Episode 79
Translator: RaidenTL
Episode 79
SYSTEM: You have had a sufficient amount of deep sleep. ‘Forced Sleep’ status has been lifted.
Blinking her eyes open, Elysia shot up and scanned her surroundings. She let out a sigh of relief when she realized she was lying in a familiar room.
The situation had been so urgent that she’d been put to sleep without a proper explanation, but it seemed Evan had taken care of everything.
As she calmed herself, she noticed she was wearing comfortable indoor clothes and froze.
What the?
Her body didn’t feel the least bit grimy, which meant she’d definitely been given a bath… As this thought crossed her mind, Elysia squeezed her eyes shut.
Senior, I trusted you, but you didn’t have to do such a thorough job…!
Jumping out of bed, Elysia spotted a piece of paper on the desk. She rubbed her eyes and read it.
「To the idiot who has zero sense of crisis」
The prickly tone and the softly curving script—this was undoubtedly Siene’s. Flopping back onto the bed, Elysia stretched out her long legs and kicked the curtains open with her foot. Bathed in the pouring sunlight, she read the letter Siene had left behind.
Whatever it was, she doubted it would be anything nice—
「Are you crazy? Why do you sleep just anywhere?」
Of course. A small smile played on Elysia’s lips as she saw Siene’s scathing words right from the start, and she continued reading.
「What would you have done if I hadn’t saved you? I’m the one who called the maids stationed in the dormitory to wash you, change your clothes, and put you in that bed. You know exactly who you should be grateful to, right? You’d better be grateful. Or I won’t let you off easy.
Also, your portrait. I like it so much I’ve decided to just make it my own work. Consider it an honor to be the muse of a master and accept it with gratitude.
Ah, this is to replace the portrait I couldn’t give you. Your room is way too bare, so either frame it or… whatever. But if you throw it away after I told you to do whatever you want with it, I’ll throw you away.
P.S. If you’re sorry, you’re playing only with me next week. I’ll be mad if you don’t.
Elysia Hemming’s savior, Siene.」
So childish. Elysia clicked her tongue lightly, then noticed a palm-sized drawing held by the same wooden clip. She let out an involuntary sound of admiration.
“Ooh…”
She had wondered what could have been drawn on something so small, but it was a graphite portrait. It appeared to have been sketched while she was asleep. Though it looked like a rough drawing at first glance, it was, as expected of a genius, incredibly detailed.
Elysia opened the ‘Shop’ menu, bought a picture frame, and placed the drawing in it before setting it on her desk.
“…Nice.”
At the very least, this meant it wasn’t Evan who had washed and changed her.
She let out a deep sigh of relief and stretched as she sprang up from the bed. There was something she hadn’t been able to finish because she’d fallen asleep. She opened her inventory and searched for the evidence Evan had given her last night.
new! <Luxury Ashtray in a Paper Bag>
Item Description: A high-quality ashtray made of marble. It is engraved with a delicate relief.
Elysia took the ashtray out of the rustling bag. Seeing that one corner of it was chipped, she immediately rummaged through her inventory again and pulled out a bottle of Luminol solution.
After blocking all light from entering the room, she sprayed the solution. The traces of where blood had pooled on the ashtray glowed with a blue light.
Elysia held a pen between her lips and opened her notebook. At the same time, she threw the curtains open to let the light back in and activated her skill.
SYSTEM: Active Skill ‘Observation’ has been activated. (Effect Duration: 15 minutes)
She reached out, lightly tossed the ashtray in the air, and caught it, reading the text that appeared.
➤ Material: High-quality marble
➤ Weight: 940g
940g. As if reading her mind, another sentence followed.
➤ A weight a woman can easily lift.
She turned the ashtray over and scanned its sides. Text began to crawl out from the indented parts of the detailed carving.
➤ Red pigment detected. Analyzing components.
…Component analysis complete. Presumed to be ink paste used for seals.
Elysia remembered that the contract Alma and Hertz had signed was stamped with a seal.
No matter how many underlings Alma had, it was unlikely they would have stamped the contract for her. The person who would have physically touched the ink paste to finalize the deal was most likely Alma Heron herself.
“Then what is this?”
So, he was murdered with a head injury right after signing a contract to hand over drug distribution rights to Hertz. It didn’t add up. It might have made sense if it were a murder in a normal place, but Hertz had been killed in the very heart of a criminal enterprise.
Furthermore, the Alma Heron she had seen was the type of person to pull the trigger with a playful smile. When faced with the moment of a kill, she would never hesitate.
Therefore, using a trick like this to hide the cause of death didn’t suit her style.
As she habitually turned the evidence over and over in her hands, something new appeared in her vision.
➤ Impact site: Cracks spreading in multiple directions → Struck multiple times in succession
“This part seems plausible…”
The violent and aggressive traces left on the ashtray matched Alma’s methods, but everything else was off. Disguising it as a suicide and knocking him out before aiming for a vital point to cause instant death were both strange for her.
With a system message announcing the end of the skill’s duration, the monocle slowly dissolved and vanished.
A knock on the door pulled her from her deep thoughts. An irritable voice escaped her before she could stop it.
“What is it?”
“Miss Hemming, someone from the Linton family is here to see you.”
“Good timing.”
Muttering to herself, Elysia leaned on the desk and picked up her notebook. She didn’t have a perfect grasp of everything yet, but she was buzzing with the excitement of having figured out who the culprit was.
With her hair a mess and still in her indoor clothes, she flung the door open with a blank expression. The maid standing outside flinched back as if frightened and squeezed her eyes shut.
“I-I’m sorry…!”
“You have nothing to be sorry for. I’m coming down now.”
“B-But, in those clothes, if you go down…!”
The maid, who had been stammering and trying to stop her, could only stare blankly at the hem of Elysia’s clothes as she vanished down the stairs in an instant.
“Oh no…” she muttered, stunned.
Of course, Elysia didn't hear her.
*
Blair, who had been waiting for her while sipping tea in the dormitory lobby, promptly spat out a mouthful of black tea the moment he saw Elysia’s attire. She plopped down in the seat across from him and scowled.
“What the fuck, that’s disgusting.”
“You, you…”
“Are you going to drink that back up? Seriously gross…”
The clothes of the woman staring at him as if he were pathetic were clearly pajamas. Blair pressed a hand to his forehead and grumbled.
“Are you in your right mind? Coming down dressed like that…”
“What’s the big deal? Everything that needs to be covered is covered.”
It seemed she had forgotten how thin the fabric of her indoor clothes was. Blair looked at her, at a loss for where to even begin his lecture, then sighed and held out his coat.
“Cover yourself.”
“Trying to act all chivalrous now, are we?”
Grumbling, Elysia took his coat and draped it over herself. She opened her notebook, her expression instantly turning ice-cold as she asked.
“So, should I just tell you everything?”
“Yes, I came to listen.”
“If there’s anything you don’t want to hear, say so now. I’m going to tell you everything, without holding back.”
“Tell me. Everything.”
Elysia glanced at Blair’s eyes, which were so bloodshot they looked ready to burst with fatigue, and began to read the contents of her notebook in a dry, emotionless tone.
“Nine hours before the body fell, at 3:06 AM on May 26th, Caden Hertz was murdered. The skull and neck bone fractures occurred at that time, and the decisive cause of death was the fractured neck bone. The skull fracture is presumed to have been an attack to incapacitate him before the murder.”
“…Go on.”
“The place of the murder was indeed the factory I found. And while going through the evidence, I discovered something new.”
Elysia paused and pulled a restored copy of the contract from her inventory, holding it out. She watched Blair with a look of pity as he took the paper with trembling hands.
“Caden Hertz made a contract with a woman named ‘Alma Heron’.”
“Alma Heron, you mean…”
“You’ve dabbled in Crea, so you must have heard of her. Alma Heron, she’s the woman who sells off the drugs that come into Minerva, isn’t she?”
His face, already pale, hastily scanned the contents of the contract. The man forced a laugh and asked.
“He won… distribution rights? He wasn’t just messing around like a youthful pastime, he was trying to start a serious business?”
“It seems so. And right after signing this contract… Caden Hertz met his end.”
Hearing Elysia’s words, Blair fell silent for a long time, his eyes fixed on the contract in his hand.
The man stared at Caden Hertz’s signature, then bit his lip hard and, with a cold expression, tore it to shreds. Just as Blair was about to stomp on the fluttering pieces of paper, he was subdued by Elysia, who grabbed him by the neck and slammed him against the back of the sofa.
“Are you fucking crazy?!!”
“Cough! Let… go!”
Of course, she didn’t listen to him. Elysia’s face was expressionless, as if she were looking at a pathetic crab blowing bubbles.
“Am I crazy? You want me to let you go? So you can run off like a misbehaving dog and tear it up again? Do you have any idea how much shit I went through for this?”
“Let’s just pretend it never happened.”
Until she heard those words, she hadn’t been that angry. It wasn’t the first time a bereaved family member had expressed their anger when the deceased’s shame was revealed.
She’d been accused of fabricating evidence, told it couldn’t possibly be true, and even had her collar grabbed.
But this.
“What?”
“Let’s end it as a suicide.”
A fire ignited in her cold, gray eyes. Just bury it? Was this insane proposal really coming from none other than the victim’s own acquaintance? Noticing her frigid expression, Blair shook his head, denying it.
“This… this is… No, this is a disgrace to the family. I didn’t know it was this bad. It’s better for everyone if his life ended as a suicide. I’ve already torn up the contract and—”
“Bullshit. It was just a copy anyway.”
Grinding her teeth, Elysia stood up and glared down at Blair, who was still seated.
Even though Evan wasn’t there, she heard a phantom voice whispering beside her. Don’t hit him, endure it, solve it with words… But the moment Blair opened his mouth again, she felt her reason snap.
“Don’t look at me with those pathetic eyes. What would a commoner with no family know?! This… burying this is better for everyone.”
What is this class-obsessed piece of shit? The moment he said “commoner,” she turned and pulled a book from a nearby bookshelf.
Elysia tossed it lightly in her hand, gauging its weight. About 600g. Should be an appropriate weight for putting down a rabid dog.
“…There’s nothing to be gained by bringing this to light. So—”
“Clench your teeth.”
SMACK! The book flew from Elysia’s hand, slammed into Blair’s face, and fell to the floor with a thud.