I'll Do Exactly As I Please (1)
I'd been giving it some careful thought.
It felt rather late in the game to be arriving at this particular realization, granted. But it seemed to me that the sensible thing to do was to map out, at least roughly, what was going to happen going forward — and what part each character was meant to play in it.
Too late, you say?
That's what I think, too.
But then, there's a saying: the best time to start is the moment you realize you're late. Which means, technically, I might not be late at all.
Mm-hmm.
Anyway.
The midterm exams had wrapped up without any real hitches. Though it was hard to say I'd personally accomplished anything of note, no one had died, and my true identity remained undiscovered — so by any reasonable measure, that counted as a win.
Setting aside next semester and the year ahead, that left only two events remaining in the first semester: the finals, and a single incident. The finals were already sorted, so I could skip over them lightly — which meant there was exactly one thing I needed to resolve before the semester ended.
The Alchemy Department explosion.
To explain it, I'd first need to say a few words about the Alchemy Department itself, and about its top student.
The Alchemy Department.
Let me be clear from the outset — these were not people trying to turn base metal into gold. It was a department devoted to a grab-bag of disciplines: physics and metallurgy, astrology and herbology, even magic engineering. If I had to pin a label on them, I'd say they were the students who lacked innate power or ability, and who studied with an eye toward lab positions or rear-line support roles on the battlefield.
Which is to say, their hunger for success ran remarkably high.
As a result, experiments and research of every description flowed through the department in a constant churn. And even though it was a place populated entirely by people born without mana or any other gift, all that experimental activity made it a genuinely dangerous place to be.
And the department's first-year valedictorian — Dorothy Haffen — was, according to the original novel, fated to die when a potion she was brewing for a class assignment abruptly detonated.
After that, naturally, the story moved on to the heroines at the protagonist Lutz's side scrambling to hunt down the true culprit of the incident.
But that wasn't how it would go this time.
Because I intended to steal Lutz's credit for myself. To be precise, I intended not to leave her to die.
Call it gut feeling — Dorothy struck me as someone worth keeping alive.
She was an exceptionally useful student.
The fact that she was the Alchemy Department's valedictorian said enough on its own. This was a girl who had entered the Academy with no abilities whatsoever and held the top seat by an overwhelming margin well past the end of her first semester.
She could craft any number of practical magitech devices, and brew potions of every variety — including that Truth Potion I'd seen at the festival.
To be fair, usefulness wasn't the only reason. A large part of it was that I couldn't stomach the idea of someone dying unjustly because of a story I had written.
She was one of the people my writing had condemned to death.
Now that it had become reality, I had no intention of letting it stand.
That said, the old proverb about it being good when the sister marries well and the brother-in-law profits exists for a reason. Winning the goodwill of a capable person in advance would come in rather handy when solving the problems heading my way — so I hope you'll understand.
For the record, I won't deny that this makes me a mercenary bastard.
Sadly, I have no intention of stopping the explosion.
Saving someone at the peak of a dramatic crisis is, regrettably, the single best way to win their heart. I believe in the Suspension Bridge Effect.
For that reason, I'd lately been spending my free hours — the ones without lectures to teach — not in the library or the auditorium, but wandering among the laboratories and research rooms crawling with Alchemy Department students.
The students I passed in the halls looked at me with wide, curious eyes. A few were fresh off an experiment, their aprons stained with every manner of chemical.
"Hello, Professor...?"
They clearly knew who I was, but a divinity lecturer — a priest, no less — loitering around the Alchemy Department's laboratories was apparently a novel sight.
I gave them a smile.
"A pleasure, sister."
A smile worn on Niger's face could only be described as fraudulent.
"Ah... y-yes..."
Judging by the flush creeping across the student's cheeks, my reputation hadn't spread as far as the Alchemy Department. A relief, truly.
I pressed on.
The long corridor was relatively quiet. Most Alchemy students were the type to bury themselves in research and experiments straight through their breaks, so the halls had a naturally thin population.
I stole glances through the laboratory windows lining both sides of the corridor. Students were hard at work mixing things I couldn't begin to identify at their respective stations. But the one I was looking for — Dorothy — was nowhere among them, so I peered into the next laboratory instead.
And as I went on surveying the rooms, a quiet voice stirred in my head.
[Ha... I truly cannot fathom what you are thinking, brother.]
The exasperated lilt of a man at a loss, punctuated by a short sigh, the syllables trailing off like a deflating balloon. Niger had been like this ever since I'd set foot in the Alchemy Department building.
Ha.
Killer, you're always like this.
Do you genuinely not understand why I'm doing this?
Well.
"If you don't understand, then feel free to carry on not understanding, brother."
If you can't figure it out, kindly keep it to yourself.
[The emotions I can feel from you are unpleasant enough as it is — and then you keep saying such shamelessly bold things on top of it.]
"...Haha."
The flat, unhurried cadence of Niger's voice was plenty chilling, honestly. I wished he were at least aware of that fact himself. Knowing him, he'd go to his grave oblivious.
Murderous bastard.
After trading pointless banter with Niger for a good while as I made my rounds of the laboratories, I finally found her.
Dorothy Haffen.
Unremarkable brown hair and black eyes, set off by a rather fine nose and fair, pale skin. Dark circles sunk deep enough to suggest she'd pulled all-nighters for days on end, and an apron spattered with every potion imaginable — practically the department's unofficial uniform. Her hands, busy mixing one ingredient into another as her tired eyes blinked and refocused, were dyed in a dozen colors.
It was a rather beautiful sight, all told.
They say a person absorbed in their work is beautiful in and of themselves — and apparently that held true.
After watching her for a moment, I knocked carefully on the laboratory door, and my eyes met those of an elderly professor who'd been watching his students from a dais at the front of the room.
I stepped inside and offered the old professor a greeting.
"Good day to you, Professor Henry."
"Ah, yes. A pleasure, Professor Niger."
The students spared me curious sidelong glances — though the old professor's expression and tone clearly asked whether I'd needed something. I already knew he was Dorothy's supervising professor, which was precisely why I'd secured his permission days ago to sit in on his lectures for a while.
[Ah. So that was the reason.]
I didn't answer Niger. Being treated like a madman for talking to myself was not an experience I cared to repeat.
[One word of caution, offered purely in concern: do not, under any circumstances, shake his hand.]
And why, you ask, would Niger say such a thing?
Because, quite simply, the culprit of the explosion was this old professor.
[The moment you take his hand, I may very well end up killing him.]
This bastard with his built-in kill-target radar.
For my part, killing a man in a crowded room full of witnesses was also a service I preferred to decline.
Professor Henry.
The original novel did eventually reveal that this old professor was behind the explosion.
He was an elder of the Alchemy Department's faculty. It would have been pleasant if "elder professor" simply meant a man of wide learning and experience — but that was, unfortunately, not the whole of it.
He was tangled up in corruption.
The Alchemy Department, by its nature, required a constant supply of expensive materials. And just as defense contracts breed embezzlement scandals in any army, so too did the department breed men who siphoned off materials and pocketed the difference.
Not every professor, mind you. But Professor Henry and a colleague or two had been carrying on exactly that kind of business.
In the original story, Lutz and the heroines exposed the whole affair and the matter was resolved. This time, though, that wouldn't be happening.
And if you're asking why I hadn't dealt with these people ages ago —
It slipped my mind. Things were chaos.
The honest answer is that I was so buried in putting out the fires directly in front of me that a crooked old professor embezzling reagents never once crossed my mind.
At any rate — if he could have lived comfortably enough just skimming money, why on earth did he go so far as to kill a student?
Because Dorothy had begun to catch on to the corruption in the Alchemy Department.
She was a sharp student to begin with, and her bookkeeping was meticulous. The department's budget never quite seemed to account for the materials on hand — little by little, things went missing, and she noticed.
And then, of all the people she could have raised the matter with, she happened to mention it to Professor Henry.
In the story, Henry confessed under interrogation — he'd panicked, terrified that once Dorothy pieced everything together she would report him, and so he did what he did.
That was the ending I'd given them.
Simply the fault of me, the author, who wanted plenty of villains and scattered them liberally across the story. Nothing more, nothing less.
But this time, it wouldn't come to pass.
Because —
Dorothy's Free Potion Pass now belonged to me.
Yes.
The potion pass is mine now, thank you very much.
I'll be doing exactly as I please with it.