#6 - Did I Become a Phantom Thief Who Can't Go Out at Night?
"Good work today."
"Yes, Professor. Thank you for your hard work."
After bowing to Professor Tiur Musset, I made my way out of the school. The sun was already sinking toward the horizon outside, and just to be safe, I checked the time.
It was a little before six-ten in the evening. If I hurried to the dormitory on the far side of the Lumiere Academy grounds, I'd squeak in just in time for dinner.
The dining hall served its meals free of charge, after all — all I had to do was fill up and recharge. With that thought, I set off across the grounds at the fastest pace I could manage.
Here and there across the campus, students were practicing their magic; others were busy enjoying their youth; the devout ones were drifting toward the chapel. Each of them living their own life, I suppose. I envied that a little, and telling myself that I had a life of my own now too, I kept putting one foot in front of the other.
And so, at exactly six o'clock, I arrived at the dormitory. Without even changing my clothes, I headed straight for the dining hall, loaded a tray with everything that looked good, dropped into a random seat in the corner, and started eating.
People still gave me looks while I ate, but it was far better than in the main building or the lecture halls. Really, it was. At least nobody here was openly hostile.
Before I knew it, I'd cleaned off everything I'd taken, and the moment I stood up to return my tray — yep. Right on cue, the whispering started behind my back.
"Whoa, she's putting away all of that?"
"Guess she really loves to eat."
"Though I have a pretty good idea where it all goes."
"Right? Totally."
If you're going to gossip about someone, at least do it quietly.
Letting out a long sigh, I gave my chest and then my hips a look apiece. Curves exactly where they should bulge, tapering exactly where they should slim down — in other words, the body of an eroge heroine, plain and simple. I was this short; how did proportions like these even happen?
Being small and flexible, I could live with. Those were genuine advantages when you worked as a phantom thief. But having to fight my way through every narrow space because of this figure was a special kind of irritating.
They could have just given me a slender body instead.
Grumbling to myself, I returned my tray and headed upstairs to my room.
For the record, I had a "special room" in the dormitory.
What do I mean by that?
"Special roooom, ahhh... it's the best..."
It was a double, and I had it all to myself. That was the one and only perk: a double room, population one.
It's a slightly sad story, actually — this was the worst room in the building, which paradoxically meant nobody wanted to move into it. Tucked into the farthest corner, on the very top floor, it was inconvenient in every way a room could be. And for some reason, whenever new desks, chairs, or beds were brought in, the counts never quite added up, so a handful of rooms — mine included — were still stuck with ancient furniture.
Who would volunteer to live here? Nobody, that's who. Thanks to that, this crummy little room had sat vacant right up until I came along. And — ta-daa! — turns out "nobody ever" isn't quite as absolute as it sounds. Yours truly moved in.
Anyway, having a double all to myself came with plenty of perks, and the biggest one was this.
"There you are, Silver Plaque~ safe and sound."
I could stash everything I'd stolen — the relics — anywhere in this big room.
Honestly, I had no real reason to hide anything. With nobody ever coming in, why would I? Still, you never know. If someone happened to walk in and lay eyes on the Silver Plaque, it would be, quite literally, game over — caught red-handed, everything crashing down, the apocalypse itself. A treasure stolen from a noble family's vault, discovered in the room of a commoner student with no patron to her name? I'd be hauled off in chains, no questions asked.
I picked up the Silver Plaque for a closer look. As I shifted it and tilted it, light gathered on its surface, then began drifting this way and that.
"Hmmmm..."
Did it look valuable? Expensive, certainly — but not so astronomically so that I couldn't picture it. What price had House Karel actually been expecting to fetch for this thing? I couldn't say. What I did know for certain was this: the relic had to be sealed away in precisely the place it was meant to be.
The sealing sites were written in Master's ledger — every last one of them prepared by Master personally. If Master were still here, it wouldn't be me doing this at all; Master would have stolen these relics and sealed them without any help from me.
There was just one problem: the sealing sites — for this relic and every other one — all lay outside the Albion Kingdom.
Some of the locations were close enough that I could pull an all-nighter, dash there and back, and be done with it. Others, though, would mean missing a day or two of school. That much I'd simply have to accept.
So — where was the Karel Family's Silver Plaque supposed to be sealed?
...I had no idea.
"Master, why on earth did you write it in a dead language...?"
It read like a cipher, set down in some ancient tongue that had vanished from the world long ago — and no, not even the disciple who inherited it could read it. You taught me the phantom thief's craft, Master; you could have taught me the language too. The real tragedy was that there was no one around to hear me lament it.
Even so, it wasn't a dead end. The dead language Master had used could be cracked with the cryptography books in the academy library — that was how it had worked in the game, after all.
Until last week I'd still been in my adjustment period and hadn't been allowed to use the library, but now I could. Starting tomorrow, then: decipher it, no excuses. What was so hard about that? Sit down, hammer it out, done.
With that settled, I headed into the bathroom to work the stiffness and fatigue out of my body.
Shhhhhhaaaaaaa...
Unlike yesterday, this was a shower taken purely to wash the day's tiredness away.
"This is the beeeest..."
Nothing beat a hot soak at the end of a long day. Blissful. It never got old.
I enjoyed the bath, toweled myself dry, stepped out of the bathroom, and had just pulled on my underwear when—
Creeeak.
...The door that should have been locked swung open.
The man standing there was muscle on top of muscle, with a shaved head.
Yes. A man.
"KYAAAAAH!"
"Screaming in the dormitory... I suppose I'll have to give you demerits for that."
"Demerits...?"
At that word, and at the sight of the face of the man who'd opened my door, it clicked — I knew exactly who this was.
The man in my doorway was Bastian Lowell: professor of the Knight Department, supervisor of the dormitories, and the professor in charge of the Disciplinary Committee, all at once. Judged on raw strength alone, he was the strongest man in the entire Knight Department of Lumiere Academy, and yet...
...why was the dorm supervisor barging into my room?
"Professor Bastian... why... why are you in here...?"
"Bastian? Who's that? I am Gerhardt Lobel. Honestly — getting a professor's name wrong, of all things. That's the lowborn for you."
What...? Not Bastian — Gerhardt?
His name had changed? And yet the surname was still the same — Lobel?
"One demerit for shrieking at the top of your lungs. One for not being ready for roll call. One for getting a professor's name wrong. That makes three demerits, Sheria."
"I'm sorry..."
I bowed my head, dressed in nothing but my underwear. Professor Gerhardt, who had been watching me with lecherous eyes, began closing the distance, slow and unhurried.
Stroke... squeeze...!
"Nhaah... Wh... what are you doing...?"
Professor Gerhardt's huge hand had stroked my breast once, then clamped down hard, and my whole body jolted under that enormous palm — a hand that seemed ready to swallow my chest whole — forcing the protest out of me.
And yet Professor Gerhardt answered as if nothing at all had happened, with an almost artful innocence.
"At ten demerits, it's off to the punishment room. Did you know that?"
"Y... yes, I know..."
And that much was true. Rack up ten demerits and you were taken to the punishment room to be disciplined by Professor Bastian — no, Professor Gerhardt. And that discipline was, naturally, the dirty kind.
"'I know,' you say... And yet a student who knows already has six demerits?"
"Wha...?"
"You were late this morning. Tardiness is worth three."
Now that he mentioned it — I had been late today. Three demerits for tardiness plus the three I'd just been slapped with made six already. Four more, and it was the punishment room.
"From tomorrow on, remember the 8:50 PM roll call. Though forgetting would suit me far better, of course. Kuhahahaha!"
Listening to that laugh, I could only think one thing: it wasn't just his name that had changed. His personality had too.
In the old game, Professor Bastian's punishments had only looked naughty — in practice, they were plain corporal discipline. Made to kneel and stand there with your hands raised, or bent over for a spanking, that sort of thing. And even mid-spanking, the man would actually apologize, murmuring his regrets while he did it. He was the textbook case of "just doing his job on their end, an ero event on mine."
This Gerhardt, though — this renamed version — had stared at my body with lewd eyes, making no effort whatsoever to hide it. Eyes absolutely brimming with lust. I could say it with certainty: if I ever ended up in that punishment room, I would not be seeing anything pleasant.
Just before stepping out of my room, Professor Gerhardt snickered.
"Oh, and one more thing. Leave the dormitory past ten o'clock, and that's an instant five demerits. If you're eager to be punished, by all means."
"Huh...?"
Wait. What?
Five demerits for stepping outside the dorm after ten?
...Something had gone very, very wrong. I could feel it.
Sealing the relics I'd already stolen — or sneaking out to steal the next one — meant leaving the dormitory at night. Inevitably.
Why did it feel like the further along I went, the harder everything kept getting?