The next day, I visited the Lestarius’s research lab, where Dr. Shouko greeted me with laughter.
“Ah ha ha ha! Wow! I hear things have been a complete mess since two nights ago,” she declared.
“It’s not a laughing matter… Wait, weren’t you guys affected, Dr. Shouko?”
“We happened to be testing a psionic displacer at that time. Mr. Wells and I were completely focused on our research. We had no idea what was going on outside!”
“That at least proves the device we made works as intended. Good news for us,” Wells said, shrugging.
I don’t sense disappointment from him. Doesn’t he have any feelings for Dr. Shouko? She’s quite beautiful.
As we chatted, more guests entered the lab: Colonel Serena and Lieutenant Robertson.
I see… So this is what their presence feels like. I remember it. How come there’s such a ferocious aura enveloping Serena? Not only does it feel like she could draw her sword at any moment, the veins on her forehead are bulging. Come on…smile a bit.
“If you dare say something stupid, I’ll stuff a plasma grenade in your mouth and sew it shut,” Serena snapped.
“Aye aye, ma’am.” I straightened up and saluted her. If I made a lame joke right now, she might actually go through with her threat. As for why she was so mad, there could be only one reason.
“Care to explain yourself?” she asked. “I’m listening.”
“Explain myself? What do you mean? If you’re referring to the chaos that broke out till morning two nights ago, we were victims of that as well.”
I wasn’t lying. Two nights earlier, I’d been with Kugi all night, then had to satisfy the other girls—minus Mei and Konoha—afterward.
“You didn’t cause that occurrence…?”
“I’m not a thrill-seeking criminal. Why would I purposely make something like that happen?” I answered with a straight face. After all, I’m not fibbing…simply masking the truth.
Colonel Serena stared at me suspiciously, but eventually gave up and sighed. “Good point. I doubt even you would go that far. Sorry; the event rattled my nerves.”
“I take it the Lestarius…or, well, the entire Pirate-Hunting Unit…wasn’t spared.”
“It wasn’t… Luckily, nothing exceeding the classification of ‘accident’ occurred. It’s certainly fortunate that none of the occurrences rose to the level of ‘incident’ or ‘scandal.’ Very much so.”
I wasn’t sure what determined whether something was an “accident,” “incident,” or “scandal.” Did that depend on an infraction’s significance? Whether criminal behavior was involved? Was it simply based on the extent of the infraction? At any rate, it’s good to hear that nothing grave took place.
No matter what, I couldn’t admit that I’d produced the chaos. In the worst-case scenario, I might actually be thrown in jail. After all, what I’d caused was tantamount to a large-scale hypnotic terrorist attack. If it had been confined to our ship, then there wouldn’t have been a problem. The event had affected the entire Dauntless, however, so simply paying a fine wouldn’t cut it. I’d probably face criminal charges.
“Hm? What’s the matter, Kugi? You’re sweating an awful lot,” Dr. Shouko noted.
“N-n-nothing.” Kugi was sweating bullets, and she was pale in the face.
Kugi? Can you please control yourself a bit? You might give us away. Colonel Serena again glowered at me in suspicion. No, no, no. We know nothing.
“Sorry, Kugi. I know I explained that a bit bluntly, but I had to, to clear our names.”
“Y-yes, my lord.”
I sent Serena a glance that said, “It’s a delicate topic, so please don’t inquire further.” She didn’t seem happy about that as she glared at me, but however she felt, she had no right to probe further into what our being “victims” meant.
Kugi was the only one with me today. The twins were lazing around, since they were still exhausted from the events of the previous day, while Mimi and Elma didn’t have a reason to come along to the lab to begin with. Mei needed to stay behind to watch the ship. As for Konoha, she had barely left her room since two nights ago; when she did leave, she made sure not to run into me. I’d decided to respect that decision and avoided her too. I understood why she was acting this way.
“Fine, then…” said Serena. “We’ve managed to get things back under control, so we’ll depart in twelve hours. The Screech Owls will accompany us as guides. Be prepared.”
“Understood. We’ll go prep as well, then. Kugi, let’s head back to the ship.”
“Yes, my lord.”
I’d wanted to ask whether the lust wave Kugi and I created had affected the spheres, but I’d missed the opportunity. Well, since Dr. Shouko and Wells didn’t mention anything, it’s probably safe to assume that nothing happened. I’ll ask them later if I get a chance, though.
✦ ✦ ✦
“So we’re finally departing?” Elma muttered listlessly. It seemed she had yet to fully recover from yesterday. Her skin glowed, so she was at least in good physical condition.
“Um…why is Kugi curled into a ball over there?” Mimi asked.
“Uh…well, you know that thing two nights ago?”
“The lust wave?”
“Can we stop calling it that? But, well, yeah—that thing. Kugi just learned that it reached much farther than we initially assumed.”
“Oh…”
“You see, what happened would definitely have been embarrassing even in Verthalz—but since people there can protect themselves from such things, it wouldn’t have escalated to the point of criminality.”
“Oh… I see,” Elma said, wincing. She must’ve grasped the implications.
“Here, though, it was basically a terrorist attack,” I continued. “We were thoughtless, and we screwed up, and in a worst-case scenario, that could’ve gotten me thrown in jail. Kugi just learned that today, so she’s a bit down.”
“I see…” Wiska said. “It really was basically a terrorist attack.”
Kugi’s ears twitched as she apparently overheard Wiska.
“Don’t beat yourself up too much, Kugi. There’s no evidence, and even if people have suspicions, they’d be impossible to prove. I guess if they tortured us with probes that could look inside our brains, that’d change things, but there’s no way they’d go that far on just suspicions.”
Unless you committed serious crimes, like pirates did, the military wasn’t supposed to look directly inside your mind through a brain hack. That was considered torture. Besides, the Dauntless didn’t have psionic equipment, so there shouldn’t be any way for them to determine that Kugi and I had committed this crime—which I wasn’t even sure could be called a crime.
“So ya say, but if episodes like this follow us around, people are gonna notice,” Tina pointed out.
“It won’t happen again. At least, I don’t think it will.”
Since Kugi had…“tuned” me or whatever, I could easily control my psionic powers. There wouldn’t be any more such occurrences unless I caused one deliberately.
“Anyway, it won’t be long before we set out. Take care of any last-minute preparations.”
“Yeah… How are you so energetic?”
“I’m not sure. I feel pretty good right now, though.”
Elma, Mimi, Tina, and Wiska were still exhausted from yesterday’s events, but for some reason, I felt better than ever. I wonder why? Did gaining control over my psionic abilities improve my stamina?
“We don’t need to prepare much, since we already resupplied and completed our maintenance checks. If you’ve got enough energy left, you should spend it consoling Kugi, checking on Konoha, or taking care of Mei. We’ll go get ready.”
“Okay.” Konoha, eh? I’m still not sure how I should interact with her.
Konoha was a military officer of the Holy Verthalz Empire, so the lust-wave leakage probably hadn’t been a problem for her. Still, for some reason, she was avoiding me. Don’t tell me she took a direct hit from that leakage and ended up in an unspeakable situation? Maybe I should ask Mei, since she’d likely been monitoring her. Then again, I thought I should at least check on Konoha myself prior to crossing a line and violating her privacy. I decided to console Kugi first, then go check on how Mei was feeling.