The Letter She Tried to Hide
"We're not involved. At all."
Lethe said flatly, popping a single grape into her mouth.
"Hohoho! That's what they all say."
"And what about you, hm? What do you think of Simon? Could it be you're teasing him because you actually like him?"
Eshu laughed without a care in the world.
"We're just really good friends! Ah, though I suppose if he went and made a huge fuss about how much he liked me and confessed, I'd consider it."
"You'd consider it?"
She shook her head side to side.
"My rivals within the department are far too strong. I don't want to quarrel with my friends, and I don't have the confidence to win him over anyway."
Lethe closed her eyes and took a slow sip of wine.
"Rivals within the department, you say... you mean that Loraine person, or Serne?"
"Oh, you already know about them, huh?"
"I already met them. Simon introduced us."
Just as she finished saying it, Serne appeared across the hall, striking up a conversation with Simon. Lethe watched the scene with a perfectly expressionless face.
"Then how about this question?"
Eshu, who had been watching the same scene, wore a knowing smile.
"You outsiders have to leave the island soon, don't you?"
"Yes."
"So leaving behind a childhood friend you grew up with—does that weigh on your mind? No, don't answer!"
"......"
Lethe plucked a grape from the bunch, put it in her mouth, and thought it over carefully. Then she let out a small sigh and smiled, as if conceding defeat.
"Let's say it does weigh on me."
"Knew it!"
Eshu's eyes lit up as she raised her glass, and Lethe lifted hers to meet it with a clink.
"You came up from home not long ago, so you wouldn't know. Shall I tell you about everything Simon got up to this semester?"
For the first time, a spark of genuine life entered Lethe's eyes as she'd exchanged polite small talk.
"That sounds fun! Do you have any embarrassing stories from his past too?"
"Oh, plenty!"
It was a rare party, but Simon was having a positively exhausting time of it.
Meeting and greeting people from every stratum of the Academy had drained him to the last drop.
Being Student Council President is brutal.
Some had even come to the Summoning Department party expressly to see the Student Council President, so he couldn't exactly sit still.
When a brief moment of respite finally came, he slumped into a chair with a worn-out face—and then—
"Hey! My best pal!"
Along with that familiar voice, an arm wrapped around his neck without warning.
"Ah, Dick!"
"Haha, you holding up? You look half-dead."
Dick handed him a drink with ice bobbing in it. Simon took the glass and downed it in one go.
"I feel alive again. Thanks."
"Don't mention it."
"Simon, big bro!"
"We're here too!"
From across the hall, Bill and Al Hayward waved at him. Each of them already had a girl in tow, chatting her up. Like brothers, like blood, Simon thought, and waved back.
"So, Dick, what brings you here? What about the Poison Department party?"
"The mood's so damp and gloomy it's no fun, so I hightailed it over here."
Dick snickered, dragged over a nearby chair, and flopped into it.
"Everyone expected at least second place by the last day, but we ended up fourth, so the third-years—including Ballack—are in the worst mood imaginable. It's supposed to be a party, but all anyone's doing is shooting side glances and tiptoeing around the seniors."
"Yeah, that tracks."
"Oh, but more importantly—!"
Dick's eyes suddenly sharpened.
"Mayrin and Kami already told me! A childhood friend came all the way from your hometown, right? Name's Lena?"
"That's right."
"And I'm guessing that's her over there?"
Dick pointed at the girl with ash-gray hair seated on a bench some distance away. When had they gotten so close? Lethe was cheerfully clinking wine glasses with Eshu beside her, deep in animated conversation.
"Wait, you, do you not remember? Elizabeth Wafer last time was also a friend from your hometown, Leshill!"
"Ah, that—!"
He should have known something felt off—he'd already used that cover story once before.
Elizabeth Wafer had been the alias Erzebet used when she transformed into a Kizen schoolgirl.
"After Elizabeth, now another gorgeous childhood friend appears! Wow, what is Leshill, a neighborhood that only produces beauties? I am absolutely visiting during break. For real."
"Calm down, Dick."
"Fill me in, quick!"
Dick suddenly dropped his voice.
"Where is this Elizabeth Wafer, huh? She's not on the second-year roster! I thought maybe she'd gotten washed out in the first-year competition, so I combed through last year's entire admission list—and she's not there either! I asked around the kids from Class E, and nobody's ever heard of a girl with pink hair!"
Simon's eyes whirled.
Who would have thought Dick would corner him on this, right here?
"You gonna introduce me or what?"
Dick asked, grinning like a villain hatching some wicked scheme. Simon sweated buckets.
"There's, uh, some complicated circumstances!"
"Yeah, yeah. Of course there are. Something tangled up with Kazhan, I bet—you two were joined at the hip during the Dark Festival, after all."
That he understood so readily was a mercy. His old roommate Dick knew that Kazhan was a secret agent, after all.
"And, um, the reason I can't introduce her is..."
"And the reason is?"
"Elizabeth, well, she... you..."
Dick held up his palm—a gesture to say no more. Like a tragic male lead, he shook his head violently and covered his face with his other hand.
"Ahem—though our time was short, I loved her!"
"......"
Simon wordlessly chuckled at the sheer shamelessness of it and handed Dick the wine glass. Dick drained it in one long pull and set it down, face flushed crimson.
"Ahhhh, that's the stuff."
He gazed blankly in Lethe's direction for a moment, then bowed his head low.
"I have a favor to ask, Simon!"
"Not that I'll grant it, but go ahead."
He snapped his head up.
"Take me to Leshill! The city of handsome men and beautiful women! My one true love is surely waiting there!"
Simon let out a light sigh, then hauled Dick up onto his shoulders in a playful piggyback. Looking to the side, he hollered:
"Bill! Al! Your big brother's had way too much to drink!"
"Oh, come on! We told him not to drink so much!"
"Why does this school even let students drink alcohol?"
Bill and Al came over grumbling, and Dick threw a tantrum, insisting he wasn't drunk.
"Do I look drunk to you? Huh?"
"Big bro!"
"Let go of me! Seriously, do I seriously look drunk?!"
"You're drunk."
"And what, exactly? What's your evidence for thinking I'm drunk, huh?"
Simon answered with a silent wave of his hand. Bone Armor materialized over Dick's body, and he went sailing up toward the dormitory in an instant.
"I'm nooot druuuunk!"
It was heartbreaking, watching the boy's struggle as his love shattered to pieces.
"So, uh, let me get this straight."
Lethe summed things up with a somewhat dazed expression.
"On the day of the entrance ceremony, you rescued a kidnapped freshman and sent him back to school, delivered retribution to the third-years tormenting underclassmen during the hazing rituals, won every single match of the Exchange Match against another school, took down a professional assassin during a field evaluation, and cleaved through ten thousand monsters with a single undead called a Dullahan?"
"Yep! Yep!"
Lethe rested her chin on her hand, oddly sullen.
"Honestly, aren't you a Simon devotee? Forget embarrassing stories—everything you've told me sounds like a legend."
"Funny, it all came out that way."
Eshu laughed sheepishly.
"But it's all true! And that's just what he did during his second year. Apparently he was incredible in his first year too, but I didn't know Simon back then, so."
"......"
Lethe rested her chin in her hand.
She had known Simon was popular everywhere, but she understood now—he'd earned it.
He had been carving monumental achievements into the Academy's history, one after another.
"Good grief."
Lethe gave a hollow laugh.
"At least he's built a flawless image. People would be shocked if they knew what Simon was really like."
"Really like? What's he really like, then?"
Eshu's eyes sparkled.
"Curious, are we?"
"Super curious!"
"Well, actually, Simon is..."
There, Lethe trailed off into thought.
Dozens of Simon's gentle smiles surfaced in her mind at once.
"Simon is..."
The time he stepped in front of her to protect her. The time he took her hand. The time they'd faced each other in the cramped confines of a wagon. The time he sat wordlessly at her side, battered and covered in wounds. The time he swung the scythe of Divinity. The time he awakened the Saintess's power. The time he stood tall before a false goddess and declared—
I am the proof that the goddess over there is fake, Lethe.
Biting her lip as she sank into her thoughts, Lethe soon let a resigned smile creep onto her face.
"Honestly, I was trying to squeeze out something bad about him, but nothing comes to mind."
"Right? Right?"
Eshu laughed in wholehearted agreement.
"Guess he's just that kind of person."
Just then, Simon—having finished seeing off the guests and even delivered the drunken Dick home—came walking toward them.
Eshu raised what was left of her wine glass.
"Ours was a short acquaintance, but we're friends now, aren't we?"
Friends.
A Saintess making friends with a necromancer—how ironic.
She was wearing a perception-disruption artifact anyway, so in a few days they wouldn't be able to recall her face properly. She could turn her back and walk away without a second thought, and it would change nothing.
And yet.
For now, rather than worrying about the future, let me be true to the present.
As if a sudden breeze had swept through her, Lethe too raised her remaining wine glass with a smile.
Clink!
The two of them touched their glasses together and drained the last drops.
Lethe chuckled softly.
"You know, you remind me an awful lot of my roommate."
"Your roommate?"
Eshu blinked wide-eyed, then quickly broke into a giggle.
"Well, whoever she is, I bet she's a gorgeous lady with culture and class, right?"
Lethe burst out laughing.
"You really are her, all the way down."
"Lethe."
Simon came over. Eshu exchanged a meaningful glance with him, then stepped aside with a knowing smile. Lethe spoke.
"Sorry—time's running short, and work's been keeping me busy."
"It's fine."
The temperature had dropped sharply and the night had turned cold, so the two of them decided to stop by Simon's dormitory room briefly to grab their robes first.
Simon climbed up by the stairs, while Lethe—ever practiced—scaled the outer wall and slipped in through the window.
"Right then, let's go."
Simon said, draping his robe over his uniform.
Except—
Chirp! Chiiiirp!
A strange bird had landed on his bed.
"What's that?"
"Looks like it came in when you opened the window earlier."
She was studying herself in the room's mirror, displaying little interest.
The bird trotted over and stared straight up at Simon. Something like a letter dangled from its leg.
"Looks like a kind of messenger bird."
Simon untied the letter from its leg, then examined the name written across the front of the envelope.
"Who sent this?"
Lethe, who'd been fixing her hair in the mirror, belatedly glanced over at the letter in Simon's hands—and her face turned scarlet.
No way—!
Her pupils wavered violently. Just as Simon was about to tear the letter open—
"Don't look!!"
She darted over in a panic and snatched the letter clean out of his hand.
"What's the matter?"
"That's a letter I sent!"
Lethe held up the envelope.
"See! It's mine, right?"
Then she hastily hugged it to her chest. Simon asked, utterly bewildered.
"Sure, but it was sent to me, so shouldn't I get to read it?"
"No!"
The girl, red as a boiled lobster, shrieked at the top of her lungs.
"I already came all this way and said everything I needed to say in person! What's the point of reading it! L-let's go, hurry!"
"...Fine, okay."
Simon turned his back without the slightest lingering attachment.
As Lethe sighed inwardly in relief, Simon secretly flexed his fingertips. The letter slipped smoothly out of the bundle she was clutching to her chest.
"!"
Simon caught the letter with Cloud and grinned, mischievous.
"Knew you'd say that?"
"Hey!!"
Lethe roared and lunged at him. Simon quickly held the letter above his head.
"It was written for me to read anyway, wasn't it?"
"Giiiive it baaack!"
Lethe rose onto her tiptoes, arms flailing wildly, but the difference in their heights left her just barely short. The harder she pushed, the more Simon scrambled—until his foot slipped.
Thud!
The two of them tumbled into a tangled heap. Struggling atop him, Lethe finally wrestled the letter from his fingertips.
Her face had gone so red it looked as though the color might drip off her.
"You are so dead—!"
"Student."
Knock knock knock knock.
The sound of knocking rang out. Both of them fell silent at the same instant.
"Simon, Toto—I thought I heard a young lady's voice just now. Would you kindly open the door?"
At those words, Simon's face drained to the color of ash.
It was the voice of the dormitory supervisor.