“You just do it like this.”
Among the second-years, there were three geniuses when it came to studying.
One genius could understand both the solution process and the answer at once, then kindly explain it to others. Another knew exactly how she had arrived at the correct answer, but had no talent for explaining it to anyone else. And then there was the genius who had no time to study at all, yet somehow, these days, always scored 100. Those three.
Their methods differed, but the result—scoring 100—was the same.
Being good at studying and being wise in many different areas were different things. Still, the first kind of genius, under the influence of her superpower, learned everything besides studying quickly as well, and could be called a genius in many fields. The third kind of genius could also be called a genius when it came to rapidly developing relationships with women.
The girl writing in a notebook she had opened in a room so neatly organized there was not a single piece of trash belonged to the type of genius who had no talent for explaining things to others.
The sight of her writing was like a painting. But her handwriting was like ancient pictographs, impossible to understand at a glance and requiring a long time to decipher. It did have a certain antique charm, resembling ancient hieroglyphs, but for someone who had to study from it, there was no way to see it merely as artwork.
And that was not all. Once she moved beyond basic explanations of terminology and began solving problems, she would say, “You just do it like this,” and the explanation would end there. Even though explaining that “like this” was supposed to be the role of a tutor.
Erika, that genius, was not unaware that tutoring meant explaining to someone else what she herself understood and had learned. It was simply that she did not know what was taught in the final year of middle school in this world, nor what was being taught in the first year, so her explanations could not help but be lacking.
But in the end, the fact remained that, to be brutally honest, her teaching ability was terrible for someone receiving expensive payment as a tutor despite being only one school year above.
It was just that Kana had not asked Erika for tutoring because she truly wanted to be taught. Since she possessed a “body” that could earn as much money as she wanted if she chose to become a police officer or a soldier, she did not need to place much weight on studying.
‘She’s still beautiful.’
The reason she had asked Erika for tutoring was similar to the reason one paid money to enter an art museum, and similar to the reason one paid money to go see a singer perform live.
Rather than money paid in order to be taught, it was closer to a fee paid so that she alone could appreciate everything about Erika in her own way.
Some might think, then, that there was no need to ask Erika, who belonged among ordinary students, for tutoring. But to Kana, this was absolutely necessary.
In order to approach Erika naturally and obtain her time, she had to build a relationship with her. But during their last meeting, perhaps because Erika had grown tired of dealing with her, her reactions had subtly changed.
When they met at the café, Erika had seemed to dislike her grown body, so Kana had changed into a form closer to her original “body” before approaching her. Yet even then, Erika had not shown her the same great favor as before.
Whatever change of heart had taken place, it was now no different from all her memories with Kana having been reset.
She had thought that, since Erika had been rejected by the school celebrity, she herself might have a chance. But had Erika actually grown sick of all human relationships, causing even the affection she had once held for Kana to disappear entirely, and her chance along with it?
From Erika’s reaction when they met at the café, Kana had clearly read, at the very least, that Erika did not even want to “acknowledge” her. So she had wanted to create an opportunity to increase the time they spent together, and Erika, as always, had taken the hand extended to her in the form of private tutoring.
“If another chance like this comes up, call me.”
—And, as always, before Kana could properly feel the faint warmth carried in Erika’s hand, Erika lightly shook it off.
The time she had spent learning math from Erika amounted to only a week at most.
It was far too little time to build a foundation in mathematics, and also far too little time to build affection, which had been the true purpose of the tutoring.
“Even if you don’t make a formal request, if I have time, I’ll do it for you without taking money.”
But a request was only a request, so she could not set the period all that long from the beginning. Unless it was something special, a week was the limit at best.
As she looked up at the girl putting her books into her bag and rising from her seat, Kana thought quietly. She could create thousands more of those “chances” Erika had mentioned.
She could give her as much money as she wanted, even without receiving a “request.” In fact, paying money through a request like this was illegal.
The money she had given her was not tutoring fees. It was payment for staying quietly by her side.
“You don’t have to walk me out like before.”
Unchanged since childhood, the girl named Erika left her and stepped out of the room. Before long, her figure appeared beyond the window.
Kana watched through the third-floor window until Erika disappeared from view, but she did not tell her not to go.
—Because she already knew through past experience that every act of saying or doing anything that amounted to begging her not to leave was meaningless.
Then what meaningful act could make it so Erika would not leave? Knowing the answer, Kana left the tutoring room she had introduced to Erika as her own room and slowly descended the stairs toward the basement.
Passing the dazzling chandelier hanging from the ceiling of the first floor and the expensive paintings on the walls, Kana arrived at the basement and opened the door. Inside were hundreds of girls.
Girls wearing black robes, with wavy hair, all bearing a similar appearance to “Kana” and all likewise named Kana, stood there in silence.
This was a place Kana herself had named the “Doll Room.” Naturally, the hundreds of girls were not people, but dolls.
Dolls created by someone.
Even if they were not special products made with special materials and capable of using “superpowers,” they were still works made with considerable precision for something created from nonliving matter, crafted with enough care that anyone who saw them might mistake them for people.
They were minutely different. Some were taller or shorter, some had slightly larger eyes or sharper ones, and their appearances varied little by little. Kana passed between those things that were the same as her yet different, and entered the room at the very back.
Inside the room, which was covered entirely in trash, the faint light from a monitor revealed the things within. And in the center of it lay a girl. A girl who looked strangely fitting amid the trash she herself had created.
If it had been anyone else, they would have put off the meeting because they did not want to enter a trash-filled room, or else cleaned up the trash before going in. But Kana, barefoot without even slippers on, stepped into that field of garbage without hesitation.
There was trash like cans. There was trash like shards of glass. But no matter what trash she stepped on, Kana’s bare feet did not bleed.
The reason was simple. Kana, too, was no different from the dolls in the Doll Room.
If there were a few differences, it would be that she was one of the special products painstakingly made by the real one who had created the dolls. Blood flowed beneath her skin just like a human’s, but being pricked by something like trash was not enough to wound her.
Unlike the other special products, she had merely been made capable not only of “instant augmentation,” strengthening her body in a single moment while maintaining the real one’s appearance, but also of cloaking her body in that augmentation.
If only she were given time, if only she were not hindered in expanding her forces, she was the queen of the school who could deliver the worst possible ending to Kim Haneul, who was blessed by the world.
If what that queen possessed was a reality-manipulation power that turned what she denied into falsehood, then Kana was pure quantity. Dolls that would multiply endlessly if given time, and special products that could use abilities.
Each doll might be feeble on its own, but if they piled up and piled up, then someday they would surely be able to reach even the woman loved by the world, or the girl who protected herself with an absolute shield.
“Time to wake up, ‘me.’ Tutoring is over, so it’s time to work.”
There were other “Kanas” located in places furnished similarly to this room, but there was only one reason Kana had gone all the way down to the basement to wake the real one here.
Because the only Kana capable of making dolls was the main body in this place.
The Doll Creator.
Kana, who had entered the room, at some point became unable to move. Conversely, the “Dollmaker” who had been lying down slowly rose from her place.
In order to escape the notice of Erika, whose powers of observation became unusually sharp when it came to things she liked, Kana always overlaid her consciousness onto a special product that could eat and had blood flowing beneath its skin during tutoring. But in order to create dolls, it was about time she moved.
The newly awakened “Kana” gathered the trash and, as always, made a doll without saying a word. A doll meant to be loved by one girl.
To make their personalities slightly different, to make their bodies slightly different, and create dolls that one girl might like, then overlay her own consciousness upon them.
That was the objective of the girl Dollmaker, who possessed a power vast enough to transform this world into a world of dolls.
‘I love you.’
The efforts of one girl to say that single phrase as she had before, and to have it returned to her once more, proceeded in a place no one knew.
Unlike Kim Haneul, of whom it would be no exaggeration to say the world revolved for her sake, no one who knew what Kana had gone through would consider her a protagonist. Yet in truth, these were the efforts of a girl who could be called one of the protagonists of this world.
That girl no longer had the system that could be called the symbol of a protagonist, but that did not matter much.
Because in the Dollmaker’s hands dwelled a power that could replace the system, which was no exaggeration to call proof of one’s qualifications as a protagonist: the power to turn living people into dolls.
The seed planted by the previous Erika had sprouted. A sprout black from its very first leaves.
The one who had to deal with that sprout was not the previous Erika, but the current Erika.
Indeed, unlike its former owner, how would a girl who could not properly wield her own blessing respond to the desires of the Dollmaker nurturing her own power at the bottom of this mansion?
With no one knowing the answer, the girl in the mansion’s basement molded the “trash” beside her and made a doll.