Chapter 66
Chapter 67
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Translator: MadScientist
Chapter: 66
Chapter Title: What to Steal from the Hero (1)
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I observed Marian as she grumbled while eating the egg cookies.
Fortunately—.
Her appetite was remarkably good.
She didn't act picky at all.
Cookies.
Cakes.
Sandwiches.
Whatever food I brought her, she devoured it all,
and even when she claimed to be full, she still brought the last piece to her mouth.
Even now, she was grumbling that she wanted peanut cookies,
yet she showed no sign of stopping with the egg cookies.
She was truly an easy-to-read girl.
Any complaints,
half vanished with a single bite,
and she forgot them entirely after two.
A simple type.
There weren't many kids this easy to placate.
A handful of cookies was all it took to coax her.
And moreover—.
She ate more than Ruena.
Of course... Marian was a bit taller,
but in my eyes, she didn't have an especially large stature or build.
Yet she ate twice as much as Ruena.
It was truly astonishing.
The fact that all that food could fit into such a small body.
'Well, I'm grateful for it.'
Eats well, eats a lot, no pickiness.
And since I'd gotten off to a good start, she didn't suspect me at all.
I'd occasionally peeked into Marian's inner thoughts just in case—.
「Celen seems like a really good guy the more I look at him.」
「How did a kid like this end up as Ruena Eliad's aide? 」
「He's Ruena's closest confidant, so he might die first. I've been freeloading off him, so I have to protect him when that happens.」
Just trivial thoughts like that.
Even putting aside that I was supposedly short-lived,
it was more confusing that she didn't suspect me despite being Ruena's closest aide.
'Probably... because of the knowledge she thinks she has.'
Knowledge can serve as a repository of information,
but it can also trap people in false convictions.
Prejudices and misconceptions.
The belief that it absolutely couldn't be true.
They all became shackles, forcing her to believe only what she'd seen and preventing suspicion even when it was warranted.
For me, it was just something to be thankful for.
However—.
I hadn't completely escaped suspicion.
To be precise, I'd escaped Marian's, but not everyone else's.
Yes.
Not from that "older sister" she was always thinking about.
And that older sister was the problem.
A week had already passed.
Every time I peeked into Marian's inner thoughts,
the older sister came up about once every five times.
For example, like this:
「I asked about Celen, but... I never imagined even older sister wouldn't know.」
「Older sister went through the first round, so I figured she'd naturally know about Celen too.」
「But... she said she doesn't know either. Never saw anyone like that by Ruena's side, and it's the first time one's from one of the seven great families.」
「Is he just a temporary variable this round? Or... if we fail again this time, will he become a fixed presence around Ruena starting next round?」
「Older sister said this is the seventh time—maybe that's messing up the random encounters?」
Absurd ramblings to anyone else.
But if she thought about it so consistently, it was one of two things.
She was crazy.
Or it was true.
And—.
Considering the future I'd seen, she wasn't crazy.
'Seven times... seven times....'
Over the past week,
I organized what I'd learned while feeding her all sorts of things.
1. Marian repeats the same time period. This is her second time.
2. The older sister she mentions has already done it seven times.
3. Probably a loop? Regression to the past? ...How on earth?
4. I appeared for the first time out of the seven. Never as a background character, not even my name.
5. Unexpected elements seem to appear more with each repetition (I'm probably this round's variable).
6. Marian surveils Ruena; the older sister handles finer details (problem is Marian's an idiot. Her thoughts are too fragmented to understand well).
7. Unlike Marian, the older sister is wary of me.
.
.
.
Class was an afterthought.
I sighed as I reviewed the week's intel in my head.
The last point was the biggest headache.
That the older sister was wary of me.
From Marian's thoughts alone—,
that older sister was clever and precise,
and after repeating the same time seven times, her danger sense was abnormally sharp.
Reading inner thoughts was absolute, but extremely fragmented.
I could only see what the target was thinking at the moment,
so the limitations were clear, and blindly trusting them was unreliable.
If it was a misperception or mere delusion on their part, basing judgments on it would be pointless.
'Fortunately... her thoughts are consistent, and contextually very likely true...'
The issue was that Marian wasn't the core—she was just a grunt.
A pawn in chess terms, expendable on the front lines.
She had almost no information or agency.
'I really want to lay eyes on that older sister...'
Yes.
She was probably the one holding the information I needed.
Building rapport would be tough since she was wary,
but even without reading her inner thoughts, just identifying her would suffice.
Speech patterns.
Gaze.
Expressions.
Actions and habits.
Every little detail that defined her
would provide clues to what she was hiding and what she suspected.
The problem was that it wasn't easy.
The older sister Marian mentioned.
I had no idea where she was,
what kind of person she was,
or how she communicated with Marian.
The week's gains were just tiny fragments from peeking into Marian's mind.
'At least... if I could pinpoint her location.'
With that in mind—.
I'd discreetly tailed Marian before.
But she only focused on observing Ruena,
and never contacted anyone outside her classmates, not once.
Yet—.
Her inner thoughts betrayed exchanges with the older sister.
New information.
New details.
Fragmentary at best, but her intel updated daily.
Which meant—,
there was some private communication channel between them I didn't know about.
'For the time being, I'll keep tailing her.'
I gazed at Marian, snoring away in the seat behind us.
After deciding that—.
For nearly a week, I watched her and shadowed her.
The result... nothing.
As a member of a thief clan,
it was a deeply pride-wounding, hard-to-accept outcome.
I clicked my tongue as I observed Marian.
She was—,
still fast asleep with a vacant expression, drool trickling down.
'Pay attention in class...'
Her wide-open mouth made her look utterly dim-witted,
yet somehow she slipped my surveillance to contact this older sister.
Now I was starting to doubt my own abilities.
Tapping my pen on the desk,
I analyzed Marian's routine from the past week.
Her patterns were simple.
Commute to school → Attend classes → Shadow Ruena → Freeload from me → Nap at her desk → Head home.
That was it.
Drilling down a bit... .
Commute.
Marian came alone or with her same-class roommate.
Lunchtime.
She ate only with classmates.
During classes and breaks, she fixated on tailing Ruena.
Even her dorm,
roommates were same-year girls.
This academy separated dorms by grade.
Anyone from another year wandering those floors would stand out.
'What if she's the same age but gets "older sister" treatment after seven loops?'
I'd considered that angle.
But Marian's inner thoughts refuted it.
Different grade.
Different classes.
The older sister in her mind
had a completely separate schedule and range of activity.
'One grade above, right...'
That was the extent of the older sister's profile from the week.
But... .
Among all those second-year girls,
there weren't enough clues to pinpoint Marian's older sister.
'Could she have noticed me tailing her and be deliberately avoiding meetings...?'
But no, that hypothesis didn't hold.
Marian's inner thoughts had thrown recent contact details at me like a taunt.
Which meant, in the end—.
The older sister operated in ways I couldn't visually track.
'What now...'
People aren't perfect.
Persistent pursuit eventually reveals an opening.
The problem was that only about half a month remained of the one-month period Marian had mentioned.
I couldn't cling to uncertainty forever.
Normally,
I would've dropped it long ago and sought another path.
But... .
'That uncertainty is the only lead, and it's driving me insane.'
I let out a long sigh and peeked into Marian's inner thoughts.
That was when it happened.
Marian, whom I'd thought was asleep, suddenly surged with new thoughts.
「What? Be careful of Celen? Why?」
Reactions like that—.
Only appeared during conversations.
'As expected, they're directly linking thoughts.'
I quickly checked the mana flow.
But—.
No foreign mana registered.
Seemed not to be magic.
Whether it was some ability I didn't know or another medium, I couldn't tell.
What was certain was that the older sister was watching Marian right now.
Perhaps—.
Even me, right in front of her.
A chill ran down my neck.
But I gave no sign of it, focusing solely on my actions.
'One more thing confirmed.'
The older sister valued Marian just as much as Marian relied on her.
I glanced at the calendar on the wall.
Soon..., the night of the full moon.
'I need to steal it. Something so precious she'll have no choice but to step onto the stage.'
The sun hanging in the sky.
Gazing up at it, I methodically planned out the full moon night, step by step.