Chapter 43 - Volume 3 (1/2)

School Arc – Chapter 24

I felt as if my head was being physically swung around, but fortunately, the person I could hurl my questions at, was here right now.

「… Were you the one who wrote this, Oria?」

Oria tried to stubbornly keep silent and avert his eyes from me, but after he’d been persuaded (threatened?) by Ru Xiang who told him to 「answer the question」, Oria hanged his head.

「Y-yes. That’s right…」「This… What on earth–」

I hesitated, unable to form the words I wanted to ask.

「Explain, Oria」

「E-err… in short, it’s a novel. I used people in the academy as the models…」

It’s obvious that wasn’t all. There had to be a reason why it has a pretty obvious resemblance to my memories of the 『actual game』 .

「Oria, do you have memories of a past life?」

「…eh?」

「No? Then, what on earth…」「I(boku)… No, I(watashi), uhm, actually have a slightly unusual magical aptitude…」

「Magic? Then, don’t tell me, you can tell people’s『fate』 ?」

「??」

When Oria sent me a puzzled expression, I stared back with an expression that must’ve been awfully stiff.

「Fate? No, that kind of magic is…」

「But, you’re writing the knowledge you acquire through magic here, right?」

「Y-yes. That’s right」

「Isn’t this in other words『fate』?　There might be various ways to call it, but isn’t this honestly what it should roughly be..?」

「N-no, an exaggeration like that is…」

「But…」

Hung up on a thought that came to mind, I must’ve lost my composure. Oria had gotten completely pressured by my intensity that seemed to press him hard for answers. Only after Ru Xiang stepped in, saying「Lycoris-sempai, may I bother you for a moment?」, did I finally realize this.

「Ah… I’m sorry」

「I don’t know why Sempai keeps calling the things written here as 『fate』. But at the very least, the contents haven’t materialized right now. I feel it shouldn’t be called『fate』」

With Ru Xiang’s well-organized and gentle spoken words, I was able to calm down a little.

「Erhm, that’s probably, because I– no, uhm, because there’s someone who’s going against fate」

「But, is fate something that can be gone against? 」

「…………I’m sorry. I got confused」

In fact, after I proceeded to read the notebook, my brain got awfully confused.

「Oria’s magic is seeing 『possibilities』 concerning a person’s life」

「Possibilities…?」

「Yes. It’s possible to mostly see the past and, at times, the future, but visions of the past and visions of the future are strictly different. The difference lies in seeing a number of varying possibilities. What Lycoris-sempai read was just one story written in the notebook. Please, try reading the next stories as well」

Under Ru Xiang’s prompting, I opened the notebook once more. Written next after Lily and Wolf’s story was… some kind of love story between me and Art. Even though I’d only skimmed through the story, that had been all I could bear to read of that.

「Eh? What is this」

A story like this was naturally not in the game. I attempted to go on reading the page after that and, this time, it was a story about my friendship with Lily… or, so I thought, the situation was looking ominous. At a scene where Lily was was going to kiss me, I closed the book and held my head.

「??????」

What I read was probably no less than a tenth of a page, but it packed quite the punch.

The notebook that has now been placed on my hands…

… was clearly at the top of『strange things』 in my life so far. The notebook’s cover was a leather that could be found anywhere, but the part that hinted that the contents would be so confusing that it’d defy description, was nowhere to be found.

「Umm….」 , the creator of this chaos raised his voice.

「I’m sorry. That is… I didn’t mean any harm! Somehow or the other, I felt bad that these poor unpicked possibilities would end up disappearing without a trace, so…!」

With his slender arms, Ru Xiang poked the back of the energetically explaining Oria with a thump.

「I’m sorry, it’s a hobby. It’s my hobby, I can’t get myself stop. The story between Dorm Head Wolfgang and Liliam-san is actually my favorite tragedy… And, the story between Arutad-san and Dorm Head Lycoris with a childish boy and an older onee-sama seemed really nice… As for the story between Dorm Head Lycoris and Liliam-san, how do they put it – a “man’s fantasy”…?」

Once Oria was done talking about his excessively broad range of preferences like he’d been in a trance, he spoke with a somewhat faraway look.

「Since way back, it’s been my hobby to write down the stories that interest me when I see the『possibilities』of the surrounding people. Every time it’s found out, I’d get kicked out no matter how seriously I did my job and had to make work as a stray…」

「Please learn from your experiences already」

Oria had tears filling the corner of his eyes at my straight up retort, but he hadn’t said “I’ll do that, I’ll stop already”. This was hopeless.

「To begin with, isn’t this misuse of magic?」

「It might not seem like it, but he did get some kind of coaching from the association regarding his use of magic」

Ru Xiang wore a wry a smile as he explained that Oria was allowed to use magic that only related to being Ru Xiang’s guard.