# Miracle (5)
*
Tap, clatter...
The dice rolled across the desk.
Jenny's eyes followed the tumbling cube.
"...3?"
"The target was 5. That's a shame, Miss Jenny. You failed your Observation check. You found nothing in this room."
At the moment, Jenny and I were in the middle of a spontaneous TRPG session.
It had started as a response to Jenny's claim that luck was everything.
Jenny said this without looking the least bit disappointed.
Clear evidence that she hadn't yet immersed herself in the sudden game.
But that only lasted a moment.
"As you step into the room, you spot a woman who immediately fires an impertinent question at you. On first meeting, she deduces that someone in your family has a drinking problem."
"Could this be... Shallot?"
"Who knows?"
I answered that with a quiet smile.
Jenny stared at me wordlessly for a moment, then gave a small smirk.
"If I were in that situation, I think I'd feel curious about this woman."
"Not offended?"
"I might have been, if her deduction had been exactly right. But it was ever so slightly off."
Jenny ran her fingers over the notebook she had just produced.
"This notebook was a gift from my older brother. Shallot deduced his drinking habits from the stains left on it, the initials engraved on the cover, and the trembling handwriting inside."
"But that deduction would have been wrong, wouldn't it? Your brother has long since overcome the pain of the past and found his footing again."
"How did you know that?"
She stared at me with wide eyes.
I gave a small shrug.
"There's a bookmark tucked inside that looks considerably newer than the notebook itself. A gift from your brother, perhaps?"
"...You're right. You remind me of Shallot."
"That's elementary."
Of course, unlike Shallot, I hadn't reasoned it out from scratch without knowing the answer.
It was closer to fitting the evidence around a conclusion I had already reached.
Though I saw no particular reason to announce that here.
"Shall we continue, then?"
"Does Shallot enjoy this board game as well?"
"Yes."
"Then... this character, Miss Sherry—can I take it that what she does reflects how Shallot used to play?"
"Who knows? There are no absolute right answers in this game."
That said, it was fair enough to think of this character, Sherry, as Shallot.
I had taken her usual character's stats and personality wholesale.
"But why would Shallot suddenly—"
"Do you really think she's the type to get swept up in an incident like this?"
"I suppose not."
Jenny seemed to accept that.
For the record, Sherry's appearance here was a practical necessity.
Jenny being new to TRPG and all.
A session runs more smoothly with an NPC like this to anchor it.
"Let's continue, then."
*
Once Sherry appeared, Jenny seemed to finally sink into the TRPG in earnest.
"I never knew there was a difference between a corpse that died and was burned versus one that burned to death. Does Shallot know this too?"
"I was the one who taught her, so naturally she does. Incidentally, that knowledge comes into play in this session."
She was breaking RP here and there.
But I let it go, given that she was new to all this.
After that, Jenny worked through the case alongside Shallot inside the game.
"You and Sherry have solved the first case together. Sherry seems taken with you. She wants you as her assistant. Will you accept?"
"Do I need to roll the dice to find out?"
I shook my head.
"That decision belongs to Miss Jenny. You don't leave it up to luck every time you make a friend in real life, do you?"
"..."
For just a moment, Jenny's expression clouded.
But only for a moment.
She gave a small nod and chose the path that made her Sherry's assistant.
"I understand. I'd like to keep working alongside Miss Sherry."
"Very well. Shall we wrap up this session here, then?"
Snap.
I snapped my fingers and the drawings on the board erased themselves in quick succession.
A light application of Transcription Magic.
One of the basics.
"So, Miss Jenny? What do you think?"
"About what?"
"After spending time enjoying this game—do you still believe everything is decided by luck?"
Jenny's expression became complicated.
I can't read minds.
But if I were guessing, I'd say she looked utterly exasperated.
"Doesn't a game like this make you feel even more like everything is decided by luck?"
"I apologize. It seems my intentions didn't come through as well as I'd hoped."
"If you're about to say something like 'hard work moves heaven,' I'd ask you to stop right there."
There was a sharpness in those words.
Not just me—Jenny herself must have felt it, because her shoulders flinched and she apologized quickly.
"Sorry. I fight with my family about this a lot. I reacted too harshly."
I shook my head.
"Not at all. I didn't propose this game with the intention of denying the role of luck entirely."
Even setting aside everything else, I've personally benefited enormously from the narrative power of the misunderstanding genre.
For someone like me to deny the force of luck would be rather brazen, wouldn't it?
Which is why what I'd wanted to say through the game was something a little different.
"I simply mean that, even so, we must keep preparing, keep putting in the effort, and keep rolling the dice."
"What do you mean?"
"Let me give you an example. Miss Sherry's Perception stat is 15. She succeeded on nearly every Observation check in this session. If that number had been lower, would she have succeeded so often?"
"Couldn't that talent itself be luck?"
"Miss Sherry's Perception didn't start out much different from yours, Miss Jenny. She built it up to 15 through bonuses earned across repeated sessions."
"..."
Jenny fell silent.
The moment I saw that, I decided the timing was right and moved to the main point.
"Earlier, Miss Jenny, you said Shallot turns all your coincidences into logical inevitabilities."
"I did."
"But in truth, that isn't so different from luck, either."
Jenny's brow furrowed.
As if to say: how dare you speak poorly of my closest friend.
Good friend she has, I noted to myself, and set the thought aside.
I pressed on with my explanation.
"Contrary to what most people think, deduction is not a flawless logical system. It's nothing more than a continuous series of darts thrown at the most probable target."
Diagnosis and deduction.
At their core, the two are not so different.
Coughing and a fever?
Odds are, it's an infectious disease.
If not, back to the drawing board.
Discolored soil on the shoes?
Most likely they've been down to the Limbus Pit recently.
If not, back to the drawing board.
In that respect, the two are essentially the same.
"And if you're wrong?"
"You keep alternate routes in your head and act on them."
Of course it can go wrong—it's probability, after all.
Not a cold after all?
Then perhaps lymphoma is worth considering.
Not the Limbus Pit?
Then maybe a wizard workshop.
Every diagnosis and every deduction comes equipped with Plans B, C, and D.
"It is impossible for even me or Shallot to arrive at the right answer from the very first step—every single time. We simply place our bets on what seems most probable first, and stay ready to return to the beginning the moment we find a contradiction."
"Then..."
"Yes. Perhaps, as you suspect, we are not quite so perfectly logical as people imagine."
It's a common misconception.
People assume that detectives and doctors operate like cogwheels—logic engaging logic in neat, orderly sequence.
But even the finest physician, even the greatest detective.
There is so much that remains unknown until you open up the patient or catch the culprit.
And yet we keep succeeding—because,
"Even so, we prepare and keep pushing ourselves—to minimize failure as much as possible, and to raise the odds of meeting with good fortune when it comes."
That is what makes the difference. The refusal to spare any effort in raising those odds.
Sharpening your perception in daily life. Studying hard. All of it exists to increase the probability of success—not because success is guaranteed.
But Jenny did not accept this so easily.
"Even so, isn't it luck that ultimately decides the outcome?"
"Then let me change my example. How many times did Sherry make a mistake in this session?"
"I can't recall the exact number, but it was few enough to count on one hand."
"In any of those moments—did she ever give up?"
Jenny's eyes wavered.
Reluctantly, she shook her head.
"Yes. Life sometimes brings misfortune. Sometimes the dice come up 1. But if you keep rolling, eventually you'll see a session through to the end."
"A single stroke of misfortune is enough to keep some people from ever getting back up."
Fair enough.
I myself fumbled in my previous life—[TL: "Fumble" is a TRPG term for the worst possible outcome, rolling a 1 on the dice.]—and got reincarnated in another world on the spot.
But even this, I believe, looks different depending on your perspective.
"Then perhaps we should feel all the prouder for where we stand right now. We have secured the chance to keep rolling the dice through everything we have built—and we have not given up yet."
Jenny's hand stilled.
I reached over and took the small cube from her fingers, turning it between my own.
"Miss Jenny. I won't pretend I can offer comfort for everything you have been through—I wouldn't dare. But this much, at least, I wanted to say."
Jenny's manner during the meal earlier.
And what Shallot had shared with me in private—putting the two together,
Jenny had lived through enough misfortune in the past that she could find no reason to be happy in any of the good fortune she now enjoyed.
If all her choices were at the mercy of fate.
If she was nothing more than fate's puppet.
Then what did any of it matter, what she did or didn't do—
That was the state she was in. Something close to fatalistic lethargy.
That was what I wanted to fix.
"Even if fate decides many things, what you do with that luck is Miss Jenny's choice to make. At the very least, we are not fate's perfect puppets."
Of course, there's something a little hypocritical about me saying this.
In one sense, I've been riding the greatest stroke of luck there is—the absurd favoritism of the misunderstanding genre—and coasting along quite nicely on the back of it.
But I had something to say in my own defense.
'You still need priming water before the pump will flow.'
I had put in my own effort. And what I chose to do with that luck—that was my decision.
Even showered with the absurd favoritism of fate, I could say with confidence that I had never simply been swept along by it.
"So please—enjoy the happiness in front of you, and feel no shame in doing so. As a start... let's see. Perhaps you could begin by thinking about what you might do with those small miracles written in that notebook of yours."
"..."
Jenny stared at me.
With eyes that gave nothing away.
We looked at each other in silence for a long moment.
It was Jenny who looked away first.
"...I can see why Shallot fell for you."
"I beg your pardon?"
"Thank you for your consideration, Lord Yulian. It was time well spent."
Jenny rose from her seat with a small smile.
The cynical, vaguely world-weary air she had carried through the meal was nowhere to be seen.
"Would it be all right if I borrowed this board? I'd like to try it with Shallot back in the room."
"Please, take it. I can't exactly play by myself."
"Thank you, Lord Yulian."
Jenny gathered up the TRPG pieces, bundling them carefully, and gave a respectful bow.
After Jenny left the room,
Perisia stepped quietly out from the shadows in the corner.
"...Why go to such lengths for her?"
"Because she's the one and only friend of my fiancée."
If Jenny doesn't play with her, Shallot has no one to spend time with.
With those social skills of hers, who else is going to be her friend?
But Perisia seemed to interpret my words differently.
"You are a kind person, Lord Yulian."
"It's embarrassing to hear, but I do try to be kind within the reach of my own hands."
"It was that kindness that saved my kin. That is why I find that quality admirable as well."
Bow.
She inclined her head, and slipped back into the shadows.
Not literally into the shadows, for the record.
I had heard at some point that it was an application of the Chameleon's Disguise technique.
The exact workings of it were outside my area of expertise, so I couldn't recall the details.
With that thought, I tidied up the remnants of the TRPG session.
***
After parting ways with Yulian,
Jenny immediately gathered up the dice and rulebooks she would need for the TRPG and headed back to the dormitory.
She returned to her room and was poring over the rulebook when Shallot, freshly back from her investigation, pushed open the door.
"Hm, what's all this, Jenny?"
"A gift from your fiancé."
"You met with him alone?"
"Mm. He gave me this too, so we could play together."
Thud.
Jenny closed the rulebook.
"I'm going to reconstruct the cases you solved and turn them into something we can play like this. I think it could be fun with other students, too."
"Is Jenny planning to be the Game Master?"
"Looks that way."
"Then... may I try a session?"
"Sure. I just made one, actually—let's give it a go."
And so began Jenny's first session as Game Master.
The two of them played late into the night.
"Jenny. Why is my fiancé the mastermind?"
"The dice value came out that way. What can I do?"
"Then why do I have to die with him? My fiancé could subdue someone at that level without breaking a sweat."
"Then you should have rolled better. And stop breaking RP."
And that night,
a new memo was added to Jenny's notebook.
—