Play With Me
It was a talent for screwing with people that bordered on the astonishing. I was sure I'd reached that realm myself in my mid-twenties... no. That wasn't it.
"What the hell were you thinking, pulling a stunt like that?"
Several hours had passed, and only after every last club applicant had gone home was I finally able to sit down across from Crystal.
At my question, she asked back with a perfectly serious face.
"Is the applicant inquiring as to the founding purpose of this research club?"
"I'm not joking."
I let a little genuine anger bleed into my voice. Crystal shrugged and glanced around.
"Could we talk just the two of us, senior?"
Peter and Jane were already getting to their feet. I looked at Miya, who scowled as if she wanted to refuse — but thankfully she didn't dig her heels in, and she left.
Once we were alone, as she'd wanted, Crystal spoke again.
"You don't like people talking in circles, so I'll be direct."
"……"
I wanted to congratulate myself for keeping my composure in the face of that absurd request.
Did this kid even understand what she was saying right now?
"Play with you?"
"Yes."
Judging by the atmosphere and the way she said it, this was not a request to hang out in any ordinary sense. Crystal's next words confirmed as much.
"I'm not just some pretty girl. Unlike the surface, what's underneath is quite twisted."
I know. I played through it myself. Though I hadn't realized her self-esteem ran high enough that she'd call herself a pretty girl out loud.
"And you want me to untangle that twisted inside of yours?"
"Something like that. In my whole life, I've never met anyone better than me. I'm not just talking about the duel the other day. I investigated everything I could about you recently — including the book you published."
I didn't ask how far she'd gone. There were things the Crystal of now could never know even if she died trying, so the question itself was meaningless.
"The result was that I had no choice but to admit you're a genius superior to me. So I wanted to keep playing with you. Well, if we're being precise about the order, I decided I wanted to play first and then looked into you — but it's the same thing, isn't it?"
"And what exactly do you propose we do while 'playing'?"
At my question, Crystal's eyes sparkled in a way she couldn't hide. Of course they did. Depending on her answer, the question amounted to an agreement to give her what she wanted.
Of course, I wasn't offering to play along out of some thoughtless goodwill.
Misfortune in Life is an unreasonable world in more ways than one.
Like its catchphrase, it could be fitting — and at times, it was simply forced. The former you could illustrate with the various backstories of the cast. The latter was more extreme. Unlike an ordinary game, this world marched toward ruin no matter what the protagonist did.
A setting meant to show that there is a limit to how much one individual can influence the world, I suppose. From a player's perspective, it was just one of those things. Now that I was a resident of that world, I couldn't call it anything but a sick joke.
That was why I had spent so long ignoring the Royal Academy, the basic stage of the main story. There were minor connecting threads here and there, but at least in the world as I had played it, nothing you did at school had much effect on the current of ruin. Even if it did, the effect had been negligible. And yet—
"It's simple. From now on, starting with this research club, I'm going to make your life constantly difficult. I'll use every ounce of my talent to pull pranks — so I want you to respond to them."
True to her own declaration, Crystal's eyes glittered with mischief.
I know the loneliness she carries. I know her wish that even one person in the world would understand her.
Crystal had been taken in and she had been rejected, but she had never stood as an equal with anyone, and she had never been held warmly and cared for. Her talent was far too great for her to remain an innocent child, and the environment she had been born and raised in was far too small and narrow to hold her.
Simply put, she was a child who had never learned how to be spoiled. And so she was trying to be spoiled by the first similar existence she had ever met.
"Hmm."
Sorry to say, but none of that was any of my business.
So I nodded.
"Fine."
Crystal showed me a genuine smile for the first time, but nothing in my feelings changed.
I had not the slightest interest in whether she would be satisfied playing her pranks on me or whether she would end up disappointed. The reason I had agreed to Crystal's request was a kind of experiment.
We were already tangled up this far. Trying to force distance now would only backfire. And Crystal was trying to do things that had never existed in the original work, so I wanted to observe that up close.
If her actions proved even a little useful later on, that would be fine. If they didn't, nothing would change, so it didn't matter. But she was, after all, the protagonist of this world. It wouldn't hurt to expect a little something. For that, I could put up with a bit of inconvenience.
"Then I'll be in your care from now on, senior!"
She had just declared she was going to make my life difficult, and now she was holding out her hand and asking me to take care of her.
I had not the slightest intention of building any affection with Crystal, and even if affection did form it would only be a problem — so instead of taking the offered hand, I asked a question that had just occurred to me.
"What were you planning to do if I refused to play along?"
"I was going to turn this fan club into a real new power in the kingdom."
If anyone else had said the same thing I would have dismissed it as nonsense, but given who was speaking, it landed very differently.
That... would have been quite a headache.
"Oh, right. Since you've agreed to play along, you're the president of this research club now. When I submitted the application, they said you have to do all sorts of activities to keep a club running — so you can't just go home after class anymore."
In other words, I would be stuck after school in a research club named after my own work, criticizing my own work.
"……"
It was farce of the highest order.
Jane White woke from sleep and, before opening her eyes, checked herself.
So that she wouldn't calculate without thinking. So that she wouldn't try to profit without thinking. So that she wouldn't, without thinking, act like the daughter of one of the kingdom's foremost merchant guild heads.
To act timid, always. To act gloomy, always. To act like a dull-witted child who knew nothing at all. So that she would look like nothing more than a young lady who had been lucky in her birth.
"Hahh."
Fixing her expression in place, Jane sat up and turned her head toward the bed against the opposite wall.
The girl she had become friends with after entering the upper division was sleeping with a happy face.
She was too excited to fall asleep, so she must have gone to bed late after all.
Having had to listen to the same story repeated for hours, Jane had found it a little exhausting — but it wasn't something she couldn't understand.
That Benjamin Jenkinson would be joining them.
You couldn't dismiss it as mere club activity. Club activities at the Royal Academy were high-level socializing to begin with, and if you considered the influence the connections formed here would have on the future...
...I shouldn't do this.
Disgusted with herself for starting to calculate gains and losses — a habit drilled into her by the education she had received since childhood — Jane carefully got out of bed.
Checking the clock, she found it was still a bit early to prepare for class. After lightly smoothing her hair, Jane left the dormitory intending to take a morning walk for the first time in a while.
The cold air seeping into her lungs felt rather pleasant, but that was as far as it went. Unluckily, there were already other people on the path she had taken.
And they were visitors she was far from glad to see.
"Oh my, White? What are you doing out here all alone?"
Watching a few of the first-year girls from the Knight Class — who had been doing morning training — approach, Jane sighed inwardly.
Ever since she had become friends with Crystal — more precisely, ever since Crystal had smashed them the way she had back in the middle division — the open bullying had stopped. Unfortunately, she was alone right now.
They weren't about to miss this golden opportunity, so Jane first arranged a frightened expression on her face.
"What's this? Did you bring this for us to wipe our sweat?"
"That's our White."
"Girls from rich houses really are different."
With mocking words, they forcibly stripped off the cardigan Jane had been wearing and started using it to wipe their own sweat.
Aside from getting a little colder, it wasn't particularly uncomfortable. She could buy enough cardigans to use them as rags, and more than anything, Jane deliberately never carried anything truly precious.
Because they always took it.
"Hey, White."
"Y-yes...?"
Hoping it would be over soon, Jane hunched her shoulders. She knew that if she didn't look scared, the bullying would last longer and get more vicious.
But today really did seem to be an unlucky day.
"I'm genuinely curious — what kind of scheme did you pull to reel in even Count Jenkinson? Hmm? Was it money after all? Or did you spread your legs for him?"
"Ah, that hurts..."
As the girls grabbed her hair and shook her this way and that, Jane sighed inwardly.
As if that monster of a man would move for something as cheap as money or women.
She couldn't understand how they could think so lightly about a heavyweight even her own father — a major player in the kingdom's economy — couldn't easily touch.
Thinking they had brains so simple she was almost genuinely envious, Jane was shoved and knocked to the ground.
"Ah!"
"Did you know? You've gotten really full of yourself since you entered the upper division."
"After how well we took care of you for three years."
"And now you're strutting around just because you trust that Baker girl."
For a moment Jane's blood boiled, and before she knew it she had picked up a stone and hidden it behind her skirt. She didn't care what they said about her — but she couldn't stand them insulting that kind child.
But Jane couldn't swing the stone she'd picked up.
"What do you think you're doing first thing in the morning, you first-year trash."
At the sudden voice, thick with killing intent, the girls bullying Jane startled and spun around.
Camilla Fletcher, soaked in sweat from her grueling training, had already come up right behind them with her followers.
"Eek!"
"L-Lady Camilla!"
The next instant, a sharp crack rang out three times in succession, and the girls were rolling on the ground, groaning. Camilla, who had struck them at a speed Jane couldn't even see, spoke coldly.
"I have no intention of listening to your pathetic whimpering, so get up and get the hell out of here."
The girls scrambled to their feet, faces a mess of tears, snot, and blood, and fled at a run.
Clicking her tongue briefly at the sight, Camilla turned her eyes to Jane.
The gaze that fell on her left Jane genuinely terrified rather than acting — but Camilla paid it no mind and held out a hand.
"Are you all right?"
"Y-yes?! Ah, yes..."
At a voice so warm it was hard to believe it belonged to the same person from a moment ago, Jane's legs gave out and she couldn't get up properly. Camilla helped her to her feet herself.
"A stone isn't a bad idea, but against numbers like just now, it would only provoke them. The weak have their own way of fighting. Don't forget that."
A noble — and an upperclassman in the Knight Class, no less — was advising her that strength was not necessarily only a matter of force.
The scene was so unreal that Jane couldn't say a word even as one of Camilla's followers picked up her fallen cardigan, shook it out, and handed it to her.
"We'll be going, then."
Watching Camilla's group leave after that brief farewell, Jane murmured without thinking.
"So cool..."
After returning to her room in a daze, Jane belatedly realized she had received help and hadn't even said thank you — and she had no choice but to sink into crushing self-loathing.