Chapter 147: Twisted Love 5
Chapter 147: Twisted Love 5
Men and women really do think alike.
I fastened the buttons of the crisp white dress shirt, turning the thought over.
What do you call this wrist part again—cuffs?
Black suit, white dress shirt. A luxury watch from this world, plus a necktie and leather shoes to complete the set.
So she wasn't just wearing the "otaku" label as decoration.
Getting changed over and over was starting to feel a little tedious, but the way my Incarnations' eyes kept sparkling brighter and brighter made it genuinely entertaining. I could see why people got into cosplay.
What Lee Ha-rin had asked for as her reward was simple enough.
"C-could you wear these?"
Inside the magically treated wardrobe was an enormous collection of clothes. At a glance, there had to be dozens of outfits in there. All she'd wanted was for me to try a few of them on.
While Han Ye-ji had no idea how to spend her paycheck and just hoarded it, Lee Ha-rin had been sinking her Academy income into buying clothes for me.
Han Ye-ji blowing her pay on convenience-store potato chips because she didn't know what else to do with it was one thing, but Lee Ha-rin had burned through every coin she'd earned just to amass outfits she wanted to see me in. That was impressive in its own way.
"...Will this do?"
"Yes!"
I'd never seen her this ecstatic before, so I put on the clothes she handed me. I suppose the reason it didn't bother me was that Lee Ha-rin never crossed any lines. She never tried to dress me up in some absurd barely-there cosplay nonsense or anything that felt degrading.
If she'd come at me calling it a "reward" and tried to stuff me into weird boomerang briefs or one of this world's idol outfits that practically flashes your crotch—what then? Incarnation or no, reward or no, I'd have rapped her on the head a few times, then taught her a proper lesson with my lower half in a dream.
But Lee Ha-rin was a professional otaku. She knew how to proselytize without making people uncomfortable, if that makes sense. Not the type to shove hentai in your face like one of those "WLS" creeps—more like someone who starts with things any normal person would find harmless and slowly works her way up without ever breaking the boundaries.
The very first outfit she handed me was the Academy cadet uniform. A full-coverage ensemble, naturally. The deep navy formal trousers went all the way to the ankles, and even the thin dress shirt—designed with mobility in mind—covered the wrists. Add the ceremonial white cotton gloves and a beret-like cap, and the only skin left exposed was my neck and face.
Since I'd seen that uniform before at the Academy entrance ceremony, putting it on didn't offend me in the slightest, gender-reversed world or not.
As soon as I stepped out in the cadet uniform, Han Ye-ji snapped back to her senses and showed up with this dazed, slack-jawed grin—
Then I took that off and put on the security uniform the beastman guards wore, and Kim Ha-eun, who'd been having the time of her life in the dream city, popped out wearing the exact same dazed, slack-jawed grin—
The momentum carried, and before I knew it, I was holding a full-on fashion show in front of my three Incarnations.
'Lee Ha-rin, you're terrifying.'
Somehow, all three of them were now locked in a heated debate over what to put me in next. She'd maneuvered us all into this situation with nothing but her own silver tongue. Her rhetorical skills were remarkable in more ways than one.
Still, it wasn't a bad feeling. Three gorgeous women shrieking with delight over me—it was a little embarrassing and made my skin prickle, but I couldn't exactly call it unpleasant. Watching their faces flush red while they stole furtive glances at me was deeply satisfying.
I fastened the cuff buttons and slicked my hair back.
The combination of broad shoulders and a tailored suit made me look less like a refined young master and more like a straight-up gang boss, in my opinion, but they were squealing about how much they loved that, so—whatever.
"C-can we take pictures?"
"Sure, go ahead."
Half resigned to my fate, I gave a slight nod. Did she have a uniform fetish or something? I'd cycled through every kind of uniform imaginable. From the Academy cadet uniform to the military dress uniforms of all four continents. This utterly skinless cosplay competition was finally winding down.
'How long before those photos start circulating online.'
The Incarnations lifted their smartphones, grinning from ear to ear. Would Han Ye-ji post a bragging thread on the Constellation and Incarnation Gallery? Or would Lee Ha-rin update the Constellation Database? Kim Ha-eun definitely wouldn't post anything unless I explicitly told her to.
I wondered idly which one would be first as I yanked roughly at the necktie strangling my throat.
...And then I nearly laughed when they started photographing even that, gushing over the sight.
※
The Incarnations had banded together, all laughter and harmony. We'd caught the killer and were holding him captive for experiments—so that settled that. Or so I'd thought. But the mood at the Academy was gloomier than I'd expected.
"How do we even—"
"No, look at this side."
By now, Lee Ha-rin and her magic instructor were stuck together like thread and needle. Hordes of mages had swarmed out, shoving all manner of figures and graphs in my face. So this was what they meant when they said magic was built on math and science. Astronomy for barrier theory. Chemistry and physics for elemental magic. A rapid-fire exchange of alien terminology, ninety-eight percent of which I couldn't parse.
The cause, obviously, was the male Incarnation currently tied up tight.
"No, how does this make any sense?"
"It already happened, so isn't quibbling over theoretical possibility a bit pointless?"
A full spectrum of mages had gathered: an old man with every hair gone white, like a wizard out of a stage play; a woman in a pointed hat practically announcing "I am a witch!"; people in robe-like garments clutching talismans, perhaps practitioners of Eastern-style magic. Shamans and mages from all four continents had assembled, and every last one of them was talking themselves hoarse.
The topic: how and why the Academy's barrier had been breached.
This wasn't an ugly political blame game. The Academy, whatever else it looked like, gathered the continent's finest minds. The reason these people were raising their voices was simple: none of them understood it.
'Impressive, really.'
What filled the huge screen were the Incarnation's memories. Not a playback of some unhappy childhood—no, they were examining his memories of breaching the Academy barrier. The screen showed the man's every move. The events weren't even a year old; there was no chance the memories had faded.
The relatively lax inspections of the less strict continents were easy to get past. He'd cleared the checkpoint with a fake ID and boarded the ship. After that, he'd dodged the onboard security checks with the nerve of a movie spy. Then the final stage: the Academy port. The barrier triggered the moment you stepped off the ship onto the dock, and the mages used that barrier as a foundation for a second round of screening.
The reason continental ports and onboard inspections were so cursory was, presumably, faith in this barrier—the one the Constellations had pooled their power to construct around the Academy. Which was why these people were replaying the footage for the umpteenth time, shouting at each other.
The man had disembarked and walked. Fake ID in hand, straight toward the Academy barrier. And passed through without triggering any reaction at all.
"The fake ID, the magically treated garments—why didn't the barrier respond?"
"What about a trait that completely nullifies the barrier?"
"There are traits that erase all magic, but a power that negates one specific barrier and nothing else has never been documented."
"Besides, he didn't punch a hole in the barrier—he just walked right through, didn't he?"
"And if he had a nullification ability, the magic on the ID and the clothes would have been wiped too."
Their faces were grim, but their voices were animated. Alarm over the monumental breach of Academy security, tangled up with the thrill of a new magical discovery. That seemed about right.
All the same, if they were this curious, couldn't they just wake the culprit up? This was a world with machines that read memories. Surely they had magic-based interrogation techniques too.
With that thought, I poked Lee Ha-rin in the side.
'Do you have orders for me, Constellation?'
Even in the middle of all this, she was watching for my commands. Still, Constellation or not, I wasn't so far gone as to send someone running errands while dozens of people were holding an active conference. I kept my voice down and whispered close to her ear.
'Can't we just wake him up and make him tell the truth? There must be truth serums or something.'
'Is that allowed?'
Lee Ha-rin's eyes went round at my words.
Surely they hadn't failed to think of something this simple. Not sure what the situation was, I stared back at her blankly, and she bowed her head before tapping the microphone in front of her.
"Ahem—The Constellation has—"
Call it a conference hall, call it a large interrogation chamber. Whatever it was, Lee Ha-rin's voice rang out across the auditorium filled with dozens of people. The mages fell silent, and their gazes converged uncomfortably on me. Wondering what she was about to say, I glanced at her profile.
"The Constellation has granted permission to interrogate the culprit."
"...?"
What was she talking about.
What followed was a chorus of praise for my boundless mercy. Was interrogating a criminal not just standard procedure? Did this isekai world not have the concept of interrogation?
'Ah, so this is "interrogation." You twist the fingers, and out pops a secret hideout.'
'Ooh, amazing! They pulled out the fingernails!'
I entertained myself with a few idle jokes while glancing around. Dozens of pairs of eyes burned with a blend of zeal and mania. Scholars young and old alike aimed their fervor straight at me.
"Erm—"
The moment our eyes met, the witch in the pointed hat spoke up.
And as if that small voice had been a signal flare, the mages rose in a swarm.
"I—I happen to have some expertise in this area!"
"Even if it may appear lacking in the Constellation's eyes—"
"Ho-ho, my, my. What business does an elementalist have stepping forward for something like this?"
"And the Sianne faction is completely unrelated to interrogation methods as well, are they not?"
The mages' curiosity about a magical phenomenon they had never seen before. Mages who considered human experimentation the obvious path to satisfying that curiosity. And the Constellation—me—who had personally stepped in while they were reading the memories of the culprit, or rather, the test subject.
The reason the mages hadn't conducted an interrogation themselves was, apparently, a near one hundred percent certainty that they would end up extracting the man's brain and pickling it in formalin. From a mage's perspective, they couldn't just casually grind up a test subject a Constellation was interested in for the sake of their own curiosity.
Lee Ha-rin, who knew mages well, whispered all this to me. In fact, several of the mages were currently making their case for how they could interrogate the man without removing his brain.
...No wonder that one Imperial Guard guy who'd quietly wormed his way in was grinning like an absolute bastard.