Chapter 51 - Now, Look at This- (3)

Si-on and I explored the school while keeping an eye on the other students.

"I don't see anything suspicious at the moment."

The instant I finished speaking, a classroom door burst open and some man came running out screaming.

"Wha, AAAAAGH!"

...It was always the mouth that jinxed things.

Then again, this was a game entangled with aberrations from the start. It wasn't strange for trouble to break out at any point. It was only a matter of time.

And Si-on's eyes widened when she saw the man in a panic.

"That person... he was on the missing persons list."

Si-on and I hurried over to the man.

"We are not students here. We're government agents. We've come to rescue you."

Si-on stated her identity and purpose simply and clearly to calm the man down.

"We need information. I know it's hard, but please try to calm down and tell us what's going on."

"Govern... ment... civil servants? Aah! He's dead! He's dead! I don't want to die! It's started again again again!"

But the man rambled incoherently, his face drained of all color.

"It was just... out of curiosity! Home! Home! Send me home! I don't want this! I don't want to die!"

He fled from Si-on as she approached, bolting down the corridor.

"AAAAAGH!"

It didn't look like he had any particular destination; he seemed unable to stay still from sheer anxiety, just running blindly.

...But the man didn't get far.

Suddenly, a pink twin-tailed girl character emerged from around a corner of the corridor.

"Kyaah! What are you!?"

Crash-♡★!?

Some kind of cotton-candy effect burst out, and the man collided with the pink twin-tailed character and fell over.

...The cotton-candy effect was a bit distracting, but anyway.

Unlike the mob characters with shadowed-out faces, this one had a cute, well-defined face. She was probably one of the heroines of the Harem Academy.

As expected, Si-on looked at the pink twin-tailed character and explained to me.

"According to the information in the notebook, she's 'Moemi Momo,' one of the heroines, and a tsundere character."

"...A twin-tailed tsundere. How classic."

"Well, he's stopped moving at least. Let's secure and protect the civilian."

But the man had gone still.

I thought the shock of the collision might have brought him back to his senses, but that wasn't it.

"N-no. ...No!"

The man lay where he'd fallen, looking up at Momo and trembling violently.

It wasn't the reaction of someone meeting a cute girl character.

It was the reaction of someone confronting the very thing they feared, frozen solid.

The pink twin-tailed tsundere character Momo grabbed the hem of her skirt with one hand and pressed it down firmly.

"You... you just saw my panties, didn't you!?"

She glared down at the fallen man, her reddened face quivering.

"Pervert! Die!"

And true to the tsundere archetype of old dating sims, she raised her foot and kicked the man in the head.

"N-no! I didn't see them! I didn't! Help m-"

SPLAT! SPLAAAASH!

The man's head burst, and red chunks of flesh and blood sprayed across the corridor in every direction.

There was no time to intervene.

It happened so suddenly, so unexpectedly, and so absurdly that Si-on and I went blank for a moment.

"Ugh! So annoying!"

Momo shook her twin tails and went back around the corner.

Then, in a grotesquely subtle motion, she peeked her head out.

Creeeak....

"................"

With flat, expressionless eyes, she waited for the next victim to come around the corner.

'Fuck... this isn't a tsundere... it's a psychopathic corner-ambush murder-aberration.'

I quickly pulled myself together. I had to.

What's dead is dead... and I needed to get my head straight to stay alive.

Just then, the sound of dress shoes echoed down the corridor.

Click, click.

A mysterious-looking girl character with brown hair approached.

"Sigh... the hallway's a mess again. I guess that's what happens when everyone here is so 'unique'."

She sighed, looking at the corridor stained with sunset light and blood.

"Should I recruit more student council members? There's just too much work."

As if it couldn't be helped, she smiled, opened a window, and gazed outside.

"...Still, I do love this school."

She swept the hair blown by the wind back behind her ear.

Turning her gaze to me, she whispered in a soft voice.

"What about you?"

I wanted to say who in their right mind would like a school with dead bodies lying around... but of course, my opinion didn't matter.

Because this wasn't a conversation or a question.

[A peaceful daily life that had nothing particularly wrong with it, yet was far removed from anything you'd call the heart-racing days of youth]

A steady, rhythmic voice echoed throughout the school.

[I thought those unremarkable days would continue on, one after another. Until I met her]

It wasn't the school broadcast system. ...It was narration.

[The girl who spoke to me at the school bathed in sunset light. Gremory, the Student Council President of the Harem Academy]

All the other characters had Japanese names. Why was only the Student Council President Western?

...Well, Western characters were a dime a dozen and it wasn't important, so I moved on.

[She invited me, an ordinary student, to the student council, what could she be thinking? ...But if I'm with her, I had a small premonition that my mundane daily life might just change]

End of narration.

The sweet voice of the brown-haired beauty, Gremory, rang out.

"Now, let's build our academy life together."

At the same time, a game title appeared like a holographic status window.

Da-dun!

[Every girl, each and every one, all romanceable~ Heart-Pounding Harem Academy Life~ Love and death together]

'...What bullshit.'

Right, this wasn't anything like a conversation.

Wasn't this common in dating sims and visual novels?

It was the prologue opening that signals the start of the game.

[Infinite cycle, a love story that never ends]

A song flowed from the holographic window, and various event scenes played out against the backdrop of the school.

From fun events spent with pretty girls, to horror events that switched tone with a burst of static.

Tug-of-war played with human intestines instead of rope.

A cheerful heroine holding bandages in the nurse's office, with student corpses strewn across the beds behind her.

A heroine picking up tiny, unidentifiable chunks of minced flesh with chopsticks and offering them with an "Aah~"

...Scenes I really didn't want to see unfolded before me.

Among the students killed by the Crazy Psycho Heroines were mob extra students, but there were also people from the missing persons list who had been dragged into the game.

Si-on's face wore her characteristic calm expression, but her fists were clenched tight.

Like someone mindlessly toying with ants before killing them.

".........."

She despised the aberrations that preyed on people, the sheer unfairness of it.

And as for me...

Tragic as it was, staring at it any longer would only be bad for my mental health, so I opened the menu window and looked for the skip opening button.

"Menu."

".........."

But there was no skip button.

"Haaah...."

My eyes narrowed.

Setting everything else aside, one thing was certain.

Seeing as they didn't include a skip button just to force-feed the player all those gory, grotesque event scenes for some half-baked shock-value twist, whether this was an aberration game or whatever, this was a trash game.

...Well, that wasn't really the important thing.

What actually mattered right now was.

I looked down at my hands.

".........."

I had been trying ever since I woke up, but my grimoires wouldn't answer my summons.

Neither <De Vermis Mysteriis> nor <The Lesser Key of Solomon> responded. It felt like the signal simply couldn't reach them.

Given that I wasn't even wearing my usual coat but a school uniform, it seemed the structure of this place prevented bringing in objects from the real world outside.

The brown-haired Student Council President girl character, Gremory, looked at me and gave a pretty eye-smile, as if mocking me.

That's right. For the first time since I became a grimoire's master, I had gotten tangled up in an aberration incident without my grimoires.

***

Yo-han's small studio apartment.

The Invisible Vampire, Grizzly, found that its master and the woman beside him had suddenly vanished.

Breaking the order not to come out, it emerged from the grimoire and poked at the flat thing (laptop) sitting all alone on the desk, the last thing Yo-han had touched before disappearing.

"Gyaaa...?"

But there was no response.

"Gyaa?"

Grizzly tilted its head, then recalled something that had happened with its master.

Bobbing~ bobbing~.

It had happened one day.

Having gotten permission from its master, Grizzly was gleefully opening and closing the refrigerator door to play.

"Gyaa~ gyagyagya!"

THUD, slam! THUD, slam! THUD, slam!

But in the middle of it, the refrigerator started acting up.

...Whirrr!

"Gyaa? ...Gyaaa."

When Grizzly called Yo-han over, Yo-han, true to his former life as a philosophy major and humanities student, resolved the problem.

"...Did the fridge finally break down?"

"Will this even work?"

He smacked the refrigerator with his hand. Thump, thump.

"Hey! Fix yourself! Get fixed!"

And luckily, it actually did get fixed.

Grizzly was amazed at the sight of the dead refrigerator becoming a living refrigerator.

"Gyaaa!"

...End of flashback.

Recalling that memory, Grizzly decided to try the solution its master had taught it.

"Gyaa!"

With determination, it raised its arm above the laptop.

The grimoires that had moved onto the bed, <De Vermis Mysteriis> and <The Lesser Key of Solomon>, found themselves of one mind for the first time since they had chosen Yo-han as their master, and stopped Grizzly.

Vrrmmm! Vrrmmm!

Flap flap flap!