Chapter 62
Chapter 62
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 62
Chapter Title: The Angel's Form (2)
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“Please guide us to the scene right now.”
“Yes.”
“Arma Cruise.”
“Let’s go.”
“……”
I dragged Theodore along, who was frozen in place like a statue.
Theodore hesitated for a moment but followed me without complaint.
“How was it discovered?”
Both the servant leading the way and Theodore made almost no sound with their footsteps.
While Theodore’s silent movements felt like a habit, the servant gave the impression of someone rigorously trained to move that way.
The servant replied in a low voice.
“A familiar belonging to the Student Council on patrol discovered it.”
I staggered involuntarily, leaning against Theodore, who had been following silently and paused for a moment.
“That’s how they knew it was Cale Ace.”
Every cadet at Aegis Academy submits blood upon enrollment for identity verification.
It seemed a familiar that remembered the scent of Cale Ace’s blood had detected the corpse’s smell and matched it.
But there, the servant stopped speaking.
Sharing any more information wasn’t permitted.
‘They’re trained to an unusually high level…’
Their faces were covered, so identities couldn’t be discerned in detail, but they were likely all around the same age.
The young servants in their twenties or thirties were uniformly exceptional in skill, swift, and never breathed a word about any incidents within the academy, no matter what.
Their value was obvious without needing to imagine it.
“Judith is naturally at the scene, of course. Are Cadet Shirley Spencer and Cadet Arthur Usher there as well?”
“Cadets Taylor and Usher were there. I’m not sure about Cadet Spencer.”
“Either way, as the person involved, I was contacted last?”
“I’m sorry.”
The servant apologized neatly without adding excuses.
I knew better than anyone that it wasn’t the servant’s fault.
He had likely been asked by one of them, or perhaps all three.
But the well-trained servant never let it slip.
I stopped needlessly pressing the servant and walked on in silence.
‘Cold……’
My temperature was rising.
The already chilly weather made my teeth chatter.
We passed the chapel, crossed the sparsely connected staff dormitories, and headed toward the waterway bordering the cliff.
In the distance, yellow tape signaling restricted access came into view.
“Shirley.”
“Huh? Senior—wait, what’s wrong with your face? Been drinking?”
“No.”
Shirley, who was covered in dirt while wearing white cotton gloves, looked my way from afar and shouted.
She closed the distance in an instant, removed her gloves, and pressed the clean inside of her forearm to my forehead.
“Oh my god, you’re burning up? Why’d you come here instead of sleeping it off at home?”
Judging by her attire and the fact she didn’t know I’d collapsed from illness, Shirley must have arrived here by chance while doing volunteer work pulling weeds.
She hadn’t been in her dorm, so naturally, she couldn’t be reached.
“They found Cale Ace.”
“Oh, I just heard about that. But Senior… you’re in no state. Wouldn’t it be better to go back and rest?”
Shirley furrowed her brow and approached me.
I took a step back, shook my head, and urged the servant, who had stopped walking.
‘I can’t put this off any longer……’
Was Cale Ace’s corpse appearing at this exact moment really a coincidence?
I didn’t think so.
I stubbornly pressed on, and the servant, whose expression was unreadable behind the face covering, began walking again.
“No, seriously… With a fever this high, what do you think you’re going to do…”
Shirley grumbled but walked with us.
Even so, she seemed a bit wary of Theodore beside me, as she didn’t crack a single one of her usual pointless jokes.
“Senior, as expected of you…”
“…Huh?”
“Nothing. There’s something bothering me, but this isn’t the place to talk about it.”
Shirley roughly mussed her bangs with her dirt-covered hands.
Unlike when touching others, she was careless with herself.
I grabbed Shirley’s hand, which was messing up her hair in frustration, pulled it down, and said,
“Could you give us some space?”
The servant nodded promptly.
“Please come to the Student Council room for the Black Lily Class.”
“Yes.”
Having finished speaking, the servant walked far enough ahead that he couldn’t hear our conversation.
His swift movements and speed were beyond what any ordinary civilian employed at the estate could imagine.
I watched him closely before speaking.
“It connects to the literary club incident. I’m convinced something was summoned that day.”
“Huh? So suddenly?”
“It’s not sudden… It’s already quite late……”
Of all times, my condition had to be at its worst.
I hurried my steps, trying to steady my blurring vision.
Ah, what an idiot.
Everything I’d thought could wait until later filled me with regret.
“I thought what was summoned that day… was something else. I clearly noticed Theodore was worried about something……”
“Um, Senior? I’m getting more and more lost here.”
I tried my best to convey what I’d experienced without distortion, but it wasn’t as easy as it sounded.
My jumbled thoughts kept inserting my personal speculations or random memories between events.
“I was too scared…… I wasn’t rational. No, why did I even think I shouldn’t do anything from the start…”
How could I convey the sense of crisis?
Then Theodore interjected.
“It seems the fever is too high. Arma Cruise doesn’t even seem aware of what she’s saying.”
“Looks like it, with her neck turning bright red below. But why do you always call Senior by her full name? You ill-mannered brat.”
“……Ah…”
“?”
The two—no, actually Shirley unilaterally—seemed about to bicker, so I quickly cut in.
“Are you listening to me?”
“Of course!”
“Yes.”
I wanted to get my point across while I still had my wits.
“The day Cale Ace died. The chapel where I was found. There was so much blood it suggested intervention by something not human……”
“Senior? I get what you’re trying to say, so lean on me a bit. You’re staggering more and more…”
Shirley supported me with one arm.
I hadn’t even realized I was staggering.
“Sacrifices are usually offered alive, right? If there were traces of them trying to offer a living person…”
“Nosebleed, nosebleed… Theo, got anything to wipe it with?”
“Handkerchief. Here.”
Something white brushed across my face.
I tried to say it was no big deal, but what came out was something else.
“I don’t know why those idiots tried something like that in the chapel… No, wait…… They were drugged and stupid, so it’s possible. They probably thought they could pin it on me.”
The unnatural drowsiness that had poured over me just hours before the incident.
The day Cale Ace died and I woke up at the scene, I’d had a disturbing dream, so I hadn’t noticed my poor physical state.
“Huh… But then the timelines don’t match. The literary club thing and whatever happened were less than a week ago, and Cale Ace was much earlier—”
“No. I think… this isn’t the first time.”
Before long, we stood before the Black Lily Class’s main building.
I continued, gazing at the square, massive Black Lily Hall and the star-shaped cross precariously hanging from its pinnacle.
“Dillon… actually, Eliya Allison told me…… The literary club had already attempted summoning rituals before……”
But back then, the literary club hadn’t even come close to summoning practice, let alone actual rituals.
So why had the literary club, through Cale Ace, suddenly taken shape as true zealots in such a short time?
It might seem like excessive speculation, but here’s what I suspected.
The hysterical madness filling Aegis Academy amid fear and chaos had accelerated the path to a horrific future.
Evil, malevolent beings thrive on such things to grow.
And if this incident had conveniently become the decisive trigger drawing me toward the ‘being within Yvon’…
‘It’s a trap from start to finish. I fell right into its clutches.’
The feverish sense of defeat wouldn’t fade.
Now, I had only one question.
Why had Machina Christie let the literary club’s antics slide?
No, why had she pretended not to know?
“I kept thinking something was off……”
“Senior. To the left. Ugh, you’re gonna bump—”
“The matter of Machina handing me over to the cadet trial so easily……”
We were drawing ever closer to the Student Council room where Machina awaited.
Machina was surely inside.
-Creak.
“That’s why I want to ask you, Machina Christie.”
As I opened the door and entered, Machina sat with legs crossed at the guest side table, gazing at me from the desk.
“Arma—”
And opposite him were Judith and Arthur, whom the servant had called but who hadn’t come, now sitting across from Machina and looking at me.
“Please tell me why you tolerated the literary club’s repeated attempts to summon something… I believe I have every right to hear it.”
The ominous feeling that had lingered around me stemmed from this very sense of wrongness.
Machina knew everything happening in the academy, so why had she ignored the conflicts surrounding me?
Past events aside, how could she pretend not to know about the recent ones?
“Ah— this is awkward.”
Machina smiled like a saint.
As always, it was the very image of an angel.
Yet Machina would have to answer me.
Why had she, in that angelic form, turned a blind eye to the chain of misfortunes crashing toward me?
“I’m not sure where to start, but for now, you’re right. Cadet Cruise, I knew what the literary club was trying to do.”
“……”
“I tried to stop it and failed. Because of what happened just a few days ago.”
Her tone was refreshingly light.
Utterly devoid of even a hint of regret, it felt all the more strange, like critiquing tea she’d had today.
“I’m sorry about the trial. I’ll compensate you somehow. I used you to secure decisive evidence, Cadet Cruise.”
Judith pulled at me, saying, ‘Arma, sit down first.’
I sat slowly opposite him without taking my eyes off Machina.
“But honestly, you’re probably more curious about something else. Arma Cruise, why I ignored your predicaments. To be frank, without more excuses…”
Machina spoke with his back straight, as if refusing to avert his eyes from his own guilt.
“Every time you fell into peril, it redirected the fear among the cadets in a controlled direction.”