After gaining access to the Closed-Stack Archives, the four of them began searching for the graduation theses among the silent stacks.
“There are graduation theses on Angel Tears present in the Closed-Stack Archives, but I find it very funny indeed that these are the only ones to be found anywhere on campus.”
As Henrik muttered under his breath, Felix’s head suddenly jerked up.
“Incidentally…to invent a new drug, you first need to patent it.”
“What do you mean, patent?”
Felix smiled with delight, excited to share his legal expertise with Mia, whose own knowledge of that field was sparse at best.
“Patents protect inventors. By patenting a new drug, you can make sure that only you have the right to synthesize and market it.”
“Although Angel Tears patients aren’t exactly numerous, so you wouldn’t expect there to be huge profits involved…”
Henrik frowned pensively.
Then…what’s the point?
As they all mulled it over, they finally reached the section where the graduation theses were kept. The guard who had accompanied them cleared his throat suddenly.
“It is strictly forbidden to remove materials from this area, so please look through them here.”
His eyes were sharp and fixed on Mia and her accomplices. In other words, they were being watched.
They’d used the Closed-Stack Archives before, but security seemed much stricter this time around.
Last time, we looked at patient charts, as I recall.
Yes, it had been Demon Claw patient charts. Perhaps nobody cared if students looked at those. After all, any sections hinting towards the cause of the disease had been redacted from every chart.
“Usually, students have to submit a viewing request and pass an inspection to view these files. Ostensibly so they can keep track of who’s viewing them in case any important files go missing. But I suspect that there’s an ulterior motive to keep track of who’s viewing them so they can crack down on any leaks to outside parties. It’s just like the patents—someone doesn’t want data on Angel Tears becoming public knowledge, and they made up these rules and regulations to prevent that.”
But who? Henrik rubbed his chin thoughtfully.
Mia was deep in thought, too.
Angel Tears and Demon Claw were two sides of the same coin. Through researching Angel Tears, the connection between the two would become apparent. Then it wouldn’t take too big of a mental leap to realize the army’s part in all this, with their inhumane scheme.
But if anyone figured it out, then…
Mia felt her heart sink as it always did when she remembered their old professor.
Students were under constant observation. And who was better placed to observe the students than their own professors? The thought made Mia’s back stiffen.
She didn’t think that there was any new army mole among the professors assigned to replace Professor Einz. But what if there were other army loyalists present among the faculty from way back? That possibility couldn’t be ruled out.
Maybe even the attendant on duty right now…?
Mia kept pawing through the thesis files, ruminating on it. She was looking specifically for any theses on the development of the medicine used to treat Angel Tears.
The files were arranged chronologically by year, so she should probably focus on the year of the medicine’s announcement. That should make her search nice and easy. However, when she opened up the first file she found…
“Huh?”
“You’ve got to be kidding me…”
The file was filled with nothing but blank pages. The text itself seemed to have been removed from the paper by some special force.
The group split up and began searching in earnest. But there was no file to be found that offered any academic examination of Anacphis—the Angel Tears drug.
They asked a nearby attendant about it, but he merely frowned and opened up one of the files, muttering, “There’s no way that’s possible.” When he realized the pages were indeed blank, he paled and quickly excused himself.
“What’s the meaning of this?”
Vital research data was seemingly missing from a highly monitored and restricted area.
Who doesn’t want us to see this?
Mia felt herself growing suspicious. If someone was trying to hinder their work, then who could it be?
She looked at Henrik, frustration bubbling up inside her. He sighed. “I had my suspicions, and it looks like my hunch has just been confirmed.”
“What do you mean?”
Felix frowned at him, and Henrik shrugged in response.
“It seems there’s more than a few parties who’d prefer this information to remain hidden. If I was in Einz’s shoes, I’d certainly have tried to make sure not a scrap of data remained. But it’s been a long time since she left. Someone would have noticed the tampering in the meantime. All this tight security, they wouldn’t have let something like that slip past.”
As he spoke, Henrik kept his gaze fixed on the attendant from before, who looked highly agitated.
If Einz was involved in this, then they were screwed. The fanatical professor had risked everything to tear their Grand Plan to shreds and scrub it from existence, even knowing how much of their blood, sweat, and tears they had poured into it.
“So, what do we do?”
Felix was unable to keep the frustration out of his voice.
Just when they’d finally gotten a hint, it had led them to a dead end. Mia felt like crying hot tears of frustration. As she stood there at a total loss, Henrik suddenly pulled another thesis file from a different shelf.
“Let’s just focus on doing what we can for now. Research on Angel Tears is still ongoing.”
Henrik began reading through the thesis in his hands. Mia grabbed a nearby file and followed suit. He was right. They didn’t have time to stand around in despair.
Mia cast her eyes down the page, swallowing her feelings of turmoil and trying to perk herself back up. Felix and Mathias were also looking through the files with solemn faces, even though this wasn’t even their field of study.
Eyes quickly scanning the text, Henrik began muttering under his breath.
“I see, I see… Yes, I had an inkling… Next is… What? They’ve moved into the area of preventative medicine already?”
“Preventative medicine?”
“Look at this. The most recent of the graduation theses.”
Everyone leaned in close as Henrik pointed to a particular passage.
“The benefits of tranquilization weighed against the dangers of anesthesia…? And then, onto methods of prevention?”
Henrik nodded.
“These seem to be nothing more than palliative measures if you ask me.”
This wasn’t what Mia had been expecting at all. All four of them had just been discussing the true qualities of magic and the kind of shadowy organizations that might be involved. She’d thought there must be tons of research available on how to cure the root cause of Angel Tears.
“But what does this mean?”
Mia’s voice was high and trembly.
“It means they aren’t trying to cure the root cause of the disease. All they’re doing is managing it. And thinking up preventative measures to prevent further cases. I don’t know if such measures are effective or not, but the number of infected patients has definitely declined in recent years.”
Henrik pointed to a page of statistics on Angel Tears’ patient numbers. One year, in particular, marked the start of a drastic reduction in cases.
“It corresponds with when the army backed off on injecting so many people with magical power. Here it shows they figured out the projected dose of injected magic that an ordinary person could handle. So maybe there’s no need for a drug for curing Angel Tears, after all. Maybe no one cares anymore. Maybe that’s why no one even noticed the missing theses.”
“But…but that means…”
Mia couldn’t get the words out. If she didn’t say them out loud, maybe they’d stop being true…but she forced herself.
“That means the currently infected patients have been abandoned? It means that infected kid from last year isn’t going to be leaving the hospital at all?”
“…”
Henrik’s silence was as good as an answer. Besides, he wasn’t the type to sugar-coat things anyway.
Felix and Mathias were both silent, their faces solemn and sad.
They were both thinking about Mia’s mother, too, their hearts aching for her.
Mia had believed that Angel Tears patients had been prioritized. She believed that drugs for the disease had been developed. It hadn’t seemed fair. But the truth was much crueler than Mia could have ever imagined. The mages who developed Angel Tears became so deranged and violent. All just for the army to use them as disposable tools of war?
Perhaps the army had always planned to use them and then discard them. All of them—not just the Demon Claw patients, but the Angel Tears patients, too…
Mia could feel her skin crawling with horror.
“Using people up and casting off whatever’s left. Isea Kingdom has been guilty of that for centuries. And all the while they glorify the ‘might’ of the Kingdom, with which they overthrew Radius.”
Felix turned to leave, muttering darkly under his breath.
“Hey, wait! Felix!”
Mathias yelled out as Mia immediately sprang into action, quickly chasing after him. Everyone was afraid that he was going to have another of his attacks.