A Dog and a Cat Can Never Get Along (1)
Episode 22.
A bird chirped, its song ringing through the early morning air.
Having woken at the crack of dawn, I opened my mouth and spoke—out of pure habit. I'd never been one for talking to myself, but this couldn't exactly count as talking to myself.
“Niger.”
[...Yes. Speak.]
The same voice rang out in answer.
Two people were clearly holding a conversation, and yet it was a single voice. Two people were clearly talking, and yet only one of us was doing the speaking.
Hm.
If anyone witnessed this, it'd be a one-way ticket to the asylum.
With no one physically there to talk to, I didn't even know where to point my eyes. I just stared blankly up at the ceiling as I spoke.
“You were calling out to me right up until I fell asleep. Why answer only now?”
[I need sleep too, you know. Besides, I did go and kill that man that night, if you recall.]
Ah. Right.
I'd forgotten something blindingly obvious.
He shared a body with me and was half out of his mind, a certified murderer—but he was still a person, at the end of the day.
People need to sleep.
And just as Niger said, the Hunchback's skull had gone flying courtesy of a mace last night.
The academy event, which had descended into pure chaos, settled down quickly enough once I'd apprehended the culprit—but an incident had occurred, so the event couldn't continue. It simply ended.
Well... still.
It was a shame that one social misfit had cut everyone's fun short, but the man had paid for his sins in the end.
And not a single casualty among the students—so all things considered, it could have been far worse.
I scratched my head awkwardly and spoke again. There was simply too much I wanted to know.
“So... could you explain what exactly is happening to us?”
[...The records of the Elohim Order—the Old Church texts in particular—write that when two personalities coexist within one body, synchronization occurs. And this, I suspect, is a part of that process.]
No, hold on, professor.
Fine, I'll accept that you know about obscure records like that—but why are you suddenly so polite? You were nothing like this in your little notes.
A courteous murderer is somehow the most terrifying kind. He'll answer you all sweet and helpful, and then the moment you annoy him, off goes your skull.
Though I suppose even the most demented killer wouldn't smash in his own head.
Yeah. Obviously.
Who goes around cracking their own skull open?
Nobody short of a certified lunatic.
A lunatic... a serial killer.
Oh.
He wouldn't... would he?
“Then, hypothetically—can you read the things I'm thinking right now?”
A bastard so obsessed with murder he doesn't care about money.
A pervert who loses his mind the second he spots a villain.
[Synchronization is not yet complete, so I cannot hear your inner thoughts. I can, however, feel emotions—extremely unpleasant and disrespectful ones, at this moment.]
“Ah. Sorry...”
Dodged a bullet there. Probably.
I'd been cursing him out mentally quite a lot lately, and if that little habit got me caught again, it wouldn't end with mere embarrassment.
Nobody curses someone to their face and stands proud afterward.
So how about we call the personality synchronization off right here, hm?
And so the conversation with Niger carried on all through the morning, and even continued on the way to the Academy.
Which, naturally, meant I couldn't stop muttering to myself as I walked down the street, and I caught more than a few sideways glances from people who clearly thought I'd lost my mind.
Nothing I could do about it, though.
We needed to decide how we were going to handle things going forward. And that meant there was a lot to say.
So, the results of our discussion:
First, unless something was truly urgent or one of us needed help, we would not interfere in each other's daily lives.
We couldn't stand around observing each other around the clock anyway—both of us needed sleep—but frankly, we each had things we'd rather the other didn't see.
It'd just feel gross, you know?
If I was goofing around with Elia, Niger would hate it. And if Niger went berserk and started caving in some criminal's skull, I didn't want a front-row seat either.
Second—and this one felt like a warning—he told me to stop cursing at him in my head. He could at least sense the emotions, and it put him in a bad mood.
So I did try to apologize.
I mean, when the landlord—a murderer, no less—complains that his mood is being ruined, it'd be downright insolent for a tenant not to apologize.
But then.
The more I thought about it, the less I saw the point.
I'd said no one could curse a murderer to his face and stand proud, but couldn't I be the exception?
We share one body. If we die, we die together—no worries there.
And honestly, you've probably cursed me out too, haven't you?
Deny it.
What can I say?
We're in the same body anyway. A guy's allowed to trash-talk his own body now and then, you bastard.
I cut that train of thought short there and returned to reality.
Because.
Light was gleaming off a bald head.
Not that either.
“Professor Niger... removing theory from a theory-based course? Does that make any sense to you at all? Without so much as a report to me?”
The truth of my curriculum purge had come to light, and I was now receiving a full earful from the Headmaster.
“Ah, well. You see, Headmaster, the thing is—when it comes to actually using divinity, theory doesn't really...”
“No, that is utter nonsense. And until last year you taught almost nothing but theory...”
Ah, that was the old guy's doing, so I really couldn't say.
“Mm. Yes. I'll add theory back in. But I'd like to hold the exams as practical assessments only, so if you could just—”
“Oh, for the love of—please.”
The Headmaster flung his sparse handful of hair about as he wailed.
And when one of those flailing strands drifted limply to the floor, I couldn't help but think:
Ooh, one came loose.
Even Elohim couldn't fix that. What a tragic loss of precious hair.
Leaving the Headmaster's wailing behind me, I opened the lecture hall door and stepped up to the podium as naturally as breathing.
The students, already mourning the loss of their practical session, deserved to know what had happened—so I gave them a brief account of my conversation with the Headmaster.
“For those reasons, I'm thinking we'll hold a theory lecture today. I know it's disappointing, but...”
“““WAAAAAAAH!!”””
Before I'd even finished speaking, a roar of celebration shook the room.
“YEEHAW!”
The hall was packed with students rejoicing at length, utterly indifferent to whether I was standing there or not.
They were so worked up that some threw both hands over their heads, started dancing, and toppled clean over.
“““WAAAAH!! WOOO! AAAAH!!”””
“Yes, yes, I get it—no one's disappointed. Now, if you'd all calm down...”
At this point, that wasn't cheering anymore. That was a scream.
“WOO! WOO! WOO! WOO! WOO!”
And that was just animal noises.
Unbelievable. These little bastards.
But the moment I spotted Bellatrix in their midst—carried away with an excitement most unlike her—I made my resolution.
That's it.
I'll kill you all with theory instead.
I smiled brightly, brimming with exactly that sentiment.
I'd been planning to whip this class into shape with a little assignment anyway.
The Headmaster had gone and offered his own hair as a sacrifice to hand me the perfect justification—how could I possibly not grind these students into dust?
And so I whispered quietly to myself.
“So then, Professor Niger. Lend me your aid.”
Grant me your knowledge, I beg you—so that I may crush these children with my own two hands.
I stared blankly and thought.
Was I actually a fool? Was I nothing but an incompetent who knew a sliver of magic and nothing more? Had I been trapped by the illusion of being a Ducal Princess, turning my eyes away from the truth all this time?
That was how completely I understood nothing.
The lecture had started out perfectly normal.
The professor's brightly smiling face had seemed terribly ominous at first, but as if to dismiss my worries as mere paranoia, he carried on with a calm, measured explanation. He really did.
“Grace is proportional to faith. And so, while priests keep Elohim in their hearts at all times, in the instant they chant a spell, they repay the god with a faith stronger than anyone else's.”
That was all it was—dry talk about how, if your devotion was sincere, you could draw out a bit more divinity.
Yes, talent made a difference. But keep offering up your faith, and the god would answer in kind. Standard doctrine, the kind printed in every temple pamphlet.
“Haha. Which means divinity is really something anyone can wield with enough faith. Ah—but that's a secret. The Headmaster would clutch the back of his neck and collapse, I'm certain of it.”
He even sprinkled in little jokes that coaxed laughter out of the students as he eased into the lesson.
There wasn't a trace of his usual viciousness. He looked so harmless that even I wanted to believe it.
“That said, divinity spells are still spells. Naturally, they have circuits.”
That much was true.
No spell in existence activated without a circuit.
Divinity was merely the exception that proved the rule—the faith offered up to god did most of the heavy lifting.
“If you understand the circuit, and learn to pour the god's grace inside it, the power of everything I've taught you until now can grow several times stronger.”
The professor said this with a gentle smile.
Right up to that point, none of the students had sensed anything amiss, and they nodded along. I was blinking along with them too.
He would address the hall, then now and then mutter something under his breath as if ensuring we couldn't hear—slightly odd, sure, but we could only shrug at such a madman's quirks.
Because, well, the professor had always been a little unhinged anyway.
What none of us knew was that this remark—“so today, I will teach you about circuits”—was the opening bell for a descent into pure madness.
...
“So, by warping the circuit in this fashion, a greater amount of grace is held within. Do you all understand?”
No.
I understood absolutely nothing.
The circuit was twisted, the area got smaller—so how on earth did it hold more grace?
“As an example, this is an ordinary beginner-tier divine shield. The circuit is likewise built the ordinary way. But if I twist it like so, and blend the circuits together... ah, one moment. Um, hmm... Yes. See here—a circuit that is not, in fact, an intermediate-tier shield, yet it achieves nearly the same efficiency.”
He showed us the example, sure—but I still couldn't grasp why the shield had grown stronger.
He warped the circuit into shape in the blink of an eye, and I couldn't even tell whether I'd be capable of imitating it.
“Try applying this circuit yourselves and submit a report. Normally I wouldn't assign separate homework, but regrettably, theory does demand it.”
'...?'
A collective murmur rippled through the hall at this sudden declaration of homework. A few students shot their hands up, voices tight with urgency.
“P-Professor...?”
“Yes, brother. Speak.”
“W-well, um... this is our first theory lecture, so it's hard to follow...”
“Perfectly understandable. Which part did you fail to understand?”
“Th-that is...”
All of it.
Every single bit of it.
All of it went over our heads—and only he didn't seem to know that. No. He was pretending not to know.
That kindly smile as he asked us to repeat ourselves—hypocrisy, pure and simple. That artificial grin on his face was more manufactured than any I'd ever seen from him.
The lunatic professor had decided, beyond all doubt, to grind us into the dirt.
“For anything you don't understand, I'll provide supplementary explanation after we finish the syllabus. There's plenty of lecture time left, after all.”
And then he smiled again.
It was at that moment I understood.
When the professor smiled like that, it was the unmistakable prodrome of him utterly destroying us. A benevolence even more vicious than the grin he wore during practicals.
“Now then, let me teach you the next circuit. Naturally, this one will also be assigned as homework—apply it yourselves and submit a report.”
And just as he said—don't worry, there's plenty of lecture time left—
The students, myself included, were doomed to sit through supplementary instruction until we understood those circuits, even the tiniest fraction.
Ugh, come on.
Mercy. Show some mercy.