy?!?!”
“Ugh, you’re so loud. Who said anything about shaving you bald? I just said I’d pluck about twenty strands.”
“D-don’t touch me!”
He flinched upon seeing the burning desire in Elysia’s eyes to pluck his hair. She scoffed, tilted her head, and uttered a magical phrase.
“Oh? Should I call your girlfriend? Huh?”
The moment he heard that, Rayner immediately surrendered his head. She didn’t forget to smack the back of his head a few times as he sighed heavily and muttered curses under his breath.
Oh? 'Uck'? What 'uck'? This little shit.
After a bit more of that back-and-forth, she had twenty of his hairs in her hand.
“What the hell are you going to use that for?”
To his annoyed question, his brow furrowed, Elysia replied with a blank face.
“To catch and kill bastards like you.”
She closed her eyes and recalled the formula for a reagent she used to make all the time through alchemy in <Panic in the City>.
Hmm, I think I just threw in Fenrir, which dissolves the surface layer of hair, and Phoebe extract, which reacts to drugs, at a roughly 7-to-3 ratio.
Elysia poured the solutions from their bottles into a beaker and stirred the mixture with a glass rod. She’d barely stirred it three times when she set the rod down with a clink and exclaimed.
“All done!”
“That’s it?”
“As far as I know.”
Even to her, the recipe seemed ridiculously simple. Feeling a little embarrassed, Elysia cleared her throat a few times and portioned the newly created reagent into small vials.
“Just mixing it is all it takes.”
Adrian was writing down the experimental procedure in disbelief when it happened. With a lightning-fast motion, Elysia plucked a strand of red hair and held it preciously, her eyes sparkling. Caught by the sudden attack, he yelped.
“Hey! What was that for?!”
Before he could even react, Elysia had dropped the plucked hair into one of the vials of reagent, capped it, and gave it a gentle shake. Seeing that it remained perfectly clear with no change, Adrian furrowed his brow.
“What is it?”
“You don’t do drugs, do you?”
“Is that even a question? What do you take me for? I’m the picture of innocence. Honestly.”
This kid’s gotten some nerve, huh? Elysia raised an eyebrow as if impressed, then smirked and reached across the desk.
“Alright, then let’s try adding a trace from a drug addict.”
She opened a new vial, dropped in one of Rayner’s hairs that she had so painstakingly plucked, and swirled the contents. And in that moment.
“Whoa, whoa!”
Adrian cried out when he saw the reagent turning crimson, starting from where the hair touched it. In contrast, Elysia was calm, her eyes narrowed as she stared at the vial in her hand. The pixelated system window from <Panic in the City> appeared in her mind.
new! <Drug Detection Liquid> x 10
Item Description: With this reagent, the culprit can't deny their crime.
Item has been added to your Inventory.
Unlike Adrian, who was making a fuss as if it were the discovery of the century, Elysia simply stared at the vial in her palm, a look of understanding on her face. Of course. To her, this was nothing more than a very basic potion.
She was certain now. <Panic in the City> was never released. Instead, it was cannibalized for the next game, <You'll Fall in Love>. Which meant…
‘They just recycled the assets.’
That was probably why ingredients with the exact same names as the ones she used for crafting in <Panic in the City> existed here.
That would also explain how Crea and Voluet could be made. It meant the ingredients used to make the drugs also existed in this world.
The only thing that bothered her was…
‘But they wouldn't have implemented drugs in a dating sim, would they? Who figured out the formula, and how?’
Manufacturing drugs requires a lot of expensive raw materials mixed in very precise ratios. Even Elysia, who was basically a living manual for <Panic in the City>, only knew the approximate amounts of the ingredients for Crea and Voluet, not the exact ratios.
“Damn it, I should have kept it in my inventory.”
She used to have a blue notebook where she’d written down all the item formulas and quest guides for <Panic in the City>, but she didn’t have it now. There had been no need to carry it around. She always just left it at home…
If she’d known she’d suddenly be transported to a different game, she would have brought it with her!
She set aside her regrets for the moment and fell back into thought.
Two years. They said the drugs started circulating two years ago. Elysia recalled the state of the drug she had tasted with her fingertip.
‘How could they achieve that level of purity in just two years?’
Chemistry was not very advanced in this world. The purity of the Crea circulating in the academy was at a level that could only be achieved if someone intentionally mixed it with perfect ratios. In a place where the level of knowledge was so barren, someone developed it to that extent all on their own?
That was impossible.
Who? How on earth? And why?
The endless questions were stuck on a loop.