What Are You Doing, Sis? (1)
What Are You Doing, Sis? (1)
I had a bizarre dream.
Beyond the mountains that formed a landscape of corpses and rivers of blood, a dusky twilight shone.
A black pillar of fire was rising over the horizon like cigarette smoke. For some reason, the sun was black as well.
[Behold. These are the feats you have amassed.]
I looked around at the voice that came from somewhere.
No matter where I cast my gaze, I couldn't find the source of the voice. My head buzzed as if someone were speaking directly into my ear.
[Onward, advance.]
At the commanding tone, my body moved on its own.
I walked across a field that smelled of saltpeter. Corpses were piled everywhere, making the whole field look like a series of hills.
The closer I drew to the horizon, the closer I came to the pillar of fire. A searing heat washed over me as if my body were being burned.
With each step, the number of bodies increased. The races were not uniform. Humans, elves, beastmen, the Gold-Eye Tribe... and even spirits.
The color of the sky gradually changed. At first it was black, then it turned crimson. Soon it distorted into a haze before returning to black again. In the end, it was so dark that I couldn't see anything anymore.
I was overwhelmed by the pitch-black atmosphere, as if walking down an unlit alley in the dead of night. Anxious, I looked back.
There, buildings were burning down—one, two, three.
A hundred, two hundred, three hundred....
Shops, residential areas, every structure swayed and collapsed as if struck by a great earthquake. There were no people, yet screams rang out from all around. The roar didn't feel loud.
Rather, it was serene, thick and sticky like a symphony playing from a scratched record....
As I walked on in a daze, following the flow of time, a familiar boulevard suddenly appeared before me. I followed the road with my eyes.
At the main gate of a university that marked the end of the boulevard, a rusted sign dangled alone. On the cornerstone, battered and crumbling as if it had weathered countless storms, a single faint inscription remained.
'Tillet.'
[Showing you this is your next task.]
"......."
I swallowed a dry breath and sat up in bed.
When I woke from that wretched dream, Rote was staring at me with an expression of utter helplessness.
"Are you okay? You looked pale the whole time you were sleeping...."
"It's nothing. I just had a bit of a, well, nightmare."
I slowly propped myself up, careful not to overexert myself.
I felt a tightness in my chest. Cold sweat trickled around my neck as if I'd done hard labor.
"Oh no.... Should we go to the hospital?"
"This much is fine."
I gave Rote a slight smile.
I had thought my headache would clear up completely after some sleep, but my head was still throbbing.
At least it was better than yesterday, which was some comfort. Right before I fell asleep last night, I'd been so dizzy I didn't even want to think about anything.
"Looks like I just caught a simple body ache or something."
"Then that means you're *not* okay!"
Rote hurriedly threw on her coat.
"Wait here. I'll go get some medicine from Teacher Sepia."
With that, she kicked open the front door and rushed out. That was why she felt like my mom sometimes.
"Here, I got it!"
Rote, who had dashed out and returned in a flash, held out a medicine packet.
It was a thin pouch packed with colorful pills all stuck together. It looked just like the cold medicine prescribed at a local clinic back home.
"You didn't have to go through all this."
I was so grateful I could have sighed. Rote was the first person who ever took care of even the little things like this.
"Thanks."
"Don't mention it."
Oddly enough, just looking at the packet seemed to make the headache fade.
"Let's see. She said to take it three times a day, thirty minutes after each meal, okay?"
Growl.
At the mention of food, my starved stomach let out a protest.
"Now that I think about it.... I haven't eaten anything since coming back from school yesterday."
I'd expended a lot of energy but hadn't replenished any. The few sips of water I'd had were probably all I'd consumed. That meant I'd ingested nothing but minerals and water.
I was hungry. Exaggerating a little, I was on the verge of starving to death.
"Is the dining hall even open at this hour?"
"It's past twelve, you know?"
"What...?"
I couldn't hide my bewilderment and covered my mouth with one hand.
I'd slept that soundly? This body, which used to average three hours of sleep a night?
"I was planning to go to the library this morning to study...."
To return to my original world, I'd made a plan to learn one new magic theory a day during the semester. This was the first time I'd failed to keep to it.
"You've looked off since yesterday. What do you mean, the library? Forget everything else and just rest up this weekend."
"But I have so much to do...."
Magic Arts studies, progress on the hydrogen bomb research, I had to confirm Vermel's location, and I needed to work on miniaturizing the Flare.
This reminded me of the old days when I lived buried in assignments. I needed to stop thinking about that. It felt like blood was rushing to my head.
To solve the immediate problem of a meal, we arrived at the dining hall.
Thanks to the convenient concept of magic, there was something like a kiosk where we could easily purchase meal tickets. It wasn't an electrically powered machine, of course.
I inserted two gold coins and waited; a clanking, interlocking sound came from inside.
"But what's with these insane food prices? Two silver coins for just a bowl of soup, does that make sense?"
"You know how prices are these days. My father mentioned that the national treasury seems to have hit rock bottom after the epidemic."
I'd already felt the murderous inflation in the capital several times over.
Just two weeks ago, you could buy things with a single donghwa, but by now items were priced in silver coins, and now we'd reached a point where it was hard to buy even with gold coins.
For necessities like food, the school was bleeding money to cover part of the costs on the students' behalf. Even so, it was so expensive that the number of students coming to the dining hall had noticeably dwindled.
Rote was a daughter of a well-off family, and I was attending school while leeching off the Chairman, so we managed. Ordinary commoners were withering away under these killer prices.
"Isn't the Imperial Palace doing anything?"
"It seems Duke Argana has led a petition calling for currency reform. I don't know yet if it'll work out."
"That means...."
"If the currency reform goes through, gold coins and silver coins could be swapped for something else. Like the paper money elves use, for example."
"That would be the most straightforward way."
I was a layman when it came to economics, so I just accepted it. I had no idea if it would work, but since Duke Argana, who was pushing the matter, was on the same side as the Chairman, I could only hope things went smoothly.
...If it went badly, would the heads of the entire Parliamentary Faction roll, just as Vermel said?
Well, I'd look into that tomorrow afternoon. I had a rough idea of where the elf bastard had gone.
I jumped up at the sound announcing our food was ready. Rote and I loaded our trays with steaming soup, bread, and a cut of steak before returning to our seats.
Given the exorbitant prices, there weren't many students coming to eat. Lately, the majority, noble and commoner alike, just bought ingredients and cooked for themselves.
"It feels a bit empty. It used to be a lot livelier here."
In the first semester, before the Black Death broke out, it was hard to even get a foot in the dining hall.
"Ah, what a waste. We could've saved this money and used it for research funds."
"You can't be that stingy about food. Times like this, you need to eat hearty meals."
Ah, it was enough to bring tears to my eyes. Something my own parents never even said to me.
I remembered the first time I ate here with Rote. The texture of biting into a croissant instead of dry rye bread was still vivid in my memory. Back then, I truly thought my tongue was softly melting along with the sugar.
And what about the soup? It felt just like yesterday, spooning through a meat stew topped with parsley and button mushrooms instead of watery corn porridge, tears of regret streaming down my face.
Now, meals like that had become everyday life. I'd really clawed my way up here, and with sheer persistence too. Twice over.
I fell into thought for a moment. I shook my fork gently as I popped a mouthful of roasted beans into my mouth, eyes closed.
"Rote."
"Yeah?"
My friend answered with innocent cheer.
"You know about applying for the exchange student program at Iliad Academy this time."
"What about it?"
"I was thinking, how about you apply for it?"
Rote tilted her head as if puzzled.
"Why so suddenly?"
"Because I think there's a lot you could learn over there."
"But we agreed to do so many things together this semester. When are we supposed to start on that new magic development I promised my father?"
Chairman Robespierre wasn't the only one who had become my guardian.
Count Saliere, who was independently researching uses for raw uranium ore, had also asked me to collaborate on joint research with Rote. It was part of the nuclear weapons research anyway, something I had to do to defeat the Demon King.
- Listen carefully. If we don't defeat the Demon King, neither of us can return to Earth. That's the Main Quest.
...If that guy hadn't said that, I would have kept putting it off, day after day.
"Thanks for the meal."
I picked up my empty tray and headed for the dish return. After a light drink of water from the fountain, I pretended to head for the library despite Rote's protests.
"I told you, you should rest until you're feeling better!"
"Only if you do me one favor."
"Tell me."
"Apply for that exchange student program I mentioned earlier."
"Hoo, alright, I get it. So you're saying the actual research can wait until after winter break?"
"No."
When I shook my head, Rote blinked as if to ask, 'Then what?'
"We can just finish it before you leave."