Chapter 60
Chapter 60
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 60
Chapter Title: Strange Hide-and-Seek (3)
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“What do you mean-”
“Stop! Cut it out and get lost, Hugh Duncan, Phyllis Walker, Mark Foster.”
“Dylan!”
“It’s no use now, right? Get out of here quick.”
I watched the four of them carrying on this incomprehensible conversation, unable to hide my bewilderment.
Dylan made a strange face for a moment, then stood there growling threats until the three cadets had completely vanished.
“Phew, what troublemakers.”
Dylan let out a small sigh and turned around.
He seemed to intend to head back to his own room, brushing past me with a greeting, but I grabbed him and dragged him into my room.
“Huh- what’s this? What are you doing?”
When I shoved Dylan toward the door, my eyes immediately met Judith’s, who had been peeking at the corridor situation through the crack.
Judith, without a hint of surprise, brazenly grabbed Dylan and helped me pull him inside.
-Bam!
I sat Dylan down in the room and slammed the table in front of him as I asked.
“You know something, don’t you.”
“Well, yeah, but… it’s not what you’re thinking.”
“Let’s hear what I’m thinking, then.”
Arthur, who had been sitting with his legs crossed watching our commotion, suddenly stood up and yielded his seat.
Dylan groaned as Judith dragged him over.
“So, what’s going on? Dylan. I can’t predict the situation at all.”
At Judith’s question, Dylan pondered for a moment before finally giving in and answering.
“Ah, this is tricky. Looks like the kids’ prank has gotten a bit serious, but telling you not to worry about it is probably impossible anyway.”
“For a prank, their behavior seemed pretty suspicious.”
At my words, Dylan scratched the back of his head vigorously.
What Dylan said next was beyond common sense.
“You already know the kids think they’ll get cursed… or something if they mess with you, right?”
“Yeah, after what happened yesterday.”
“That’s why. The ones who think they’ve harmed you before sent proxies to transfer the curse over.”
“What? What kind of ridiculous-”
“Don’t get worked up; that’s why I didn’t want to tell you.”
Even after hearing the explanation, it was all incomprehensible nonsense.
Even if there really were guys under a curse, who would willingly become their proxy?
That’s when my thoughts turned to Aegis Academy’s chronic problem.
“…No way, those proxies. Did they buy them with money?”
“-Yeah, probably.”
The academy’s chronic issue: the disparity caused by power.
In that instant, a childhood memory I’d buried deep in my subconscious flashed by.
-Young master. I’m fine. If this is the fate Lord Aegis has decreed…
-Fate? There’s no such thing.
The superstition that a healthy child born on the same day could spare a sickly one from death, and the catastrophe it unleashed…
From that moment, I’d come to hate words like fate or karma.
And now, exactly thirteen years later, this creepy business of forcibly trading each other’s fates because of me.
“I can’t… just let this slide.”
Even recalling the past made my breath shorten and cold sweat break out.
The scar etched in my memory starts bleeding again at the slightest trigger, unhealed as it is.
My cowardly heart, always needing a trigger, now belatedly screams that I can’t hold back anymore.
It was time for this timid hermit to crawl out of his shell.
***
The next day.
I’d barely slept, but my mind was clearer than ever.
With my textbook satchel slung across my back, I passed through the gloomy fountain square.
My destination was the chapel where the grand assembly was being held.
‘So that’s why they were messing with me despite being scared.’
By Dylan calling their real names, the cadets who had come for me instead of those who’d once harmed me lost their original target.
They must have thought they could make someone else take on the curse meant for touching my name as a proxy…
‘Ridiculous.’
If you’re the one to be whipped, you take the lashes yourself; if it’s your yoke to bear, you bear it personally.
Can a curse even apply retroactively in the first place?
If you went around seeking revenge for every past event, one guardian angel wouldn’t be enough.
-Murmur, murmur…
These past few days, someone was always by my side.
But today, I refused all offers of escort.
It wasn’t desperation; I’d realized from recent events that incidents happened even with someone sticking close.
That said, one of Judith, Shirley, Theodore, or Arthur was surely lurking within my range of activity.
Anyway, it shouldn’t be a problem.
Because I-
“Arma Cruise! I-”
“Hey, Eric Benson.”
“Huh, how…”
“Arma-”
“Sera Carter, good morning.”
“…!”
-had memorized the names and faces overnight of cadets from relatively weaker families who could be exploited for this.
Every single one on that ‘list of cadets likely to be exploited for this’ that I’d crammed approached me, attempting to take on the curse in place of their clients.
And each pathetic scam was blocked on the spot.
It’s a secret—not really—that memorizing around three hundred cadets’ names overnight made me so wistful I half-hoped the guardian angel or whatever would retroactively apply that damn curse.
“An unexpected countermeasure, Arma Cruise.”
“Yeah. Sleep well? Theodore White.”
“Yes.”
Theodore always calls me by my full name, yet when I did the same, he looked amusingly a bit surprised.
I shrugged and added.
“It’s working great. Thanks to this, the guardian angel can relax, right?”
“I doubt this is the end.”
“Of course not. I’ve been doing some thinking since last night, myself.”
“…”
At my words, Theodore—who usually responds promptly even to nonsense—fell silent.
Something seemed to bother him, but I couldn’t predict what yet.
I glanced at Theodore and continued.
“That summoning ritual in the composition club that day. You said it failed—but I don’t think so.”
As soon as I finished, Theodore dropped his gaze to his toes.
I wondered why he’d told such a clumsy lie that day, but Theodore still didn’t seem inclined to confess the truth himself.
“I thought, given all the circumstances that day—that what was summoned was the soul of someone else I know.”
“…”
“But it wasn’t.”
Recalling the suspicious ritual the composition club had frantically performed amid their madness, beating each other.
I’d thought what they summoned was future Theodore.
That by sheer coincidence, they’d met some condition and pulled his soul from a time when he was still alive in the past.
But seriously considering it, that couldn’t be.
In Shirley and Arthur’s cases, they’d appeared here ‘briefly’ with future memories, without any separate summoning.
“What was summoned in the ritual was something else entirely, and the person I know just happened to show up then. That makes sense.”
I subtly checked Theodore’s expression.
He still had his gaze lowered.
“So I’d like you to be honest. What the composition club was trying to summon that day. You’re the only one who looked inside closely, Theodore.”
“By the drawn summoning circle…”
Theodore glanced around briefly.
Between us—no, precisely between me and the other cadets—it was as if an invisible wall had been erected.
Even if we shouted here, no one would hear our conversation from that distance.
“[The embodiment of the most frightening concept].”
Thankfully, Theodore didn’t try to deceive me further.
Before his mind could change, I pressed.
“…Is that even possible? The standard varies per person.”
“As you said. The summoning target is overly abstract to begin with. Even a proper dark mage would find it tricky, let alone a ritual prepared by non-mages. And the reason I said the summoning failed that day…”
Just then, a chilling winter wind blew.
Unbelievably cold for the time before December.
It seemed to herald a winter arriving faster than usual.
Theodore murmured in a voice so small it was nearly swallowed by the wind.
“The devil summoning circle the composition club prepared assumes a vast number of living sacrifices.”
“Living sacrifices.”
Only then did I realize Theodore’s words to me weren’t a lie but a natural prediction from experience.
The fact that something was summoned via a ritual (no, magic, since it succeeded?) requiring living sacrifices proved a very obvious proposition.
“The highest probability is human sacrifice. The higher the intelligence and sensitivity of the sacrifice, the easier it is to lure darkness with ultimate fear and despair as bait.”
I halted in my tracks, my steps toward the chapel freezing.
“One more question, Theodore?”
“If it’s something I can answer.”
“Could someone who didn’t participate in the ritual—just happened to be nearby—affect the summoning target?”
“There are various preconditions, but yes, to some extent. However, to influence that summoning circle, they’d need to have directly witnessed inexpressible extreme terror.”
My mood sank heavily.
I recalled what my [Most Frightening Concept] was.
It was an entity from a variant Bible unique to the Lichten region—[The One That Must Not Be Called].
I’d already beheld that truly inexpressible extreme terror multiple times in my dreams.
If my presence had influenced what was summoned, making it more malevolent and terrifying?
“I got it wrong. We need to tell Makina… no, the faculty.”
“Tell them what?”
“It was probably summoned. That thing following me around, making unspecified people retaliate without orders—it might be ‘it.’”
I turned my back to the distant chapel.
Aegis Academy was so eerily quiet, but it felt like a fleeting peace sustained only because we were in the eye of the storm.
My heart raced, anxiety gnawing at my mind.
-Is it possible for everyone to never think of it at all?
-It is born and grows stronger just by being recalled and focused upon.
If my fear had elevated the summoned entity’s level, I had to resolve this before it took form and unleashed its power.
“Arma Cruise.”
Theodore, following behind, called to stop me as if he had something to say, but I had no time.
“Makina… no, the chancellor? Damn. With the school in such chaos, I don’t know what’s the wise call.”
“Do you need something from me?”
At that moment, the most reassuring voice reached me.
I turned to look at Makina.