An Offer You Can't Refuse
“Writer, you seeing this? That's the end of someone who strutted around without knowing her place.”
“I don't really care about the ending, but the nudity is showing up just fine.”
Her uniform had burned away to ash, and the shameful secret it had been hiding was now on full display.
“How on earth did you do that? I was sure Ter was going to be seriously hurt.”
“I just put the Halo's power to active use. You already know how it works.”
Burn to nothing whatever it willed to destroy.
That was the power held by the Halo that belonged to Solis.
Overwhelming destructive force — sunlight that could reduce even an opponent's most potent magic to ash.
People tended to fixate on that clause, but I'd always read it a little differently.
Put the other way, didn't it mean that anything I didn't want to burn simply wouldn't burn?
When I was just reading the novel, I'd been on the fence about it. But after transmigrating into Solis and testing it out on Maten, the suspicion had hardened into certainty.
“I... never knew it could be used like that.”
“You call yourself a god and you don't know that? Be honest with me. You're not actually a god, are you?”
“You'd have to actually get to use them properly to find that out. For someone like me who can do nothing but watch, what good would weapons like that even be?”
“Fair point, honestly.”
Devastatingly reasonable!
Her logic was airtight, so I didn't bother poking holes in it. Sure, a few questions still lingered, but I decided to focus on Ter's situation instead.
“Um...”
She looked herself up and down — perfectly unharmed despite taking the flames head-on — and only then did it dawn on her that her clothes were gone.
Her face flushed scarlet, like a boiled beet.
“So all you managed to do was burn my clothes? Your magic really is pathetic.”
For all her bluster, her words and actions were pointing in exactly opposite directions.
Whatever confidence her tone carried, the way she shyly crossed her slender arms over her chest and between her legs made her look less like a domineering noblewoman and more like a blushing bride. Quite the image.
Okay. Time for a photo shoot.
I raised my phone and aimed the camera at her.
“Dear Reader, that's a crime.”
“I know, I know. It's a joke, just a joke.”
I'd only opened the camera app — I hadn't pressed the shutter or started recording.
Human dignity deserved to be respected, after all.
The only reason I'd pulled out my phone at all was that the view was too entertaining to pass up.
“You think I'm scared of a camera?”
“Hmm, maybe this angle's better.”
“Wow. I become a Purity Academy student and end up photographing naked women. You know how trashy that is, right?”
“Maybe flipping the phone around and taking a quick selfie wouldn't be so bad either.”
“You — if the Citrine family finds out about this, you really think they'll let it slide? Delete that right now!”
“Hey, hey, Writer, look at her. She's getting more and more talkative.”
“That's because you're embarrassing him, dear Reader.”
The haughty air, the languid expression of a young lady who'd spent her whole life looking down her nose at lesser people — bit by bit, that composure was draining away.
She didn't lose her temper and burst into tears like Chloe had, but she fixed me with an ugly glare.
Rich, coming from the one who started all this and is now getting mad about it.
Wrathful Heavenly Thunder.
One of the ten Divine Artifacts left behind by the God King.
If she'd used it against any student other than me, death would have been guaranteed. Even the protagonist's party — Marin aside — would all have been seriously hurt.
Though I suppose Eva managed to dodge it on pure instinct?
At any rate, Ter had just committed an accident that would go down in Academy history as one of the worst ever.
The headmaster could expel her on the spot and the justification would be airtight.
“Dear Reader.”
“What is it, Writer?”
“Couldn't you stop here? You know as well as I do how much that girl has suffered.”
“I do know. Believe me, I do.”
After all, I was the guy who reread Academy Yuri Princess every time boredom struck.
I knew Ter carried a painful past, and I knew that past was exactly what had warped her personality.
But none of it was ever a license to hurt other people.
“Sorry, but I have no intention of leaving Ter as she is. You know perfectly well what kind of vile things she's capable of.”
“That's true, but...”
Back in the day, when readers debated which character best matched Eva as the ultimate heroine candidate, they'd list off virtues one by one — and Ter was the only one whose sole selling points were her pretty face and killer body.
It was largely because of all the awful things she'd pulled on Eva early in the story.
Under the pretext of tarnishing Yupi's reputation, she'd bullied her own classmates, hauled off to the reflection room at the slightest whim — until one day Eva, unable to watch any longer, stepped in to stop her, and the two of them clashed.
From that day forward, Ter harassed Eva over every little thing, their feud deepening with each incident.
They did eventually reconcile and become friends, but her past misdeeds didn't evaporate because of it, and fans championing other heroines for the lead role roasted her constantly.
“But if you leave things like this, she'll be too pitiful.”
“I know you've got a soft spot for Ter — you did write the whole story from Eva's point of view. And I don't actually hate her, either.”
They say a person can't be rewritten, but after reconciling with Eva, she'd genuinely repented, walking a path of penance — going to her victims one by one to apologize in person.
Some readers sneered that the past didn't wash away just because she said sorry, but I'd always thought there was room for leniency.
The biggest factor: at this point in the timeline, she hadn't yet committed the sins the readers had crucified her for.
If prevention was possible, plugging the leak now was the best play.
Click!
“Dear Reader!”
“Trust me. I've got a plan here.”
Having captured the photo on my screen, I walked over to Ter.
“You see this? A naked picture of you.”
I waved the phone screen in front of her face.
Ter tried desperately to look anywhere else, but in the end her eyes flicked my way.
“A precious photo won at the risk of my life. Not a bad trophy, honestly.”
“You want it? Then take it. But you'll be paying the price, of course?”
“Getting dragged off to jail, presumably. Burning your clothes I might talk my way out of — claiming I had to incapacitate you — but taking the photo is a crime, black and white.”
Purely on the merits of the situation, the moment my finger pressed that button, the initiative had passed to Ter.
Handed over to the committee, the two of us would be stood up side by side while our conduct was dissected, and we'd both risk the reflection room at best, expulsion at worst.
...If we kept things inside the Academy, that is.
“But instead, rumors would spread. That Ter Citrine lost to a commoner classmate — not even nobility — that she was reduced to pulling out a Divine Artifact and it still ended ugly. That she was stripped naked and photographed for all her trouble.”
Ter's expression darkened in an instant.
For her, it was the worst-case scenario — a truth that could never be allowed to leak outside.
“Word is you're fighting Yupi over the family head's seat, right? Even if the Divine Artifact chose you, I doubt your supporters would be thrilled with this kind of result.”
“What do you want?”
There it is.
Ter had finally raised the white flag.
She was the kind of person who would accept it with grace if the photo went viral on the internet, so long as it meant Yupi was dragged down with her.
The family head's seat was the only card she had to keep Yupi in check, after all.
“Three years. You stay out of trouble for the entire time you're enrolled at the Academy. And you stop sticking your nose into everything involving Yupi — no more getting in her way at every turn. That's my opening offer.”
“She'll be thrilled, that little bastard. Having someone doting on her like that, right by her side. I'm almost jealous.”
“Skip the commentary. Pick already. If any other witnesses show up here, we'll both be in a world of trouble.”
“...”
Ter seemed to weigh her options.
For her, getting into Purity Academy had been nothing but a means to tear Yupi down.
Causing an incident here and now was supposed to be the first domino in whatever grand scheme she'd built — and I was asking her to abandon it.
But refuse, and she'd be crossing the river to the afterlife before her revenge had even begun.
For my part, I wasn't about to let her sweet-talk me with empty promises and slip out the back.
“If choosing is that hard, let me sweeten the deal. Accept my proposal, and I'll put you in the family head's seat yourself.”
“...What did you say?”
“You heard me. The family head's seat. Isn't that what you wanted?”
Every troublemaking move Ter had ever made ultimately funneled into this one conclusion.
Yupi held the more advantageous position, so Ter schemed and plotted to shave away her reputation at every turn.
“I can't bring myself to believe you. How exactly would you put me in that seat?”
“Simple. I'll make you into someone worthy of it.”
I reached out and tapped the back of her hand with a finger.
“You can't handle Wrathful Heavenly Thunder properly, can you? I'll teach you how.”
The Citrine family were descendants of the God King's bloodline, a house devoted to his worship — and only those chosen by a Divine Artifact had the right to stand as its head.
Ter had been chosen. But her mastery was too crude, and the qualification had slipped through her fingers.
With me, I could lift her higher than she'd ever dreamed.
“You saw it yourself, didn't you? How I stopped your lightning.”
“Hmm.”
“So choose, and choose fast. This is your last chance.”
“...Do I really have no other option?”
Ter stretched out her hand, offering a handshake.
I took it.
Deal closed.
The instant the contract sealed, I deleted the photo from my phone and stripped off my own clothes.
“What are you doing?”
“What does it look like? I'm giving them to you. You weren't planning to stroll around buck naked in broad daylight, were you?”
“And you?”
“Trunks are plenty for me.”
And with that, I was off.
Business concluded, I waved to her and left without looking back.
I had a party to rejoin, and fast.
Luckily, they'd been waiting somewhere closer than I expected, so we regrouped in no time.
Which turned out to be less fortunate than it sounded.
“KYAAA!”
“Why are you naked AGAIN?!”
“Oops.”
Given the state I was in, I took a full helping of curses for my trouble.