Chapter 203.

Chapter 203. The Man Killer Returns to the Academy. (1/2)

I woke up this morning with a headache. My memories were a bit hazy. I felt like I’d woken up in the middle of the night at some point, but I couldn’t remember whether that was part of a dream I had.

Since I couldn’t remember anything of it, I figured I’d just awoken from a dream.

When I sat up I confirmed nothing was out of order. Everything was as it had been before I fell asleep.

I rolled off the bed and stood up.

Though I had a headache, my body felt pretty good.

I stretched a bit before I headed downstairs and discovered three girls in the living room. They were playing video games with Alicia’s little brother.

When the three of them noticed me their eyes all locked onto me.

“What? Do I look weird?” I asked cluelessly.

“No, you don’t,” Rosa responded.

The three girls looked at each other and giggled about something.

“Is there something on my face Chris?” Outnumbered, I turned to the only other boy in the room and sought confirmation from him.

“No. There’s nothing. Heheh.”

“What the hell was that cocky chuckle of yours? You don’t look the least bit convincing.”

I entered the bathroom and verified there was nothing on my face.

I returned to the living room area and asked again, “What the hell, there’s nothing on my face. So what’d you chuckle for, brat?”

“Huh? Not sure, they just told me to do that if you asked. Was that good enough?” He turned to them and asked.

“Yeah, yeah. Good job, Chris. That was perfect.” Rosa ruffled his hair praising him.

“Hah? Is this some new form of bullying?” I didn’t get it at all, what was with this?

“Yeah, yeah, we’ve established the, ‘make Ran overly self-conscious task force.’ It was created specifically to bully you.” Rosa rolled her eyes and joked.

“And what’s the real reason?”

“We just wanted to make you think we snuck into your room to draw on your face as a prank for being the first to fall asleep. But you ruined our fun with your locked door last night.”

“I see. So it was a petty form of revenge for being unable to prank me?”

“Yeah, you completely killed the biggest planned event in our sleepover.”

I was naturally confused, she could have just picked the lock on the door if she really wanted. Why go through this? Unless… she did do it and she was trying to verify something. 

Wait… what if I did get pranked and I just don’t remember it? What if these assassins had some sort of method to make me forget? They were assassins, right? It wasn’t impossible.

No, what if it’s a layer deeper, a multilayered trap? One to just make me think they did something when they didn’t. They’d force me into a state of paranoia trying to expend my energy to figure out what the prank had been when there was none at all.

But… the fact that I felt like I’d woken up at some point refuted that. Then again, it could actually support the idea. Perhaps they knocked on my door and woke me up in the middle of the night and when I checked there was nobody there so I went straight back to sleep. That might explain why I remembered nothing because I was still groggy and hadn’t completely woken up yet.

Ugh, it felt like the more I thought about it, the more I was playing into their little mind game.

I already have a headache, I’m not in the mood for this first thing in the morning.

“I’m going out for a bit. I’ll probably head straight to work after.”

“Oh? On a Saturday? That’s pretty rare, did you have plans today?” Rosa asked curiously.

“Yeah, you could say that.”

“At least have something to eat before you go then. There’s some food I made for you in the fridge.”

“Oh, thanks.”

“Heheh, no problem, Ran~” Rosa was unusually cheerful when she said that.

So much so that I couldn’t help but ask, “You didn’t put anything weird in the food, did you?”

“Of course not~”

I squinted my eyes suspiciously. Perhaps everything before this had been a feint to distract me from the food. Maybe the true prank would be the food.

Sadly, that wasn’t the case either. I cautiously ate it, but there wasn’t anything unusual or out of place about it.

After I ate I got dressed and headed to the university.

An hour later, Wisteria arrived. I probed her to figure out whether I’d really been pranked, but in the end, she gave nothing up. I spent the day teaching her more about proofreading and editing.

My shift with Yuna was a breeze, though I had to listen to her complaints that had piled up over the last week about Rosa. They really didn’t get along well. I was already used to listening to her rattle on in our downtime every Saturday about things Rosa did that annoyed her. I was the only one she could let out any steam around about others. It wasn’t only Rosa she complained about though, there were other coworkers and even customers. More specifically, she’d similarly caught onto the faction war going on behind the scenes.

It didn’t appear she’d come to the conclusion I had about the Owner selling pictures of them in secret. Even if she knew… she couldn’t do anything about it unless she quit. I’d only recently discovered there was a clause in the lengthy contract everybody signed to work here that permitted such sketchy conduct. The wording of the clause was very sneaky. Even if you read it, you wouldn’t think anything of it.

One’s image was the store’s image, if the store wished to sell or distribute merchandise or items representative of store employees as mascot characters in the form of a stuffed plush toy, they could do so. It covered pictures as well.

It was best to not tell anyone about this. Sometimes, living in ignorance was bliss. Since it didn’t affect me, I didn’t care. The Owner wasn’t about to go and waste money on Ran merchandise or pictures of me any time soon. 

After work, I returned home. I didn’t go to sleep tonight. Rather, I waited until everyone else was asleep.

Wisteria snuck out of the girl’s room in the middle of the night and paid me a visit. I’d requested her to. I spent all night teaching her until early morning. 

She left our place early in the morning saying she had to prepare her things to leave today. In reality, all of her things were already packed. 

After she left I headed out with the excuse that I had things to do today again. We decided to spend the last of our time together at the airport and met up there today. We found somewhere nice and quiet where it was just the two of us. 

I taught her everything I could and provided her with as much practice as possible until it was late into the evening when it was almost time for her to board her flight.

An hour before she left, we had one final exchange.

“Hey, Wisteria, could you do me a favor when you get back to the academy?”

“Sure, what is it?”

“Well… does the academy have a library with information you wouldn’t normally find elsewhere?”

“Yes, it does have such a place. Why? Was there something you wanted to find out?”

“Yeah, I wanted you to see if you could find any factual information pertaining to devils.”

“Wouldn’t it be easier to do a search online? I’m sure there’s lots of information available online about them.”

“What you find online these days can hardly be trusted. Just about any random person can put out fake information. There’s hardly any way for me to verify the credibility of such information easily. But if it’s a secretive place like an academy for assassins, I’d have more confidence in a source of information like that.”

“I see. That does definitely sound like a problem. Ran, despite claiming you’re a devil, are you actually clueless about devils?”

“Uh… haha… sorry about that. I am clueless about them, I only just recently figured out that I might be one because of those contracts I’ve had people sign.”

“Does something happen when people sign the contracts?”

“Yeah… something actually does happen,” I explained the typical phenomenon I experience and even told her how I verified it was not all in my head with the few experiments I conducted. The time with Angela was the most convincing one of them all because of the sort of game we played.

She nodded and responded, “I see. If what you say is true it makes sense why you’d think you’re a devil. But… do you truly believe something like making it so someone no longer ages is really possible with a simple contractual agreement? You have no proof of that.”