Became a Traitor in an Academy

Clubs (2)

The research building located in a corner of the academy.

…And specifically, the rightmost laboratory on the topmost floor where hardly anyone went was the Ability Research Club’s room.

So it was a bit troublesome to find.

This is why students who become interested in the club run away saying it’s terrible just trying to find it.

But saying that would deeply wound Meirin, the only club member, so I kept such thoughts carefully tucked away inside.

“Ah, found it. This is the Ability Research Club. Let’s go.”

“This is in quite a corner. Usually club rooms have good accessibility…”

But even then, that tactless bastard was saying unnecessary things.

I don’t understand how he manages to perfectly undercut my opinion every time I try to think of him positively.

Holding back what I wanted to say, I knocked on the door, and a lively voice from inside called for us to enter.

Fortunately, it seemed they hadn’t heard that crow’s muttering.

“Welcome!!! Is… is this a dream…? Four research subjects?! Ow, it hurts… it’s real!!”

This slightly smelly-looking small person energetically greeting us must be Meirin.

Then that somewhat gloomy and overall dark girl sitting there must be Lucia.

“Why are you here? And why is he…?!”

Min-ho’s eyes widened as soon as he saw me and asked why I was here.

His attitude was so obviously wary that it hurt a bit… but I had to do what needed to be done.

“Ahaha, well… I’m not following you, just, I got a bit interested while looking at the club guide book, you could say…”

Min-ho was still looking at me with a gaze full of disbelief.

Hmm, it really hurts.

“It’s not like I need to handle weapons, and I don’t need to train in fighting techniques either. As for the magic club, both he and I are special types, so…”

“Sp-special types, two of them?! Hu, hahaha, heeheeheehee…!!”

So to prevent this situation from continuing, I casually dropped information that would make Meirin go crazy.

Then Meirin forcefully interrupted our conversation, shoved questionnaires into our arms, and said to fill those out first if we wanted to join.

Her eyes were gleaming with desire.

“I still don’t even know what kind of club this is-“

Jin-hyeon raised his hand and demanded an explanation of what the club does, but Meirin looked at him with quite a creepy gaze and shouted:

“I’ll explain later, just fill it out first!”

She’s really excited.

Being an ability enthusiast, it’s natural.

Special types are very rare after all.

While filling out the profile, I recalled information about this club and Meirin.

First about Meirin.

Her setting was that she was an eccentric who kicked away the vice president position of the fighting techniques club because she loved abilities too much and established this club.

The reason it wasn’t shut down despite being essentially a one-person club was because she kept producing results.

While the academy and other clubs trained abilities, this club analyzed and researched abilities.

Rather than making them stronger, you could say it was a club that suggested ‘couldn’t it be used like this too?’

It was also the club Lucia joins to erase her ability, and Min-ho joins to both save Lucia and become stronger himself.

As for why Lucia wants to erase her ability… let’s just say it’s the kind of gloomy worry typical for that age.

Things like ‘they only see my ability, not me’, ‘I want them to see me’, stuff like that.

Before I knew it while thinking, I had finished writing everything they asked for.

The others had finished or were finishing too.

“You’re all done! Let me see!”

As soon as everyone finished, Meirin snatched the papers away and started reading them with frightening intensity.

“First year, mixed enhancement and transformation type, first year, emission type, first year, special type leaning toward emission… heeheeheehee, first… year…?”

Then, she stared at me blankly.

“You’re… a first year?”

Her gaze was on my body.

“Ah… sorry, sorry. A-anyway. Walking chemical factory… wow. Amazing, in many ways.”

I know I don’t have a first-year build, but is it that shocking?

She seemed somewhat deflated compared to before.

Was height a complex for her in the original work? I don’t think there was any mention of that.

Meirin stared at me blankly then glanced at her own feet and reacted as if in pain with a “kugh.”

What is it really? Did she have a chronic illness in her setting?

“…No, good thought. Good thought! Anyway, welcome to the Ability Research Club! First years are still chicks, huhu.”

Meirin welcomed us warmly and gave us the club chat room info along with the club’s plan.

4 PM every Thursday at the club room, huh.

“Then… well. You can go now. I’ll probably spend all my time just analyzing your profiles today. Two people would be fine, but four takes a while!”

“Is that so… Alright. Then we’ll see you at the next club meeting.”

Lucia responded in her still lifeless voice and left the club room.

Jin-hyeon also left saying he looked forward to working together.

Just as I was about to leave, Min-ho called out to me.

“Blanca. I have something I’d like to talk about, if you have time would that be okay?”

“Eh, eh?”

Min-ho? Me? He has something to discuss with me?

This wasn’t in my plans?

“O-of course! But, here?”

“No, it would be awkward to talk here, so let’s go to the cafe near the student cafeteria.”

I was flustered by this completely unexpected situation.

Like how you might lose your composure when your idol approaches you first.

That was my state right now.

Happy, yet flustered, yet excited, yet wanting to politely decline saying I wasn’t ready yet.

But there’s no way I could refuse.

“Okay! I’ll pay!”

With my tail standing straight up, I ended up volunteering for the sucker position.

I could tell that what she held for me was closer to goodwill than hostility.

Otherwise, she wouldn’t have willingly paid for something quite expensive.

But that was all.

Why does she follow me wherever I go? And how does she appear at every major event location?

And why is she trying to approach me?

Since I knew nothing, I planned to uncover at least enough to satisfy me today, if not everything.

“…What did you want to talk about?”

Blanca seemed strangely excited yet somewhat tense.

“Ah, it’s nothing big, just something I wanted to ask about. About the entrance exam and entrance ceremony, is that okay?”

I watched hoping she might show some strange reaction, but there was nothing particularly like that.

“Yeah.”

“Alright, then… could you tell me what exactly happened during the entrance exam?”

“Aha… that. Well… looking back now it’s a bit embarrassing…”

Blanca turned her gaze away awkwardly and started talking as if it was nothing.

However, it was absolutely not something that could be talked about as if it were nothing.

She said that to both eliminate all her test competitors and firmly imprint her ability on the academy officials, she indiscriminately sprayed sleeping gas right at the start of the test.

So it was because of her.

The reason the monster attack at the entrance ceremony was cancelled.

I didn’t ask if she did that aiming for this outcome.

That would have been too hasty a judgment.

“…Couldn’t they have died?”

“Ah, of course I carefully adjusted it to a non-lethal concentration. Don’t worry, I’m quite familiar with that kind of thing.”

She bragged as if it were nothing.

“…I’m genuinely glad you’re a hero aspirant and not a villain.”

This was pure sincerity without any pretense.

If I had to face a villain with such abilities and proficiency…

I didn’t even want to think about it.

“Eh? Oh. Y-yeah…?”

She just smiled awkwardly, perhaps taking what could have been a rude comment as praise.

“Well, I understand what happened during the entrance exam. No wonder the class students were angry. That’s that. How did you know something would happen during the entrance ceremony?”

“Uh… huh?”

When I brought that up, she seemed flustered.

“Um, well… wait. You knew about it too… more importantly, how did you know I knew?”

“I was sitting next to you at the entrance ceremony. Being that close, there’s no way I wouldn’t notice you drawing up magical power. You knew, right? That something would happen.”

When I said that, she hesitated as if truly not knowing what to say.

…Though I hate to think about it, if she had ‘original work knowledge’ like me.

Someone like that wouldn’t be able to answer readily.

Like how a student who saw the answer key couldn’t answer when asked how they solved the problem.

They can’t say they saw the answer key, right?

At the time I just thought she found out through some means, but now I needed to find out no matter what.

To reveal her identity.

If she saw the same answer key as me…

…

Blanca was silent.

That silence felt like an eternity to me.

“Well, I felt this sensation of my spine getting chilly and my heart freezing. Usually when I feel that, something bad comes…”

And she continued while tapping her ears, saying she knew through her senses.

“I definitely had a feeling something would happen. But well… nothing happened, so isn’t that fortunate…?”

“Ein race’s unique senses, huh.”

Senses. Indeed, Ein race did have a setting of particularly sharp senses.

Some even had settings of having something similar to a sixth sense.

If she found out that way, it could explain everything.

But… somehow I kept feeling a sense of discomfort in one corner of my mind.

What is it? What am I missing?

I thought deeply.

And then, I realized.

The reason was so simple it made me want to laugh hollowly.

How could she sense something that wasn’t even going to happen?

Intuition warns you about things that could happen, not things that won’t happen at all.

In other words, she couldn’t have sensed through intuition the entrance ceremony attack event that was cancelled before the ceremony even began.

Because there were no attackers in the first place.

There was no way intuition could have reacted.

And above all, her expression then.

It was clearly shock and disappointment.

Like the expression of someone whose long-prepared project had turned to bubbles in an instant.

I could be certain.

She was lying to me.

Whether it was because she didn’t want to reveal how she obtained the information, or… whether she was trying to hide that she was a possessor.

She was hiding something from me. That was certain.

Moreover, if you consider the unusually high interest she showed in me…

…No, that’s too much conjecture. That’s really impossible.

Erasing impossible fantasies, I focused solely on Blanca again.

“They say Ein have sharp senses, guess it’s true.”

“I suppose so…? Ah, but not all Ein are like that. Though I am a bit exceptional.”

Still, I could tell she didn’t do it to interfere with me.

By my guess, Blanca didn’t aim for that.

If she had aimed for it, she wouldn’t need to feel disappointed.

Rather, unless she reacted like “of course it should be that way-“

Good. For now, I know she’s hiding something. That’s one thing.

“Then next… why are you being nice to me?”

I asked the next thing I needed to know.

Why she treats me so well.

Because she’s a heroine. I could dismiss it like that.

It’s not like there weren’t heroines in the original work who just fell in love at first sight.

But she was definitely not that type.

That’s why I wanted to hear her reason, even if it was a lie.

“…When I was young, there was someone who often helped me. Somehow you remind me of them.”

That can’t be true. Even you think it’s a stupid reason, right?

She said that while sipping her coffee.

Truth unverifiable.

Probably a lie.

But it didn’t matter either way. I found out what I wanted to know.

She had business with me. And she doesn’t want to be at odds with me.

The proof was that instead of leaving saying I was rude when I directly asked who she was, she answered readily.

Then, is Blanca my ally or enemy?

…That, I couldn’t know.

But I thought maybe I could be a little less wary than I was thinking.

It would probably be best to hang out with her moderately while continuing to uncover her identity.

When I finished organizing my thoughts, my heavy heart felt a bit lighter.

Perhaps because of that, one silly question came to mind.

“By the way, is it okay for you to drink coffee?” I remember seeing somewhere that caffeine is poisonous to cats.

“I’m not a cat!”

Ah.

I see.