Doubt (1)
Doubt (1)
Whether she was meant to appear in a sequel, or whether she was a character never intended to appear in the game at all.
One thing was certain: the existence of Lena Meyer posed a considerable threat to me.
First, the fact that she was a student the Governor-General had specially requested the Emperor to enroll bothered me deeply. The Governor-General was a character who appeared only in passing in the game, and since I had never met him directly, I could not know his true personality or how he judged me. And the Emperor was a man whose inner thoughts I could not fully grasp even when facing him directly.
At least I knew the Emperor to the degree he was depicted in the game. How he viewed this world and each individual person, how he viewed the Empire's subjects and nobles and planned to utilize them. Perhaps because of my existence, he was moving far more gently than he did in the game, but he still remained an object of caution.
Then, what kind of existence was Lena Meyer?
A somewhat stiff, soldier-like manner of speech. Yet an appearance that seemed youthful and charming.
...... No matter who looked at her, she did not seem like a mere extra.
Ah, of course, even if she had been an extra without distinct modeling, everyone here was a normal person with a unique appearance. Whether it was a village shopkeeper or a market merchant, they all had different faces.
Even so, among such people, there were not many who 'blatantly stood out.'
At the very least, among those of extra origin, I had never seen a person who so openly possessed a forceful character identity like Lena Meyer.
The fact that she was a year younger than us also fit. No matter how I looked at it, Lena Meyer was a character who would not have been out of place appearing in a sequel.
...... Right. I always did think it was strange that there were kuudere characters but no distinct Cool Beauty character.
I quietly observed the inside of Lena Meyer's room through my binoculars.
The place I was in now was the same spot where I had watched Mia Crowfield before.
Naturally, I had not brought a gun. She was a somewhat suspicious figure, but not enough to make me consider that she needed to be eliminated.
Honestly, even if I had to eliminate her, if you told me to kill a kid younger than me, I'd have qualms about it and wouldn't be able to do it.
So, for now, I thought it was necessary to properly investigate the person called Lena Meyer. Deciding whether to push her away or not could wait until after that.
Truthfully, I thought that peering into a room through the window like this wouldn't let me discover anything significant—
—Quite unexpectedly, I did discover one thing.
Inside Lena Meyer's room, on the bedside table, was a stuffed doll.
That doll, as large as a person's upper body, was luggage I had not seen even while Lena Meyer was moving into her room.
She probably brought it in hidden. If she'd put it inside a wardrobe and carried it all in at once, she could have brought it in without anyone seeing.
I could easily recognize the doll's appearance. It was that very character I had once considered using for my own concept: 'Digger the Dog.'
...... To be honest, it wasn't that cute of a character.
The mascot characters in the world I lived in were thoroughly tailored to 21st-century tastes. The popular types were round and looked like they'd be soft and squishy when touched. Or they were somewhat weird-looking and oddly funny to look at.
Naturally, the characters I considered 'cute' were also those types.
But here, the calendar year placed us right at the very beginning of the 20th century.
The character industry had only just started to emerge, and in the original work, all the 'characters' appearing in this era matched the tastes of the early 20th century.
Digger the Dog had a long, stretched torso and very thin limbs. In the cartoon, it moved with its limbs drooping as if they had no joints, and the reason they deliberately made it that way was probably to make the character's mere movement look comical.
Its face, deformed from a basic brown puppy, was passably cute, and its torso was round, so it looked nice to hug. Though the doll's limbs would definitely droop down limply.
And Lena Meyer was lying face down, pressing her face into that doll's torso.
She was probably taking a nap.
I silently lowered my binoculars.
And then I wiped my face with both hands.
...... So you were running a concept too.
Yes, I had gotten a bit of that feeling. For someone called a Cool Beauty with no emotions, I could feel changes in her emotions too easily. Expectation being visible beyond her expressionless face, or the way she had acted as if she held me in immense respect over the past week.......
That meant: even if the expressionless face was an act, the image of her respecting me was highly likely to be genuine.
I let out a silent scream and rolled around on the rooftop. Because I had laid down three poncho raincoats on the floor just in case, my clothes didn't get dusty even after that.
Having overlapping character concepts with me wasn't the problem. If Lena Meyer really was a Cool Beauty, I could gradually shift my own character traits over time to differentiate myself. No, if Lena Meyer maintained that kind of character to the end, there might even have been no major issue if I kept my Cool Beauty concept to the end as well.
The problem was Lena Meyer getting caught revealing her real personality.
If we were to assume that Lena Meyer was a 'character who would appear in the original work,' getting that personality exposed was only natural.
Because it was a cliché!
Laughing at a trivial joke, accidentally relaxing her expression while eating something sweet, or getting caught hugging a giant doll by someone who suddenly barged into her room.
The person herself was intensely embarrassed and made all sorts of pathetic excuses to preserve the character, but no one believed her, and in the end, her character identity completely collapsed and she became a 'cute character.'
Yes.
It was the concept I had planned out.
Then what would happen if Lena Meyer's concept was exposed 'before mine'?
...... Naturally, everything about me being exposed and feeling awkward would end up being a late, stale punchline.
Having thought that far, I stopped rolling on the floor and shuddered once.
Goosebumps ran all over my back.
The reaction of 'What, she was a normal kid too?' and the deflated feeling of 'Don't tell me, you too?' were completely different. The former was the fate and cliché of a subculture character, but the latter was a normal person's cosplay shattering into sheer weeb cringe.
Moreover, the reaction toward a kid you've only known a short time and a kid you've known and talked to for about ten years couldn't help but be different. If only one of the two existed, the kids would probably just go 'oh, that's how it is' and let it slide. But if both existed—
—It meant there was no need to even think about which side was more humiliating.
"No."
I muttered without realizing it.
Lena Meyer's concept must not be shattered before mine.
If I'd known this would happen, I should have bought a doll ahead of time and prepared all the lines to say......!
I had put it off on the grounds that I wasn't emotionally ready, and it had come to this.
No, if she's a sequel character, she should appear at the sequel's point in time! Why is she butting in already!
Even though there's no proof she's a sequel character!
I swiftly rolled again, steadied myself, and picked up the binoculars.
"Huh?"
Lena Meyer had gotten up from the bed.
She hadn't just gotten up; she was standing in front of the door.
Seeing her standing with the door slightly open, it seemed someone had come to visit her.
Once more, goosebumps broke out on my back.
If whoever was outside the door came into Lena Meyer's room—
They would see the large dog doll on the bed and the small ceramic dolls on the desk.
Lena Meyer would have to desperately explain all of that, and that would likely become the first step of a cliché character-break for someone who appeared outwardly cold.
I sprang up from my spot.
There was no time to retrieve the poncho raincoats on the floor. This was more urgent right now.
I went down the stairs as fast as possible.
*
Lately, Sylvia Fangriffon had been acting suspicious.
Then again, Sylvia Fangriffon had always looked suspicious in the eyes of Mia Crowfield.
After their last conversation in her room, she had stopped shadowing Sylvia. Because doing so would yield nothing anyway.
Trailing someone who could single-handedly overturn a battlefield did not seem likely to show her any solution.
Besides, Sylvia was a person who possessed the nerve to openly hand a pistol to someone clearly hostile to her, in a space where they were alone together.
...... It was perplexing how that strange attitude gave off a baffling air of trusting Mia.
On top of that, Sylvia was the one who had given her the blue Marmaros that looked immensely valuable at a glance. Without it that day, Mia Crowfield might well have been seriously injured or killed. The situation had been so dangerous that Charlotte, who had first insisted on accepting that commission, had personally apologized to Mia Crowfield.
Therefore, Mia had wondered if Sylvia might be someone she could trust a little.
But lately, the look in Sylvia Fangriffon's eyes as she watched Lena Meyer had not been good.
Those eyes, looking on as if observing something, showed no emotion whatsoever, but Mia Crowfield could not shake off the sensation of 'danger.'
That was why, on the first weekend after Lena Meyer transferred in, Mia Crowfield had impulsively found herself standing before Lena Meyer's door.
After hesitating for a moment, she decided it would still be better to speak up. She couldn't reveal everything about that identity, but at least she ought to give a warning to be careful.
Since Lena was a foreign student who knew nothing about such matters.
Mia Crowfield took a deep breath, and knocked on the door of Lena Meyer's room.