51. I Can Do As I Please. (3)

Before I was possessed into this novel.

I used to always gaze out the window once night fell and darkness settled in.

It wasn't that I had any romantic notion of moon-gazing like some lovelorn fool. I suppose I just liked watching the people who bustled about outside, even while I sat cooped up at home.

Not that this was any less pathetic, really.

The point I'm trying to make is that I still have a taste for that melancholy habit of staring outside on a darkened night.

And that includes right now.

To be precise, I was standing atop the main building of the Academy, looking down at the Alchemy Department's laboratory.

There was Professor Henry.

I watched as he used a master key to open Dorothy's locker and slip out a potion.

A cold light gleamed in my eyes — closer to Niger's than my own — as it caught the moonlight and shimmered.

Then Niger's ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠voice rang out.

[Brother. You're not going to stop him? You intend to simply watch?]

At his question — why wasn't I stopping Professor Henry — I quietly shook my head.

"...If I stop him right now, it'll be that much harder to win Dorothy's favor."

[...]

Stopping him when neither the perpetrator nor any witnesses were around — as it was right now — was the morally admirable choice, nothing ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠more.

She could have felt grateful to me.

She might have marveled that an accident had been prevented in advance, that the culprit had been caught.

She would have been disappointed in Professor Henry, and perhaps come to hold a contrasting respect for me in turn.

But that would have been the end of it.

A professor who cared for his students. A brave priest who brought a villain to justice. Merely a respectable man — that's all I would have been.

I had no need for such useless labels.

I did not want to end as a priest who had merely caught a villain for a student's sake.

No — in the optimal moment, I wanted to sway her heart with an action that would move her emotions, and make her mine.

And saving her from the terror of a possible death was, I believed, the easiest way to achieve that goal.

Human emotion was, after all, something that unfathomably delicate and incomprehensible.

[...Brother. That is not the right way to think.]

"..."

I answered Niger's words with silence.

I knew, of course.

Whether I dressed it up as a joke or cloaked it in the excuse of saving her life, thoughts like these weren't righteous. Even I understood that much.

But I believed it was necessary.

It hardly seemed possible that someone who remained nothing but a good person to the very end could reach the ending unscathed.

Of course, the moment I'd begun turning a blind eye to Niger's murders after the possession, I had long since forfeited any claim to being a good person.

And so I murmured to myself that it would be fine — that even if the process was murky, the outcome would flow in a good direction for everyone.

For me, stranded alone inside this novel.

For Niger, who would have to commit murder safely hereafter.

And for Dorothy, who in the original story should have died.

Holding fast to that thought, I looked down at the Alchemy Department's laboratory.

Professor Henry was gone, and Dorothy's locker, which had stood open, was now shut fast and firm.

I opened my eyes.

"Hwaaam..."

It was an unusually refreshing morning.

The grogginess I usually felt dragging myself out of bed was far lighter than normal, and eyes that should have been half-glued shut from fatigue were wide open from the early morning hours.

What is this? What could it be?

If I felt this refreshed first thing in the morning, maybe today was simply a lucky day.

Come to think of it, perhaps it was because today was finally the day the Frenzy Potion would be complete.

With that thought, I stood before the mirror to change my clothes.

My hair, left unbound and falling long, gleamed with a healthy sheen. My face, which by all rights should have been grimy, was inexplicably clean.

Huh...?

Ah.

I washed up before bed last night.

No wonder I felt so clear-headed this morning.

Flushing for no particular reason, I changed my clothes and carefully combed through my hair.

It was a little embarrassing, I supposed — making it so obvious it had been days since I'd last washed.

When I stepped out of my room in the dormitory, my friends — Lacey and the others — were waiting for me as they always did.

Thanks to being ready ten whole minutes earlier than usual, I'd come out ahead of schedule, and yet I couldn't help wondering how long these girls had been standing there.

Just as I was thinking that, Lacey's eyes went wide as she stared at me.

"Huh, what's this? Dorothy, you came out pretty early for once? And also... hee hee! So you are a girl!"

She marveled at my early arrival, then looked me up and down with a sly smile spreading across her face.

Oh, come on.

"I-it's nothing. I just hadn't washed in so long, that's all I did. Washed."

"Well, of course! I mean, you normally go almost a whole week without washing, so maybe this time something just felt extra grimy, hm~?"

"No, seriously — everyone else washes, so being the only one who didn't would look weird. That's it, I swear."

"Sure, sure! Naturally you couldn't very well be the only one not washing while everyone else does! And that would explain why your hair is down and so carefully combed for once, would it?"

My friends' expressions didn't budge an inch no matter how I tried to explain myself.

Oh, honestly.

I really did just... ugh, whatever.

Lacey, and even the rest of my friends, kept teasing me with those sly grins.

Thank goodness you're a girl too, they said. We were worried, you never seem to show any interest in men, they said.

And so they kept at it, relentlessly, all the way until we reached the laboratory.

And the moment we arrived, the priest-professor in question greeted me with a smile.

"Good morning, Sister."

"Huh...? You're here early today?"

Normally he'd have come in halfway through our experiment and sat quietly sipping his tea — so why was he already here?

"Yes. Somehow I found myself arriving early today, and I wanted to watch your experiment."

"Ah... right."

I gave him a vague reply and hurried past.

The expressions of the friends who'd come into the lab with me were already brimming with mischief again.

Pretending I hadn't noticed a thing, I opened my locker and took out the miniature furnace and the potion.

I gazed at the potion, faintly shimmering with a soft violet light.

Once today's stabilization was finished, I intended to submit this potion as my assignment.

That would be the end of weeks of grueling work.

I would still need to find a way to bring the potion to market, of course, but since the Academy counted the assignment as a formal credit, that could wait — there was no real problem there.

Potion, miniature furnace, and the materials for stabilization in hand, I took my seat.

The clock struck nine ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠precisely, and Professor Henry entered the laboratory.

He, too, gave the priest-professor a slightly startled look — just as I had — then composed himself and started the experiment as if nothing were amiss.

I lit the furnace.

I lifted the flask and set it atop the miniature furnace, then waited for the potion to come to a boil.

Ten seconds.

Thirty seconds.

And then, as the first full minute passed, the potion naturally...

"Huh...?"

naturally began to shift toward a reddish color.

That couldn't be right.

There was exactly one reaction that turned the potion from soft violet to red.

Before the thought could even finish forming, the potion surged violently to a boil.

The red liquid began to glow brighter and brighter, and only one future crossed my mind.

It was going to explode.

Judging by the potion's condition, the blast would be big enough to swallow half the laboratory.

Evacuate?

Too late.

The explosion would come in an instant, and left as it was, the damage would be severe — that much was certain.

And it made sense: among Alchemy Department students, eccentrics who had awakened mana were few and far between.

Anyone who awakened mana had no real reason to study something like alchemy in the first place, and those with mana naturally went on to the School of Magic or the School of Swordsmanship — it was simply the accepted path.

Put simply, an explosion in the Alchemy Department's laboratory meant that most of the students inside would be gravely injured. Or killed.

Praying that no such thing would come to pass, I gathered the potion — now spewing its strange red glow — into my arms.

And then, in a voice unlike my own, I shouted.

"Everyone, run — get out of the laboratory...!"

I doubted screaming would make the explosion any smaller, but at the very least it might help a little.

"Dorothy...? Huh? Wait, you—!"

Beside me, I heard Lacey's voice. She'd glimpsed what I was doing and seemed to have grasped the situation, more or less.

There was no time to answer her.

My friends being hurt or killed would have been bad enough — but I couldn't bear the thought of saddling my family with debt on top of it.

They had raised me — talentless, powerless me — with such boundless love and devotion. I couldn't repay that with a burden of debt.

Call it the barest duty of someone born human, I suppose.

Not that any of it would matter after today.

The potion bubbled and snarled, rising ever more violently, and at some point my whole body had begun to tremble.

And yet — just maybe.

A brief flicker crossed my mind: if luck were kind enough, couldn't I survive this? But no. That was clearly impossible.

Perhaps this was the price of reaching for more than my station deserved.

Poor as I was, why had I thrashed about so desperately trying to succeed?

With that thought, I screwed my eyes shut.

Feeling the potion heating up madly against my chest, I let a single tear fall.

And then.

"Sister, it's all right. I will handle this."

I heard a gentle voice.

And a radiance every bit as warm filled the laboratory to its edges.

I thought to myself how glad I was to have come to the laboratory so early in the morning.

Without even preparing the tea I usually drank, I simply sat in my seat, watching Dorothy.

The furnace was lit, and the potion was placed atop it.

Ten seconds. Twenty.

Time flowed on, and before long the potion began to boil.

[Brother.]

I did not answer.

Because I would not fail.

The potion began to take on a red ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠hue, and Dorothy's eyes went round.

"Huh...?"

Her voice wavered, thin and frail.

Flustered, then frightened — her trembling gaze darted between the potion and everything around it.

[The scale of the explosion will be greater than you expect. A simple barrier will not be enough to contain it. And so—]

"I know."

Even without Niger saying it, I could tell.

And so I offered up a small prayer, right away.

...

I continued the prayer. At the same time, I drew the circuit.

The standard barrier would not suffice — so I threaded new modifiers throughout the circuit's every junction.

Divine amplification.

Barrier compression.

Divinity streamed out of my body, its light slowly flooding the laboratory.

At some point Dorothy had wrapped the potion in her arms, shouting something or other.

She seemed to think that holding the potion against her chest might shrink the blast radius.

"..."

An explosion of this scale — and now I could begin to understand why she had died alone, that day.

I moved.

I walked toward Dorothy.

Coming up behind her with her eyes screwed tightly shut, I spoke softly.

"Sister, it's all right. I will handle this."

I took Dorothy by the shoulders and steadied her upright, and the instant the potion erupted, I recited the spell.

High-tier divine spell.

The gathered light swallowed the potion whole.

And in the same instant—

KWAAAANG—

The detonation roared, and the potion blew apart along with the flask — but whether it was thanks to the prayer, or to the modified circuit, the explosion did not break through the barrier.

Again and again, within the barrier, the potion flared with a thunderous kwang—, spitting light in every direction, and only after that process repeated several times over did the eruption finally die down.

"Aaaah..."

At the voice trembling behind me, I turned my head.

A small, slight frame met my eyes, and beneath it, pupils shaking uncontrollably.

Strength gone from her, Dorothy's knees began to buckle — so I slipped an arm around her waist and held her up.

"...Are you all right, Sister?"

Her waist was remarkably slender.

Fragile, almost — as though it might snap clean through if I tightened my grip.

And as I watched her trembling in my arms, it was only then that I recalled the nonsense of days past — the plan I'd dismissed as a mere favorability gambit.

Had I briefly gone mad?

Or was I being absorbed into Niger's emotions?

By now, I honestly couldn't tell anymore.