Fifty-Second Chapter
A Morning of Afterglow and Doubt
The top floor of the laboratory building in the Institute was truly desolate. The entire floor was made up of this single room.
Through the windows came the sunlight of early morning. However, the barren room had no real lived-in feel to it. For starters, there were practically no curtains, blinds, or any other interior decor for that matter. The few desks, tables, and other furnishings that were here were devoid of any color. They were either white or black, not giving much of a hint for the owner’s preference in color. It wasn’t inconvenient, but there was nothing interesting about it.
That said, points could still be given for the interior. Nowadays, curtains and other ways of minimizing the level of light were more like hobby items with little practical use. The windows in this room could be shaded at will. It was also possible to set them to auto mode that would adjust the lighting depending on the amount of sunlight in the morning. Although this type of window was widely-known about, it was still a luxury item that most households couldn’t afford.
Speaking of expensive things, the laboratory equipment in the room would fetch a high price as well. Even an amateur could make a decent guess at the value. But since everything was arranged in such a haphazard manner, the room looked more like a warehouse than anything.
Compared to the girls’ dorm where Tesfia and Alice lived, there was a stark difference. There, they had curtains on all the windows regardless of size, with much attention paid to the interior as well.
But there was still a corner of the room that felt lived in. That was mostly thanks to Loki. Then again, her tastes were similar to Alus’s at their root, so it could hardly be called modern.
Regardless, it was now early morning, a refreshing morning after all the clamor of the day before. A soft light flooded into the room most girls would consider plain and boring. It was the pseudo-light of the artificial sun, which, with progress in science and magic, had become very similar to the real one.
The faint light shone on the three girls sleeping in the room. They were all spread out every which way, and dressed as if they’d fallen asleep in the middle of a midnight chat. Their bodies might have gotten stiff if left alone, but fortunately Loki had put blankets over them out of consideration.
Eventually...a yawn. “Good morning?!” Strangely enough, the first to wake up was the redhead, Tesfia. Her normally shiny red hair was now a complete mess. In a way that was just like her. She must’ve thought she was sleeping in her usual bed in the dorm, but the next moment she frowned in pain at her aching joints. Which made sense, as of the three girls she was the only one who’d slept on the bare floor.
She let out an “Uhh” and her body jerked. “It hurts,” she said, as if looking to share her feelings with someone. The tone of her voice made it sound like she was appealing to a doctor.
The next moment, her attention shifted from her body to the unfamiliar blanket over her. It was then that she finally realized she’d fallen asleep. Although her eyelids were heavy, she opened them and confirmed she was indeed in Alus’s laboratory.
Her body shot up as she tried to sort out the situation in her head. She couldn’t remember exactly what had happened just before falling asleep, but she traced her memories of what happened the day before.
Looking around, she saw Alice fast asleep near her. Unlike Tesfia, she’d curled up on a small sofa. But Tesfia didn’t need to go through her memories to know that she’d been here with Alice and Ciel, as well as Alus and Loki. However, Alice was the only one around.
“Where’s Ciel?” Tesfia blurted out the name of the missing party, as she tried to shake off her sleepiness. She slept in the same dorm room with her best friend Alice, so sleeping together elsewhere wasn’t much different. But this was her first time sleeping in the same room as Ciel.
That said, it wasn’t unusual for them to visit each other’s dorm rooms and have pajama parties. Those kinds of girl gatherings naturally happened when girls their age lived together. However, because the Institute tended to attract students from respectable families, these kinds of acts were frowned on by students who respected the norms. Because of that, sleepovers were held in secret. Yet that too made it exciting for the young girls.
Tesfia was pretty well-acquainted with Ciel. In spite of that, she’d never slept over in Tesfia’s and Alice’s room even once.
Still shaking off her drowsiness, Tesfia rubbed her eyes. Then she looked across the room again. That’s when she spotted a cute-looking blouse she’d seen before, gently spread out next to a blanket.
She casually picked it up and gave it a suspicious look. “What is going on here?” she asked, completely confused, before looking down. Something was wriggling beneath the table.
Bending down to look, she finally found Ciel. Her hair was messy and she was wrapped in a blanket with only her head sticking out.
Just then, Ciel slowly opened her eyes and yawned. “Good morning, Fia,” she mumbled.
“Good morning, Ciel.” Aside from the fact that Tesfia was bending down to stare under a table, it was a very normal greeting, which left only one thing unanswered. She looked back to the clothes in her hand, her mind still not working properly.
The next moment, there was a sharp bang as Ciel bumped her head on the table. “Ow,” she yelped. At the same time, her consciousness snapped awake. The pain aside, she had realized something that made her unable to enjoy the blissful morning hour.
Crawling out from under the table with some skill, she made sure to keep her blanket wrapped around her. “Can I have that back?” Ciel meekly asked after a moment’s hesitation, red up to her ears.
The noise of it all must have woken up Alice as well. Unlike Tesfia, she didn’t have low blood pressure, and it didn’t look like she would fall back asleep. A difference in how they grew up, perhaps, but not even Alice had fully recovered from her built-up fatigue, so she blinked repeatedly in an attempt to clear her head.
“You two are up...early.” She was generally laid-back in her manner, but it took her longer to finish her sentence than it usually did. Still in a daze, she asked about the same matter Tesfia had been wondering about. “By the way, why aren’t you wearing any clothes, Ciel?”
“...”
“What?! Ciel, are you naked?” With Alice’s words and the clothes in her hand, the reality of the situation sank in even for Tesfia. It was hard to tell with Ciel wrapped up in a blanket, but it seemed Alice was more observant than Tesfia was when newly awake.
Once the idea was in her mind, Tesfia couldn’t keep herself from imagining Ciel’s appearance under the blanket.
Ciel herself wasn’t entirely sure of her situation beneath the blanket, so she timidly checked.
The two held their breaths as they watched.
After a moment, Ciel let out a sigh of relief. “I-It’s fine,” she said. “I’m still wearing my underwear.”
“Of course you are!” the other two retorted, but then they realized something. There were supposed to be four girls plus a member of the other sex in the room. The strange situation brought to mind a normally unthinkable possibility. Four girls and one boy had spent the night in the same room, and the next morning, one of those girls was stripped of her clothing.
Tesfia gave Ciel an anxious glance as she returned the blouse. Alice too gave her a look of sympathy.
Ciel confessed, acutely sensing their doubts. “N-Nothing happened. I just...” She paused. “I just have a terrible sleeping habit where I take off my clothes.” Red up to her ears, Ciel wriggled under her blanket as she put her clothes on.
Alice tossed an undershirt and shorts over to Ciel, and opened her mouth as her doubts had finally been answered. “So that’s why you always turned down any sleepovers.”
“Yeah,” Ciel weakly nodded in return.
“There’s nothing to worry about. We’re all girls,” Tesfia said, in hopes of backing her up. Not only was she saying that to cheer Ciel up, she was also saying it to herself to try to calm down her stirring heart.
“Well, Fia’s got her own bad sleeping habit she doesn’t want to show others,” her dorm roommate Alice said with a wry smile.
That said, Tesfia was still nobility. So whenever she went over to someone else’s for a sleepover, she would always keep her guard up. In that sense, Alice felt like Tesfia showing that side of her was a sign of how much trust they had in each other.
Unaware of Alice’s thoughts, Ciel said, “It’s been a bad habit since I was a child. I just haven’t been able to fix it.” It appeared this bad habit had forced Ciel to hold back from any sleepovers. She’d been looking for a chance to go home yesterday too, but at some point the fun had made her forget it.
Despite being exposed in the end, she was taken aback by Tesfia’s and Alice’s reactions. “You can be so withdrawn when it comes to yourself, Ciel. We don’t mind, so let’s have another sleepover sometime.”
“Y-Yeah,” Ciel nodded hesitantly at Alice’s suggestion.
“Well, to be honest it was a bit of a surprise. But now we can have a sleepover whenever we want. You’ve already been found out, so it’s all the same now,” Tesfia nodded with a smile.
Meanwhile, Ciel seemed relieved by the fact that she wasn’t being taken advantage of. She did in fact feel that now she could sleep over in their room without hesitation. But she was still a little embarrassed.
Things having finally settled down, the three girls were greeted by a peaceful early morning. That’s when Alice recalled something, and she looked around with a strained smile. “Ah. Maybe you shouldn’t get dressed here. Al’s probably still sleeping but he’s here too.” They were being a bit careless, since this was Al’s room, after all.
That warning came a little late, and though Ciel didn’t look particularly shaken up, she did speed up in putting her clothes on. She was embarrassed, of course, but also relieved that she was covering the essential parts of her body. If Tesfia had been in her shoes, she would have been in hysterics.
At any rate, the early morning commotion came to an end. The Alus the girls knew wouldn’t overlook their loud chattering. Even Alice had been prepared for Alus to come out with a frown on his face when she warned Ciel. She’d been prepared to get scolded, but...betraying their expectations, nothing happened.
“Huh?” Alice said. She and Tesfia exchanged glances at this anticlimax. They soon realized that an inexplicable silence filled the large room. When they focused, they couldn’t sense the presence of anyone aside from the three of them. Even Loki’s bedroom, which was just a simple partitioning, would have been subjected to their voices and the noise. Tesfia and Alice had helped with its design, so they were well aware of that.
“Looks like it’s not just Al.” Tesfia paused. “It doesn’t seem like Loki’s here either,” she mumbled, looking at the other girls again.
Shortly after that, they confirmed that the owner of the room was, in fact, missing. Alus and Loki had disappeared quite some time before they woke up. As proof, the license that served as a key was left on top of the table. It was meant for the remaining guests to lock up after themselves.
Once she’d finished dressing, Ciel combed through her unruly hair with her fingers and brought up yesterday’s discussion, which Tesfia and Alice had forgotten all about. “Oh yeah, Alus and Loki did say they had business to attend to today.” Incidentally, as of yesterday, Ciel had stopped saying the “Ms.” in front of Loki’s name, as a sign of their friendship.
After a moment’s pause, Tesfia and Alice recalled the same thing. It was nothing to make a fuss over now, and having known the two for a while, they could guess at what was going on.
“I wonder what business it is this time,” Alice said. “Do you know, Fia?”
Tesfia shook her head. “I don’t know. But Lady Lettie did show up yesterday, and I don’t think she’s unrelated to this.”
“Really?! I wish I got to meet her too,” Alice exclaimed.
“I only got to see her for a short while. And then...” Tesfia remembered being called out to by Lettie, only to be scolded by Alus, which brought a wry smile to her face. But that had been that. She would’ve liked to talk with Lettie as much as she could, as long as it didn’t cause any trouble for Alus. She admired Lettie Kultunca not just as a powerful Magicmaster, but also as a woman.
Lettie was a veteran, full of composure, and she showed her feelings in a natural and human way. It was that openness that attracted people to her. Tesfia wanted to become just like her. Filled with a frustration she struggled to put into words, she recalled what had happened in the baths at the Friendship Magical Tournament.
She then rephrased what she’d been about to say. “That’s true. If I get the chance, I’d like to have a talk with her over some tea.”
“Lady Lettie is really easy to talk to, isn’t she?”
“It’s like there’s no barrier or gap between you.”
“I know what you mean,” Alice agreed with a smile.
It was difficult to put into words why people were attracted to each other. However, they both felt that Lettie was carefree and open-minded. At the same time, she was wild, but equipped with her own unique sensibility. At the core of her actions were firm principles that were different from rigid military discipline and common sense. In other words, there was a clear focal point that supported Lettie’s own righteousness.
On top of that, there was her affability. Even though they’d never met before, she’d gladly interacted with them. It was only natural that Tesfia and Alice would be drawn to her. To novice Magicmasters like them, Lettie was an ideal. In addition to that, she still maintained her human nature despite all of her battles with Fiends in the Outer World. Needless to say, that was yet another reason for Lettie’s popularity.
It also meant that her way of Magicmastery was the opposite of Alus’s way. But the two girls were still immature, so they didn’t even notice. Lettie had kept her human nature in the Outer World, while Alus had lost his. They knew too little of the Outer World to realize this.
“Lady Lettie seems to do some things completely on impulse,” Tesfia noted. “But that’s part of what makes it so easy to get close to her.”
“Yeah.”
As Tesfia and Alice continued talking, the remaining girl asked in confusion, “Who are you talking about? Lettie? Do you mean...THAT ranked No. 7?” Ciel was in shock.
Everyone at the Institute knew Lettie’s name. And the two girls nodded in affirmation at Ciel. Even though they’d met her through their common connection with Alus, Lettie was still a big deal to them. They’d thought they would never meet her. What greater honor could there be than to have someone like her remember their names?
However, they already knew Alus. He went beyond Lettie, standing at the top of all Magicmasters as the ranked No. 1. That being the case, perhaps they shouldn’t take Lettie at face value either.
A normal person would never work as a Single. Of course, there were all kinds of bonds and inconveniences related to rankings, more than the girls could even imagine. Once they became aware of that, they wouldn’t be able to innocently yearn for it like the other students.
“I’d love to see Lady Lettie fight just once, right, Alice?” The fact that Tesfia could state an extravagant wish like that was a sign that she still had the mindset of a student.
“Yeah. I wonder what kind of magic she uses,” Alice asked, in an innocent and naive fashion. Even as she spoke out of curiosity, she didn’t truly realize the greatness of Single Digit Magicmasters that were touted as the most powerful warriors on the battlefield. This, despite her daily contact with Alus...which meant that she just didn’t know the Outer World.
But that wasn’t just limited to Alice. Nearly all the students at the Institute had no idea what battles in the Outer World really looked like. The girls didn’t know that it would take someone’s death for them to finally realize it.
“Singles have all the information about their affinities and spells kept secret, after all. Well, I bet Alus would know,” Tesfia innocently said.
However, Alice, realizing she was stepping into a minefield, answered with a dry smile, “I think Al would get angry if we asked.”
Ciel agreed. “Of course he would. Actually, are you saying that Alus would know?”
There had been an event that caused a big commotion in the Institute yesterday. And that was Lilisha revealing that Alus was a Magicmaster for the military. Being a Magicmaster was like a full-time job, so as a student perhaps he was being treated like an apprentice Magicmaster, it was thought.
The credibility of Lilisha—who’d only just transferred in—aside, the high-level mock battle that took place on the festival’s first day had removed all doubts. Then again, the reality far exceeded the false information Lilisha leaked to keep the situation under control. The students couldn’t even imagine the truth...that their classmate Alus Reigin was the ranked No. 1 Magicmaster.
With one day having passed since the campus festival, Ciel was finally able to calm down and think about what had happened yesterday. “Thinking about it, it wasn’t a very convincing explanation. I get that Alus is part of the military—no, that he’s helping them out with military affairs—but is that okay from a disciplinary level?”
It was an obvious question. As a general rule, recruiting minors into the military wasn’t allowed. Maybe it was different in the past, but in the present day, public opinion was firmly against sending minors into battle. Part of that was because the tranquility in the Inner World had dulled the sense of danger in people’s minds. It was a side effect of the peace they enjoyed.
“It’s probably complicated,” Tesfia said. Being nobility and having a mother with a military background helped her to understand that side a little easier. She furrowed her brow. The military probably wasn’t pleased that people were talking about Alus’s status and treatment. Above all, the military wasn’t just a simple force in Alpha; it was also a metaphorical wall that psychologically separated the common population from the Outer World. A soaring wall that stood between them and the threats that loomed from the Outer World.
Which was why no matter what someone as powerful as Alus did, the military would settle the matter within its own walls. Or rather, they had no other choice.
Having considered things to that extent, Tesfia—unusually for her—pondered for a while. That meant that perhaps what Lilisha talked about yesterday may have been in Alus’s best interests. At the very least he didn’t have to leave the Institute, and his position had been only marginally affected.
Some of the best students already took up unofficial military duties before graduation under the guise of training. In fact, Tesfia had even heard that Felinella, who was at the top of the Institute excluding Alus, was working for her father, Vizaist.
Besides, Lilisha’s revelation hadn’t been completely false, and she’d kept the core truth hidden. Alus’s most important secret was still a secret, and it had been done with a minimum of effort. However... “Hey, do you think Lilisha is really on Alus’s side?”
Alice and Ciel both fell silent at Tesfia’s unexpected question. Alus himself had said not to trust Lilisha. Those words kept bothering Tesfia. Most of all, if you assumed that surveillance was Lilisha’s primary role, then she really should keep her guard up around her. She was convinced of that much.
When Tesfia faced Lilisha, she had sensed there was something different about her compared with the usual nobles. That’s why she honestly didn’t have a favorable impression of her. The world of nobles was twisted compared to commoners’ society. It didn’t even have something you could call normal.
Or perhaps they just didn’t get along. It was a vague feeling, and it was hard to share with Alice and Ciel. It was something that only someone who knew a fair amount about noble society would truly understand.
Lilisha’s family name, Frusevan, was one of the reasons for that feeling. That family was something of an outlier in noble society. If anything, they were pretty much treated as heretics.
Seeing Tesfia’s wrinkled brow, Alice let out a sigh. “Well, there’s not much point in thinking about it. Fia, you’re the type of person who only gets confused the harder you think about things.”
Alice was pretty much calling her an unintentional troublemaker, but she knew Tesfia had good intentions. In any case, Tesfia tended to run in circles with her thinking.
Tesfia just shrugged in the face of such kindly intended, but painful to hear, words. “I-I know that.” She’d had plenty of failures under her belt, so the best she could muster was a pout.
“But,” Alice said hesitantly, “I don’t really like that we don’t know.” She blurted this out in a somewhat lonely tone. They’d been together with Alus and Loki thus far, so being kept out of the loop felt like being treated like an outsider.
Somewhere deep down, she knew that she and Tesfia were able to stay under Alus’s tutelage because they helped him to create a place for himself within the Institute. But he didn’t even need to be a student here. That much was evident from Principal Sisty’s involvement. The fact that they were in such a fortuitous situation right now was due to political circumstances. It was simply because it was necessary for Alus to live at the Institute.
In that case, they didn’t need to poke their noses into things they didn’t need to know. There was a clear line drawn by Alus. Stepping across that line risked creating a rift between them.
However... “We would have helped if he’d asked,” Alice mumbled with a sorrowful look.
Since she looked unusually dejected, Tesfia hurriedly stepped in. “That’s just like you, Alice. But I can understand how you feel.”
“Can you not just agree on this on your own? We spent the whole night together, so please don’t leave me out.” Ciel interrupted the somber mood with a sulking expression. “Well, I don’t know what kind of relationship Lilisha has with Alus...” She stopped to ponder it. “Ah, could it be that she herself is the problem? Like a rival in love? I’m good at spotting that kind of thing!”
She nodded with a self-satisfied look. Was she trying to be considerate? At any rate, she’d pulled the conversation in a different direction. It wouldn’t be surprising for her to have a more in-depth understanding of Alus’s situation compared with the other students. She seemed so proud of herself to have caught onto the scent of an adolescent girl in distress.
“Say, Ciel? Have you not woken up yet?”
“That’s mean, Fia! I am fully awake! Can’t you see that my eyes are even sparkling?!” Ciel protested Tesfia’s serious question by opening her eyes wider with her fingers. She might be an airhead, but she was sensitive when it came to affairs of the heart. Three girls starting to talk about a boy fulfilled all the requirements. “Well, maybe I took my imagination a little too far, please forgive me for that,” she continued, bringing her hands in front of her face in an apologetic gesture. It seemed it had just been her brand of joke.
“But if Lilisha is the key, why not close the distance to her?” she continued. “She seems well-informed, so maybe you can get something out of her?” This was advice from someone who wasn’t as familiar with the situation as the other two were.
Alice followed up on that. “That’s true. There’s no need to be hostile towards her from the start. We might be able to work together to help Al with something.” Lilisha was sent by the military to watch over Alus, so if they showed that they were being cooperative, they might be able to be of help to Alus. They could also observe the observer, so long as they kept a degree of distance from her.
Alice’s idea was simple. Meanwhile, Tesfia showed a puzzled face, but after thinking on it for a while, she said, “That’s true. Al’s been a big help to us, so we could at least try.”
“Yeah, let’s at least hear what she has to say.” Alice put on a bright smile, as Tesfia nodded in agreement.
However, Ciel was unable to fully grasp the unspoken intentions and hesitations. “But she’s a transfer student, so why not just get along with her?” she asked, but that wound up putting an end to the discussion.
After that, the three looked around the room and decided to clean it up, since it was still a mess from last night.
Looming after this was the campus festival’s closing party. Participation was optional, but the multipurpose hall would be opened for a buffet party. Their class had also planned for a small party before that, but the three girls agreed they needed to clean up here first.
Incidentally, when it came to cleaning, Ciel was as good as Alice. Though Tesfia was not very good at all. That wasn’t just because she lacked skills, but also because of a lingering doubt in her mind. Just where had the owner of the room and his silver-haired partner gone? She knew there wasn’t much point in thinking about it, but it still vexed her.
Trying to shake those thoughts away, Tesfia went to work, cleaning the room in her own way. Frusevan... I know, maybe I should ask Mother. She stumbled upon that realization when they were halfway through cleaning the room.
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