Dying of Curiosity
"Isabelle, if there's someone you want to build up favor with, but you don't know how to get close to them, what should you do?"
Isabelle, who had been foraging for ingredients alongside me in the nearby woods, slammed her face straight into a tree trunk.
"U-Uh, Isabelle?"
"Don't mind me."
"Your forehead is bright red, though."
"More importantly... who is it you want to get close to?"
"It's a secret!"
Isabelle made no attempt to conceal her disappointment. Considering she was spending her precious day off gathering ingredients just for my sake, I supposed keeping it from her was a bit cruel.
"Mmm... It's supposed to be a secret, but I'll tell only you. You can't tell anyone else, okay?"
"All right."
"Usually, she just shuts herself up in one place and doesn't have any friends besides me except for this one other person. But she's so close with that friend that I can't seem to get any closer to her."
Isabelle offered an understanding smile. "Ah, there are people like that. The type who get so attached once they open up to someone that it's hard for anyone else to break into their circle."
Soulmates. Best friends. Once someone formed a bond that tight, penetrating their defenses was tough work. That was the gist of what Isabelle explained.
"In times like that, you have to break the ice by bringing up their best friend. That's how I bonded with the veterans in our adventurer party."
"Whoa, really?"
"And they always love talking about hiking."
"Huh?"
"Fishing isn't bad either."
Social skills honed in the cutthroat realities of adult life within the Esonia Adventurer Party: bring up hiking and fishing!
'The Answering Door can't go hiking or fishing, though.'
It wasn't particularly useful, but I decided to keep it in mind anyway. At the very least, bringing up topics they care about should pique their interest, right?
"There is no friend in Miss Orknodi's orbit with whom she shares that degree of intimacy," Giselle stated flatly, his gaze dead serious.
"That's what I thought, right?"
"Unless she has made a new acquaintance away from your watchful eyes, Miss Isabelle, the individual is likely someone we already know."
Isabelle was deeply indebted to Orknodi. Sharing her concern for the young girl, Giselle had even paid her a separate stipend to provide daily reports and consultations regarding Orknodi's well-being. Given his background as an underground merchant, Giselle possessed an unconventional perspective that was surprisingly keen, leading Isabelle to seek his counsel on regular occasion.
"The most likely candidate is Miss Dorothy."
"Dorothy?"
"A fellow Upper Class student from Group A. Miss Orknodi previously came to her aid when she was betrayed and abandoned by her comrades during Examiner Minerva's trial."
"That girl actually made it into the Upper Class...?"
Isabelle was genuinely surprised. While she respected tenacity, sheer grit alone rarely sufficed to navigate the unforgiving world. From what she had observed, Dorothy possessed no remarkable qualities that would guarantee such success.
'A difference in discernment.'
As an adventurer, Isabelle was confident in appraising wild ingredients and unearthed relics, but her ability to read people paled before that of an underground merchant like Giselle. After all, when she first met Orknodi, she hadn't realized just how kind, upright, and pitiable a child she truly was.
'I knew he was thorough, but to think it was this bad...'
Dorothy lived on the very same ground floor of the girls' dormitory as Isabelle. Yet while Isabelle had remained oblivious out of disinterest, Giselle—who lived in an entirely different dormitory—commanded far more information about the girl. It was rather shocking.
"Do not be too hard on yourself. Gathering intelligence on individuals connected to Miss Orknodi is merely an occupational hazard of an underground merchant. It consumes an exorbitant amount of time and is, frankly, a rather gloomy hobby that cannot be openly shared."
"Don't sell yourself short. You're helping me out right now, so I think it's a perfectly fine hobby."
"I am relieved you see it that way. For your information, that girl has not utilized the automated laundry magic circle once over the past few days, so she may smell slightly ripe."
"Okay, that part is actually kind of creepy."
She genuinely hoped it remained just a hobby. A single step in the wrong direction, and he would be nothing short of a full-blown stalker.
Tracking down Dorothy's whereabouts proved simple enough, thanks to assistance from another person who kept tabs on every female student in Group A.
"Dorothy? Ah, that girl who carries a bow. Group B has been acting up again, so I offered to let her travel with us to keep Group A united, but she insisted on staying alone—likely still in shock from being betrayed by her childhood friend."
Arcadia, the sole woman among the leadership of the Western Aristocratic Alliance. Contrary to the initial impression of a haughty and difficult noble lady, she looked out for the safety of the female freshmen in Group A, demonstrating the poise and responsibility befitting both an Upper Class student and highborn nobility. As someone who often needed help locating Orknodi whenever she lost track of the girl, Isabelle found Arcadia almost as invaluable as Giselle.
"Could you tell me which room Miss Dorothy is staying in?"
"Room 120."
Upon returning to the dormitory, Isabelle spotted the familiar back of a male student standing near the entrance.
"What are you doing in front of the girls' dorm?"
"Are you... Orknodi's companion?"
It was Rockfell, the boy who had once betrayed Dorothy. Looking thoroughly dejected, he gazed up at a window draped with drawn curtains.
"I am waiting for Dorothy to accept my apology."
"Stubborn fool."
"I committed a terrible wrong."
"If you knew that, you shouldn't have done it in the first place."
"Back then... I wasn't in my right mind. I was obsessed with the idea that I had to bring honor and aid to everyone back home. I thought if Dorothy and I were going to fail together, at least one of us ought to pass."
"If it were me, I'd never forgive you."
"..."
"Don't make that face. I'm on my way to see Dorothy anyway."
Rockfell hastily raised an arm to grab Isabelle's shoulder, only for his fingers to freeze midair. Did someone as unworthy as him have any right to make such a selfish plea now? Paralyzed by hesitation, he slowly withdrew his hand.
"Pathetic. How can a grown man be so timid?"
"...Will you help me?"
"Only to the extent of mentioning that a creepy guy has been loitering outside the dorm for days, waiting for someone."
"I have no right to ask, but please."
Isabelle walked past him and knocked lightly on the door of Room 120, where Dorothy was staying.
"Who is it?"
"Isabelle. Orknodi's companion—we helped you in the forest."
"...Come in."
Screeech. As if reflecting the occupant's unease, the door opened only a sliver, barely wide enough to slip a toe through. Just as Giselle had warned, the stifling, stale odor characteristic of someone who hadn't washed their hair in days drifted from within.
"You did well to pass."
"When I touched the black-hatted instructor, I gained a massive number of points. Around eighteen hundred, I think?"
"How was that even possible?"
"Unlike the examinees, who rested a day before beginning the game of tag the next morning, the instructor's tag score must have been accumulating from the very moment the exam began."
"...Is that what she meant when she said you might pass if you were lucky?"
If those were the rules, the first person to tag the instructor would rake in all the points accumulated since the start of the exam in a single lump sum. Had Orknodi possessed that knowledge from the beginning, she could easily have tagged the instructor herself, sprinted in reverse, and breezed right through the magic circle.
"The points were cut to one percent, so what I actually received was eighteen points, and since I didn't arrive in time, I was hit with a fifty-point penalty... but thanks to that boost, I was able to keep pushing without giving up."
What if Orknodi had taken it for herself? Instead of eighteen points, couldn't she have monopolized the entire eighteen hundred? Considering that one exam score point translated to one hundred Academy points, that was an opportunity to claim a staggering one hundred and eighty thousand points.
'She knew, yet she didn't pursue it.'
Isabelle knew the reason. It was because Orknodi had been worried about them, her companions. After all, wasn't she the very person who had refused the privilege of Immediate Admission as the first stage's top scorer simply because she couldn't leave the group behind?
A child so purely, foolishly kind.
Yet at the same time, a child suspiciously competent, raised as a ruthless weapon or assassin by some shadowy noble house.
The more Isabelle thought about it, the more her heart ached.
"Did she ask you to deliver a message?"
"Nothing like that, but I did come to ask you something."
"It's not about that idiot outside, is it?"
"That's just a byproduct."
"Rockfell, that moron, needs to suffer a lot more. Even then, I won't feel completely satisfied. Do you think I'm being too harsh?"
"Couldn't care less. If it were me, I wouldn't forgive him in a million years. A man who betrays you once has no reason not to do it twice. He's unfit to be a comrade."
If it were merely for dating, keeping a reasonably handsome fellow like Rockfell around might be tolerable, but as a comrade or marriage partner, it was out of the question. A man who cut and ran at the decisive moment was the epitome of irresponsibility. She couldn't trust him, nor did she care to.
"If it's not about Rockfell, what did you want to ask?"
"Orknodi came to me for advice because she wants to get closer to you."
"Huh? Me?"
Surprise and a flicker of vitality returned to Dorothy's sunken, melancholic eyes. A sly, mischievous grin spread across her lips. The moment Isabelle saw that expression, she realized: even Giselle's intelligence wasn't infallible.
"It wasn't you?"
"Of course not! I haven't seen her once since passing the exam. Aren't you mistaking me for someone else?"
"Then I've just wasted your time. My apologies."
"Wait, hold on! You've piqued my curiosity. Tell me what this is all about!"
"I'm not sure sharing it with you is the wisest idea."
"Trust me! I may have gotten advice, but I'm still an Upper Class student who passed the entrance exam on my own two feet. A forest keeper's tracking skills are pretty dependable, you know!"
With Dorothy making such confident boasts, Isabelle figured she had nothing to lose and shared the story.
"Isn't that the friend next door?"
"Next door?"
"I was terrified that there might be some secret dormitory exam after we moved in, so I've been holed up in my room observing the surroundings the whole time."
"...Now that you've returned to the embrace of civilization, learn to adapt. Why torment yourself when you've been given a plush, private room in a comfortable dormitory?"
"Tch. You think I wanted to live like this? I was so anxious I couldn't help it!"
Steering the conversation back on track, Dorothy recounted what she had witnessed.
"A few days ago, a bizarre maid stopped by those two rooms. I remember it clearly because she only went in to change the bedsheets for Rooms 111 and 112."
"Just the bedsheets?"
"Yeah, and she even pressed her ear against the wall from the hallway trying to eavesdrop. A totally creepy maid."
"...Eavesdrop?"
"Something definitely felt off. Could it be that the muscular girl living in Room 112 and Orknodi have some special relationship? Sorry, that's the only lead I have on anyone Orknodi might be concerned about."
"No, this was plenty helpful."
"Ah, also, every now and then, students from nearby rooms press their ears against that wall to listen in. If you go ask them, maybe they know something."
Bedsheets changed in only two rooms.
A maid eavesdropping on those rooms.
Strange noises that had neighboring residents pressing their ears against the walls.
'Ah, dammit. Now I'm hooked too.'
She was going crazy with curiosity.
If she didn't unravel this mystery, she wouldn't get a single wink of sleep tonight.