“Witch” An Katagiri was glaring at Yuichi, and Shota was clearly remembering her introduction on the first day of school.
An, as usual, was clinging to Takuro Oda.
Takuro had been Yuichi’s friend since middle school. Originally the label above his head had been “Friend,” but now he had become “Witch’s Beloved,” receiving attention from “Witch.”
Yuichi thought that the labels he saw must have something to do with the concept of worldview.
In other words, they displayed the person’s role in the worldview they were associated with above their head. A person’s role might vary depending on which worldview they were involved with at the time. Thus, Takuro would still be “Friend” in the world where he was associated with Yuichi, but Soul Reader could only display one label, and he didn’t know how to swap between them.
Perhaps moved by pity, Takuro had apparently gone out with An a few times over summer vacation. Yuichi was a little worried, but as long as Takuro didn’t show interest in other women, he thought, he should be safe.
“Could we talk for a moment?”
Yuichi tore his eyes from An to look at the blonde girl standing in front of him. “What is it?”
It was Yuri Konishi, “Anthromorph.” This was his first time seeing her since their encounter on Kurokami Island during summer vacation. They had been enemies there, which had left Yuichi feeling uncertain about how he would face her when their second term began. But Yuri didn’t seem awkward about it at all, and Yuichi was relieved that he was apparently overthinking it.
“Meet me on the roof after class,” she said.
Perhaps she wanted to settle her grudge from the island. If so, Yuichi was happy to do it.
“Why was Konishi talking to you?” Shota asked, looking at him with his mouth agape. Before Yuichi could figure out how to explain, the warning bell for homeroom rang.
At the same time, the classroom door opened. Yuichi found it unusual. Usually their homeroom teacher, Hanako Nodayama, was just barely on time, or a little bit late.
The one who entered was a man named Hayashibara, a substitute homeroom teacher. Above his head was the label “Teacher,” implying he wasn’t caught up in any other, more troublesome worlds. He taught math, and had an easygoing attitude, and he was popular among the students because of it.
His presence caused whispers to run through the classroom. Why would they have a substitute on the first day of the new term?
“Okay, quiet down, everyone,” the man said. “I’m sure you’re all surprised by the suddenness of this, but Ms. Nodayama isn’t feeling well, and she’s taking today off.”
“That’s weird. Miss Hanako’s never taken off before, has she?” Shota asked dubiously.
Yuichi couldn’t remember her ever taking time off, either.
The substitute teacher led them all to the gym, where the student body was divided into seats by class to look up at the stage. The teachers up there talked business for a while, and then the principal launched into a long-winded speech.
This was Yuichi’s first term-opening speech since entering high school, but it seemed no different from the ones he’d had in middle school. After the principal’s opening remarks concluded, the vice principal took the podium.
“The teacher for Classroom 1-B, Nodayama, will be taking some time off for poor health. Let me introduce your new substitute teacher in the meantime, Ms. Shikitani.” The teacher appeared at the podium in response to the vice principal’s call.
Immediately, the gym burst into whispers.
She was a terrifyingly beautiful woman.
Stylish glasses, tall, and with a great figure. Her outfit, too — striped shirt, necktie, and miniskirt — clearly set her apart from the school’s usual, more modestly dressed teachers.
Like the rest of the students, Yuichi fixed his eyes on her. But it wasn’t because he was entranced by her beauty.
It was because she didn’t have a label over her head.
He thought back again to Monika. She hadn’t had a label, either. Which meant that this woman was an Outer, too.
“I am Makina Shikitani,” the woman said. “I’ll be 1-B’s homeroom teacher until Ms. Nodayama is back. I look forward to working with you all.”
Makina smiled faintly from atop the podium. Her gaze focused straight on Yuichi.
After the opening ceremony ended, Makina led the 1-B students back to their classroom. She gave a simple introduction back at the classroom, and that was the end of homeroom for that day. She departed immediately after.
“Wait!” Just as she was leaving the room, Yuichi flew out after her.
“Oh, you surprised me.” Makina turned back, not bothering to hide her surprise. “That’s no way to talk to your teacher, is it? It took me a moment to even realize that you were talking to me...”
“...Sorry. Miss Shikitani, could I have a moment of your time?” He had lost a bit of his cool, but they couldn’t talk about this out in the hall, so Yuichi decided to act more deferential.
“This certainly isn’t what I was expecting,” she said. “I didn’t think you’d make contact so quickly. Wouldn’t most people spend a lot of time weighing their options? You looked like an idiot, sitting there smiling knowingly, you know.”
“I don’t care about that,” he said.
“That’s fine. Let’s go to the student guidance room.” Makina issued the directive, then started walking. Even just walking down the hall, the beautiful woman drew stares from everyone around her. Yuichi felt uneasy walking behind her.
They quickly arrived at the guidance room on the first floor. Makina went inside. Yuichi followed, and shut the door.
An instant later, a chill went up his spine.
Feeling a sudden change in the atmosphere, Yuichi spun to face Makina.
“Oh-ho... despite finding me suspicious, you walked right into my trap. Yet you also noticed the trap the minute it was sprung. How very interesting.” Makina sat deep in her chair and looked at Yuichi with intense interest.
Yuichi tried to open the door, but it wouldn’t budge. It was as if it had become part of the wall.
“Before you waste a lot of time struggling, let me tell you something,” she said. “You are trapped in this room. You can’t get out until you win the game. So for now, just come right over here, and we’ll have a little talk.”
Yuichi considered breaking down the door, but carelessly destroying school property would cause its own kind of trouble. He decided to do as Makina had said, and sat down across from her.
“What’s going on here?” he asked.
“The fact that you don’t know anything about my ability suggests you haven’t actually heard about me,” she said.
“Of course I don’t know your ability,” Yuichi replied. “I just assumed you were an Outer.”
“True. But when dealing with an Outer, you should always be on your guard,” she said. “For instance, I use an ability called ‘Sealed Room Game.’ It can be used in any closed space. In other words, all you had to do to prevent it was to not close the door.”
“I couldn’t have known that...” Yuichi responded, sulkily. How was he supposed to predict things like abilities and closed spaces?
“True. But had you collected information about Outers’ abilities in advance, you likely would have been able to foresee something. Let this be a learning experience.”
“But in that case, you could just have shut the door yourself,” he retorted.
“I wish it were that easy,” she said. “I cannot apply the ability to closed spaces that I myself have created, and while the ability is in use, I must remain within the space.”
Yuichi filed that information away, but it wouldn’t help him get out of the trap now that he was in it. “You said it was a game, right? So what are the rules?”
“You catch on quickly,” she said. “That’s good. It’s quite simple, really. Some time within the next thirty minutes, I will lie once, and only once. If you se
e through the lie, you win, and you’ll be able to leave the room. You’ll have only one chance to guess.”
Yuichi felt the atmosphere in the room change. Simply speaking the words had changed something. Words of power, perhaps?
“What guarantee do I have?” he asked. “Even if I saw through the lie, you could just pretend I didn’t.”
“Seeing as you’ve only just met me, I doubt you’ll be willing to go on trust,” she said. “But the rules of ‘Sealed Room Game’ are absolute, and they apply to me as well. So once you recognize the lie, it will be impossible for me to pretend that you haven’t. I can change, add, or delete rules, but when I do, I must tell you. And of course, I wouldn’t do anything that would break the game. I’m only doing this because I like games, you see. To violate that spirit would miss the point entirely.”
“And if I win, I can leave?” he asked.
“More precisely, there are three conditions under which my power will be nullified. The first is if you meet the victory conditions for the game. The second is if I leave this room. The third is if I lose consciousness — via death, fainting, sleep, etc. Of course, you know the third would be difficult to achieve, don’t you? It’s extremely hard for outside forces to affect Outers. On top of that, I have an ability called ‘Inviolable Domain.’ It protects the people, locations, and items necessary for the game’s completion from unmerited violence. In other words, you cannot simply lash out and knock me unconscious.” Makina triumphantly crossed her legs and her arms, emphasizing her chest. She looked at Yuichi with inviting eyes and smiled lasciviously.
“What happens if I lose?”
“Hmm. Unfazed by the sexy teacher act, are you?” she asked. “You’re not like most high school students. Why not act a little more flustered? Come on, you can see up my skirt. Aren’t you interested in my cleavage?”
“I don’t care about that stuff,” he said. “Answer my question.”
“The rules are as I said before,” she told him. “If you win, you can leave. That means that if you lose, you can’t leave, and you’ll remain trapped here until I grow tired of it. If you want to get out quickly, you’d better work for it. Now, the game has already begun. Feel free to ask questions that will see through my lie. I will lie once, and only once. A skillful interrogation might earn you useful information.”
“What happened to Ms. Nodayama?” Yuichi demanded. He was angry. He wasn’t especially close to his teacher, but he still liked Hanako and her irresponsible, do-whatever attitude.
Makina looked dismissive. “You make it sound like I did something to her. But it’s just as they told you: she’s not feeling well.”
“Yeah, right! You’re telling me she just happened to get sick, and you just happened to arrive?” Annoyed by Makina’s level tone, Yuichi started raising his voice.
“To claim it was total coincidence would be a lie,” she said. “I wanted to be a teacher at this school, so I got my teacher’s license. But I needed an opening, as well, which meant that someone would need to take time off. There was no particular reason why I chose Ms. Nodayama... if I’d known you would get this angry, maybe I should have picked a different teacher?”
“If you made her sick, cure her right now.” Yuichi’s voice was ice cold. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been this angry.
“But I told you before,” she said. “I have only two abilities: ‘Sealed Room Game’ and ‘Inviolable Domain.’ I don’t have the power to make someone sick, or to cure them.”
“What did you do?” he demanded.
“Good question.” She smiled. “First, I’ll explain what happened to Ms. Nodayama. To put it in so many words, she was dumped by her childhood friend of twenty years. Surprised? Despite how she looks, she was quite the earnest young maiden in love. But their engagement was broken off just before the wedding. It was traumatizing. She literally cannot eat. But her condition isn’t that bad. Even if she won’t eat, the hospital will keep her nourished, and the pain of the heartbreak will ease in time.”
If that was true, Yuichi felt a bit relieved. He didn’t know about the pain of heartbreak, but at least it wasn’t something permanent.
“Of course, I’m the one who stole her childhood friend,” Makina added.
Yuichi rose to his feet.
“Now, don’t get angry,” she reproved him. “I’m free to love whomever I wish, aren’t I? What gives you the right to complain about that?”
Yuichi grudgingly sat back down. He could sense something malicious in her roundabout way of speaking, but if it was just an affair, it was hard to argue about it.
Once he had calmed down, Makina started speaking again. “But I must say, Yuichi Sakaki... you aren’t much like I’d heard. You’re sticking your neck in quite aggressively. When I came to this school, Ende... she’s a bit like our manager, more or less... told me to avoid you, if possible.”
“What do you mean, ‘not what you heard’?” Yuichi asked.
“I was told you were the... you know, ‘average looks and personality yet still gets all the girls,’ ‘remains indecisive despite women throwing themselves at him, but gives in just enough so that none of them hate him,’ ‘suffers from intermittent deafness to miss crucial lines spoken by others,’ ‘participates in a club as an excuse to hang out with his friends,’ ‘refrains from interfering in an incident until it’s just in the nick of time/sometimes a bit too late,’ ‘constantly says “yare yare”’ type.”
“What, a protagonist?!” he snapped. Her teasing tone was successfully needling him.
“Go on, ask me anything,” she said confidently. “If you don’t, I’ll go into detail about how I ensnared Ms. Nodayama’s fiancé.”
“I don’t want to hear about that crap,” he said. “What did you come to the school for?”
“That’s a secret,” Makina quipped.
“You said I could ask anything.”
“I never said I had to answer.”
“You freaking—”
“Well, if I must say something about it, I’d say it’s your fault.”
“Huh?” The unexpected answer gave Yuichi pause. He and Makina had only just met. How could there possibly be a connection between them?
“Do you remember the attack on your life during the first half of summer vacation?” Makina asked.
“You’ll have to be more specific...” Yuichi tried thinking back to all the times he’d been attacked during summer vacation, but none of them stood out as remarkable.
Makina stared at him in shock. “How many times have you been attacked?”
“It’s not my fault!” he cried.
“The truck that crashed into the cafe,” she clarified. “Do you remember that?”
He nodded. “Yeah. Are you the one who arranged that?”
“Yes. He was one of my more powerful pawns, and now he’s ruined, thanks to you. I’ve been forced to abandon my Plan A. Getting a job at this school is part of the groundwork for Plan B.”
“I guess you’re not gonna tell me what your plan is?” he asked.
“No, so don’t bother asking about it again. Ask me something else. If you ask something I want to answer, I’ll be more than happy to oblige!” Makina added, as if to placate him.
“I heard you guys were ageless and immortal. Is that true?” Yuichi asked. He had been told that Outers, freed from the destiny that all things must die, were effectively undying.
“Close, but not quite,” she said. “It’s not impossible for us to die. What it comes down to is that if there’s any chance for us to stay alive, we always will. In situations where there’s no choice but to die, we die, and methods have been formulated to drive us into such situations. Yes, it might be more accurate to say that Outers are extremely lucky.”
“You think you can explain non-aging with luck?” he asked skeptically.
“The exact mechanism behind aging hasn’t actually been discovered, so I can’t say for certain. But if living beings are programmed to age, the
n perhaps a flaw in that program could develop, due to luck. Under the programming theory, the telomeres at the end of chromosomes are viewed as counters for how many times the cells divide. So perhaps they just happen to not shorten.”
“Are you sure you want to tell me all of this?” he asked. What she was saying meant it wasn’t impossible for him to kill her. This could be useful information in dealing with Outers.
“It would be easy enough to find out with a little investigation,” she said nonchalantly. “I see no reason to hide it.”
Yuichi listened cautiously to Makina’s words. He was treating this as a battle, paying close attention to her every gesture and action. In battle, Yuichi could easily identify a feint. Her gaze, her tone, her smell, her pigment, her heart rate, her muscle tension — he could combine them all in making his judgment. So far, she hadn’t lied.
“I intend to remain a teacher here for a while,” she went on. “If you have any questions about that, let’s clear them up right away to resolve any potential awkwardness between us.”
“Why do you want to be a teacher here?” he asked. “I heard that Outers altered stories from the outside.” Of course, he knew that “from the outside” didn’t refer to some other plane of existence, just that Outers liked to manipulate destiny from on high, like gods. But at the moment, Makina was trying to get directly involved with Seishin High School.
“It’s up to the individual,” she said. “I like to watch things unfold from a front-row seat, in real time. There’s another who simply likes to read about things in a book after they’re over. We all have different tastes.”
“Don’t you want to kill me because I know about you?” he asked. Yuichi, knowing as he did about the existence of Outers, could pose a threat to Makina.
“Hey, now,” she said. “Just who do you think I am? Who would do something like that, after coming all the way here to be your teacher?”
“The worst kind of garbage person, which is what I heard you are,” he retorted.
“Hmm. I won’t deny that... but do you think I’m a villain? That there’s nothing I won’t do to achieve my goals?”
The Melancholy of the High School Girl Light Novel Author?! Page 3
