Sherlock Holmes Play!
“Ah, ahahaha… Y-yes, that’s right! Your affection for animals is truly… No, I’m sorry, my lady, but this is one thing even I cannot defend.”
“Won’t you stick with me a little longer, Zophy?”
But what could Zophy possibly do? My behavior just now had been pure villainess material. I’d smashed an entire carriage simply because some baron’s daughter dared to block the path of someone from a powerful ducal house, then coolly asked, Now will you get out of the way? That was straight-up evil-overlord behavior.
No, no. The Villainess of Lily Academy Who Doesn’t Want to Sue! had been a trash novel, but it wasn’t one of those misunderstanding stories. Maria hadn’t been written as a secret hypocrite or a protagonist who got unfairly accused. So there was no way this would drag me into the abyss of becoming a truly heinous villainess… if I apologized right this second!
“Um, excuse me…”
“Wait! I have finally deduced it-sawa-yo! Your true identities, and especially the identity of that busty woman with the dazzling spiral curls, have become perfectly clear to me-sawa-yo! Wahahaha!”
“Busty woman?”
“How rude! What kind of language is that…”
Zophy tried to get angry, but the pink-haired midget’s voice was louder and immediately drowned her out.
“Your identity is that of a highly dangerous outsider, an otherworlder who does not belong to our world-sawa-yo! Your objective is the destruction of the Academy’s very system! Or rather, the complete overturning of its order!”
Hm? Huh? Uh… the otherworlder part isn’t actually wrong, but… No, snap out of it. There’s no way she actually knows anything. This character was always like this. In the original story she’d confidently spout nonsense, crack a joke that wasn’t funny, and then exit stage left.
“The first piece of evidence is your failure to introduce yourself or even offer a greeting to another noble daughter upon your very first meeting-sawa-yo. To skip introductions with someone you’ve just met is a clear violation of noble etiquette! Therefore it is possible to deduce that the young lady before us, while appearing to be a perfect noblewoman on the surface, is in fact an outsider merely pretending to be one-sawa-yo.”
“No, no. The young lady was simply so stunned by your absurd behavior that she didn’t even have time to introduce herself!”
Zophy tried to refute it, but I felt a small sting in my chest. In my past life I’d never had the habit of stating my name first when meeting strangers, so I really had been careless about the etiquette that was obviously expected in this world. Good lesson learned. I’ll remember that.
“And the second point: your merciless cruelty in destroying a carriage simply because it blocked your path! Such an act would never be committed by anyone except a member of the Black Knight Order, the evil faction targeting the Academy-sawa-yo.”
“The young lady simply misjudged her own strength…”
“Zophy, you don’t have to refute every single thing.”
“And finally, that overwhelmingly beautiful face and figure! It is impossible to believe such perfection could occur naturally, so you must be covering your entire body in charm magic-sawa-yo. Ordinary people might be fooled, but it cannot escape my powers of observation-sawa-yo.”
“The young lady is rather excessively beautiful…”
“Zophy, when I said not to refute things, that didn’t mean you were allowed to agree with her.”
I spoke languidly. Zophy covered her mouth and laughed.
“Oh dear, I’m sorry, my lady. That little one said something strangely accurate for once, so I couldn’t help myself…”
“In other words, putting all the evidence together, you are a high-ranking officer of the Black Knight Order who has infiltrated the Academy, using charm magic to bewitch every noble daughter and turn the entire school into your personal yuri harem garden, with the ultimate goal of destroying the empire from within-sawa-yo! And the black-haired young lady beside you is clearly your subordinate-sawa-yo! How do you like my flawless deduction? Have you been rendered speechless? Wahahaha!”
Zophy looked furious that her own master had been accused of being part of the Black Knight Order—the Demon King’s most powerful strike force and the empire’s greatest enemy. But I already knew this character was the type to spew nonsense without hesitation, so I wasn’t particularly angry. Still, her reasoning was so outrageously bold that even I was at a loss for words. It would probably be better if I handled this myself rather than letting Zophy step in. In that case, I should respond to her humor… well, she seemed completely serious, but I’d treat it as a joke and answer in kind.
“That was an excellent deduction. In that case, would you allow me the same opportunity to guess your identity?”
“Ooh? A challenge-sawa-yo? Very well, come at me-sawa-yo!”
“First of all, the young lady before me is quite the bookworm. A specialist in deciphering ancient grimoires, in fact.”
“Hah!”
Direct hit. Well, I wasn’t really deducing anything—I was just reciting established setting details—so of course I was right. Still, I should at least pretend to be reasoning it out if I wanted to leave a strong impression.
“The evidence is your bare hands. It is common for witches entering the Academy to wear gloves in order to control their magic, yet you are strangely bare-handed. One might think your magic is still too weak for you to feel the need… except I can see a thin rubber glove poking out of your coat pocket.”
I casually stepped closer, gently took her bare hand, and softly traced her fingers. Since I had also removed my own gloves to use magic moments ago, the warmth of skin on skin passed directly between us.
“Eep!”
I pretended to pull her into my arms, but instead simply slipped the glove from her pocket. It was a thin latex glove, the kind you’d see in an operating room. Even in a fantasy world, they had something that looked like it belonged to twentieth-century Earth… The pink-haired young lady must have thought I was really going to embrace her, because she’d squeezed her eyes shut with a bright red face. When I released her hand after taking only the glove, she let out a huge sigh of relief. The blush on her cheeks didn’t fade immediately.
I’d only been teasing her after she went on about charm magic, but it seemed my face really did have an effect on her. Interesting.
“Despite the chilly weather, you were wearing what appear to be disposable thin rubber gloves rather than thick thermal ones. You must have taken them off because you were worried about dirtying them while pushing the carriage. You introduced yourself as a poor baron’s daughter, yet your other clothes are quite neat, so it’s not that you couldn’t afford gloves. You must have been handling some delicate artifact or document inside the carriage.”
This is actually pretty fun. So this was why protagonists in these stories loved showing off.
“Supporting evidence can be found among the wreckage of the carriage over there. First, I sincerely apologize. It was my mistake. I misjudged my strength. However, while the textbooks needed for Academy classes have been smashed to pieces by my magic, that single thick book with the extremely old cover and worn pages remains perfectly intact.”
If my memory was correct, this character wasn’t weak in magic at all. She simply had the terrible habit of focusing on the wrong things.
“You must have cast a protection spell on it. And the fact that you could drive the carriage yourself, holding both the reins and an ancient tome in one hand while climbing this mountain path, means your magic is quite advanced. Yet you failed to properly enchant the carriage itself, got stuck in a pothole, and couldn’t move the stopped carriage on your own. That can only mean you poured so much power into protecting the book that you lost sight of your priorities, correct?”
“Ugh… uuuugh!”
“A rural baron family that isn’t particularly wealthy, a young lady who drives her own carriage while wearing work gloves, reading ancient texts, and cherishing books enough to cast thorough protection magic on them. There is only one family that comes to mind. The Cosette barony, yes? Now that I think about it, I seem to recall hearing that the baroness of that house had pink hair.”
“I lose-sawa-yo! Everything is correct-sawa-yo! As expected of a Black Knight Order officer! A mere countryside grimoire researcher like me is no match for you-sawa-yo!”
…I’d only been playing a word game, yet the Cosette baron’s daughter collapsed in front of me, sobbing. Zophy clapped her hands beside me and kept praising me, but keeping up the act for too long felt uncomfortable. These people seemed to be taking my words as serious truth rather than jokes. And honestly, I felt guilty for making a child cry with a silly prank.
“Actually, there’s a fragment of the carriage wreckage over there with the Cosette family crest stamped on it. Anyone would recognize the house from that.”
“Ah.”
“And before you accuse me of being in the Black Knight Order or whatever, wouldn’t you like to check our family crest first?”
Only then did the baron’s daughter turn to look at my gleaming golden carriage. Honestly, the fact that she hadn’t noticed such a ridiculously extravagant vehicle until now was more surprising than anything.
“Leti… Letiaponk… Then you must be Maria von Letiaponk…”
“You really didn’t know?”
Zophy stuck her tongue out in disbelief. The moment I finally introduced myself properly and tried to discuss compensation for destroying her carriage and textbooks, the baron’s daughter threw herself flat on the ground and screamed.
“I have committed a crime worthy of death-sawa-yo! This Lillia Cosette will never spout nonsense again, so please, I beg you, do not use that magic and observation power to cut off my breath-sawa-yo!”
…You can’t cut off someone’s breath with observation power, can you? No, more than that—this woman seemed far more terrified of me now that she knew my real identity than when she thought I was a Black Knight Order executive.