First Impression (4)
First Impression (4)
No matter how many times I turned back time, the embarrassment didn't simply vanish. It was only erased from other people's memories, not from mine.
Well, fine.
At least I'd learned firsthand that Claire was completely serious.
Since I hadn't revealed my identity, Claire apparently meant to uncover it with her own hands. That beaming smile on her face made it even more obvious.
The way she'd looked so startled when I got hit and fell was probably for the same reason.
The time Claire and I had spent together wasn't all that long. But the memory of someone who'd treated her with warmth during her hardest days must have left an intensely vivid impression.
Besides, to young Claire's eyes, I must have seemed like someone with astonishing abilities. I'd moved the children around as though I knew the future, guiding them right to the baron's front door.
Honestly, I had considered hiding it a little longer, not for any grand reason, but simply because I wanted to maintain the character. I'd spent ten years building that role. Wouldn't it be a shame for it to collapse in an instant?
But if I dodged Claire's attacks here and defeated her, she would realize that I was that "Sylvia Black."
...... That wouldn't be so bad, would it.
An older sister and younger sister reunited after so long. A bond proven through skill. If this were in a Japanese manga-style story, wouldn't that be a splendid scene?
"......."
I slung the rifle onto my back and drew the revolver into my hand.
Then I placed my finger on the trigger. The Wexler revolver was a double-action model, so there was no need to cock the hammer manually.
"Now then!"
Jennifer's voice rang out once more.
"Begin!"
The moment Jennifer shouted, Claire raised her sword high again—
But because I'd switched to the revolver, things didn't play out exactly the same as before.
Instead of evading Claire's movement, I extended my arm straight out.
Click.
When I pulled the trigger, the hammer drew back and then snapped forward. There was a faint recoil from the mechanism, but that was all. A gun with no powder charge wasn't going to push me back.
"Missed!"
Jennifer declared.
The moment I extended my arm, Claire was already twisting her body sideways and slipping out of my line of fire. She couldn't see the future like I did, but she could certainly see my arm coming up.
You can't dodge a bullet after you've seen it. But you can shift your stance in anticipation of a shot.
In the turn-based original game, combat meant walking up and hitting, but in reality that kind of fighting was obviously impossible. To face a gun-wielding opponent while armed with a sword, you'd need at least this level of speed.
To my right. To Claire's left.
As she twisted her body away, Claire's sword grip shifted. Her stance almost made it look like she was shielding part of her face with the flat of the blade. It wasn't that she was actively trying to block a bullet—more likely, she was just keeping her stance from collapsing while throwing her whole body out of the way.
I swung my arm to track Claire, but before the muzzle could line up on her, she was already swinging her sword.
It wasn't that my arm was slow. It was more that Claire's next move outpaced my reaction.
The distance was too short for her sword to reach me with the blade itself. And in fact, the sword Claire slashed down diagonally didn't touch my body.
But half a beat later,
"Gh—!"
A violent impact slammed down onto my right shoulder.
The revolver dropped from my hand.
Again.
*
Right after I pulled the trigger for the very first time.
Claire took the same stance as before, but this time I moved first, before she could smoothly swing her sword down into a chopping strike.
A half-step to the left.
I pulled my body left while keeping the revolver aimed at Claire. A beat late, sword energy slammed into the ground where I'd been, kicking up sand.
Clack.
"Missed!"
Her voice sounded a little excited.
This time I'd rushed it. A handgun aligns its muzzle quickly, but the barrel itself is short. Even a slight increase in distance can send the bullet wide by a narrow margin.
Making aggressive movements while firing one-handed would obviously make that worse.
Before I could pull the trigger again, Claire slipped to her left. Clack. The revolver produced an empty sound. Jennifer didn't even bother to call it. The miss had been far too obvious.
And this time, Claire raised her sword high overhead with both hands.
Shaaak. With the sound of wind being torn apart, the sword came down at a terrifying speed.
Once again, it didn't come close enough to touch me, but the sword energy that followed a beat behind sent the dirt on the ground flying.
And I failed to dodge that sword energy.
Again.
*
I thought I was starting to understand.
Claire's sword energy trailed behind the blade like a whip connected to one end of the sword, but it didn't thrash around freely the way the Whip Sword had in the game. Compared to the game, where it had moved literally like a snake, Claire's sword energy now was far too straightforward.
Was being unable to writhe like a whip simply a property of sword energy? Or was it because her skill hadn't matured that far yet? I didn't much care which it was. Either way, it worked in my favor.
Although the fact that her attacks came in two consecutive hits was still aggravating.
...... Right, I'd made up my mind.
Next time, I'd prepare a short shotgun as well. For an assassination mission you might get away without one, but on a battlefield where some lunatic came charging at you with a sword like this, the more countermeasures you had, the better.
Right now, though, all I had was the revolver.
I pulled my body left while keeping the revolver aimed at Claire. This time, I used my other hand to brace the hand gripping the revolver.
Once I had Claire in my sights, she once again slipped to her left, from my perspective.
Machine guns existed in this world too. And the most famous method for dealing with machine-gun fire was to run in a zigzag pattern. The more unpredictable your next movement, the higher the chance the bullets would miss. Of course, dodging bullets barehanded like that was probably only possible for someone whose physical abilities had been pushed to the utmost extreme.
But I wasn't carrying a machine gun or submachine gun. I held a revolver. It could fire repeatedly, but a double-action revolver had a heavy trigger pull that made rapid fire impossible. On top of that, Claire did not merely swing a sword; she also had sword energy as a ranged attack.
Fine.
Again.
*
Claire's foot moved. A motion I hadn't been able to catch before began to come into focus as I turned back time over and over. The movement to Claire's right, my left, was the preparation for her to slip away.
A single instant. A tiny motion you'd never spot in the middle of a heated fight.
But even a scene that flashes by in a single frame of a video becomes crystal clear if you replay it enough times.
I didn't possess the ability to calculate that minute difference and perfectly aim in that one split-second.
But that wasn't a problem.
With a single opening, I could try again a hundred times, a thousand times.
I swung the muzzle to the left and pulled the trigger at the same time.
"Missed!"
Again.
*
Clack.
"Stop! Claire Grace loses!"
Jennifer, who had been watching the two of us intently, made the call. The other two pairs were both using swords, so the students could judge those bouts on their own without Jennifer having to step in. Not that she hadn't been keeping an eye on them, of course.
Nobles didn't handle firearms all that often.
To begin with, the gun as a weapon was frequently treated as "an armament anyone could use." In practice, compared to blades, which required enormous effort to reach any notable level of mastery, firearms had a much shorter training period. A soldier could be trained to fight on the battlefield in three months at most.
But even so, a weapon was still a weapon.
Once you began to train with firearms, there was no true end to it either. Calculating trajectories to hit targets at distances normally considered impossible, rapidly acquiring and neutralizing a target in close-quarters combat, and even using the firearm itself to defend yourself physically were all part of handling a gun.
However, the ordinary soldier who used firearms didn't spend years training under a master. They built their skills on the battlefield, rolling through hell with mad desperation. Live-fire training that realistically simulated actual combat was simply too difficult to arrange. Even the firearm the imperial princess was using right now had no powder charge inside, and the sensation of firing it would have been different from a real gun.
You grow strong by surviving. That saying applied to every soldier who'd seen real combat...... but a mere fifteen-year-old child?
Perhaps she truly had been talent worthy of deployment to the north.
Or perhaps, even before that, she'd had reason to carry a weapon like that and fight for her life.
Moreover, there had been something odd about Sylvia's own movements.
Motions that suggested she knew in advance how her opponent would swing their sword, how their body would move.
When Claire tried to bring her sword down, Sylvia was already extending her arm and aiming at Claire. When Claire brought the sword down, Sylvia calmly stepped a half-step sideways and avoided it.
And then......
Sylvia herself might not have realized it, but at least through Jennifer's eyes, Sylvia had been turning her gun toward the direction Claire would dodge before Claire even moved there.
The moment Claire entered that diagonal line, she fired.
Unlike the other students who were fiercely clashing blades, this match was over in an instant.
Not that the duel between the two of them had looked easy by any means.
"Hmm."
Was Sylvia coming to the academy instead of heading north ultimately a good thing for the Empire, or a regrettable waste?
Jennifer's interest was piqued.
*
There was no physical exhaustion.
No pain either. I was a little mentally worn out, but honestly, in terms of raw time, even including all the rewinds it probably hadn't taken very long.
Still, the feeling of getting hit by something wasn't exactly pleasant.
If my opponent hadn't been Claire, I'd have felt far worse.
While I was returning the revolver to its holster, Claire walked over to me.
Despite having lost, she looked so happy—Claire was wearing a bright, beaming smile.
It was an incredibly lively and cheerful smile. In the game, Claire had smiled like that exactly once, at the very final moment.
And back then, the "sister" she smiled at had been Alice, not me.
From behind me, I heard the clack, clack of two practice swords colliding. Alice and Charlotte's sparring match apparently wasn't over yet.
Swish.
Claire stopped right in front of me and extended her hand. As if offering a handshake.
"......."
I looked at that hand in silence for a moment, then slowly reached out and took it lightly.
But the light grip was only on my side. Claire squeezed my hand tight.
Then she pulled me toward her.
I didn't think it qualified as a surprise attack. The reason I didn't end up stumbling too badly was that I'd been able to imagine something like this happening to some degree.
When I stepped closer as Claire pulled,
"Big Sis."
Claire looked me straight in the eye and spoke.
"You're my big sis, right?"
Her eyes were already full of certainty.
...... Well.
I'd expected this anyway. I'd figured that Claire would take my clean victory over her as proof that I was that same Sylvia Black from back then.
That was why I'd been thrown off when her attacks had actually landed on me earlier.
"You seem...... quite confident."
I said that, but Claire's smiling expression didn't change in the slightest.
"I knew you'd dodge like that if it was you. Just like you did back then."
The time Claire and I had known each other was extremely brief. And honestly, that precognition-like ability I'd displayed back then...... the principle was the same, but the type was different. What I'd just done was using that ability in short bursts to dodge individual attacks, whereas back then I'd avoided entire threats from the beginning.
"I looked into it later. Those people back then must have been a human trafficking ring."
The fact that the orphanage had burned down yet produced only a single victim had been regarded as a mystery even at the time. To be honest, we'd escaped openly, but the fire had spread to adjacent buildings and reports had flooded in from everywhere, causing absolute chaos.
Children who had vanished without a trace. And then, the very next morning, children who suddenly appeared at House Grace's doorstep.
It would have been stranger if Baron Grace and his wife hadn't noticed anything.
"...... Did you ever find that trafficking ring from back then?"
The deal that had been taking place at the count's estate was separate from the one at the orphanage. If I had been able to find that man with the monocle, I would have shot him myself. He might not have remembered, but I'd been beaten unconscious.
Countless other children besides me must have died under those fists.
...... Had he called it processing?
If it had been Claire, would she have been beaten just short of death? Could it have been connected to the resurrection ritual that only existed as a hint in the game? Or maybe she'd simply been on her way to being sold to some necrophiliac pedophile and had gotten lucky enough to survive.
I had revealed my identity, but Claire's expression stiffened slightly.
She shook her head.
I see.
He'd been a figure I'd never seen in the original game, but that didn't guarantee he wasn't important. He might have been planned to appear in a sequel.
If he was still alive now, he might even have become a major player.
"......."
I glanced around briefly. A lot of eyes were on us. Some students were staring curiously at us since our bout had ended first, and Jennifer's gaze was still lingering on us as well.
"Claire."
"Yeah, big Sis."
"...... Please call me Sylvia here."
When I revealed my identity once more, Claire's eyes widened, and then she nodded deeply several times in quick succession.
"Information isn't something you reveal carelessly to others. You never know when or how it might be used against you."
"Okay."
Claire nodded like an obedient child. She was no longer grimy like she'd been back then—her hair was neatly arranged, and she was wearing much nicer clothes. Even if it was an academy uniform with a design similar to a military uniform.
At the very least, she no longer looked like a "penniless orphan."
"......."
"......."
Hm.
Even though our conversation had ended, Claire showed no intention of letting go of my hand.
I'd have preferred it if she could start by letting go of this, and then we could continue talking.