Chapter 45
Chapter 45
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 45
Chapter Title: Someone (2)
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I thoroughly checked Cookie from head to toe to make sure there were no injuries.
Cookie, thinking this was some kind of game, sniffed at my serious face, poking her nose right up to it.
“Cookie, stay still.”
“Woof! Woof!”
Of course, Cookie, who couldn’t understand human language, just spun around following my hand.
If this kept up, it would never end.
‘I didn’t want to use this, but...’
In the end, I resorted to my last measure.
“Bang!”
With my thumb and index finger extended like a gun and the rest of my fingers tucked in, mimicking firing a shot, Cookie finally flopped down onto the floor.
I hadn’t trained her to do this myself since I actually used real guns, but one of the handlers must have taught her.
I searched over Cookie’s prone body.
“No injuries... Good thing.”
Then again, Cookie was a bit of a drama queen.
The day I accidentally stepped on one of her claws while planting my feet, she limped on that leg the entire day.
If she’d been hit or hurt somewhere, she wouldn’t have come bounding in with her tongue lolling out happily.
“Who gave you this? Huh?”
When I pinched and pulled at Cookie’s chubby cheeks, she beamed innocently, oblivious.
Well, there was no point asking Cookie anyway.
I hadn’t taught her how to identify people, and even if I had, the one who sent this paper necklace could just deny it.
More than that, I was curious about the intentions of the person from the Composition Club who’d sent me the original test paper.
“Blackmail.”
Who the hell could it be?
Why was this guy circling around me, making it obvious they were watching?
I scanned the empty shooting range and folded up the paper, tucking it into my pocket.
‘Even if I ask the Composition Club, I doubt I’ll get a straight answer.’
After soothing Cookie, who was still sulking hard from the aftereffects of my long-avoided “bang,” I proceeded with class as scheduled.
My mind was a mess, but the moment I started hitting targets, I calmed down and got absorbed without realizing it.
Before I knew it, morning classes ended, and the bell signaling lunchtime rang out.
My mood was complicated enough that I wanted to skip lunch, but if it were breakfast, fine—but skipping lunch usually meant Shirley or Judith would come looking for me.
“It doesn’t matter.”
No, in fact, it was what I wanted.
By now, I was more curious than ever about what this person circling me wanted and why they were threatening me.
The past few weeks of ordeal had left me sleep-deprived and a bit on edge.
It was to the point where I might even have to visit the counseling office, which I’d rarely gone to even during my turbulent teenage years.
After tidying up the shooting range and sending Cookie home, I watched for a long time to make sure no cadets were lurking to harm her before heading to the cafeteria.
“Hey, Senior Cruise~”
As I entered the cafeteria, a familiar voice with a drawn-out ending greeted me.
“Cadet Allison. Hello.”
The one greeting me was Eliya Allison, whom I’d seen that morning.
Dillon, who usually hung around with her, wasn’t at the table.
Taking her greeting as an invitation to sit, I settled into the seat across from Eliya.
“We can drop the formalities now, right~? You’re older and all...”
“......”
I started to shake my head to refuse, but realizing it might get awkward hearing polite speech from a much older senior I barely knew, I nodded instead.
No sooner had I sat than the cafeteria staff swiftly set out my utensils and bowed.
It was more precise and efficient than well-trained knights.
“Fun~”
“Fun?”
Eliya, unable to find anything to her taste, poked at some mashed potatoes and two stalks of grilled asparagus on her plate before speaking.
Propping my chin, I hummed idly, watching Eliya—who’d completely lost interest in her meal—out of the corner of my eye. I took the same: mashed potatoes, two asparagus stalks, and an extra piece of grilled cod.
Once she confirmed I’d gotten all my food, Eliya spoke.
“Ever since Senior Cruise started coming, that table over there has gone quiet.”
“You mean the one to my right?”
“Yess~”
Well, that made sense.
Sitting there were members of the Composition Club, made up of mid-level class cadets.
I’d never met them in the clubroom, but I remembered them because one had once swept up every literary award imaginable.
Though at some point, that shining talent had faded, leaving him just one of the better writers among the cadets.
“I have a question.”
“Go ahead~”
“You, those guys over there—do club members usually pair up and hang out like that?”
“Hmm, tough question.”
Eliya, who’d been chopping up her sea-salt grilled asparagus into tiny pieces, looked reluctant as she popped one into her mouth and chewed for a long time.
I wasn’t a big eater myself, but compared to her, I was a glutton.
“Usually, close friends join the same clubs, so it looks that way.”
Eliya pointed her held fork toward her left—angled so only I could see.
“That group isn’t a club; they’re the same major. The pairs sitting together are mostly couples, and—”
“Arma Cruise.”
“—or cases like this where you just happen to run into someone.”
Cutting into Eliya’s words midway was none other than Theodore.
The two exchanged light nods in greeting.
As Theodore quietly took the seat beside me, Eliya continued her interrupted story.
“Anyway, clubs started clumping together recently. The fights between clubs are recent too.”
I glanced at Theodore for a moment.
I’d thought he’d come all this way for something urgent, but since it wasn’t, he meekly turned to face Eliya.
“Speaking of which, I wanted to ask—you fought with the Classics Club and the Composition Club, right? What was that about?”
“You mean the poster incident~? Our class rep lost his temper, and it blew up from there~.”
She’d barely eaten a birdseed’s worth, but Eliya looked like she might throw up.
She shoveled the rest of her food in at once, set down her fork, cleared her plate entirely, and left only her water glass.
“Senior Arma’s in the Classics Club and the Composition Club, so to be honest~ it was really about the clubroom~.”
“Clubroom?”
“Yeah. The ‘Fruit of the Baby Angel’ room we’re using now.”
So that room was called the Fruit of the Baby Angel.
There had definitely been a baby angel and grape clusters by the door.
An honest name, without any fancy tricks.
“I heard that used to be the Composition Club’s storage room?”
“The Classics Club didn’t have it from the start?”
“We used Class Rep Dillon’s room at first. Then when Isaiah came along, we got our own clubroom. We didn’t get official club status, but we were allowed to use the empty north annex.”
That gave me a rough idea of the poster incident.
The Classics Club, taking over the Composition Club’s space, must have done something to rub them the wrong way.
As I nodded silently, Eliya seemed to guess my thoughts and continued without further questions.
“From our side, it’s unfair~. We notified the Composition Club multiple times to clear out their stuff, but they ignored us~.”
“So? You threw it out, and that started the fight?”
Eliya shook her head.
She pursed her lips, hyper-aware of the Composition Club watching us from behind.
“We didn’t throw it away. We just organized what they’d left scattered and boxed it up.”
“And they made a fuss over that?”
“Yeah. They claimed we dismantled their carefully made summoning circle.”
“......What?”
“Summoning circle. To me, it looked like a total failure. But they kicked up a storm over that crap...”
Unknowingly, my grip loosened, and I nearly dropped the fork I was holding.
Pretending I’d just lowered my hand instead of dropping it, I felt my heart pounding wildly and took a moment to sort through the situation.
‘Dillon knew the Composition Club was doing devil worship?’
That made my hiding the fact even more awkward.
It was like trying to cover up something he already knew full well.
But Eliya misread my expression and said something off-base.
“Don’t worry about them at all, though. No idea what they were trying to summon, but it was pathetic~. That’s why Dillon didn’t stop Cruise from touching it~.”
What I was worried about was deliberately concealing the Composition Club’s devil worship, but Eliya had interpreted it differently.
I nodded without correcting her interpretation.
Without realizing it, we’d been having this serious talk with third-party Theodore right there.
Theodore, sitting doll-like and obediently, finally asked belatedly.
“If they knew it was a summoning circle, it would’ve been hard to touch.”
“Oh, the class rep handled that alone. He majored in black magic in the Crown of Thorns Class.”
Eliya answered Theodore.
But I was the one shocked by the reply.
“R-Really?”
Dillon had been a black magic major in the Crown of Thorns Class!
It must have been before I enrolled.
Their conversation vaguely recalled topics from magic theory class.
‘All magic circles implemented through mana are harder to dispel.’
If someone without magic knowledge messed with a summoning or magic circle, nothing would happen.
Magic is a power for those who understand it, not for those who don’t.
In other words, a regular person touching a magic circle while a mage is forming it won’t cancel the spell activation.
But a mage dispelling a magic circle to counter the magic is a different story.
Our Magical Dynamics Theory professor, Sir Norfolk, explained it like this:
—Imagine a bomb box rigged to explode when opened. Mages know how to open the lid; commoners don’t.
How hard would it be to open a box you know contains a bomb and dismantle it?
Eliya was saying Dillon had pulled that off.
“Dillon was in the Crown of Thorns Class.”
“No wonder he’s the school’s fossil. He changed majors, barely met attendance requirements, and ended up like that~.”
“No, no—that sounds pathetic, but isn’t it actually amazing?”
Whether white or black magic, having aptitude for it means you’re in the top 4% with special talent.
In Aegis Academy, which gathers only such talents, they’re just commonplace.
“According to the class rep, he got lucky all around~. The circle was crappier than expected, and he happened to have the skill to dismantle it.”
Eliya brushed off the impressive story like it was nothing, downed the last of her water, and stood.
“Well, I’ll head out first~. You two chat.”
Having dropped that bombshell, she left as if it were no big deal.
Theodore, who’d been sitting blankly beside me, turned to me.
“Summoning circle, Composition Club, club membership?”
Now the tricky one was starting to ask questions.