My pale face was reflected on the terminal screen.
A sickly male student.
There were thousands of male students at the academy, but if someone were to single out “sickly” as a distinguishing feature worth warning people about... only one person came to mind.
More terrifying than the fear that someone was targeting me was the fact that they had officially acknowledged me as a threatening variable.
My heart pounded like mad.
My stomach felt as if it had twisted so much it was about to tear open.
The festival’s brilliant lights now felt like the lamps of an interrogation room shining down on me.
In a trembling voice, I muttered,
“This... really isn’t me. I’m telling you, it’s not...”
But whether Briana hadn’t heard me or simply ignored me, she began confirming the man’s identity and rapidly recording something on her terminal.
That concise and unmistakable warning written on the note was now trampling my newly begun, peaceful plan to withdraw from school with brutal force.
The man was led away by Dylan and dragged into the temporary interrogation room set up in one corner of the student council office.
As the dazzling noise of the festival grew distant beyond the thick door, only a cool tension and the acrid smell of dust from the old desk lingered in the room.
My legs gave out, and I barely managed to perch on a chair in the corner.
A groan escaped me at the sensation of my stomach twisting, but the situation before me was not something I could dismiss as mere stomach pain.
“Now then, why don’t you tell us? Whose orders were they?”
Nadia asked gently as she sat in front of the desk.
Her voice was kind, but the chill hidden behind it was more than enough to freeze the air in the room.
The man shook his head, his face pale.
“I don’t know! I really don’t! I just... did what I was told.”
“And who told you? What was their name?”
At Nadia’s questioning, the man answered in a tearful voice.
“I told you, I don’t know! I’ve never even seen their face.
The orders came through anonymous documents and an intermediary.
My role was just... to swap out the designated magic lamps and retrieve the used seals.
That’s all!”
The man did not seem to be lying.
He was not the mastermind of some grand conspiracy, but merely a low-level tail hired for pocket change.
Nadia rested her chin on her hand and fell into thought for a moment, then slowly pointed to the three items lying on the desk.
“Let’s organize the situation.
First, you attempted to reinstall the contaminated equipment we had already recovered.
Second, our group’s movements had already been detected on your end.”
Nadia’s gaze finally settled on the crumpled note.
“And third, this instruction. ‘Beware of the sickly male student among the inspectors.’”
The moment I saw that phrase, I felt the cold sweat that had stopped begin to flow again.
I had to deny this reality somehow.
There was no way this was about me.
The academy was enormous. Surely I wasn’t the only sickly guy here.
“...Um, Nadia. About that sickly male student.”
I spoke as naturally as possible, trying to steady my trembling voice.
“How many students are there at the academy?
I can’t be the only male student among them who’s in poor health and looks frail, right?
There could coincidentally be some weak-bodied kid in the Divinity Department or the Magic Department, or it could just be a general warning...”
Before I could even finish speaking, Briana, who had been tapping away on her terminal beside me, raised her head.
There was not the slightest hint of joking in her eyes.
“Yurian. According to an analysis of the academy’s enrollment records, there is only one male student who has visited the infirmary more than five times in the past week and has simultaneously been granted on-site inspection authority by the Student Support Office.”
Briana drove the point home in a dry tone.
“Furthermore, in the entire history of the academy, you are the only sickly male student with both such an overwhelmingly extensive record of destruction incidents and a history of discovering hazardous materials. Statistically, this identification converges on a margin of error of 0%.”
My mouth fell open.
I could not think of any logic with which to refute her.
Briana’s data was always far too accurate, and that accuracy had now returned as a rope tightening around my neck.
I stared blankly up at the ceiling.
Even the culprit recognized me as someone they needed to watch out for.
This was not a mere coincidence, nor the result of getting swept up in Kyle’s goodwill as the original protagonist.
I had already ended up on their checklist.
Nadia wore a faint smile, as if enjoying my reaction.
She nodded toward the man.
“Very well. I’ll believe you when you say you only did as you were told. After all, that means there is someone behind you who must take responsibility.”
Nadia rose from her seat and straightened her clothes.
Now that the tail had been secured, they would likely be able to prevent any immediate further attempts to replace equipment.
But from the look in her eyes, she did not seem to have any intention of ending the festival just yet.
“The festival will proceed as scheduled. If we stop it now, the culprit will simply go into hiding. The hotter the festival’s atmosphere becomes, the more likely those whose tail has been cut off will move again.”
At Nadia’s conclusion, my eyes widened.
We caught the culprit, and even found a phrase targeting me, but we were still continuing the festival?
“Excuse me. If we caught the culprit, then now... shouldn’t we be able to clock out?”
I asked with desperation.
My legs were still shaking, and my stomach was screaming.
At this point, I wanted nothing more than to escape this hellish commute and collapse into the bed in the corner of my dorm room.
But Nadia did not even look back as she gripped the heavy doorknob of the interrogation room.
“What we caught was not the body, but merely the tail, Yurian.”
She glanced back over her shoulder and smiled brightly at me.
“And besides, the lighting ceremony, the highlight of the day, hasn’t even begun yet. There is still plenty of equipment left in the plaza that you, as special assistant for on-site inspection, must verify with your own two eyes.”
With a clack, the heavy door opened.
Through the gap, along with the night air outside, the excited laughter of people and the raucous cheers of the festival poured back into the interrogation room without restraint.
Brilliant clusters of light seeped through the doorway and cast a chaotic glow across the floor.
I stared blankly at the dazzling scenery beyond the open door and muttered in exhaustion,
“We caught him... so why can’t I clock out?”
My time to go home was still far away, and the festival night was only just beginning.
The moment Nadia left the interrogation room, she showed the student council officers she encountered her characteristic gentle, controlled smile.
“Ah, that commotion just now? We checked, and it was a simple mistake by an equipment management assistant.
It was just a minor happening caused by mixing up the item box numbers, so please inform each booth so the visitors don’t become agitated.”
With one clean order from her, the anxiety that could have grown into something larger melted away like snow.
The student guides scattered in relief, and the surface of the festival burned bright and splendid once more, as if nothing had ever happened.
Looking at the peaceful faces of the people who knew nothing, my legs gave out, and I barely managed to steady myself against a nearby wooden pillar.
“Now, Nadia. The official announcement is over, and we caught the tail too. So I can really rest now, right? I can go to the dorm and lie down for a bit...”
I asked desperately, wetting my dry lips.
But Nadia shook her head.
With that firm motion of hers, my flimsy hope snapped along with it.
“Yurian, catching the tail does not mean every trace on the equipment he had already touched simply evaporates.”
Erka, who had been quietly walking alongside us, also nodded as if agreeing with Nadia.
In her hands, she still held a notebook filled with dense calculations of formulas.
“Nadia is right. What we caught was only the tail, and the contaminated mana stones and residual phases he tried to install throughout the festival grounds still remain.
Now that the tail has been removed, the equipment already installed has become the final variable, one that may go wrong at any timing.”
Erka’s calm explanation made my breath catch in my throat.
My stomach tightened with a sharp twinge once again.
If we caught the culprit, that should have been the end of it. Why did we have to finish defusing the remaining bombs too?
My throat tightened with indignation, but I had neither the authority nor the stamina left to run away.
Before I knew it, the sun was beginning to set, and the festival was entering its latter half in earnest.
The light event booths that had filled the plaza during the day were being packed up one by one, and people’s attention was now turning toward the upcoming nighttime events and the lighting ceremony.
At the edge of the plaza, students from the Reconnaissance Department were moving busily.
Rowen held a map in one hand and shouted as he made the final checks on the spacing of the torches and the visitors’ route for the operation of the nighttime maze booth.
At the center of the plaza, students from the Magic Department had gathered.
Seria was circling the large magic lamps, throwing herself into the final adjustments to ensure the light output did not go astray.
Everyone was laughing and chatting as they prepared the romance of the night in their respective places.
But even as I walked through the center of that peaceful, brilliant festival scene, my mind was filled entirely with thoughts of the crumpled note I had seen in the interrogation room.
‘Beware of the sickly male student among the inspectors.’
Cold sweat ran down my spine once again.
That short, unmistakable sentence lingered in my ears and tormented me.
Until now, I had tried to package myself as an unlucky failing student who had gotten caught up in incidents, or as an extra who had coincidentally overlapped with the path of Kyle, the original protagonist.
But I was wrong.
They were fully aware of me.
They had officially acknowledged me as someone to be wary of, a variable blocking their plans.
No matter how much I denied it or pretended not to know, I had already been exposed right in the center of my enemies’ field of vision.
The fear that fact brought pressed down on my throat far more terribly and heavily than an explosion going off right before my eyes.
My fingertips began to tremble faintly.
Just as I was biting my lip hard, feeling as if I might suffocate at any moment, a familiar presence approached from behind.
It was Mia.
She walked close beside me and sniffed.
Even amid the thick smells of food and perfume around the festival grounds, Mia’s nose was accurately reading my condition.
“Senior.”
Mia tilted her perked-up ears slightly as she looked up at me.
“Still, you smell less like you’re about to die than before.”
I stopped weakly and looked down at Mia.
It probably meant that, since we had cut off one tail, the immediate fatal threat had passed, but to my tattered mind and body, the words did not resonate at all.
“Is that supposed to be comforting?”
Even after hearing the resentment mixed into my hoarse voice, Mia nodded vigorously as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
“Yeah.”
At that clear affirmation without a shred of doubt, I let out a hollow laugh.
Fine. In this academy, being told I seemed less likely to die might be the greatest comfort there was.
Letting out a heavy sigh, I once again dragged my heavy feet into this dazzling hell that had no intention of letting me go.