The Results of Aggro (4)
So then—how exactly was I supposed to get my memories back?
The answer turned out to be surprisingly simple.
Every faction’s intelligence division kept at least one illusion mage on staff; memory-restoration magic was common enough that it saw regular use. It had advanced to the point where you could even pull memories from a freshly dead corpse.
A spell that powerful failing to restore something as ordinary as my own memories made no sense at all. I needed to move quickly.
Afternoon lectures still remained, so I couldn’t exactly leave campus. Fortunately, the Academy itself housed several recognized authorities on illusion magic.
Of course, letting any of them rummage through my head was risky—I had no idea what they might do—so I had to choose someone I could actually trust.
Hmm.
In the end, only one person came to mind.
Another heroine, and a fellow student at that.
Receiving such a dangerous spell from another student felt questionable, yet it was precisely because she was who she was that I could trust her. In pure talent for illusion magic she already surpassed most mid-tier mages, and on top of that she possessed a straightforward integrity that meant she wouldn’t try anything underhanded with me.
“So then…”
She was usually somewhere on the hill behind the Academy.
“Huff… hah…”
I slowed down, catching my breath after the hurried run, and looked around. Dirty couples were clustered everywhere, strolling about in little groups.
Ugh. Spit.
Filthy popular people.
Even so, the former man in me had no desire to picture myself clinging to other guys and cooing at them, so I simply turned my gaze away with eyes that had gone several degrees colder.
The real problem wasn’t the couples. It was that she would never be found in a place this noisy.
She was someone who kept other people at extreme arm’s length. There weren’t many spots on this hill where she could hide from the commotion.
For example… over there.
The cemetery, still wrapped in gloomy fog, a place filled with nothing but the monochrome gray of plaster. It was where the protagonist Lutera had been buried, and it was the meaningful site of the very first moment I had possessed this body.
The instant the thought struck me that she would be there, I started walking slowly toward the cemetery.
A few students’ eyes gathered on me as I went, but the closer I drew to the graves, the more that interest visibly withered away.
No—it wasn’t just interest.
“…Ungrateful bastards.”
They treated this place—where the people who had risked their lives to save them now lay—as something ominous. Because of that, the cemetery was utterly deserted, only a chill stillness flowing through it.
This atmosphere.
If it was her, she would definitely be here.
I strolled through the graves at an unhurried pace and, almost without thinking, found myself approaching Lutera’s plot. The headstone and coffin were still smooth and unmarred; they hadn’t been there long enough to gather a single scratch.
Honestly, the feeling was strange.
The fear and rage I’d felt when I met Burgeng. The anticipation and happiness of meeting a new heroine. Every one of those emotions vanished in an instant.
I couldn’t even begin to guess what was going on inside me.
Am I still myself?
If not, then what am I?
If I restore the original memories of this body… if those memories swallow me whole… what will I become then?
“Haha…”
What is this.
It’s not even the Ship of Theseus.
So this is all your fault, isn’t it, Lutera.
“…Why the hell did you have to die?”
If only you had lived.
If only the protagonist had been here, I could have just sat back and enjoyed the ride without any of this suffering.
You died, and the person who was supposed to save this world disappeared, and that’s why I ended up stuck with all this hardship.
“You’re not… lying to us, are you?”
I wanted to meet the real, living, breathing Lutera—not the fake one I was controlling.
But before I could even finish the thought, Lutera had already died and been buried in the earth.
What exactly had gone wrong?
What had I messed up?
So far the story had been following the plot I knew, but now that an irregular like me had appeared, there was every chance things would start spinning out of control.
And if that happened…
Would I even be able to protect the heroines?
When I couldn’t even take care of my own single body?
…I didn’t know.
Still, I couldn’t give up.
“…Hah. Really… why am I like this?”
My eyes had been stinging for a while now. Without meaning to, tears began to fall one by one. They rolled smoothly down my cheeks and dropped weakly onto the ground, staining Lutera’s headstone black and leaving their mark all too clearly.
“…You okay?”
—Rustle, rustle.
Soft footsteps sounded behind me, followed by a blunt question. The voice carried no emotion at all, yet I couldn’t hide the tears from it.
“Hic…”
A familiar voice, just like Novena’s.
Even though I knew she remembered me and hadn’t come specifically to comfort me, I still felt as if I were being consoled by her, and I let the unnameable feelings keep pouring out.
“She was a noble person.”
The girl who had come to stand beside me didn’t offer any hasty words of comfort. Instead she simply continued speaking as if talking to herself, as though she barely registered that I was there.
“While everyone else was fighting to protect their own power, she was the only one who looked at people as people. And now that she’s dead like this, not a single one of them comes to visit.”
Her tone was thick with self-reproach. I couldn’t just sit there and listen.
I turned, tightly clasped the cold hand of the girl who was looking at the grave, and spoke in a voice that was still thick with tears but that I tried to make firm.
“Even so, we’re remembering her, aren’t we?”
Hino Seaport.
The genius of illusion magic I had come looking for.
“I figured you’d show up soon.”
Even with my sudden action she showed no rejection; she simply took my hand in return as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Her hand was warm and soft, just like her heart.
…Huh.
Is this a green light?
I felt heat rising in both cheeks.
Because of her illusion magic, Hino had unwillingly peered into the depths of other people’s hearts and no longer trusted humanity—someone whose personality was quite similar to mine. I had expected that getting her help would require a long, careful process of persuasion.
Yet she was acting as if we had known each other all along, which only made things more awkward.
“H-how did you know?”
“Mm. I heard it from a professor.”
“Which professor?”
“Professor Lutera.”
“…When?”
“A week ago.”
True to her nature, her answers were short and almost like a Zen dialogue, yet they gave me more than enough to piece the situation together.
So the protagonist had told her in advance that I would come here…?
Did Lutera have the ability to see the future?
It was a detail that stuck with me, but Hino gave me no time to dwell on it and simply continued.
“You came to restore your memories.”
“…Is it possible?”
“Yeah. That’s why I took your hand.”
“Eh? So there wasn’t any ulterior motive?!!”
How cruel.
Playing with a girl’s pure feelings like that.
I had gotten my hopes up thinking maybe Hino shared the same lily-colored heart as me!
I made a show of radiating pure disappointment, yet Hino simply kept talking as if it didn’t matter in the slightest.
“What memories do you need?”
“…The last month or so.”
“Okay. I’ll do it right now. You might feel a little dizzy.”
In the game, memory restoration had been nothing more than the screen going black and then coming back. What would it be like in reality?
Tension surged up inside me. I even stopped trying to probe Hino’s feelings and focused entirely on the mana that had begun to flow from her body.
сети се на минатото
"сети се на минатото"
⟨ Memory Restoration ⟩
No proper warning about possible side effects or things to watch out for—the restoration simply began.
Warmth flowed in through our joined hands, climbed my arm, and spread into my heart and head. My body flinched and trembled at the alien sensation, but it wasn’t painful, so it was bearable enough.
But then.
“…Ah?”
Throb.
The moment that invading warmth touched something—my head? my abdomen? my solar plexus?—
“Ha… Aaaaaagh!! S-stop!!”
Insane pain exploded through me.
A horrific agony so white-hot it made even the memory of being shot by a pistol fade into nothing; my mind went completely blank.
“Huh? Mm? Why is this happening?”
Even Hino, usually so flat, sounded flustered; a rare crack of panic slipped into the end of her words.
The energy that had flooded into me was hastily sucked back out and dwindled away. Only then was I able to stop the terrible screaming and claw my way back to sanity.
My limbs were still twitching and convulsing. My face was a mess of tears and drool. I couldn’t let Hino see me like this, so I forced my head down and hid my face.
Even after all that pain, not a single memory had returned.
What had gone wrong?
“…Why… why is this happening?”
“Any memories come back?”
“None! Not a single one.”
Did Hino know something?
But even under my pointed stare she only tapped her chin, lost in thought.
“This is a first for me too.”
After saying that, she offered a few hypotheses in a tone that suggested it couldn’t be helped and certainly wasn’t her fault.
“Two possibilities. Either you’re some higher-dimensional being on the level of a dragon, or you’re carrying something powerful enough to block my magic.”
I’d never heard of anything like that.
No—talking about dragons or “something powerful” when this frail body of mine couldn’t even beat a single man was hardly going to find any sympathy.
I briefly wondered if the save system was responsible, but that seemed unlikely. What Hino had been trying to do wasn’t forcibly extract my memories; it was a restoration performed with my consent.
“Then my memories…”
Was there no way?
Then I’d have to live as a homeless beggar!
If I abandoned the Academy and wandered the cities clearing quests for money it might be possible, but living the way I was now—attending the Academy and acting for the sake of the heroines—would become nearly impossible.
“Haa…”
Memory restoration.
I’d thought it was a good plan.
I never expected it to fail this completely.
As I was wiping my tears with my sleeve, a white handkerchief appeared in front of my downturned face.
“Use it and throw it away.”
“…I’m not throwing it away.”
“Don’t talk with your mouth full either.”
“Okay!”
Hino’s handkerchief.
I brought it carefully to my nose and caught the clean scent of grass.
“Hehe.”
My mood improved again.
That didn’t mean I was going to actually use the handkerchief and erase Hino’s scent, of course!
While I was still trying to tidy my miserable appearance with my sleeve, Hino’s voice came again.
“The professor left one more message. On the day you came looking for me, if the memories couldn’t be restored, I was to tell you to go see the health professor.”
Huh?
Why is Professor Enut’s name coming up here?