Stop Talking Nonsense (2)
“No, I told you, I don't want to.”
[Even if you don't want to, this must be done.]
“You crazy murderer, who the hell says killing is something you have to do even if you hate it?”
[Oh, so you've decided to just let it all hang out now?]
Oh, for crying out loud.
I opened my mouth to curse again, then caught myself and swallowed it back down.
God, I wanted to just fly off the handle right then and there—but that mocking, admiring lilt in the murderer's voice sent a faint chill down my spine.
“Are you—ugh. This is a violation of our contract, you know. We agreed to respect each other's separate lives.”
That's right. This was clearly a breach of contract.
Whatever happened to our agreement—each of us sticking faithfully to our own lives, our own roles?
[Brother.]
“Ah, don't 'Brother' me. I told you, I'm only here to play the professor.”
He didn't know a thing about the professorship, and yet here I was, scrambling frantically just to keep him from picking fights with me over it.
Even after clocking out, I'd stay up late into the night preparing lessons to teach my students, and to properly handle my divinity, I burned through it every single day until I was running on fumes.
[Brother, at least hear me out.]
“No. I mean it. I really don't want to.”
Even while dying of exhaustion, I kept struggling on—I simply couldn't sit by and watch incident after incident unfold.
Guilt-ridden that the world had ended up this wretched, I forced smiles at my students.
And whenever the thought struck me that I'd fallen into a strange world where I knew no one, that I had to do all of this alone, my chest would seize up tight.
[Calm yourself. I did not say this to torment you.]
“God, just shut up already.”
Ah. Seriously. This is exactly why I didn't want to think about any of it.
I'd been keeping a smile plastered on my face all this time precisely because the deeper I dug into my thoughts, the more only the depressing stuff floated up.
The point is, I didn't want to be the guy who couldn't even endure half a year before whining about how hard it was.
[...]
Honestly, though? I was at my breaking point.
The great selling point of this being a novel I wrote myself—once I actually possessed the body, it turned out to be worth about as much as scrap paper.
Not a single thing unfolded the way I'd planned.
Even now, just recalling the murder scenes gave me chills.
I'd been oddly, unnervingly calm in the Forest of Hallucinations, but thinking back on what happened there made my stomach turn now.
I'd failed to properly stop the villain's terror attack, an event I already knew was coming. The body I'd possessed had keeled over from nothing more than pathetic overwork.
Everything—absolutely everything—was bullshit.
[Brother, I misspoke.]
“...”
I had a rough idea why he wanted me to come along to the murder scenes.
[When I visited the temple to rest this time, I did some research.]
I knew. I was awake too, while he was poring over those records.
[According to the Old Church Records, two personalities cannot coexist within a single body.]
“...”
One body. One personality. That's all a single vessel can hold.
[The likelihood that you and I will gradually merge is high. There may well be some exceptional workaround, but given how things stand with us right now, can't you roughly guess?]
In the beginning, we couldn't even intrude on each other's time—and now here we were, having conversations like this.
Emotional currents that had once been faint were deepening little by little, until every one of Niger's feelings came pouring straight into my head.
[You'll have to experience it eventually regardless. So wouldn't it be better to grow accustomed to it in small doses, ahead of time?]
“Oh, come on...”
He was right, point by point, damn it all.
Maybe it was because he was the educated one, but the way he meticulously laid out each step and arrived at his conclusion was nothing short of formidable.
Which meant he was an opponent I couldn't beat—neither in cracking skulls nor in arguments.
[This is for your sake, Brother.]
Well, obviously it's for my sake.
We're living in one body together. If we don't cooperate, it's going to be hell for both of us.
But.
“Goddammit, teach. That thing you're talking about is murder.”
That's the whole problem—that it's murder.
You heartless psycho.
The answer that came back to my protest was suitably obnoxious.
[Besides, once you get used to it, it's really nothing much.]
Ah. This bastard is genuinely insane.
To cut to the conclusion: I agreed to go along to the murderer's skull-splitting festival.
God knows I tried to refuse, but in the end I got talked into it anyway. The fault lay with my own stupidity—I simply didn't have the wit to rebut his arguments.
Besides, since we wouldn't be going immediately, he told me to use the time to prepare myself mentally. And listening to the murderer sigh and pat my back like that—well, it was a little embarrassing.
And so, D-minus-5.
Come this weekend, Niger and I would be throwing a glorious, blood-splattering party in the criminals' den.
That was what I was thinking about when—
“Ehh...? You have something you need to do this weekend...?”
“...Yes. Unfortunately, I do.”
I shook my head bitterly at Elia's invitation to a weekend date.
“Professor Niger has plans this weekend...?”
“Yes, that's right.”
Elia hung her mouth wide open like a woman who'd just taken a fist to the face, and murmured, “I know Professor Niger's gotten kinder lately, but I didn't think he had any friends, and yet a weekend appointment...?”
“...It's not a personal matter. It's business as a priest.”
“Ahh! So that's what it was!”
“...”
No, Professor Elia. That is insanely rude.
I gave her a look of pure disbelief, and she averted her eyes with an awkward laugh.
And yet she must have been genuinely disappointed about not seeing me on the weekend, because she spoke up again.
“Ahaha... ah, well then, could I perhaps help you out?”
Help me with what?
The murdering?
I let myself imagine it for a moment. Elia, beaming radiantly, lopping the heads clean off a den of criminals.
It was a bit grotesque and unpleasant, sure—but if it was Elia, I felt like she might actually be able to understand me.
[Don't think strange things. Turn her down, quickly.]
Yep. On it.
Of course, Niger apparently felt nothing of the sort.
Keeping my smile in place, I shook my head.
“It's quite all right. A priest's work is a trial handed down by Elohim Himself, and so it must be faced alone.”
“Oh... I didn't realize there was such meaning in it.”
There is no such meaning.
I just figured that if anything qualified as a trial from Elohim, it would be a murderer's skull-splitting festival, and the words came out on their own.
“Haha, some parts of the Church's doctrine are a touch difficult to grasp, you see.”
I simply smiled.
Right. There must be some divine reason the god up there leaves the murderer to his own devices.
Thinking that way kept my conscience comfortable.
Besides, cursing Him out as an incompetent god who can't even catch a single killer felt like it might be crossing a line, so—
...Though now that I think about it, He's insanely incompetent.
Today's lecture came to an end.
“Thank you all for your hard work. Then I shall see you on Friday.”
“““Thank you for your hard work!”””
The students' replies rang out, and they all looked back at me with smiles on their faces.
Which made sense.
Not a single student had collapsed in my recent lectures.
After the birthday celebration (not my birthday, mind you), I'd been forced to drastically lower the difficulty of my lectures.
It was my decision, and it was also Niger's.
How brutal must it have been, that even the students who called me a demon took the trouble to celebrate my birthday?
Of course, the problem was that in my frantic scramble to make the lessons easier, I ended up working even harder than before.
But anyway, that was the situation.
My lecture reviews had improved considerably. Even the students who used to flinch at the sight of me now reacted decently.
When we crossed paths in the halls, they'd flash bright smiles and greet me.
Not that I ever wanted the students to be this happy.
Oh, and the Headmaster's hair was being fully preserved as well.
Ever since I lowered the lecture difficulty, not one Letters of the Heart complaint had been submitted, and he'd been grinning ear to ear about it.
Not that I wanted the Headmaster's hair preserved either, mind you.
Hm. Maybe that makes me kind of a trash person.
Lost in such thoughts, I walked down the corridor.
Tap, tap—my leather shoes rang out, and behind them echoed the click of a different pair of heels.
“Sister.”
“Mm.”
“Why are you following me?”
It was Bellatrix.
I stole a glance sideways and found her looking remarkably more spirited than usual, a slight smile playing at the corners of her mouth. Even her shoulders, which would normally have drooped, sat perfectly straight.
“Professor, you're headed to the library anyway. Walk with me.”
Even her tone of voice was remarkably gentle—for her.
“That is true, but do you not have another lecture?”
“Plenty of time before it. Ah—unless this is your way of hinting you don't want my company, and I'm simply failing to pick up on it?”
“No, it's nothing of the sort.”
It was just... genuinely fascinating, how much gentler people became the moment the lectures got a little easier.
Now that was it—I wanted to mess with her a little.
Lowering the lecture difficulty had actually piled more worries onto my plate, and yet here were my students—Bellatrix foremost among them—looking this relaxed.
Should I grind them again?
“...Professor, your gaze is looking extremely unsettling and impure right now.”
“Haha, I'm sure it's just your imagination. I was merely thinking how lovely it is to see you looking so bright these days.”
“If you're even considering grinding us down again, I implore you—stop right there.”
“Surely you don't take me for such a man. A man's word is worth a thousand pieces of gold.”
Of course, my actual plan was that the moment things went sideways, I'd rip off the duct tape and crank the difficulty right back up.
“The professor I know would grind us down even if it cost him his manhood, which is exactly the problem.”
Oh.
“Ooh... how wonderfully impure of a remark, Sister.”
“Oh, shut it. If you ask me, the impure look is the one on your face, Professor.”
Truly, Bellatrix was remarkably sharp.