Maybe I Shouldn't Have Asked
"…Something like that happened."
The day's schedule was finished, and we were on the way home from school—more precisely, on the walk back to the dorms. We'd been going over everything that had happened today when the business from earlier slipped out on its own.
"Well, she isn't a bad person. Her competitive streak runs a little strong, but… why would she suddenly approach you, Miriel?"
"That, I wouldn't know either… Mariella, you weren't there then?"
"Then… something had come up during the lecture that I wanted to ask about, so I went to see Professor Edward."
So that was why she hadn't known. Then again, if Mariella had been there, would she have stopped Bella from coming up to me? Hard to say.
Which brought me back to the question.
"Why?"
"…Pardon?"
"I'm right here. If you had a question, you could have asked me. Why ask Edward?"
"…Well, he is a professor. Calling him by nothing but his name feels a little off, doesn't it?"
The thought does it really matter rose up, but on reflection she was right. I was supposed to be speaking politely in the first place. I'd grown so used to talking freely in papers and letters that I'd gotten it mixed up.
I'll need to get that straight before long. If my identity comes out over something like this, it'll be a disaster.
"Still, did the professor actually give you a proper answer? Judging by his personality, I'd expect him to call it a bother and refuse."
"I… did get an answer. Of a sort."
Mariella twisted a lock of her hair.
"He said, 'A fine question. I haven't the time to explain it in detail, but I'll give you some materials that ought to help,' and then…"
A slip of paper came out of her pocket. I took it, unfolded it, and found writing scrawled across the page as if in a great hurry.
"…These are titles of papers?"
"Yes."
I was surprised. It was a far more normal response than I'd expected. For someone who had refused to answer on the grounds that he had no time, he had listed quite a number of papers—and, down to the precise range, which page to which page of each one I was supposed to read.
"…Was he a better person than I thought?"
Enough, almost, to erase the first impression I'd carried until now. I had been certain he was human garbage, and yet…
Wait. Was the thing that had been wrong my own prejudice?
No. I will not be taken in. He is the sort of trash who dumps every menial chore on his graduate students. Other people can forget if they like. I have not forgotten the misery and the anger from back then.
Even so, his ability did seem exceptional. I'd taken him for an idiot when he failed to understand my paper, but maybe he'd simply been in poor form that day. Pointing someone toward an answer by exact page ranges in exact papers was impossible unless that information sat perfectly ordered in his head.
…I ought to send a letter later. In the name of Emily Staria.
"I wouldn't go so far as to call him a decent person, though. His temperament seems a little twisted."
"What do you mean?"
"That problem is one of the Five Great Problems the Magic Tower announced recently, isn't it? And a first-year asks about a thing like that, in the very first class… Oh, and he did answer properly, back then."
Back then? When was that? Before I could ask, Mariella's mouth drew close to my ear.
"I don't know whether Emily could have solved that problem, but if you'd so much as talked as if you knew the slightest thing about it, an enormous amount of attention would have landed on you. You realize that?"
"……Ah."
"Well. In that respect, I suppose you did a decent job of reading the room."
"…Ah, haha. Right… haha."
Mariella's remark left me nothing to offer but a laugh I coughed out to cover myself.
I hadn't known. I hadn't known that problem was one of the Five Great Problems. I hadn't known it was a problem no one had solved.
"…Why are you reacting like that?"
"Th-that's…"
Mariella looked at me and said nothing. She didn't speak, but under that interrogating stare I had no choice but to surrender the truth I'd meant to keep hidden.
"You know… the question I asked at the end of the lecture…?"
"The Stairel Continuum Hypothesis?"
So that was its name. Awfully grand.
"For that one, I don't know is the correct answer."
"………What?"
Mariella stopped dead.
"I solved it once, a while back… I never published it as a paper, but I stumbled onto it by accident while trying to solve a similar problem."
"……."
"M-Mariella? Could you say something? Y-your eyes are scaring me…"
Her fingers cinched down hard.
"Nngh?"
Pain lanced through my wrist all at once, as if it were being wrung dry. Mariella had my wrist in a fierce grip.
"Come with me."
"Wh—huh? What? All of a sudden…?!"
Still clamped onto my wrist, Mariella set off in long strides. She was only walking, but with my short legs I had to move at something close to a run just to keep up. We arrived around the time my breath had climbed all the way into my throat, and the place we had reached was the dorms. Mariella's room.
Mariella opened the door. Someone was already inside: a girl with a curly brown bob and a somehow fragile look about her.
"Lady Mariella…? So suddenly—um, who is the person beside you…"
"I'm sorry, but could you step out for a moment?"
"What? Uh, all of a sudden…?"
"Spend a little time at a café nearby. I'll come get you once we're finished."
"Huh? W-wait—"
"Don't worry about the money. I'll cover all of it."
"W-wait, um…?"
The door slammed shut.
The girl from a moment ago was gone, and only Mariella and I remained in the room.
"Haa… what were you thinking, saying a thing like that on a main road where everyone walks by?"
Covering that distance must have been a little much even for Mariella. Her voice came out unsteady, threaded with breath, and far too sharp.
"Do you even mean to hide who you are? You gave a professor the answer to that problem! If he realizes later—no, before that, what did you mean? I don't know is the answer? How did you solve it?! What's the proof? Why didn't you write the paper?! The Magic Tower announced it a little under two months ago!"
The words poured out of her, enough of them to bury me alive.
"O-okay, I'll talk…! I'll explain, so…!!"
"…Ah."
A small cough. Realizing she had gotten a little carried away, Mariella apologized with an abashed look.
"I'm sorry. I got excited."
"No… I'm fine."
From in front of me came the sound of her steadying her breath. When Mariella spoke again, her voice was far calmer than before.
"So. Will you explain it?"
I nodded.
"Yes! Don't worry. I'll show you I'm better than Edward!"
"I don't believe I've ever particularly doubted that…?"
"To explain this, I first need to define a continuum with precision—specifically, a nonlinear residue-motion continuum."
"Excuse me. Please listen when someone is talking to you."
"Ah, and before that, understanding it requires at least a minimal account of graph theory as it applies to magic-circle studies. Put briefly—"
"Ah. Yes. This was a mistake."
"In graph theory there exists a concept called mana-quantum reduction, and………"
"—and so, to sum it all up: assume the hypothesis is false and work the problem, and there is no contradiction, and assume it is true and work the problem, and there is still no contradiction! Which means the conclusion is that one cannot know whether it is true or false. In other words… I don't know is the right answer!!"
"………Whoa…"
Somewhere along the way the sun had sunk low. When I came back to myself, a great deal of time had passed.
Wasn't that proof of how completely I had sunk into the explanation? I felt proud of myself. At this level, even Mariella had to see that I was the better one. Right?
"……And what possessed you to prove this?"
"Huh?"
"There has to be a reason you ended up proving it. From what you said earlier, you found it by accident while trying to solve a similar problem."
"Ahh…"
At Mariella's question I turned my memory over. Right—the occasion that had led me to prove this was, without a doubt………
"A few years ago. Not exactly recent. There was a stretch when I was utterly fixated on magic circles and researching without coming up for air."
"Yes."
"I proved it while studying the correlation between magic circles and the arrangement of the runes used in incantations."
"Wasn't that something you could prove even at the level of the Academy's advanced curriculum?"
"It was, except the formation took the shape of a hypercube, so the usual methods of proof wouldn't do."
"……Where am I even supposed to begin objecting?"
Mariella rose, unsteady on her feet. She looked worn thin, and somehow that worried me.
Watching her wobble toward the door, I remembered something I had forgotten.
"Oh, right. Mariella, there's something I'd like to ask."
"…What is it? Please make it quick this time… I have to go fetch my roommate."
"Nothing major. You know the choker I gave you? Could I look it over for a moment?"
"What? Well, that much is fine… It's in the desk drawer over there. Check it, and put it back properly."
"All right."
The moment my answer ended, Mariella went out. The desk drawer was locked, but I had permission, so I opened it with magic and took out the choker inside. I only meant to see whether anything differed from my design, so it wouldn't take long.
"Hmm…"
The choker was identical to my design. Then why had the result come out different?
The experiment had produced something other than what I'd predicted, and there were two variables… If one of them showed nothing wrong……
"I'll need to check."
Leaving it alone would sit wrong with me. And it wasn't as if we wouldn't be seeing each other.
I could look into it once the timing was right.