Duel (2)
“...Wait, Teacher! You’re actually going through with this?!”
“Of course. Student Ageha. Surely you didn’t stir all this up without being prepared to fight?”
“Th-That’s... I-I just wanted to scare them a little, to make them apologize...!”
“Then start learning now. If you try to tighten the noose around someone else’s throat, you may find your own throat tightening as well.”
Once the stage had been set in earnest, the “victims,” who clearly hadn’t expected things to go this far, began to murmur among themselves.
Among them, the heroine who had stepped forward to pressure me in the first place, Toju Ageha, was the most shaken of all, demanding to know whether they were really going to let the two of us fight.
As the other students edged closer, asking what was going on, I supposed she might have been trying to protect her image, but...
I didn’t think she was that sly.
In the original story, she’d been the kind of character who was all bluster and no bite.
She probably really had drawn up a sloppy little scheme, failed to realize just how sloppy it was, and then gone around smugly thinking, Perfect as always.
“Ugh, this isn’t how it was supposed to go...!”
“Excuses like that won’t fly in the field. Use this opportunity to learn responsibility, Ageha.”
If you hadn’t rallied the students against her, none of this would have happened in the first place.
After hearing that much, Ageha lowered her head completely, looking as though all the strength had drained out of her.
So when her confidence hit rock bottom, she turned timid in an instant. That much was exactly the same as the original.
Only after Ageha fell silent did Yustitia explain the rules to us.
No attacks that would leave aftereffects or scars.
And if you were subdued or forced out of bounds, you lost.
The other side could send out up to four people, but if I went down even once, it was an immediate defeat.
“Isn’t that... a little too much?”
Ageha voiced a hesitant objection from the side, but Yustitia answered her at once.
“I’ve taken into account the gap between your entrance-exam results and yesterday’s test results. Is there any problem with that, Blanca?”
“None at all. In fact, I’d prefer if they all came at once.”
But Yustitia said no to that and firmly declared that this was a duel.
What a shame. It would be easier to just crush them all at once.
“...Lastly, whatever feelings there may have been between you, let this duel settle everything. From this point on, you will not repeat this sort of behavior. If anything like this happens again after today, I won’t let it slide so lightly.”
With those words, she asked who would step forward first and called for volunteers.
“I’ll go.”
When everyone else hesitated, the delinquent stepped up.
He looked calmer than before, as if he’d cooled off a little, but the hostility in his eyes when they landed on me was still burning bright.
“Student Yamaguchi Fukukin. Very well. Student Blanca, take your position as well.”
The delinquent stood opposite me and took gold necklaces and rings out of his pockets, slipping them on as he warmed up in an intimidating way.
That bastard’s ability strengthened him in proportion to the value of the things he wore.
Early on, if he was decked out in about twenty million won’s worth of stuff, he’d become ten times stronger. He’d even said that himself, claiming that was the maximum.
After the midsection of the story, he mostly just showed up as the guy who funded the protagonist when he needed money or paid for trips, so I didn’t know much beyond that.
Either way, he was pretty strong. At this point in the story, he was easily in the top ten.
Among the so-called victims, he was probably the strongest one here.
So it made sense that he’d come out first.
“Surrender. I already know your ability, and this isn’t an ambush anymore.”
Even after it had all come to this, the delinquent was still recommending surrender.
“Ready—”
“You talk too much. Scared?”
“Ha. As if.”
The delinquent grinned fiercely and let his mana rise.
I answered in kind, synthesizing a few compounds of my own while also building up my mana.
“You’ll be scared soon enough.”
The moment Yustitia shouted the start, the delinquent charged. I slipped past him by a hair and released the gas I’d already synthesized from my body.
Since it was a colorless substance, nothing was visible to the eye.
Still, the way his hair was fluttering told me he’d already been doused in something.
That should have been the end of it, but surprisingly, the delinquent kept coming.
Ah. He’s holding his breath. So he planned to take me out without ever breathing once from the start?
The idea was admirable, but wasn’t he overestimating himself a little too much?
Holding your breath doesn’t stop poison from getting in, and something doesn’t have to be inhaled to take effect.
The fact that his face was already twisting suggested the smell had made its way into his nose.
He wouldn’t last long.
I kept narrowly avoiding his string of attacks and counted backward from fifteen in my head.
When I reached one, the delinquent clearly couldn’t hold out any longer. He broke off mid-punch and let out a violent sneeze.
“Ghk, cch—huff... cugh...!”
There was blood mixed into his cough. His eyes were bloodshot, and blood was running freely from his nose as well.
“Pretty nasty smell, isn’t it?”
What I’d spread around at the start was ammonia.
Of course, I’d carefully adjusted the concentration so that, while it would make him bleed like this, he’d still be fine afterward as long as he got the proper treatment.
“The reason I bother using gas you can actually see is consideration. It’s to keep bystanders from getting caught up in it for no reason.”
Ammonia was infamous for its stench, but it was poisonous in its own right, too.
I used it fairly often because it didn’t kill you on contact; instead, it could make you suffer for a long time.
“So I want an answer. Did you think I could only spray smoke you could see? Or did you know I could release something invisible and still come at me anyway?”
“Keheh, ckh, cough—hck...!”
“That’s not an answer.”
I gave the delinquent a hard kick in the stomach, and he folded over and went down.
“No answer, then I’ll assume it was the first one. Because if you came at me knowing full well, that would make you not just stupid, but arrogant too, wouldn’t it?”
I’d like to believe my classmate isn’t that far gone.
I added that, though I wasn’t sure whether the bastard had heard me.
There was no fighting spirit left in him now.
He was merely crawling along the ground, trying desperately to put as much distance between us as possible.
There wasn’t a trace of that tenfold strength in his movements anymore.
That was exactly why I’d chosen ammonia. His “value” wasn’t absolute. It could change.
I’d exploited that weakness.
No matter how many gold necklaces he wore, if a foul stench clung to them, their value would plummet.
Watching that pitiful sight, the corners of my mouth almost twisted upward on their own.
But I couldn’t laugh like that in front of all these people, so I held it in and went on.
“Ah, and I’m sure the Teacher said this too, but don’t think I’m being excessive. You’re the ones who started it, after all.”
I pressed down on his back with steady force, making sure he had no choice but to let all the air out of his lungs.
I shouldn’t be doing this. I couldn’t seem to suppress the urge any longer. Yes. That face. That expression. That body language.
Show me more. Thrash in pain more. Despair more.
Keep showing me what it looks like when you realize the person beneath you was never beneath you at all.
More, more, more—
“That is enough, Student Blanca.”
Ah.
Right. We were in the middle of a duel. Fortunately, Yustitia stopped me with her ability, so I didn’t make a fool of myself in front of everyone.
The instant Yustitia released her power, I lifted my foot from his back and sprayed a deodorizing compound to wash the stench from my clothes.
I sprayed some on the delinquent writhing on the floor, too. And a neutralizer, just enough to help.
“Yamaguchi Fukukin, battle incapacitated! Student Maria, would you please come here?”
“...Yes!”
Yustitia immediately called over Maria, the heroine with healing abilities, to treat the delinquent, then walked over to me.
I wondered if she was about to scold me for going too far, but instead she asked what I’d used.
“Ammonia. If he gets treated and then drinks plenty of water and washes well for a while, he’ll be fine.”
“I understand. We’ll do that. But attacking an opponent once they’ve been subdued isn’t heroic behavior. Come to the counseling room after class.”
Only after saying that did her expression finally soften.
Even if she was a member of the Liberators, her mindset really was the real deal when it came to being a hero.
After Fukukin was carried away, Yustitia looked over the huddled group of victims and asked, “Next participant?”
No one raised a hand.
“If there are none, I will consider this a full surrender. One last time: is there no one?”
They all looked thoroughly terrified.
Yustitia declared my victory. But no one cheered.
They just stared at me in silence.
Minho, Yeonhwa, and Jinhyun at least looked like they had something they wanted to say... but right now, there was someone else who should speak before them.
“You. Is your name Toju Ageha?”
“Y-Yes...?”
Unlike when she’d been pressing me with her little pack, Ageha now looked like a bird that had been frightened half to death, all but folding in on herself.
That was harsh. You were the ones who started it, and I only reacted.
But since we’d agreed to end everything through this duel, I smoothed away my hurt feelings and smiled brightly as I held out my hand to her.
“Ageha. Let’s forget what happened and get along from now on!”
“Uu... Yes... L-Let’s get al... aahk. Get al...”
Ageha was trembling so hard she even started hiccuping mid-sentence.
---
When I looked at Jinhyun, he was wearing a deeply troubled expression.
We were reviewing what we’d learned today at my place, but he still seemed to be thinking about Blanca and nothing else.
Given his personality, that was only natural. No matter what anyone said, he stood on the side of justice.
...So, in this case, the “justice” was Blanca.
Whatever the reason, someone being bullied by a crowd was someone he had to protect, and that was justice to him.
And yet that same person had turned around, bullied the bullies back, and trampled them beneath her feet.
In an instant, justice had been turned upside down.
For someone like him, who tended to divide the world into good and evil, it must have been deeply confusing.
I was having plenty of trouble with it myself, so how much worse must it be for him? I couldn’t even guess.
“Jinhyun.”
“Huh? Yeah?”
“Were you still thinking about Blanca?”
“...Sorry. I should’ve been focusing, but I drifted off somewhere else. Where were we?”
“Honestly, you. You’re always trying to split everything so neatly down the middle, and that’s your problem. We were here, from this line.”
After I pointed it out again, he immediately concentrated once more.
I threw myself back into reviewing with him as well, trying to shake off my stray thoughts.
But that strange, uneasy feeling didn’t go away until I fell asleep.