Chapter 81: Academy Heroine's Right Diagonal Back Seat

Chapter 81

I washed my face with the water pouring from the bathroom sink.

It felt like the sound of a grinder was ringing in my head, making me feel nauseous, but after throwing up more than three times already, there was nothing left to come out.

I rinsed my mouth and turned off the faucet with trembling hands, then left the bathroom.

Yoon Si-woo approached cautiously, a worried expression on his face, as if he had been waiting nearby.

"......Scarlet, are you okay?"

"......Yeah, I'm okay now."

I answered Yoon Si-woo's question in a small voice.

But as soon as I answered, his expression turned sour.

......This is why talking to this guy is such a hassle.

"......No, actually, I'm not okay. How could I be okay, damn it......"

I muttered a curse-laden response, taking a deep breath to calm myself.

Inhale deeply, exhale.

But it didn't seem to help, so I sat down and curled up, burying my head between my knees.

Unconsciously, I began to speak my thoughts aloud.

"......I was convinced he was the culprit. I didn't know what he'd do if we left him alone, so I thought we had to catch him quickly......"

When asked if there were any blurry parts in his memory, the brief pause before he answered.

And when he answered, his tone suddenly changed as if he had become a different person.

At that moment, I somehow knew.

If James really had another personality as I thought, it was the culprit answering now.

That's why I got angry and shouted.

If my classmates and dear friends had been careless, they could have died because of him.

I thought there might be another victim if we didn't catch him quickly.

That's all I was thinking when I acted.

"This isn't the result I wanted......"

The scene I saw in the kitchen wouldn't leave my mind.

When I entered the kitchen, there were dishes inside.

I remembered James smiling, saying he wanted to cook for those struggling without lunch today.

James was that kind of person.

We succeeded in finding the culprit.

But the culprit, whose identity was exposed, made a drastic choice, and because of that, James ended up dead too.

It felt like everything was my fault.

The grinding sound of the shredder kept ringing in my head.

The sound of the shredder.

The sound.

That's when I realized something strange.

I lifted my head from my knees and asked.

"Yoon Si-woo, the sound you heard before you broke the door. It was the sound of the shredder, right?"

"What?! Oh, yeah. It was definitely that sound."

Yoon Si-woo, who had been crouching in front of me with his arms outstretched, hastily straightened up and answered my question.

I didn't know what he was trying to do to me, but that wasn't important right now.

I asked him again.

"When you heard that sound, didn't you hear anything else?"

"......I don't think I heard anything else."

Yoon Si-woo's answer made me tense up.

No matter how I thought about it, it was strange.

The kitchen and dining room.

The door was closed, but we could have a conversation through the wall, so if there had been a loud noise, Yoon Si-woo, who had better senses than normal people because of the Unyielding Holy Sword, should have heard it.

But he said he didn't hear a sound he should have.

I retraced the events one by one.

Dining room, kitchen, dual personality, question, shredder. Sound.

And then, with a shock like being hit with a hammer, my hands began to tremble.

"......It wasn't."

As the realization hit me, words spilled out of my mouth.

The premise itself was wrong.

"......It wasn't a dual personality."

Facing the worst situation I hadn't imagined, I jumped to my feet urgently.

"Scarlet?!"

Yoon Si-woo looked at me in surprise, and I shouted urgently.

"The real culprit was someone else!"

A dual personality meant that the body still belonged to the original person.

No matter how crazy someone was, they wouldn't choose such a gruesome way to die just because their identity was exposed.

There were plenty of kitchen tools, so if he wanted to kill himself, he would have used a knife.

Moreover, no one could be ground up in a shredder without screaming.

There was only one answer that explained everything.

From the start, the body didn't belong to the original person.

I screamed with a contorted face.

"He was being controlled!"

*

A few teachers were having a serious conversation in the kitchen where the horrible incident had just occurred.

"......I can't believe Mr. James was the culprit."

"To be precise, it wasn't Mr. James but his other personality. The student who first identified the culprit said it was a dual personality. Who would have thought he passed the lie detector because of that......"

"Mr. James is really dead, right? How could this happen......"

The teachers' faces contorted with the shocking realization that a long-time acquaintance was involved in the incident and the sadness that they would no longer see him again.

However, immediate sorrow was secondary to the urgent need to resolve the case, so Eve, representing the teachers, began to speak.

"......It's tragic, but now that we've found the culprit, we need to figure out how a terror attack using dark magic could occur inside the barrier. Remember when the intermediate magical beasts appeared at the school last time? If there's an issue with the function that blocks dark magic, today's terror incident is just the beginning."

If so, it was a serious matter that could bring great chaos to the city within the barrier, where people believed they were safe.

Another teacher asked Eve.

"You said you requested support from the Bureau of Public Safety investigators, right?"

"Now that we've identified the culprit, there's no need to restrict access. None of the teachers have expertise in that area. They should be arriving soon."

As soon as Eve finished speaking, a short-haired woman in a Bureau of Public Safety uniform entered the kitchen with a stern expression and spoke.

"I am Investigator Rhea Abella from the Bureau of Public Safety. Teachers, please cooperate with the investigation."

Eve looked at her for a moment, sighed, and spoke quietly.

"......Rhea, you were close to Mr. James, weren't you? You don't have to pretend to be okay in front of us. It's okay to cry."

At her words, Rhea, an Academy graduate with red-rimmed eyes, wiped her eyes with her sleeve and forced a smile.

"......I'll cry later since I'm on duty now. If I start crying now, I don't think I'll be able to stop."

"......I see. You've grown up, Rhea."

"......I was always mature, you know?"

The teachers who remembered her from her student days smiled slightly.

Eve also smiled and asked Rhea.

"Shouldn't a mature person take better care of herself? What's with the scratch on your neck? You're not still fighting with cats because they stole your snacks, are you?"

Rhea's face turned bright red as she shouted.

"I didn't get it from fighting with a cat! I...I'm starting the investigation now! Please leave the kitchen!"

"Alright, alright. Please check every corner."

"It's really not from a cat!"

After shouting at the departing teachers, Rhea's expression turned gloomy once they had all left.

She had been vaguely informed through the contact, but it was still hard to believe.

That Mr. James was a dual personality terrorist.

In her memory, Mr. James was always a kind person who would make snacks with a smile whenever she asked.

Determined to uncover the truth behind this incident despite her sorrow over his death, Rhea began to examine the items in the kitchen.

*

Psychometry, the ability to read the memories of places or objects.

Knowing it would take time to read the old memories, Eve waited for Rhea to come out.

After Rhea had been alone in the kitchen for a while, she emerged with a stiff expression, and Eve asked her.

"Did you check everything?"

Rhea looked around slowly and then spoke to Eve.

"......This isn't something we should discuss in a crowded place. Can we talk alone?"

There were many students in the dining hall. It might not be a story that should be shared, so Eve nodded at Rhea's suggestion.

As soon as they entered the dormitory attached to the teacher's office, Eve asked Rhea.

"So, what exactly happened?"

Without answering immediately, Rhea looked around the dormitory, then sat on a long sofa and gestured for Eve to come closer.

"I'll tell you, but please sit next to me, teacher."

Eve sat next to Rhea, smiling.

"You used to insist on calling me 'teacher' instead of 'professor,' and now you finally do it properly."

"Did I do that?"

"Yes, you did. Have you already forgotten? Anyway, could you tell me what happened?"

Rhea leaned close to Eve and whispered.

"I made another mistake."

Thunk.

A kitchen knife plunged into Eve's neck.

Soon, the light disappeared from Eve's eyes, and her body collapsed to the floor.

Rhea watched the scene, scratching her neck, then spread out a blanket from the dormitory.

Rhea, who covered Eve with a blanket soaked in oil she had brought from the kitchen, crawled inside slowly.

And from within the blanket soaked with oil, she took out a lighter.

Woosh, flames erupted.

The teacher and student, once close, burned to death in one place.

Eve watched the illusion silently.

After removing Rhea, who had lost consciousness in the hallucination with a knife at her throat, Eve rubbed her neck.

There was a faint trace of blood on her hand after wiping her neck.

"......That was close."

She had trusted Rhea completely because she was her student.

The only reason she could react just in time was thanks to Scarlet's warning yesterday to never let her guard down anywhere.

"......I should thank Scarlet."

Muttering to herself, Eve looked at Rhea coldly.

Rhea Abella, who had been mischievous but kind and always made everyone laugh.

She was not the kind of person to do such things.

That meant she was being brainwashed or controlled.

Both types of magic were strictly prohibited for ethical reasons, and such powerful control that one wouldn't wake up until they burned to death was beyond human capability.

That meant there was only one entity capable of such an act.

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