Chapter 31. Talent (2)
Chapter 31. Talent (2)
The days after her coming-of-age ceremony — when she first entered the Academy.
Those who knew Ymir invariably described her as a dull person.
A plain appearance. A hunched posture. And an unapproachable attitude that kept all social ties at arm's length.
But for Ymir, there was little she could have done about it.
Her precocious development since childhood had made her a target of scrutiny and envy, and she grew so self-conscious under those stares that even as an adult, her social skills remained stunted.
So she was simply the quiet honor student who spent every day reading alone, occasionally asking the teachers questions, and otherwise keeping to herself.
When she had first entered the Academy, Ymir's standing amounted to little more than that.
'Why are you sitting all by yourself?'
There had been exactly one student who approached Ymir.
A girl in the same year as her.
A woman with the same black hair as her own, cropped short.
Unlike Ymir — drab and hunched — this girl always walked with her shoulders squared, and in her eyes lingered a certain spark, the kind that belonged to someone still carrying the brightness of girlhood.
'......People make me uncomfortable.'
And her chest was fairly large.
About the same as her own at that age, perhaps?
'Uncomfortable? Why?'
Even so, Ymir had thought it was truly admirable how she carried herself with such confidence.
Enough to make her wonder: why couldn't she be like that herself?
'Well, since we've met anyway, how about we exchange names? I'm Madoka. And you?'
'......Ymir.'
'Ymir! Nice to meet you. Mind if I call you Yumil?'
'Uh, um. Sure. That's fine.'
'Nice to meet you, Yumil. Let's be good friends!'
A place where no one's eyes could reach her — that was where Ymir believed she belonged.
Even her talent was something she had merely stumbled upon while trying to escape. She regarded even her own gifts that way — the Ymir of those days was scraping rock bottom in self-worth.
'Yumil, let's eat together!'
So a future in which she grew close to anyone was something she had never once imagined.
'Yumil, Yumil!'
Yet there was this friend — always taking the initiative to approach her worthless, self-loathing self, leading her forward, blazing a path toward sunlit places she would never have gone on her own.
'Hehe, let's go shopping together! I'm sure you'd look pretty if you just dressed up a little!'
With this girl, she had thought — just maybe — she could find the courage to step out into the world a little.
'Ymir got first place again.'
Ironically, the place the two of them occupied was not a social venue for mutual exchange, but a gathering place for those devoted to academic pursuits.
Their grades served as the very proof of their existence; the higher one's rank, the better one was evaluated.
Conversely, those with low scores were inevitably treated as inferior.
'...Madoka, are you okay?'
The greatest genius in the Academy's history.
That was the label attached to Ymir at the time.
So much so that even some of the instructors gathered at the Academy sought her assistance with their research, or occasionally came to her seeking knowledge.
'.......'
'Madoka.'
'......Ah, sorry, Yumil. What did you just say?'
Madoka, by contrast, had grades that barely scraped the average.
And as Ymir later learned, Madoka at the time had been under considerable pressure from her family.
She had been an outstanding student before entering the Academy — why could she not stand shoulder to shoulder with the other geniuses here?
Unable to accept the simple reality that where there are winners, there must also be losers, the desperation of those who merely wanted their successor to be the best came lashing down on her.
'Madoka, aren't you overdoing it lately?'
'No, it's not like that. I'm just lacking compared to everyone else. So working harder is only natural, right?'
The bright, radiant impression she had at first gradually dulled — until eventually even the time she spent with Ymir began to dwindle.
Ymir worried about Madoka.
She might be someone utterly unaccustomed to dealing with people, but even so — she had to do something.
'Madoka, just rest for now. If you get sick like this.......'
'Don't talk nonsense.'
'...Madoka?'
'Scared I'm going to steal your grades? Sure, you're our Ymir the Great, always grabbing first place on every exam — but even that doesn't come free, does it? So you want to eliminate the competition, even just a little.'
'No, that's not it. I was just genuinely worried about you.......'
'Shove your worry! A genius like you could never understand me! You who've had everything from the day you were born!!'
In the end, Madoka raised her voice and lashed out at her. Then, as if suddenly realizing the mistake she had made, her eyes went glossy with tears and she averted her gaze.
She hadn't meant any of it.
She was simply cornered by the pressure of her circumstances, lashing out because she had no other choice.
'......Let's talk later.'
That must have been the last time they spoke face to face.
After that, they only caught fragments of each other's news from time to time. Though, of course, it was Madoka who received news one-sidedly — Ymir heard almost nothing of Madoka.
A world endlessly cruel to students with low grades. That was the phrase that best expressed the microcosm of the society they lived in.
'I heard there's some kind of drug going around lately that boosts your mana.'
Perhaps that was why.
Why such a bizarre, baseless rumor began circulating through the Academy, and why so many students started taking an interest.
'Would be great if that actually existed. Then you wouldn't have to bother with studying and all that.'
'Now that you mention it — that one kid who was always failing suddenly shot up the rankings, didn't he? You don't think... because of that drug?'
It was a story she couldn't care less about.
No — it was a story she didn't want to care about.
Madoka was the only person she had wanted to face and talk with.
Without Madoka, she was content to simply go back to how things had been before.
And so, the will she had barely mustered to step out of her cage was crushed entirely. Months passed as she once again shut herself away in a dust-laden library.
'Recently, the number of absent students at the Academy has been increasing.'
Around the time she was preparing for early graduation, the headmaster himself one day began delivering a word of caution to the students.
'I won't single anyone out by name, but I imagine those concerned know exactly who they are. I understand that things may not be going well and that you may feel frustrated — but that pain will nonetheless be one that serves your future.'
'So I ask that you all refrain from ruining everything for the sake of a momentary lapse. Devote yourselves to your studies and prove your merits. Hard work will always be rewarded.'
An increase in absences?
No — given how often no trace was left behind at all, it was practically a string of disappearances.
And yet the headmaster merely brushed it off as student misconduct, trying to sweep the matter aside as if telling the other students to just go read their books.
After all, the students were adults — they could handle their own affairs.......
Rather than trust, it looked more like drawing a line: whatever they did was their own responsibility, and the faculty had nothing to do with it.
She could not help but feel that way.
Because Madoka was among those who had gone missing.
'Madoka, Madoka!'
That day was probably the first — and the last — day she did not read a single book.
Belatedly, the thought of going to search for her took hold, and she wandered in every direction until at last she found a trace of her in the room Madoka had used.
A white powder spread across the desk.
The dizzying, head-spinning sensation that emanated from it was more than enough to grasp what kind of situation Madoka had fallen into.
'What's this, young lady? What brings you here?'
Following the trail of that powder, she arrived at a place not far from the Academy — yet firmly outside anyone's attention.
Why such a place existed near the Academy was not entirely incomprehensible.
No matter how lofty one pretends to be, trash still piles up — and the places to dispose of it, along with the people who scrape by feeding on even that, inevitably follow.
Why were traces of Madoka visible in that slum — that very symbol of the gap between rich and poor?
'Ah, that uniform. Academy student, right? Then I get the picture.'
Why did the residents here not find it strange to see an Academy student — someone who had no business being in this place?
No. That couldn't be......
Surely, even so, there was no way Madoka would be in a place like this.
'Here for the drug, yeah? Perfect timing — there's another student already going at it, so follow along, young lady~ Once you've had your fun, you'll be able to get plenty of the stuff too.'
But even as she denied reality, her feet carried her step by step deeper toward the abyss.
She didn't want to know — but she had to.
Even if what awaited her was more vile than anything she had imagined.
'Ah~♥'
Yes — she was already broken.
The moment she saw that familiar face, brazenly rocking her hips in front of the slum's men, Ymir understood the truth instantly.
'Ahahaha~! Yes~! Yes, yes!! Harder! Pound me harder!!♥'
What existed there was no sun of hers.
Only a drug-crazed whore remained — one who had craved the boosted concentration and mana efficiency the drug provided for her studies, one who had reached for it again under the lethargy of its peculiar volatility.......
Too ashamed to even inform her family of such disgrace, she had ended up spreading her legs for vagrants to cover the cost of her supply.
And yet, no one was there to rebuke her for her depravity.
To the men who had lived lives of unrelenting dissatisfaction, the slab of meat shaking her hips before them was nothing more than a convenient tool for sexual release.
'Haha! She's shaking her body like she's loving every second of it!'
'When we first popped her cherry she didn't seem like she'd turn out this lewd — honestly, isn't this girl more suited to being a whore than a scholar?'
'Yesss~ That's right~♥ I'm a cock-crazed slut~ A sow who loved cock so much I dropped out of school and came right here!!'
In her hands and legs.
And in every hole they plugged — Madoka let out pleasure-drenched mating cries without pause.
'So give me cock~ Give me more cock!! Ruin me completely!! Ahaha!!'
The vagrants on all sides closed in on her with their lust laid bare — but Ymir could not bring herself to step into that banquet of madness.
Only watching from a distance.
Watching someone she had once admired fall so far, her fists silently clenching, and nothing more.