Headaches When the Body Suffers (3)
I know no one would believe me if I said this, but back in my student days, I really did nothing but study. I got so sick of it back then—why the hell do I still have to rack my brain and force myself to study now? What’s the point? People should live doing what they’re good at.
“Anyway, studying just isn’t my thing.”
Even so, panicking and running off to hide in the dormitory was pretty stupid. It wasn’t a place Melina could reach, but still.
“If I’d known this would happen, I wouldn’t have brought Melina with me to get my report card. What kind of confidence made me drag her along?”
It wasn’t exactly that I’d brought her on purpose—she’d just been by my side as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Melina, who already grumbled constantly about how I never studied, had trembled like a bomb about to explode the moment she saw my grades.
‘But why does she even care about my studies…?’
To Melina, I should be her mortal enemy. If someone like me studied hard and became a capable lord, wouldn’t that be a problem? It would make more sense for her to encourage me to stay away from books…
“……So that’s what it was. I finally get it now.”
Melina didn’t actually want me to study. She was aiming for me to stop training because I was too busy studying. In the end, she’d bought herself a whole week. What a terrifying girl. To think she’d try to support Eres like this.
But this tactic wouldn’t work anymore. I didn’t need to study in the first place. The Colwen territory had Leira as a reliable pillar. She handled all the brainwork, so why would I waste effort on studying? I was simply doing whatever I could to reach a happy ending.
“Alright. Let’s do this.”
What I needed right now wasn’t books or writing tools.
“Fire Starting.”
Two dry sticks.
Fire Starting
It wasn’t that I’d never considered using magic. I’d tried it mostly when my defense training pushed me to the brink of death. But I gave up because magic required using my head and my aptitude was terrible. Still, so what? Just like how the original world had Muggle wands, two knives were enough to start a fire without any long, pretentious incantations.
“Yes, there was a sudden fire in the backyard of the dormitory. It’s not the incinerator. Yes! I’ll check it thoroughly!”
Dry wood didn’t catch easily, of course. But I had the ability to obtain two long blades… and the ability to sharpen them to create sparks.
‘I’ve never broken in during the day before, but it might not be a bad idea.’
Academy classes were elective, but there were preferred time slots. The number of people moving around during those hours was low. The stereotype that thieves only came at night made security lax. Getting hit when you’re relaxed is more shocking than when you’re on guard.
‘They left the management office empty just because of a small, easily controllable fire. They really need more training.’
To leave a place that should never be left empty so easily. I’d prepared three backup plans, but they all felt pointless now.
Obtaining the spare key to Arte’s room: success. Next was getting inside the room itself. Arte’s room was on the second floor. They gathered in the shared dormitory now, but since I’d visited her room in the game, I knew it well. If this were the modern world, I would’ve been caught by security cameras before I even got there, but this was a medieval fantasy world without guns—let alone cameras. The surveillance devices were only for preventing residents from leaving at night, and they were turned off then anyway.
Since I’d already passed the biggest obstacles—the first-floor lobby and management office—there were no more problems. I’d worried someone might be wandering around and spot me, but fortunately that didn’t happen.
“Is this what they call safety complacency? I need to be more careful.”
Arte’s room was cleaner than I’d expected. The floor mat was so soft that my foot sank into it with a poof. The question was whether the document was here.
“If she put it in her bag, I’m screwed. Let’s start with the drawers…”
It was there. Right on the very top of the desk drawer. Huh? It came out this easily?
“No… to them, this information isn’t that important.”
It was information about a special dungeon that ordinary people couldn’t enter. But it wasn’t something they’d hide away tightly or carry with them at all times. How many people would steal a key and break into the room like I did? Leaving it here was already considered safe storage. There was no need to take it, so I just needed to copy it down.
Since Arte was still in class, I had plenty of time.
“So it was here… I don’t recognize the place at all. I’ll have to go check it out tomorrow.”
The exams were over, so skipping class should be fine. I was already skipping right now. Actually, I’d skipped before too, but it was still okay. The academy didn’t give you an F for missing five classes. Not unless you were being graded purely on skill.
“I’ve copied everything. Time to go.”
Leaving was relatively simple. Opening a locked window from the outside was hard, but locking an already-open window from the outside was easy. First, tie a string to the window latch, go outside, and—
“What the hell is that?”
As I was about to leave, a clock hanging by the door caught my eye. 2:35. The time itself wasn’t strange. It was roughly around then. But if the clock had stopped moving, that was a little odd.
‘A stopped clock just happens to show the time I saw it. That can happen.’
It was possible the clock had broken at exactly this time and they simply hadn’t fixed or replaced it yet. There was another clock in the room, after all.
2:42. The difference between the clocks was seven minutes. Probably the amount of time that had passed since I entered the room.
“……No way!”
Click.
When I opened the door, the clock started moving again, just as I’d suspected. After closing and locking the door, I opened it once more.
“It stopped…”
When I opened the door and left, the clock worked. When I opened the door and came back in, the clock stopped. If you set the time when you left and there was a discrepancy when you returned, it meant someone had entered in the meantime. They’d probably tampered with the door lock.
And—
“This ridiculously soft floor mat. Looking closer, it’s double-layered.”
When I lifted the outer layer wrapped in fluffy yarn, a mat that left strong impressions appeared. It must have been the marks I left when I stepped on it earlier. There were even small footprints—probably Arte’s—that still remained.
Even if someone noticed the clock trick, checking this mat would tell them someone had entered.
“Why…?”
No, before that. I needed to deal with this trap first.
‘Arte’s footprints are still here. That’s all I need…!’
No matter how meticulous someone was, they wouldn’t carefully memorize the exact shape of their own footprints. The marks wouldn’t be perfectly identical anyway. First, I pressed down on her footprints with my hand. I pressed harder than the depth of my own footprints.
“Next… I need a wide board. Something that can press the mat evenly all at once.”
I’d use Arte’s books. One wasn’t enough, but several lined up would do. I spread the books across the mat and pressed them all down at the same time, sinking it evenly.
“The key is force control… deeper than my footprints, but slightly shallower than the deeper-pressed Arte footprints…”
My footprints almost disappeared with this, leaving only Arte’s. The overall thickness would be a bit thinner, but if they had no reason to suspect anything, they wouldn’t look that closely.
“That’s done. Now for the clock.”
I set the stopped clock to the current time. Then I just had to open and close the door.
‘Wait, is it really that simple?’
It was too basic a trap. If it were me, I would have set it two or three minutes slow or fast. But there was no way to prove that. Or was there?
‘I entered at 2:35. If I can prove just that, it’s enough.’
I didn’t have the brains to prove something like that. But if it was about using my body, I was confident. The current time was 2:50.
‘Skip the mat…’
I entered the room, looked around once. Opened the drawer, glanced at the document once. Took a breath. Thought about skipping class. Copied the document. Prepared to leave by tying the string to the window latch, turned around, took another breath. When I looked at the clock again, it was 2:57. I didn’t know the exact seconds, but it was about seven minutes.
“The clock… I’ll adjust it like this…!”
There probably wouldn’t be any more problems. This was a world where filming technology hadn’t advanced. No need to worry about cameras or recordings. Fingerprints were the same. These were all the traps in this room.
But—
‘Why does Arte need to set up something like this?’
That afternoon, after school. Arte, who had returned from the shared dormitory, decided to check her room as usual.
“The mat… there are only my footprints.”
The strange mat Fria had given her. And the clock cleverly linked to the door lock. To be honest, she had doubts about whether she really needed to go this far, but after seeing Cardo’s ominous aura that day and Alto’s persuasion, she’d been scared into doing it anyway.
If she didn’t leave the document in the room and carried it with her, or if she didn’t rewrite it, the people targeting the information would reach out to her directly. The room’s traps weren’t just to check if someone had come in. They were also to determine whether such a person even existed.
“The clock too…”
The current time was 6:45. The clock should have shown a corresponding time. Following Fria’s advice, she had set it two minutes slow.
“6:43. Yep! Perfect!”
Confirming that nothing had happened today either, she stepped inside.
“Phew… I hope I wasn’t caught.”
When people are nervous, there are two possibilities: they slow down or they speed up. There was no way I could measure over seven minutes without any error. But at most it would be one or two minutes off. If the error was only a minute, the owner would probably mistake it. That left two minutes. In the end, it was all guesswork anyway.
‘Is there someone besides me… targeting the dungeon’s information?’
I didn’t know who. But Arte had clearly been wary of someone. I’d only been a little cautious. Maybe that someone was me. Even so, I couldn’t just let it go.
That dungeon held the magic sword. I could let other things slide, but not that. I couldn’t hand it over to anyone else.
Therefore, I had tampered with the document’s contents. Arte would probably notice by the time she went there. But if I could buy time until then, I would have already finished everything.
Tomorrow—no, I should go right now and secure the magic sword—
“Master. Where have you been all day?”
“Whoa! M-Mel! Where did you come from?!”
“That’s what I want to ask. The training ground where we live now—you can’t enter without my help, Master.”
Oh, right. The path there was a dungeon too. I’d completely forgotten about this kid. But the current me couldn’t be stopped by Melina. Even if Eres came, securing the magic sword was my top priority.
And the reason Melina was telling me to study was a scheme to weaken me—
“Why are you so quiet? Let’s go back. I’ve already finished shopping.”
“……Shopping?”
“Yes. Even though my master is a rotten person who only plays around every day, you still studied hard right before the exam, so this is your reward.”
……Reward? Had this girl lost her mind? If she was going to act, she should at least make it realistic. Was she saying this just to keep me here?
“Don’t make unpleasant jokes, Mel. You saw my score too.”
“Yes. Didn’t you do well?”
“……Why would you think that?”
“You studied for a week and got over half correct. You usually work hard too.”
“No, no! Those were points you could get with minimal effort! There was almost no discrimination in the scoring—”
“But you still did that ‘minimal effort,’ didn’t you?”
“No… the average was 62 points. People who did badly got 50s…”
I’d guessed on quite a lot. Even then, 62 points. If I’d taken the test with pure skill, maybe I could have gotten 40s.
“So some scores went up to 70?”
“Just one or so…”
“Then it’s fine. Let’s go.”
“You… do you even know how low that score is?”
“Yes, of course. Master always says everything you do is lacking.”
“What…”
“I’m just moved that Master studied instead of doing the self-abuse you always talk about.”
“……To me, studying is abuse.”
During my student days, I really had studied like crazy. Maybe it was because I’d filled the most miserable period of my life with studying. Or maybe it was because no matter how hard I worked, I couldn’t change the reality that kept rushing toward the worst outcome. Either way, I hated studying.
“Is that so? Then I should give you a reward for enduring the abuse.”
“……So why are you…”
Even after coming to this world. After Count Colwen, my father, passed away, I’d tried to manage the territory somehow. But it was too late to learn anything new. There was nothing I could do. It would have been nice if intelligence rose the more you used it, like a status.
“What are you doing? If we’re late preparing, the dinner menu options will decrease one by one?”
“……Heh. Go slowly. I’ll help make up for whatever you can’t finish because we’re late.”
“No thanks? Just sit and wait.”
“Listen to your master.”