But that had also probably earned me Tamamo’s undying enmity. The very thought was enough to freeze my blood. To be honest, I was way more compatible with a tactician than I was with someone like her, where you never knew what they were thinking.
“Tamamo doesn’t usually get sent on such insignificant missions. She probably got involved because of Ms. Jun… I expectorate Hagihara was behind it.”
Advancing another level in the game.
“Even if we didn’t have to worry about ‘Zigzag,’ there’s no way Hime-chan and Master could contend with a strategy devised for Ms. Jun. As long as she’s still here, we should do our leavened best to join back up with her.”
A baking competition?
“I think you mean ‘our level best.’ Though I don’t think dividing our forces was such a bad strategy─nor is you being with me instead of her, Hime-chan; I doubt they’d expect it.”
“But the danger is too dangerous.”
“Yeah. We might as well give up on figuring it out on our own, and leave it to the professional…”
As I walked a little ways away from the school building, it occurred to me that out here we had a bit more breathing room than we did inside. We had a better view of our surroundings, and there were fewer places for someone to hide. Hime-chan seemed to take it for granted─and I had taken it for granted─but if Shiogi was indeed the one currently devising the anti-Jun Aikawa strategy, did she know that the Director was dead? Shiogi was a tactician, a staff officer. She was very much not a simple student, top or otherwise. So I was pretty sure she’d have to check in with the Director at regular intervals, even if she did so through the “staff room” rather than directly─in which case, it was very unlikely that she and the other students didn’t already know about Noa Origami’s murder.
And if they didn’t─then someone was concealing it. And if that was true, then the only conceivable candidate would be the “culprit.” Someone at this academy─was manipulating the picture for her own ends. If it was a struggle for power, then maybe it was someone from the “staff room”…or.
Or, if it was one of the students.
Who would be most qualified to do such a thing?
“Hime-chan. What kind of a girl is Shiogi?”
“Huh? Why do you ask? That’s a bolt from a clear blue moon.”
“I mean, I’m just interested. As Mencius says, ‘Know thyself and know thy enemy, and you shall meet no danger even in a hundred battles.’”
“That’s Sun Tzu.”
Corrected by Hime-chan.
“You’re surprisingly uneducated, Master.”
And the salt in the wound.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about. Ever heard of Fermat’s Last Theorem? I was the one who proved it!”
“Y-You was?! I had no idea, I can’t believe I was so rude! Sorry!”
“…”
Aaand she actually believed me.
“Anyway, I’d like a detailed report on Shiogi. Will you tell me whatever you know?”
“Let me see. Well, she’s very intense. Severe, is that the word? If she weren’t then I guess she might not be able to work as a tactician, but it still feels out of the ordinary. She’s like the Director that ways.”
“She’ll do anything to achieve her objectives?”
“No, Hagihara herself doesn’t have any objectives. She just adopts whatever strategy’s most effective to complete the task she’s been given. Hagihara doesn’t have any will of her own.”
“Interesting. I guess it’s not the place of the tactician to have her own objectives. If every piece on the shogi board had a will of its own, it’d be pretty hard to play.”
“In that sense, it’s less that Shiogi’s suited to being a tactician and more that she isn’t suited to being anything else.”
Hmm. Like me, just as Aikawa said─though, were we really alike? Shiogi and I were the same insofar as we had nothing inside ourselves. But it seemed like her options were even more limited than my own. Though that probably wasn’t her own fault, it was because she was stuck in this academy.
That’s the difference between people who belong to an organization and people who can’t belong to one. At that point─my interest in her was abruptly aroused. Including the suspicion that she’d murdered the Director.
“But just because she’s a tactician doesn’t mean you can let down your guard. Every student at this school acquires some skill at self-defense, including her.”
“Yeah, I learned that the hard way.”
“Kendo is Hagihara’s specialty. She’s second dan.”
“Second dan? That seems pretty average for this place.”
“No, in kendo, second dan is nothing to sneeze at. Since ancient times they’ve referred to it as Kendo Sun Vulcan, you know.”
They definitely haven’t.
Shiogi Hagihara─Tamamo Saijo, and finally Yuma Shisei, huh? What a batshit-crazy motley crew of outstanding warrior-scholars. The road ahead was fraught with peril. If there was any saving grace, it was that the students who favored a direct assault, like the Dark Knife and Zigzag, tended to lack strategy.
“I gotta say. Shiogi, Tamamo─they’re pretty interesting girls. If only I hadn’t met them in this insane place.”
Shiogi in particular was my type.
“You’re soft on your enemies, aren’t you, Master. That’s what they call skyping with the enemy.”
“Somebody put me out of my misery,” I shook my head. “But no matter what you say, Shiogi, Tamamo, Yuma, they’re all human same as us.”
“They’re all human different from us.”
For once, Hime-chan sounded less than optimistic. With that gloomy expression of hers, naturally.
I looked her over again. This all started because Hime-chan wanted to quit this academy, because she wanted to run away from it─but there was no possible way they would go to all this trouble to stop her over something like a little “non-disclosure agreement.”
She’d called herself a washout, and I believed her, and Aikawa hadn’t contradicted her─but upon consideration, was it really possible that Ichihime Yukariki could be “a nobody washout” if she was friends with the world’s strongest?
This was total conjecture, but perhaps there was another reason why they were attempting so tenaciously to prevent her from escaping. For instance, maybe she had some kind of special abilities or mutant powers, which was why the Director didn’t want to let her go…
Maybe she was a “Dark Knife” like Tamamo Saijo, or a “Spider” like Yuma Shisei. But as far as I could tell from what I’d seen of her in battle thus far, she didn’t possess any direct combat skills whatsoever─if she did, she wouldn’t have been captured so easily by the tactician’s cordon. Then again, neither did she excel in strategy and tactics like Shiogi Hagihara. To put it bluntly, Hime-chan’s behavior, coming after me included, could be summed up by the words “rash and impulsive.”
It somehow didn’t add up. It was like trying to do a Rubik’s cube with seven colors. When a jigsaw puzzle has too many pieces, it makes it impossible to finish. Too much evidence, an overabundance of clues.
If Hime-chan did hold some significance for this thoroughly unrealistic school, then it wasn’t for her skill or intelligence─but maybe for some other secret psychic art she possessed. Something that could indeed compare with the “Tactics Expert,” the “Dark Knife,” and with “Zigzag the Spider.”
“Hm.”
Well, how about we fail to rejoin Aikawa and end up in dire straits when our escape route is blocked by Shiogi Hagihara, or Yuma Shisei, or Tamamo Saijo─how about a grand finale where at the last possible second, Ichihime Yukariki saves us by unveiling the secret ability she’s been hiding this whole time?
“Hime-chan’s been an ESPer all along!”
“Wh-Whuuut?! Totally unexpected! We’re saved!”
“But I can’t fully control my power…oh no, Master!”
“What’s happening?! My right hand is Hannibal?! My shoelaces are radiating a green aura?!”
…
Fine, I’ll never be a novelist.
An introvert who doesn’t even have any imagination─is there any reason to go on living?
And now back to our regularly scheduled story. Ahem. At any rate, Aikawa was likely still hiding something from me. And probably Hime-chan was too. Which was fine, that’s to be expected. I live with all kinds of secrets myself, and I won’t tell them to anyone no matter what. Secrets are only secrets because we keep them secret. All we can ask is for secrets to stay secrets and lies to stay lies─I guess?
If possible, I wanted to remain an outsider till the end. That was the one wish I had no desire to abandon.
As we were crossing some kind of courtyard, I tripped over something. I was scared shitless that it was a trap, on account of what Hime-chan had been saying, but nothing happened. Apparently I’d just tripped over a stray soccer ball or something that someone had forgotten to put away.
“Gimme a─”
As I went to pick up the ball, my thoughts caught up to my actions. Sumiyuri Academy─Hang ’Em High, by no means a normal school. Would there really be something as banal as a “stray soccer ball” lying around?
I looked down at the ball. It was Tamamo Saijo’s severed head.