Liar, Liar - Volume 5 - Chapter 1.1

Chapter 1

A Challenge from the Missing Girl

“Ah…nnnh…”

A sweet voice echoed across the mansion in the late afternoon, almost sounding as if its owner was trying to hold out against something.

“No, you can’t, Master. If you keep being so rough… Nh, ngggh…!”

The breathing, and the charmingly sweet voice, evoked a sort of animal passion in me. The now-familiar maid outfit rustled a bit every time the girl, Himeji, twisted her body, which made my heart race even faster.

“I know you don’t want me to…but can I go a little deeper? I think it’ll be all right if we just take it slow.”

“D-deeper…?” Himeji said, repeating my own words through panting breaths. Then her eyes filled with resolve, and she nodded at me, silvery hair dancing around her face. “All…right. If that’s what you want, Master, I will accept everything you have.”

“Thanks.”

Replying perfunctorily to the submissive Himeji, I changed position slightly. All at once, her body pressed tightly against mine through her clothes, the warmth of her body thrilling me as I resumed my careful, gentle motion. Certain sensations began to make themselves known within my body.

And then:

“Ah, ngh, wait, please, Master— Ahhh…!”

Suddenly, a much louder scream reached my ears as her slender body jerked up. Her clear blue eyes closed tightly for a moment, then slowly opened as the intense waves of emotion gradually calmed. Her whole body slumped, and she remained silent for a while, trying to catch her breath—but then she opened her cherry-red lips and said…

“Well, that’s game over.”

…and pouted a bit as she tossed her game system away.

“Phew…”

We were on an excessively luxurious sofa in an excessively large living room. Himeji was sitting alongside me, and her silver hair shook as she let out a faint sigh.

“Didn’t I tell you, Master? You shouldn’t have rushed in with only a rough plan. I’m sure the right move there was to back off and take a different route.”

“Yeah, maybe. Hmm… I thought it’d work, too, as long as we were careful.”

I scratched my cheek with one finger, reflecting on Himeji’s quietly stated argument.

Hydrazia, the game Himeji and I were eagerly playing, was a brand-new title that had just come out the previous week. It’s a game firmly in the “die a lot and come back for more” genre, where hapless players must conquer dungeons filled with unfairly strong enemies and nefarious traps. The difficulty level’s got that perfect balance that makes you want to keep playing, and the game’s received high praise both in Japan and overseas. The one problem with games like these, though, is that they’re notorious time sinks. One dungeon raid takes only a few minutes at most, but then you keep trying over and over again, and before you realize it, it’s the next day.

Still, I’d decided to buy this game because of the particular moment of my life I currently found myself in. Today was May 17, the Tuesday after the May Interschool Competition, a major island-wide event. Most students would be back to regular school by now, but since the May Interschools were held during Event Week, a cross-Academy holiday, students who took part in the proceedings had been given the following week off instead.

It’s only natural that they’d offer this perk to people like us, but we’re still talking a whole week with nothing to do—and after competing (and excelling, if I may say so) in such a major event, my only real priority right now was to laze around as much as possible. So here I was, on the sofa with Himeji.

…That said, I didn’t expect Himeji to get so enthusiastic about this, I thought as I shifted my gaze to the girl in the maid uniform next to me, staring at her screen and brooding to herself. It looked like she was studying the replay video of our previous run, but after a bit, she turned my way.

“Right here,” she said calmly. “I think our approach through this cliff area is key. If we take the time to climb it, those enemies coming at us from behind will catch up. But if we use that trampoline, the cliff collapses from the impact of the landing, that giant eagle hauls us off on its back over to its nest, and the game’s over. It looks like neither of those approaches is the right answer.”

“Right, but is there anything else we can really try? …Actually, wait a sec. Just now, wasn’t there a little pause between when you were thrown into the eagle’s nest and when the game over message appeared?”

“Was there? …! You’re right; there was. It’s only for a second or so, but I think that’s an intentional pause. Is the game still controllable for that period?”

“Yeah, probably. It’s hidden by the eagle’s body, but there was kind of a hole in the back of the nest, wasn’t there? That’s gotta connect to some other path…or maybe we could hide in that hole and wait for the eagle to go away.”

“I see… Hee-hee! Quite observant of you, Master.”

Himeji turned away from her screen and twisted her upper body a little to look at me as she offered her praise. The maid outfit pulled tight across her chest as her soft, sweet, feminine smell mercilessly tickled my nostrils.

“…”

One thing I’ve noticed is that when Himeji’s occupied with a game, she gets so focused on controlling the action that she leaves herself completely defenseless. This is a pretty big sofa, but somewhere during our play session, she’d sidled up right next to me. She’s also the type to lean one way or the other as she’s controlling her in-game character, which means her upper arm and thigh kept pressing against me. Those little yelps she lets out whenever she takes damage are pretty sexy, too… I dunno. It’s just way too cute, in all sorts of different ways.

“…? What’s the matter, Master?”

Himeji raised a curious eyebrow at me, noticing how dulled my reactions were now. Then, for some reason, she moved her body even closer, almost draping it over me as she looked right into my eyes. I could really fall in love with her if I’m not careful, or just get sucked right into those clear blue eyes—

“Uh… L-let’s take a break! I think it’s about time for one! …Right?!”

I squeezed my eyes shut as I made the suggestion.

Shirayuki Himeji was an excellent cook.

I mean, I suppose it was only natural, in a sense. She was picked from an undoubtedly large pool of candidates to serve a Seven Star like me (whether that’s all a lie or not), so I knew well in advance that she was skilled with household chores as well as cheating and Games. But even so, her talents were on a whole different level.

“These are so good…”

“I am honored by your praise, Master,” she said as she placed two teacups on the low table in front of the sofa, a little smile on her face. Today’s afternoon tea came with some bite-sized madeleines, their fresh-baked color and fragrant, buttery smell whetting my appetite like some kind of work of art. That sweetness spread across my mouth the moment I tried one, filling my whole body with a sense of euphoria. It went perfectly with the not-too-sweetened tea.

“Hee-hee! …I’ll have some as well, then,” she half-whispered as she gently sat down next to me. The first few days after we met, she made a point of sitting diagonally across the table from me, rather than next to me…but now we were sharing a sofa. Seeing her open up that much made me feel a bit bashful, a bit happy…and it definitely got my heart racing.

After a while enjoying this moment—which felt like the embodiment of happiness—I reached for my screen, figuring it was time to start playing again. Just then, the device in my pocket let out a brief rumble. I nodded at Himeji, who was already on standby, as I took it out and checked the message.

“Oh… A Game request?”

I found myself frowning at the screen as I read the sentence on it.

In order to explain what a Game request is, I’ll first have to explain the unique rating system the Academy here runs on. Everybody attending a high school on this island is in possession of stars, very important items that represent your “rank” here. It’s kind of like a visible caste system, and the higher your rank, the more authority you get.

The most traditional (and effective) way to earn stars is through these Games. The way this system works is that you can only challenge people ranked higher than you, and you both stake your stars and your pride against each other. Lose, and you’ll give up a star; win, and you’ll go up in rank, under the right conditions. In addition to your individual rank, there’s also a “school ranking” that pits high schools against one another, so if you seize a star from another school’s student in a Game, that directly contributes to improving your own school’s status.

As the sole Seven Star student in the Academy, I was the perfect target for people from other wards. Beat me, and you’d instantly become a hero while your school shot up in the rankings. Receiving a Game request like this was thus no particular surprise; however…

“Weird… I thought I turned notifications off.”

I gave my screen a quizzical look. Thanks to the false story I was living under here, my name held sway from one end of the Academy to the other…which was fine and all, but if I accepted every single notification I got from strangers, my phone would be going off all day. That’s why I turned almost all of them off, except for messages from friends and certain other exceptions. Yet my device was alerting me to something that had gotten past the filters.

“What do you think, Himeji?”

“Well…if the request isn’t from someone like Rina or Ms. Akizuki, the first thing that comes to mind is that the challenger has more authority than you do. But that shouldn’t happen at all, normally. Perhaps the Game you’re being challenged to is a little different from usual.”

“Different?”

“Yes, Master. Your device has been configured to ignore most unnecessary notifications, but we can’t have you accidentally missing important messages because of that. Therefore, we’ve set it up so messages that could potentially require your immediate attention are forwarded to you as is. When a Six Star player sends a Game request, for example, or you’ve been challenged to a Game in an unusual format. Um…could I look at that for a moment?”

“Hmm? Sure.”

Himeji leaned over, looking at my device and showing me how to view the Game details. As we checked them out, we saw that the name of the game was simply DearScript, with the genre described as Gamebook, which didn’t sound at all familiar to me.

“Gamebook…?” muttered Himeji when she saw this, brushing her silver hair back. “That is a new Game format for me as well. Um… Looking at the summary, it’s not a standard ‘player versus player’ setup, but more of a ‘gamemaster versus player’ one, where the challenger sets up a situation for you and you’re tasked with making it to the end. But in that format, no stars will change hands afterward, since the gamemaster’s not on an even playing field with the player.”

“No stars change hands…? That’s a little concerning. The whole reason students from other wards would want to challenge me at all is so they can take a star from the island’s top student. But here’s someone challenging me to a special Game, independent of stars…? What’s the point of that?”

“Hmm… Good question, Master. If someone wanted a chance to defeat you without risking any stars, this wouldn’t be a bad way to get a lot of attention very quickly, at least. That, or perhaps Mr. Mikado Kurahashi—well, he’s gone, but perhaps one of his associates is trying to gather some sort of data on you.”

I fell silent at Himeji’s conjecturing, which frankly sounded pretty out there to me.

Mikado Kurahashi was the former provost of the Twelfth Ward’s Seijo School, as well as a member of the Board of Regents that ruled over the whole island. He had been trying hard to wrest stars from me ever since the Fourth Ward Challenge last month, ultimately interfering with the May Interschool Competition to get at me. He was found out and exiled from the island…but in those same May Interschools, we discovered that Toya Kirigaya, a Six Star student from the Seventh Ward’s Shinra High School, was an associate of his (although he hadn’t described it that way to me). This proved to us that Kurahashi wasn’t a lone rogue figure but part of an organization—one so unnerved by my reign as a Seven Star that they wanted me out of the picture somehow.

We had taken down Kurahashi, but he was just a small piece of the puzzle. And yeah, I wouldn’t put anything past them at this point.

“Well, let’s take a look at the request anyway.”

Just thinking it over wouldn’t get me anywhere, so I ran a finger along the terminal to project the DearScript screen. Once I did, the following text appeared in front of us:

Special Game: DearScript

DearScript is a Game modeled after a traditional gamebook experience. Game participants will each receive an e-book app called DearScript on their devices. Each page of DearScript contains two elements—a text passage describing the current situation and an order that outlines what must be done to proceed. Fulfilling these orders will automatically advance you to the next page.

Victory Conditions: Reach the final page without dropping out partway. Players who achieve this will be granted a meeting with the gamemaster of DearScript.

Defeat Conditions: Players who find themselves in a situation in which one or more given orders are rendered impossible to complete will be kicked out of DearScript.

The order for page 0 is given below. Carrying out this order will be taken as agreement to participate in DearScript.

““…?””

We both frowned at the text passage. In a way…I didn’t really understand the overall rules of the game. I got the whole “text” and “orders” thing, but what was the point of it, really? I mean, I wouldn’t pay any sort of penalty at all if I lost. It’d keep me from earning the reward for winning, but then, that reward doesn’t exactly seem irresistible to me, either. What would meeting with the gamemaster do for me?

“Mm…?”

Himeji, who had been staring silently at the screen for a while, eventually shook her head a little.

“I do have some nagging questions about this…but it seems like a Game request you can safely ignore, Master. There’s little to win, nothing to lose. It’s probably nothing more than an attempt at publicity.”

“Yeah, probably. I don’t have any reason to take it. Let’s just leave it be—hmm?”

Himeji tilted her head a bit as I suddenly ground to a halt.

“Hang on,” I mumbled as I enlarged the projected screen in front of us. “I only noticed just now…but in addition to the Game details, there’s one more message attached to this. See? Right here.”

“Ah, yes, you’re right… Do you want to read it? It might be someone trying to slip some hate mail to you in the form of a Game request.”

“Nah, that’s pretty far-fetched… Or is it?”

I was somewhat frightened by Himeji’s suggestion. She wasn’t joking, but she wasn’t wholly serious, either—probably just worried about me—but either way, I decided to open the other attachment. It was a plain, unadorned text file, and I figured it was an addendum to DearScript or whatever. And I wasn’t wrong about that, but…

““Huh…?””

The moment we read the message, Himeji and I let out simultaneous stunned gasps. It felt almost as if I’d been sucker punched. I brought my right hand to my lips, trying to calm my nerves and having to consciously keep breathing, as I looked at the screen again.

Hi, Hiroto! Boy, it’s been years, huh?

Did you read the rules for DearScript, the Game I’m challenging you to? It’s not the sort of straight-up combat Games you’re usually playing, but I think it’s gonna be pretty tricky to beat. Don’t let your guard down, or you might find yourself in trouble!

So if you do make it to the last page, I’ll let you meet me as a reward. After all, you’ve been looking for me this whole time, right? You came all the way to the Academy to see me, didn’t you? …That really makes me happy. Seriously, I’m over the moon!

But just because you came over here looking for me, it wouldn’t be any fun if you tracked me down that easily, now would it? Maybe you’ll get disillusioned and wind up not caring about me all of a sudden. And I sure don’t want that! So try your best to look for me, Hiroto, because I really do want you to find me. I want you to beat DearScript and come see me.

That’s a promise, okay?

The message ended there. It wasn’t an audio file, so I couldn’t hear the person’s voice or anything else like that. And because it was digital text, I couldn’t see their handwriting, either. But the contents of the message clearly brought a person to mind.

“The person you’re looking for, Master…?”

Himeji’s voice was a mixture of confusion and agitation. But she was right.

About two months ago, I was scouted by the provost of the Eimei School and offered a stint here on the Academy. I immediately agreed, and I had good reason to: My childhood friend had come here many years ago (or at least I thought she did), and I wanted to find her. That was the whole reason I was staying here, living under all these huge lies after a couple of chance events let me beat a certain young lady at a Game. I even went across the ocean, all for a chance to see her again.

Still, my memories of her were now nearly ten years old. There were certain fragments I could still recall vividly, but I didn’t fully remember her name, or even what she looked like. I had nearly no way of finding her—really, my only chance was to become a Seven Star, granting me access to every piece of information the Academy had. But…

“…Now she’s reaching out to me with a Game?” I whispered, my voice shaky.

I could sense my heart beating faster. That was the only real way to read this text, I thought—she knew I had come to the Academy, and all about my reasons for being here, which was why she’d reached out to me. If I wanted to meet her, she wrote, I’d have to overcome this Game first. I couldn’t be completely sure the gamemaster of this DearScript game was the girl I was looking for, but only a scant few people knew that I had come to the Academy searching for someone, and those that knew wouldn’t gain anything from trying to catfish me like this.

“If this is real…it’s a good chance for me, right?”

My grip reflexively tightened around the device in my right hand.

“…”

Himeji, seeing my reaction up close, was about to say something with her usual monotone expression but instead fell into deep thought. She opened her mouth a bit to hesitantly say something, only to shake her head silently. Then she lifted her face up once more.

“It could be,” she said, her silver hair shifting with each movement. “I’m curious about what the order on page zero is…and either way, I’m no longer sure we should be ignoring this. But let’s go visit that old vixen first, Master, just to eliminate any doubt about this being some elaborate prank.”

The next day, when Himeji and I visited the provost office in the Fourth Ward’s Eimei School, we were greeted not by Natsume Ichinose, the young head of the school, but a girl much younger. She was a middle school student with dark hair, one eye black and the other crimson. Despite being inside a private school with a dress code, she wore a frilly gothic-Lolita dress without a single thread out of place. This was Tsumugi Shiina, and as always, she was lost in the world within her own mind.

“Oh! It’s you!”

She was stabbing at some kind of fruit-and-granola thing with a tiny spoon, but when Shiina saw me coming, she beamed, stood up off the sofa, and rushed over to me. She didn’t slow down at all before she slammed into me and hugged me around the waist, looking up with the most darling sparkling eyes.

“Wow, I haven’t seen you in a week! Did you come to hang with me, maybe?”

“Huh? No… Well, actually, maybe. I was kinda worried that you were all depressed and stuff.”

I felt a bit bashful under the completely trusting, loving stare of those oddly colored eyes, although I didn’t betray any of it. I mean, I really had been concerned about her. Shiina had, after all, thrown the May Interschools into complete chaos under her Chameleon persona, and as soon as the event was over, she had been taken into custody by the Board of Morality, which functions as the island’s police force.

She was released soon afterward, though, after it was found that she had been deceived by Kurahashi and was an involuntary accomplice to his crimes—but she was still the first person in Academy history to create a working fake student account, which made her a kind of ultimate problem child in most teachers’ minds. Her previous school was apparently reluctant to readmit her, and given her eagerness for the Academy and its Games, Shiina herself had been less than thrilled about the idea of returning to her parents over in mainland Japan. Then, just as everyone was in contact trying to work out some sort of compromise, the Eimei provost swooped in and agreed to accept her.

Of course, the reasoning she gave was that Eimei’s about the only place where they could keep an eye on her, since she likes hanging out with me the most…

That’s the provost for you. As strong, or as cunning, as ever, and never afraid to butt into a conversation.

So now Shiina was the responsibility of the Eimei School… That said, we’re talking about a girl who called herself an “elite shut-in” at one point. She didn’t hit it off too well with the provost, as expected…but with her total lack of adulting skills, there’s no telling what she’d do if we let her live by herself. Thus, she was now using a temporary dorm set up in a small room in the back of the provost’s office.

I stole a glance at the door leading to that room as I got our conversation back on track.

“I imagine you don’t mind being right next to the provost’s office or anything…but you had the Board of Morality interrogating you all last weekend, didn’t you? Did that turn out okay?”

“Oh, yeah, that was no problem at all. It was kinda scary talking to strangers—not that I was scared. I mean, I was afraid of scaring them with my magical aura, so I had to keep my back turned to them when I answered their questions. But otherwise it was all good!”

“Wow. Um, great job, then. So you’re going to be here for a while?”

“Yeah! They haven’t really decided how to, um, deal with my situation quite yet, so I can’t really go anywhere until then, they told me. So feel free to stop by and play with me whenever you want, Hiroto! I’d love to play another Game like ASTRAL again!”

“I could come visit you, sure, but I don’t really think a redo of ASTRAL’s gonna happen anytime soon. How many people do you think you got caught up in all that, huh?”

“Well, yeaaaah…but, you know, you play Games with people every day, don’t you?”

“No. If I was at it every day, the stress would probably put me in the hospital.”

“You don’t? Ohhh… So what about today, then? What’re you here to talk about?”

“Huh? …Well, it’s about a Game, but…”

“I knew it! Hee-hee-hee! You can’t trick these magical eyes of mine, Hiroto. I wanna join you! I wanna join you!”

Shiina drilled her head into my chest, whining like a toddler begging for candy. She carried on like this for a little bit longer, only to erupt in a wide yawn. Before my eyes, I could see her eyelids grow heavier and heavier, and soon they were closed. Shiina went motionless as she still clung hard to me. It happened in an instant, but by now I knew she wasn’t just pretending to sleep.

“It was the same deal during ASTRAL. How’d she develop that knack for sleeping anywhere?”

“Heh-heh! Well, you can’t blame her. She hasn’t slept a wink since yesterday.”

?!

I whirled around toward the voice behind me, internally taken aback. There, I saw the woman I’d come here to see—the provost, a wily smile on her face. Somehow, though, I didn’t detect her usual ferocity.

“You’re really loved, you know that, Shinohara? Though you hardly ever show up at all whenever I’m around. It makes me uncharacteristically jealous, you realize.”

“Mm…nr, nrfff…”

“She acts way too young to be in junior high,” the provost said, sounding exasperated even as she eagerly reached out and tousled Shiina’s shiny hair. After a few moments of that, she let out a self-satisfied sigh and walked past me and Himeji into her office. She sat down on the sofa at the far end of the room, boldly crossing her legs.

“…Right. So what do you two want this time?”

After carting Shiina (already in a deep sleep) back to her room, I joined Himeji as we faced the provost across the table.

Natsume Ichinose was the current provost of the Eimei School—young, but still taking on the full responsibilities as the superintendent of the Fourth Ward. She was a dark-haired beauty who wore a business suit well—which sounds like a compliment, but her personality was vicious and sadistic. Her ultimate aim was to reign supreme over the Academy, and as a fake Seven Star, I was currently locked in a “you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours” relationship with her.

I gave the provost a rundown of DearScript and asked her point-blank if this was a prank, but she replied with a teasing look in her eyes.

“Hee-hee… You two really are a pair of dummies, aren’t you? You actually think I’d pull a prank like this on you, Shinohara? Come on, that’s not even funny. I don’t have that much free time on my hands. I’ve been stuck on level 9 of Hydrazia for the past four hours.”

“That sounds pretty free to me,” I muttered, disgusted. I had always wondered when the provost actually did her job, if ever. “But anyway, you’re sure this wasn’t just a way for you to kill time or something, Provost?”

“Let me ask you this: Why do you think it’s me?”

“Um, well—”

“…You’re about the only candidate I can think of, Ms. Evil Vixen.”

Shirayuki Himeji cut me off, sounding more than a little miffed. She was sitting right next to me on the sofa, hands clasped and blue eyes staring right at the provost.

“As far as I know, there’s only a tiny number of people who know my master’s motivation for coming to this island. None of them, apart from you, are the type to play a prank like this.”

“Oh, really? You’re talking like you think I’d be capable of it.”