Lipsberg University of Technology
The side of my forehead that I’d slammed into the wall was still throbbing.
When I looked over at the culprit, Liesel smiled back with an embarrassed little eye-smile. As if what had just happened were nothing more than a trivial mishap, she kept trotting after me with my right arm hooked in hers.
Maybe I shouldn’t have blurted out that it was only nerve damage.
The weight hanging from my right shoulder felt a little heavy from all the dangling.
The fox ears on top of my head twitched affectionately, and the tail visible at the edge of my vision swayed loosely with the wind.
With behavior like that, it was hard to stay angry.
My downward gaze narrowed for a moment, then relaxed again. I let my right arm hang as it was and tipped my chin up.
“Hah.”
My breath came out white and stark. The air was still cold.
Winter hadn’t quite left yet.
From the side of the road where the two of us walked, a river wind blew toward us.
It came from the river that cut through the center of Lipsberg.
That wind carried up a belated mist rising from the water.
The mist lingered low to the ground, ankle-high, before slowly dissolving as it met the sunlight.
Sunbeams crossed between budding branches and drew pale pillars of light.
I walked along the path threaded between those pillars and the trees.
My calm eyes moved over the surroundings.
There were quite a few people on the road besides us.
Some had come out for a stroll and had only thrown on a light cardigan, while others hurried along with a book bag slung over one shoulder.
There were also people sitting on benches, staring blankly at the river, and others in long coats with briefcases in hand.
The last two were probably professors, I guessed.
The atmosphere of the first day of the semester swelled softly in the gap between winter and spring. As I walked through the middle of it, a thought slipped out before I could stop it.
“Never thought I’d actually come back here.”
“Hm?”
“No, nothing.”
There was no point explaining; she wouldn’t understand anyway. I swallowed the rest.
Lipsberg University of Technology looked exactly like it had in my hazy memories.
Or rather, it was more accurate to say that the university’s appearance had dredged those hazy memories back up.
Crossing the pedestrian light in front of the dormitory led to a dorm complex that looked like a row of private houses.
Its old-fashioned architecture didn’t suit a technical university at all, and in fact it had been built around the same time the university itself was founded.
In that sense, maybe even this dormitory was part of the university’s history.
Cross the pedestrian light once more, and from there the main campus began.
I glanced down at Liesel again. She was still clinging to me, showing no signs of letting go.
Checking the time, it looked like we still had plenty of room to walk in at a leisurely pace. We’d left early, after all.
We could probably make it as far as the central plaza.
We passed the low building that housed the entire Department of Mechanical Engineering.
Once we were past it, the view opened up all at once. Turning my head, I saw the enormous dome that was practically the beginning of Lipsberg University of Technology itself.
In front of it, a grass field greening with the arrival of spring stretched all the way to the road, while wings extended out from the dome to the left and right.
Several memories came back to me.
It was here that a dream had settled into reality, and from here that the misfortune I hadn’t yet realized had begun.
Back then, I had no way of knowing that I’d eventually circle all the way back to this place, or that I still didn’t know the horror that would one day swallow the world.
The days of my past indifference came drifting back.
Like a standing stone, I stared at the university with downcast eyes.
“Tina.”
Suddenly, I felt a poke at my side.
It was Liesel.
“Are you okay? You looked kind of dazed.”
“More or less.”
I shook my head and broke the train of thought. Since we’d already dealt with the first Yggdrasil, I thought it was still too early to speak of anything serious.
Then, with a faint, weary smile, I let those thoughts ride the wind and drift away.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
“Then see you at lunch!”
She had no intention of letting go, so when I told her we were there, she finally detached herself.
Liesel headed toward the main building of the Valkyrie Frame Maintenance Department.
It stood opposite the main building of the Department of Mechanical Engineering, and in truth the distance between them wasn’t that great. They handled the same kind of machines, after all, so there was a certain closeness between them.
I watched the green fox in her orange varsity jacket disappear through the front gate, then turned and headed for the Department of Mechanical Engineering’s main building myself.
Following the notice that had been sent out to everyone, I walked down the corridor looking for my classroom. People passing along the same hallway let their glances skim over me as they went by.
They were probably looking at the brace wrapped around my right arm. That was my rough guess, anyway, so I let the attention go.
It was only when I stepped into the classroom that I realized those weren’t ordinary glances at all.
Finding the room was easy. My revived memories knew exactly where I was supposed to go.
I stopped at the classroom door and, without really thinking about it, pressed the button beside it to open it.
“...?”
Eyes turned toward me.
So many of them that I was left blinking in bewilderment.
Even in a world where prosthetic limbs had become commonplace, a support brace wasn’t exactly a rare sight.
And the bandage taped to one side of my forehead wasn’t anything special either.
Nor was the varsity jacket slung over only one shoulder because I had my right arm immobilized.
Then why were they staring? Did I have something on my face?
I took a small step back. My body, which had been straddling the faint boundary between hallway and classroom, slipped out into the corridor.
I opened a hologram and checked my clothes, but there was nothing particularly wrong with them.
Just a fairly ordinary white blouse under the jacket, a loosely tied black necktie, and a skirt I’d grabbed without much thought.
Below that, black stockings that ran clean and straight down, and a pair of shoes.
I even checked to see if the spell that had hidden my eye color had worn off, but my reflection was just as it had been that morning. There was nothing on my face, either.
So why?
Just in case, I opened the door again and stepped back into the classroom. Nearly every gaze in the room snapped toward me.
I don’t know why that memory came to mind in that instant.
The first time I’d faced my own appearance in Nordfjord, and every time after that when I looked at my reflection in the mirror while washing up. Each time, my feelings had been unbearably itchy, like a fresh wound tingling under a bandage.
Come to think of it, the fact that that same itch was suddenly welling up now probably wasn’t just a coincidence. I looked up briefly, flustered, then lowered my gaze again.
I had nothing to be ashamed of, after all. Besides, it wasn’t my fault.
Ignoring the gathered stares as best I could, I headed for my seat. I dropped the bag slung over my left shoulder onto the desk, pulled out the chair, and sat down.
Even through that whole process, most of those eyes stayed fixed on me, and only after I collapsed into the chair did they begin to drift away one by one.
In the end, I did catch sight of a man getting knocked to the side by the woman sitting next to him with enough force to make a sound, but that hardly seemed like my responsibility.
...Anyway, it didn’t seem like my responsibility.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
The classroom was exactly as I half-remembered it. The professor in charge was the same person I remembered, too. Looking around once, I even saw a few faces that seemed vaguely familiar.
At first, no particular thought came to me. I didn’t know them, after all.
More precisely, even when I first met the classroom and the professor, I hadn’t known what that sense of familiarity would eventually mean.
Thinking about it, that was only natural. Regression wasn’t a normal thing, nor even a common one.
I covered a yawn with my hand to muffle the sound.
I moved my eyes slightly to check the professor and the other people around me. My movements were loose, lacking any real energy.
And then, almost unconsciously, I muttered, “This is boring.”
The reason was simple: the voice and the content were both familiar.
Was it really this dull to hear what I’d already heard once more, to have someone else tell me again what I already knew?
The glances that kept sneaking over to watch me were familiar now, too.
Given the situation, I couldn’t exactly goof off with someone else either; aside from the professor and the teaching assistant, there weren’t many people here I knew. There was even less chance of finding someone I could chat with through class.
Still, maybe it was fortunate that the atmosphere hadn’t sunk further in the absence of the ominous news that should have been there to begin with.
I checked the room’s mood and opened a hologram.
I brought up the news page and skimmed the latest headlines. Maybe because information moved so slowly here, the top story was still about Yggdrasil.
Most of the articles were speculative pieces guessing at its identity, though now and then one would appear summarizing the responses of various corporations.
It didn’t seem like the fallout was all that severe.
The corporations stayed quiet, offering no clear reaction.
Every so often, rumors would spread that they had formed an investigation team and dispatched it, but that was about all.
The Administration Bureau didn’t seem to be making any obvious move either.
After all, the gate had been shut down before it could properly function.
To anyone else, the only thing they’d seen was a single instant during the incineration. It would be hard to tell what it had been from that alone.
Just as I was browsing the articles with that sense of ease, an alert flashed at the top of the hologram: breaking news. It was an official announcement from the Administration Bureau.
“Hah.”
Thinking of it from the perspective of a designated survivor gave me a strangely ticklish feeling. I opened the breaking news window.
The content was brief and concise.
“The anomalous object observed north of Nordfjord has been designated Gate of Yggdrasil. It is a new Origin Species entity never before recorded, and its characteristics are still under investigation.”
Well, that made sense. I didn’t have any clues yet.
Without much thought, I scrolled down. Beneath the concise statement, there was something else. An enlarged image of a spot in front of Yggdrasil. A circle had been drawn around what looked like a dot.
Looking closer, it seemed eerily similar to the back of a Strayed. A chill ran down my spine.
No way.
“Image analysis suggests that the one who destroyed the Gate of Yggdrasil was an unidentified Valkyrie Frame. The Administration Bureau is currently searching for this unknown Valkyrie Frame.”
Ah.
My mind went blank with stunned disbelief.