Discovery (3)
Discovery (3)
And then I repeated far more failures than when I had picked the lock on the sewer entrance.
That was only natural. The lock on the sewer had been an expensive one, not the sort of thing just anyone could open freely, but in the end it was a lock that had to remain exposed to the outside. Better to have something a little simpler but sturdy enough to withstand long exposure to wind and rain. The person who put a lock on that place probably never imagined anyone would go looking for it. Still, they couldn't let just anyone come and go as they pleased, so they'd have chosen something reasonably sturdy but inexpensive.
But Mia Crowfield was, after all, the daughter of a count's house. No, the dormitory's own security was quite excellent. The guards thoroughly checked and recorded everyone who entered, and anyone unauthorized was stopped at the entrance.
The rooms used by Noble Class students and Commoner Class students had basically the same facilities, but that didn't mean the facilities were subpar. This academy was "the best," after all.
Fortunately, however, Marmaros hadn't been worked into each individual keyhole that locked the doors, nor had magic been applied. In any case, it wasn't a door that couldn't be opened with a lockpick.
...... Though I broke nearly thirty of them.
Still, if I hadn't practiced opening various doors with lockpicks in the past, I'd probably have broken over a hundred and still not gotten the door open. So I considered my efforts absolutely not in vain.
Maybe it didn't matter whether it was thirty or a hundred since I could turn back time, but still.
.......
Well, anyway.
I pushed down the sense of emptiness I felt deep in my chest somehow and opened Mia Crowfield's door, stepping inside.
The thought crossed my mind: What if the room's owner was asleep inside? Fortunately, she wasn't.
"......."
The room was clean. Well, it had been the same in the original work. Most of the Noble Class students' rooms were clean. They received that kind of upbringing from childhood, so that they'd never be embarrassed no matter who visited, whenever they visited. Even if that visitor was a maid or a servant.
Of course, there were a few exceptions, but I decided to set those aside for now.
Anyway, I thought the fact that she kept her room this tidy while living in an academy where personal maids and servants weren't permitted was worthy of praise.
The room's layout was the same as the room I used.
The furniture (bed, desk, wardrobe, and so on) was originally provided by the academy, so there was no reason for the design to differ. There weren't any nobles who'd make a fuss, claiming "this furniture is low quality." It had been prepared as top-grade goods from the start.
But the books on the desk, the bed cover...... the things an individual could bring and use for herself were all thoroughly infused with her own taste.
It was a little unfamiliar, yet somehow familiar too. Because it was a sight I'd seen many times while playing the game. The atmosphere differed a lot between a room vaguely rendered with mediocre graphics and reality, but it was enough to stir the images in my memory.
The books on the desk were mostly books related to magic. There wasn't a single book on swordsmanship or marksmanship.
A training staff hung on the wall.
There was hardly any part that had been separately decorated, so in terms of the room's overall atmosphere, there wasn't anything in particular worth—
Click.
"Huh?"
I turned my head at the sudden sound from the door.
At first I thought someone else had come in behind me. I thought it might be Mia Crowfield herself, or someone else who'd seen me picking the lock and sneaking in, but—
There was no one there when I turned around.
Of course, it wasn't the sound of a ghost or some other supernatural being either.
...... No, if you wanted to be precise, magic was also a supernatural phenomenon. And since this was a steampunk world that had developed in a completely different way from real history, splitting hairs over that probably wasn't important.
Besides, this was also a place where ghosts genuinely existed.
"......."
I silently approached the source of the sound and examined the device.
A strangely shaped mechanism was locked on the inside of the door.
The faintly reddish Marmaros was probably supplying energy to the device through the minimal heat it gave off. I got the sense there were a few more magical mechanisms attached to it.
The device, which looked rather like the front-door lock of an old apartment from the world I'd lived in, was gripping the door firmly with what appeared to be a sturdy lump of metal, keeping it from opening.
It seemed to be a mechanism designed to lock automatically if someone entered without permission.
"......."
I didn't think there had been a device like this in the original work.
*
I tried a few times to figure out how to open it, then gave up.
It was a device with no keyhole or anything of the sort to begin with. Truly, it would never open unless someone who knew how to open it opened it for me.
It was probably the kind that required Mia Crowfield to personally channel magical power into it.
"Hm."
But I wasn't impatient or in a hurry. Even if Mia Crowfield caught me like this, well. I could just have a brief conversation to extract some information and then turn back time.
"......."
In that case, now that things had come to this, perhaps I should inspect the inside of the room a little more.
I knew very well that Mia Crowfield opened the floor panel under her bed and hid important things there. I knew well what had been inside in the original work, but this was a room fitted with a device I'd never even seen before. The contents might be different.
I pulled up the sheet hanging down beside the bed and crawled underneath it, into a space just high enough for one person to wriggle into.
Suspiciously, there was no dust accumulated. If someone went in and out, the dust would inevitably disappear from just that spot, so she must have cleaned specifically to keep any trace from remaining. Someone might suspect obsessive-compulsive tendencies, but for Mia Crowfield, that would have sufficed.
There were no particular marks on the floor panel beneath the bed, but as I wedged a coin into the gaps between the panels, one of the wooden planks making up the floor lifted up.
There wasn't enough space to store anything large. But there was space to store Marmaros by type.
"......."
Yes. Marmaros was stored there, sorted by attribute.
There was nothing at the level of what I'd taken from the sewer crate...... but combined with a magic staff when necessary, it was enough to kill at least one person.
Seeing it like this, it was chilling.
In the original work, it was depicted as something that Mia Crowfield, who was deeply interested in magic, had secretly brought in for her research...... but in this world, Mia Crowfield had entered the same academy as her father's enemy from the very beginning. It wouldn't be strange at all if she had gathered them intending to take revenge should the opportunity arise.
And the real problem wasn't even that Marmaros.
Beside the Marmaros lined up side by side, there was a small pistol.
It was a small pistol that seemed far too limited for full-scale combat use, unlike the revolver I used. A break-action Derringer with two barrels, top and bottom, capable of holding one relatively large-caliber pistol cartridge in each—two shots in total. Strictly speaking, it was closer to a self-defense weapon.
But even as a self-defense weapon, if you landed the loaded bullets properly, it was enough to kill someone.
"......."
I took out the gun and held it in my hand. It was quite heavy for its small size. Well, it was practically a lump of metal that size.
When I broke the barrel downward, I could see the two rounds already loaded inside.
There were no spare rounds.
Had she judged that two shots were enough to reliably kill me? Or that even if she had spare ammunition, there'd be no time to reload?
Or had she planned to use one shot and then use the other somewhere else?
Click.
When I returned the barrel to its original position, the gun made that small sound.
It was a weapon that didn't suit the Mia Crowfield from the original work.
Well, I supposed that was just my own prejudice. In the original work, equipping weapons other than each character's main weapon was impossible, but this was reality, not a game.
A sleeve, a pocket...... as long as you could hide it, concealing a small firearm would be trivial. This wasn't yet an era with metal detectors, after all.
I crawled back out from under the bed, still gripping the gun.
I brushed the dust from my clothes and sat down on the edge of the bed.
And there I waited quietly, holding the gun, for Mia Crowfield to return.
*
I'm afraid to go in.
Mia stood before her room door, thinking that thought.
Last weekend, Mia Crowfield had followed Sylvia Fangriffon and wondered how an assassin could be so careless.
But thinking it over again carefully, something was a little strange.
She couldn't quite understand how Sylvia Fangriffon, who showed such a cold, level-headed face in front of others, could behave just like an ordinary girl her age when no one was watching.
Wasn't there nothing to gain from it in the first place?
Pretending to be a cold, level-headed assassin would only rouse pointless suspicion in the people around her. If she were truly someone who could kill a person and still claim her innocence, she wouldn't have engaged in such "assassin-like" behavior to begin with.
Rather, she'd have acted like a warm, kind, and friendly person to those around her.
And she'd build connections, then when it seemed like her true nature might be exposed, she'd borrow other people's gazes and words to slip away smoothly.
That was why she couldn't understand.
Could it be that Sylvia Fangriffon had known Mia was tailing her? That she had only started acting then, to confuse Mia's thoughts?
That seemed more plausible, actually.
And so, all this week, Mia hadn't been able to properly meet Sylvia Fangriffon's eyes. She'd behaved that way until the weekend approached, so Sylvia Fangriffon must have noticed something too.
That must have been why she'd started taking action this morning.
The area around the academy was residential. And the residential buildings that had swelled with people since the Industrial Revolution were all narrow, left and right. When climbing the stairs, one person standing filled the stairway nearly completely, so if two people came from opposite directions, one of them could only just squeeze past by climbing a few more steps and stepping aside.
Sylvia Fangriffon climbed to the rooftop of such a building, a place so narrow that Mia couldn't follow without being detected.
The rooftop wouldn't have been very spacious either.
Even if Mia had followed a little later, facing Sylvia Fangriffon alone up there would have been absolutely unavoidable.
And Sylvia Fangriffon had waited there until the sun set.
Like a spider spinning its web, waiting for prey to get caught.
Mia hadn't been able to bring herself to go up there.
After waiting a long while, Sylvia Fangriffon had come down from the building with an utterly untroubled expression.
And, as if no one was following her, she'd walked normally and openly back toward the dormitory.
...... And then, still with that utterly untroubled expression, she'd picked the lock on Mia's door and gone inside.
She had set it so that the door would lock automatically if anyone sneaked in.
But if she opened that door and went in, this time Mia truly would be trapped in one place with Sylvia Fangriffon.
Still, this was the student dormitory.
Would Sylvia Fangriffon try to kill Mia inside?
No, it wouldn't be strange if someone like Sylvia Fangriffon knew how to persuade without necessarily killing anyone.
"......."
Mia agonized for a long while before the door to her room, then finally steeled herself.
Fine.
If Sylvia Fangriffon wanted to face Mia one-on-one, then so be it.
Even if she died, she would fight honorably under the name of Crowfield.
After taking several deep breaths, Mia took the Marmaros from her pocket.
Click.
She held it to the door, released the lock, and opened the door—
—and there was Sylvia Fangriffon, sitting on Mia's bed, fiddling with the pistol she'd hidden just in case, waiting.
Mia nearly fainted on the spot.