Skill Check
Beatrice strode toward me with a face set like stone.
Her intensity made me take an involuntary step back, but she paid it no mind and seized my arm. It was a small hand — and one covered in calluses.
"This."
Her gaze dropped to my forearm. More precisely, to the wound I'd already treated.
"Ah, this? I just tripped and fell on my way—"
"Don't you dare try to brush this off with some story about falling down."
"...Do you have some kind of future-sight?"
Beatrice didn't let go of my arm.
"I just know a cliché when I see one."
"Are you angry?"
"To a degree."
She shot me a piercing glare. I'd tried to gloss over it so she wouldn't worry, but at this rate there was no point in hiding anything. I had no choice but to give her a reasonably condensed account of what had happened today.
I left out the part about Lee Sae-ah being a shrine maiden, of course. Telling someone else about her circumstances without permission wouldn't have been right.
"...So let me get this straight." Beatrice muttered in a low voice after hearing me out. "A bunch of nobodies picked a fight with my Target. That about right?"
"That's the gist of it, yes."
"Ha."
A short, humorless laugh. Beatrice swept her bangs back with a sigh.
"...Which pieces of trash thought they could lay a hand on my Target?"
"..."
"You get their names?"
Her red eyes gleamed with a cold light.
"Did you at least take a picture?"
I gave a small shake of my head. I remembered their faces. That was about it. Both of them had that generic villain look, so even if I tried to describe them, nothing distinctive came to mind.
"Nothing? Ha." Beatrice let out a short laugh.
She was talking about killing people. And there wasn't the slightest flicker in her expression that would let me write it off as a joke.
It hit me all over again. The quirky, playful girl standing in front of me was an executive in an organization notorious for its cruelty.
"How many were there?" Beatrice asked, looking at the wound on my arm. "If they managed to hurt you, Target, there had to be at least six of them."
Well. Being overestimated this much was almost embarrassing.
"There were two of them."
"...Two?"
Beatrice narrowed her eyes and tilted her head, as if she must have misheard.
"...You're kidding, right?"
"I'm completely serious."
"That's impossible." She muttered, looking genuinely bewildered. "You're Ryuzaki Genma's son. Aren't you the guy who walked away from a twenty-on-one fight without a scratch?"
Ryuzaki had a past like that? In the original story he'd been portrayed as someone who solved everything with his fists, but...
Twenty-on-one, without a scratch...
...Then how the hell did this bastard lose to the protagonist in the original?
"Well, it had been a while since I'd last thrown a punch." I offered a wry smile and a convenient excuse. It wasn't as if I could explain that a dead man had taken over Ryuzaki's body.
"..."
Beatrice looked at me in silence after hearing my excuse. Then she took a step closer.
I instinctively edged backward as the girl in the dress shirt closed the distance.
"Let me check something real quick."
"Huh?"
Before I could even ask what she meant, her arm wrapped around my neck — a hold designed to keep me from going anywhere. With her free hand, she slowly felt along my forearm. My forearm. My shoulder. Then various other parts of my body. She was inspecting me as thoroughly as someone examining a broken machine.
The sensation of her small hands was strangely ticklish.
"...Just how far are you planning to check?"
I hurriedly pushed her away before her hands could travel any lower. Beatrice wriggled her fingers as if disappointed, then muttered under her breath.
"You've definitely gone rusty."
Her eyes turned serious. "Your body, and from the way you got hurt today, your skills too. I don't like it." She gave a small shake of her head. "My Target can't be like this. Do you have any idea how many people are after you? I won't allow you to get beaten up somewhere I can't see. Wait here a second."
She headed to her room and quickly changed into something more comfortable. Passing by me on her way to the front door, she said:
"Come with me."
"Where are we going?"
She jabbed a finger at me, her expression grimly determined.
Creeeak.
She threw the front door open with gusto.
And exactly five seconds later.
Creeeak.
She closed it again. Beatrice wiped the sweat from her face, fidgeting.
"...O-okay, today's not great. I'll help you later."
Beatrice, Nexus executive. I'd just discovered one of her weaknesses.
She can't handle the heat.
I should probably remember that.
The last stretch of PE. The dodgeball game had ended, but there was still an awkward sliver of time left before the break, so everyone was just killing time.
I sat in a reasonably out-of-the-way corner and studied. Spreading a workbook out in the open felt like it would draw too much attention, so I was going through a palm-sized English vocabulary booklet instead. I already knew most of the words. I was reviewing them more as insurance, in case there was something I'd forgotten.
It was more fun than I'd expected, too.
"Nngh..."
A groan drifted over, accompanied by a wave of body heat. It was Alice. Drenched in sweat, she staggered over and collapsed onto the seat beside me.
"Ahh... I'm so tired. I seriously feel like I'm gonna die." She panted, her breathing still ragged.
"..."
I quietly turned my eyes back to the vocabulary booklet. Looking at her any longer felt like it would get me into trouble.
"...Is that actually fun?"
"It is. There's a real satisfaction to memorizing things."
"You're a monster." Alice muttered, looking thoroughly put off. "Ryuzaki-kun, don't you read anything else?"
"I do. This. And workbooks."
"Nooo. Not that kind of thing." She waved a hand. "Manga, or novels, or whatever."
"Nothing I follow regularly, no."
At that moment —
Ding-dong-ding-dong~
The bell rang, signaling the end of PE. We stood, bowed to the teacher, and headed back toward the classroom.
"The kids around me have been going crazy over something lately."
"Over what?"
"Hmm, it was definitely a novel." Alice tilted her head, rummaging through her memory. "The title was... Afterschool Starts with a Lie? Is that right? I can't quite remember."
"..."
I nearly stopped walking.
She didn't have the exact title, but I knew exactly which work she meant.
Lies Spawned Afterschool.
The novel I was writing.
The story had certainly been growing in scale lately, but I never expected to hear people talking about my novel in real life.
"Have you read it, Alice?"
"Nope. I don't really read manga or novels to begin with. Oh, but everyone's been making such a fuss that I've been thinking about checking it out. It'd be perfect for reading on the way to school or tutoring, right?"
"True."
A friend reading my novel. It was embarrassing, and at the same time, some part of me hoped she actually would. A strange feeling.
"If I read it and it's good, I'll recommend it to you too, Ryuzaki-kun. Oh, and don't worry — I never spoil anything!"
"...Thanks."
Alice flashed a thumbs-up, as if to put me at ease. A reader promising not to spoil the story — to the author. What an ironic situation.
Bzzzt!
My phone vibrated softly in my pocket.
Lane? No — looking again, it was an email.
Huh. They got in touch a lot faster than I'd expected.
I might actually make some money off this.
I'd take my time and reply once I got home. I let a small smile slip, then slipped the phone back into my pocket.
"Why are you smiling? Whose text was that... wait, is it that girl you live with?"
"It's a secret."
"Ugh, you jerk!"
When I got home after school —
BAM!
An unidentified noise thundered from the direction of the warehouse. Wondering what was going on, I set my bag down and made my way over carefully.
BAM! BAM!
I opened the door to find Beatrice hammering a punching bag. Though at this point, calling the place a warehouse was starting to feel inaccurate.
"Oh, you're back?" Beatrice spotted me and gave a light wave. "What do you think? I fixed the place up while you were at school."
"What is all this?"
"It's not like we ever used this space anyway. I spent a bit of money and remodeled it. Nice and cool — how great is that?"
She gestured around. A wide mat covered the floor, and various pieces of protective gear were arranged on shelves along the wall. A hefty punching bag hung from the ceiling.
And most conspicuous of all were the two air conditioners installed in the corner.
I could feel Beatrice's iron determination not to set foot outside in this heat, no matter what.
"You didn't go to school?"
"Today's a day I don't have to. Anyway." She pointed to the equipment piled to one side. "Come over here and put these on."
Gloves. Headgear. A mouthguard. A groin protector...
"Target. I can't have you going around getting hit." Beatrice rolled her wrists as she spoke. "I'll get your instincts back for you."
"You're going to teach me martial arts?"
"It's not just martial arts." She looked up at me as she tightened the straps on her gloves with those small hands. "Everything I've learned over the course of my work." Her red eyes gleamed. "I'm going to teach you all of it."
"..."
"So be a good student and learn. I don't like my Target staying weak."
"All right."
Beatrice blinked, as if my answer had caught her off guard. "...What? I was sure you'd refuse — something about needing to study."
It wasn't that I disliked sports themselves. New knowledge was new knowledge, no matter how you acquired it. I just didn't enjoy the part where you had to socialize with a bunch of other people while doing them.
"This is a form of studying too, in a way."
"Ugh, you're exhausting."
And a few days ago, that fight had taught me something. I wasn't using Ryuzaki's body properly.
I'd prefer never to fight again. But as long as I was living under the name Ryuzaki, the day might come when I'd have to raise my fists once more. If I was going to prepare for that, getting the chance to learn from Beatrice was undeniably lucky.
Receiving instruction from an enemy was a little strange, sure. But you take what you can get.
"Let's do a quick sparring match, just to see where you stand. Any objections?"
"None."
I didn't bring up the difference in weight class, or the difference in gender. I knew perfectly well what the girl in front of me was.
I put on the headgear and looked at Beatrice.
Could I win? No. Almost certainly not. She was an active combatant who'd been through countless fights, and I was a complete amateur who didn't know the first thing about brawling. Even with Ryuzaki's body, the gap in experience wasn't something you could close that easily.
"Ready? Then let's begin."
And yet, strangely, anticipation outweighed the nerves. Unlike learning from a book, this would be the first time I'd ever learned by colliding with someone directly.
What would I walk away with from this?
The sparring match began.
Beatrice didn't even bother taking a stance. She just stood there, watching me at her leisure. I didn't move rashly.
Instinct warned me. If I stepped in now, it would be over in a single exchange.
"Kick." Beatrice murmured. "You didn't fall for it?"
Apparently I'd guessed right. Only then did she roll her shoulders, loose and easy, and settle into a proper stance for the first time. And then —
In that instant, Beatrice came at me with a speed that put everything before it to shame.