No Warning, No Foreshadowing
The mess I was in was humiliating enough that I wanted to flee reality with a joke like that.
A black magic grimoire, out of nowhere? Heresy?
I'd been stealing a nap on the bed when they slapped me with charges that made no sense at all and hauled me, just like that, down into the cells beneath the Academy Main Building.
This wasn't even a religion. Since when did magic have heretics? Was a fireball the one true orthodoxy, and a flame orb the work of some cult?
I spent what amounted to the entire night in a cell that was cramped, damp, and pitch-dark, and no sooner had morning threatened to arrive than the interrogation began.
"Tell me the truth. By what means did you obtain the black magic grimoire?"
"I'm telling you, it isn't my book."
"And you expect me to believe that? According to Miss Claudel's testimony, you yourself admitted it was yours. Spare me the obvious lies. Don't you have a more plausible excuse?"
"……No! I'm saying it was a misunderstanding. I thought I was looking at a scripture and a prayer book. I never dreamed it was a black magic grimoire. It wasn't even my book to begin with."
"Then why, when Miss Claudel asked, did you answer that every one of those things was your property?"
"I— ha— oh, come on! This is unbearable…… This is a complete frame job, I'm telling you."
The interrogation had been tilted against me from the very first question.
It had been a match I was doomed to lose from the start.
And honestly, by any common sense, how was I supposed to know whether that thing was a black magic grimoire or not? I wasn't even sure it had been among the belongings the original Anastacia carried.
The rigging was bad. It was too bad.
Was this a trash game?
The man who had led my arrest — the one who introduced himself as the Bailiff of the Faculty Guild — changed tactics the moment I kept insisting, with the steady testimony of a victim, on how wronged I was. Now he tried to coax me.
"Hah…… Anastacia of Tallin. As a student of Oxenbridge, you are, in effect, standing before the Headmaster's court under academy law. Do you understand what that means?"
Roughly the first move in the unwritten rules of every academy story, wasn't it? The academy is a famous zone outside the law, that whole speech.
I stared at him blankly, and the Bailiff sighed and went on.
"Under academy law, the punishment for a charge of heresy amounts, at most, to the revocation of your student standing. Even the worst case ends at exile. As a fellow mage, how could I fail to understand? That desire to reach even into forbidden ground, if that's what it takes to go on pursuing the truth?"
"I'm telling you, it isn't my book……"
"Confess and admit it now, and it will end with you being driven from the school. But once the Inquisitors visit next week? By then, even if the school wants to help you, there will be nothing it can do. Once we officially hand over the person of a heresy suspect, you will be judged according to the laws of the Magisterium."
The Bailiff looked at me with eyes full of weariness.
"So, before they arrive, why not simply admit it here and be done? It would be better for you as well. You entered as an Ecclesial Scholarship Student. Even if the school expels you, you can just return to the Church, can't you?"
The Bailiff left the underground prison, saying he would come back later, around evening.
Hah……
At this point, even I couldn't tell.
Was this man really saying all this out of concern for my safety? Or had he caught a convenient case and was looking for an excuse to throw me out? Or else……
No. Go back to the beginning and sort the situation out.
My roommate. Olivia Claudel, the young lady of a count's house — the one who stuttered, and who went around with her neckline on display.
What was she?
Why had she dropped a frame that absurd on me?
I picked through the possibilities one by one.
One. Olivia is a rotten bitch.
First: Olivia is actually an emotionless psychopath. Her innocent roommate gets dragged off on a false charge, and she doesn't so much as flinch. If anything, maybe she finds it funny?
……That couldn't be it.
Second: maybe this Olivia was the heretic mage who had been carrying the black magic grimoire. She learned the Inquisitors were scheduled to visit in a week and, before they arrived, tried to pin the blame on someone else. High probability.
Did it hold together? It almost sounded right.
But if that were the case, why had she pressed me so relentlessly, all the way to the end, about whether those things were mine? She could have played dumb and then reported me to the school, and I would have been dragged in here just the same.
Thought of that way, it didn't seem to fit perfectly after all.
Two. Olivia is a good friend.
First: I, Anastacia, really am a black-magic heretic, and the grimoire really is my responsibility.
Did that make sense? There had been nothing like that in the background when I picked the character. The character sheet had listed black magic at zero points.
Immediate disqualification.
Second: a third party was running the scheme.
Someone had slipped the black magic grimoire into my luggage while it was being delivered from the mail coach to the dormitory, and Olivia had "by chance," "by mistake," opened my bag instead of her own and "by chance" discovered the book inside. So, just in case — on the off chance I was an innocent victim framed exactly like this — she had tried to steer me into checking my belongings in front of her?
Hmm…… it almost seemed plausible……
Personally, I hoped it was this one. Why?
Because Olivia is pretty……
I mean, wanting a beautiful NPC to be a party member rather than a villain, if you had the choice, was only human nature, wasn't it?
In any case, if there was one thing I was sure of, it was that I could not get thrown out of Oxenbridge like this.
Why? Because this was a magic school game. Get expelled, and it was obviously game over, or a bad ending.
I had to endure, by whatever ugly means it took, and remain at the school. Even if I had to open a convenience store to do it.
And while I was sorting my thoughts, time kept sliding past.
No sunlight reached the dark underground, but every so often a jailer — a prison guard? — brought hard bread and sour wine for a meal, and thanks to that I could roughly gauge the hour.
Come to think of it, the entrance ceremony was today.
I drew the Journal from inside my clothes and opened the schedule page.
[ UPCOMING ]
D-DAY
▸ First Day of Term
▸ 09:00 — Term Opening and Entrance Ceremony
D-6
▸ Regular Visit of the Inquisitors
The classes…… were probably all over by now.
According to the course timetable, there were lectures I was supposed to be sitting from today. Things like Introduction to Magical Structure and Basic Spell Language — names that made me yawn just looking at them.
In an academy story, the unwritten rule was to skip class from day one, hog every fortuitous encounter, and clear all the hidden dungeons. Getting locked in a prison, though, had to be a first in all of history, east or west.
I was idling in that useless fantasy when the Bailiff came back and asked again.
"You've had plenty of time to think. Well? Feeling inclined to confess?"
I looked up at him crookedly.
"What if it truly, honestly isn't my book? Don't you have any intention of believing me?"
"Still on that claim, are you. Very well. Suppose, on the off chance, that the black magic grimoire is not yours. Why, then, was it in your bag? And why did you claim the book was yours?"
Whether he was simply tired of hearing me plead how wronged I was, the Bailiff wore the look of a man willing to hear me out just once.
This was my chance!
I hurried through Hypothesis 2-2 for him. This was all the handiwork of the "real heretics," and both Olivia and I were nothing more than victims of the incident — upright citizens!
"So I'm saying this isn't the time to keep holding on to me, all right? The real culprit is out there right now, strolling around in the sunlight like they own the place! And here you are, keeping an innocent person shut up in the dark between the mold and the moss."
"Hmm……"
Well? Plausible, right? Persuasive? Didn't the grimy, pathetic look of me stir up a little pity? I let the strength drain out of my whole body as pitifully as I could manage and resettled myself in a sprawl across the floor.
The Bailiff stroked his coarse stubble with his fingers, sunk in thought for a while, and after some time had passed he finally opened his mouth.
"……I do think there is sense in what you say."
"Oh!"
At last. Finally!
I scrambled up and clung to the iron bars.
"Then you'll let me out, right? I can keep attending the school, yeah?"
"But……"
"But?"
But?????
"But even so, there is something about your conduct that does not sit right. If a suspicious grimoire you had never seen turned up among your luggage, the natural thing would have been to report it. You did not."
"……What if I said I'd lived my whole life shut away in a remote convent, and I don't know the ways of the world? That I don't know the first thing about black magic, or heretical magic, or any of it……"
"They would take it for nonsense."
"……They would, wouldn't they?"
Well. Great.
A sigh escaped me on its own at the clean line he drew.
If this were a game, I could just take a clean game over and load the save. I could shrug it off — ah, so it was one of those rigged patterns where if you don't know from the start, you just eat the hit — and move on.
"Then let us do it this way."
I had been heaving sigh after sigh, and at the Bailiff's words my head snapped up.
"For the next several days, I will search the campus with the patrol for any trace of a heretic mage. If we find no clue by the day of the Inquisitors' visit, then you confess and accept expulsion. I think it a fair bargain. Of course, you would remain confined to the underground prison until then."
There was nothing in it for me to lose. If the real culprit got their tail caught, my false charge would be cleared, and that was good. And the worst case would only be more of this: Healing in the Academy's Underground Prison.
"Yes, yes. Fine! Let's do that! Deal!"
Oh!
But the good mood lasted only a moment.
When the Bailiff visited early the next morning, the stiffness of his face told me, by instinct, that something had gone wrong.
"At dawn today, the body of Miss Olivia Claudel was found near the Astronomy Tower. It appears she was murdered during the night."
"……Pardon?"
No. No, no, no. Why did she have to die? What was this, out of nowhere? Was this that kind of game? It was too sudden, too out of the blue. You weren't supposed to do this from the very start.
"……It seems you were right after all. Anastacia of Tallin, you are acquitted and released."
"……Fuck."
Rage shot all the way to the top of my head, and I felt as if the tears might spill at any moment.