Sensei had disappeared.
Tachibana Saori first learned of that fact roughly eight days after Sensei went missing from Academy City.
Originally, it was common for Sensei to be away for several days at a time.
The role of the Integrated Guidance Department to which Sensei belonged was to mediate the various disputes that occurred in Academy City, or prevent them before they happened.
Students who had ever received Sensei’s help, or had been meddled with by him, knew that fact, so at first they did not think much of it.
But when the thought, “Even so, isn’t he gone for too long?” began to creep into their minds, the real catastrophe began.
The Integrated Guidance Department to which Sensei belonged was, nominally at least, a subordinate organization of the General Student Council.
Because of that, no matter how busy Sensei was, he always made sure to participate in events hosted by the General Student Council. When he failed to attend even one of those events for the first time, the news that Sensei had gone missing spread throughout Academy City.
Naturally, the first place the arrows of blame turned was the General Student Council.
“We, the General Student Council, are also doing everything in our power to locate the missing Sensei, but we have yet to obtain any clear results.”
“Going forward, the General Student Council plans to devote all currently available personnel to the search for the missing Sensei…”
“We express our deepest regret that such an unfortunate incident has occurred in this garden of learning, where every student should be able to study with peace of mind.”
At the emergency press conference held not long afterward, the General Student Council stated its position in that way, but most of the students who saw the broadcast did not believe its contents.
Because in modern society, it was almost impossible for a single person to vanish without leaving any trace whatsoever.
Moreover, Academy City was a place where all manner of new technologies combining superpowers and science were introduced before anywhere else.
For a person who had been drawing the attention of every student to disappear overnight in a city at the cutting edge of such technology?
It was more natural to think that the General Student Council was lying to hide information disadvantageous to itself.
As the number of students who distrusted the General Student Council increased exponentially because of that press conference, the council tried somehow to restore the organization’s trust, which had fallen to rock bottom, but those struggles instead created a great crack in Academy City’s once-stable power structure.
And the person who made the most active use of that collapsed power structure was none other than Tachibana Saori.
As the student council president of Übermensch Alliance School, one of Academy City’s three most prestigious schools, and Academy City’s strongest mental-type ability user, she made full use of her abilities and seized control of the confused General Student Council in an instant.
However, contrary to existing speculation, the General Student Council truly knew nothing about the vanished Sensei. When Saori learned that, though incompetent, they had been innocent, she formed another hypothesis.
“Sensei is still inside Academy City.”
If Sensei had been abducted by someone with malicious intent and dragged outside the city, some trace of it would have remained, one way or another.
But Sensei’s biometric ID recorded in the database showed not a single instance of him leaving Academy City.
That meant the conclusion was clear: whoever had abducted Sensei was an insider.
“No individual could ever pull off something this bold while every faction has its eyes wide open.”
Having judged that, the first groups Saori suspected were the two organizations that, excluding Übermensch Alliance School, boasted the greatest influence in Academy City: Kochou Girls’ Academy and Chouten Zouki Academy.
If Sensei had been abducted in an organized manner without leaving a single trace, then those two schools could only be the most likely candidates.
So, under the pretext of exchanging information, she opened an exchange meeting among the three major academies, but contrary to her initial expectations, she was unable to obtain any information at all.
Rather, all she learned was that both academies suspected each other of being the force behind Sensei’s abduction.
When the case returned to square one like that, the second possibility she had been desperately ignoring began to creep into her mind.
What if Sensei had not been abducted, but had gone into hiding on his own?
“…No, that can’t be.”
A person who cared so much for his students had disappeared without saying a word?
If that were the case, he would certainly have given some hint to someone he trusted.
But if it was not the General Student Council, not herself, not Kochou Girls’ Academy, and not Chouten Zouki Academy, then who on earth knew where the vanished Sensei was?
And when she thought that this trustworthy someone was not herself, a corner of her chest throbbed.
Because the only adult she could trust was Sensei, but for Sensei, that would mean there were plenty of students he could trust besides her.
That was why she had no choice but to consciously exclude the second possibility.
For the sake of the vanished Sensei, and for her own sake as well.
“It doesn’t matter how long it takes. I will find you, no matter what. Sensei.”
***
In the two years that followed, truly many things happened in Academy City.
The General Student Council, having ultimately failed to find Sensei, was forcibly dissolved after being held responsible. The two giant academies, each suspecting the other of having abducted Sensei, engaged in a struggle for influence.
There was even intervention from the Japanese government, and an attempted management takeover by the mega-corporation Cyclops.
Even amid the endlessly continuing chaos, Tachibana Saori mobilized every method available to her in order to find Sensei.
But she still could not find a trace of him.
Not inside Academy City,
not outside Academy City,
nowhere at all was Sensei to be found.
Just as she was slowly beginning to grow exhausted, one of her subordinates said to her:
That it was time to give up, and that after all she had done, Sensei would understand.
It was a truly sweet temptation, but she could not easily give up.
Because the person who had saved her, when she had been unable to trust anyone due to the misanthropy caused by the side effects of her ability and was slowly falling apart, had been Sensei.
That was why, the moment she saw Sensei’s face beyond the window of light that suddenly appeared before her while she was working,
she thought she was seeing things.
But it was not a hallucination.
Because Sensei’s face, which she still remembered vividly as if she had seen it only the day before yesterday, was staring intently at her from beyond the window of light, unchanged in the slightest from two years ago.
“She’s still pretty, even after all this time.”
Though she almost never showed emotional changes in front of others, the moment Sensei’s thoughts naturally flowed into her mind—
“Ah, aaah…!”
Before she knew it, she was shedding tears of joy.
It was real.
It was the real Sensei.
Sensei, whom she had not been able to reach no matter how hard she tried, was now right before her eyes.
That was why she unconsciously reached out her hand.
The window of light before her might, in truth, be a trap.
But because beyond it was the Sensei she had longed so desperately to meet, there was no hesitation in her actions.
After all, everything she had done in the two years that had passed—becoming the president of the General Student Council that managed all of Academy City after advancing from high school to university, and even taking control of the mega-corporation that had been aiming for Academy City’s management rights—had been nothing more than means to find the vanished Sensei.
And the moment Saori’s slender fingers touched the window of light, she found herself standing not in her office, but in an unfamiliar place.
***
“What…?”
Sensei, whom she was seeing for the first time in two years, looked up at her with a dumbfounded expression.
Then, as if he could not possibly believe this situation, he pinched his own thigh.
“Gyaah!”
An odd action completely at odds with his serious face.
And so she could be even more certain.
That the one before her eyes was the real “Sensei,” whom she had sought for so long.
What he had been doing all this time, why he had disappeared without saying a word, whether he had not wanted to see her—there were mountains of things she wanted to ask.
But if she poured out all those questions at once, Sensei would undoubtedly feel burdened.
So she looked around as if nothing were wrong and said,
“Is this where you’re living now, Sensei? It’s not that different from the school night-duty room you used to stay in. Have you been eating properly?”
At first, it was something she had tossed out lightly in order to find a suitable topic of conversation, but perhaps he had something to feel guilty about, because Sensei suddenly avoided her gaze.
With a sense of foreboding, she turned her head and saw a convenience store lunchbox sitting on the computer desk.
“……”
Seeing that made her heart ache.
Because it seemed that without anyone beside him to take care of him, he was ruining his health by eating nothing but ready-made meals and frozen foods, just as she once had.
That was why, before she knew it, she may have thought it.
“First, I’ll make you something to eat. We can say what we want to say after that.”
For now, she would make sure Sensei ate a proper meal.