Re-Becoming a Nerd (END)

“La… girls first.”

“Thank you, Elder.”

Seeing as there would be others inside the cabin, we decided to put on our act early and purposefully. We’d then judge how pretentious we’d have to be based on who the passengers were and how much attention they seemed to care about us—that was the plan, at least. But the plan didn’t tell me what to do if Annabelle stopped and turned white as she was boarding the stagecoach.

Turned white? Now where had I seen that before?

“Eek! U-um. Apologies, I forgot something!”

Suddenly letting the cloth drapes of the stagecoach fall shut, Annabelle decided to immediately bail from the wagon the moment she saw its interior. Then she looked at me with a pained expression on her face, like she really really needed to change her underwear.

“Huh? Is somethin’ the matter?” yelled the coachman from the front. I don’t know why this guy had an extremely thick American redneck twang in Magic Europe whilst I was hearing it as Japanese, but yeah.

“A-ah, it’ll just be a moment!”

“Hurry up! We’re leavin’ in five, with or without you.”

I looked at Annabelle like she was crazy. She looked at me like there was a big problem.

“No, actually—is something the matter?” I asked.

“Shh,” she hissed. Then she stood extremely close to me, which she hadn’t done ever since she’d tied me up and threatened me with her needlessly large rod. “Be quiet. There’s a Templar inside.”

Oh. Anxiety quickly welled up in my chest. That was actually somewhat of a problem. I couldn’t promise you definitively that I was taking this world seriously, but if there was one thing I knew for sure—I didn’t want my journey with Annabelle and magic to end yet. Getting arrested here for impersonation would be terrible for my Polymarket odds on reaching godhood.

A switch turned on in my brain. Don’t screw around now.

“But why is he riding a stagecoach? And his companion…”

“Calm down,” I said. “Do you recognise him? Is he from your sect?”

I didn’t know how much this mattered, because I didn’t know anything about how Templars worked at all besides brief lore tidbits from Quanta TCG. These questions were for her as much as they were for myself—I wanted to jog her brain with questions so she would keep thinking and resist the urge to collapse under pressure.

“N-not at all. And he’s definitely not from Highcrest sect. I would recognise someone with a face like that…”

What the hell is that supposed to mean?

“Should we ditch, then? Spend the night at an inn?”

“U-u-u-um, I don’t know about th-that…”

“Hey! Are you two comin’ or not?”

“J-just a second!” replied Annabelle. Then her eyes darted towards me. “Primot, I really don’t know… there’s someone else besides the guy in the carriage, too…”

A guy. I knew it. I BLOODY KNEW IT. I could feel it in the way she spoke. That blushing had nothing to do with him being a Templar. She’s just a dumb, midget wh—

No no no. Daisuke, this isn’t the time to go on an ironic tangent and signpost your various mental illnesses. You need to lock in if you want to keep this journey chugging along.

She’s not the enemy. Focus.

“Hey. Remember where you are. You can’t call me that right now.”

“O-oh, right. Of course, Elder Rowan,” she said loudly.

I drew my face right next to Annabelle’s.

“So. About the two people in the carriage—think they’ll recognise me?”

“...”

For some reason, her breathing was getting even more erratic, and she didn’t respond to my question. I gave her a slight push on the shoulder, like an Oi, wake up, but her body was so intensely rigid and straight that it was like I was touching a wax figurine.

“T-too close…”

“Oh, whoops. Sorry.”

“I-it’s okay.”

Chat? Is this W Rizz? Chat? Is this W Rizz?

Answer: No. You’re not funny, and you just traumatised this poor girl. Dumbfuck.

Ah, screw it. What was the big deal with getting investigated for looking Asian, anyway? I thought about it a little more (this means that I did not think about it at all and was just justifying my impulses in hindsight), and came to a realisation: if Rowan the Elder was well known, then surely there’d be some sort of tale or rumour that claimed he “looked different from other Templars”. If he wasn’t, then I don’t think some random Templar from a different sect would care too much about me. Perhaps they’d sense that I was powerless just like Annabelle did, but would they really derail a journey just to interrogate that small detail? They were on the stagecoach for a reason, which meant they had somewhere to be. Just because somebody witnesses something suspicious doesn’t necessarily mean they’d go out of their way to ensure their bad hunch was verified or not. It would probably end up as a rumour of some sort, but by that time I’d already have cleared it up with Highcrest sect, anyway. And even if they decided to question me, would that really amount to anything if I just denied everything?

“Are you two comin’ or not?!”

“Yeah, yeah.”

In any case, I was absolutely not going to spin this as a way to spend another night alone with Annabelle. Staying overnight with a male stranger for multiple nights in a row must have taken a toll on her, and I felt bad for not noticing earlier.

Don’t worry. I’ll get you home.

I grabbed her hand and hastily climbed up the steps at the back of the horse-drawn carriage. Curiously, she didn’t resist. Then, I slowly lifted up the cloth drapes separating the outside world from the interior of the cabin, and there I immediately realised I’d made a mistake.

***

Meanwhile, somewhere in Hachioji ward, there was a woman with amber eyes and red hair perched over a skinny corpse split into three parts. In the distant background, there was also a crushed truck with a smouldering engine hissing non-stop.

“...Oops.”

To the average bystander, the woman would have looked like a professional cosplayer, but to someone with the requisite knowledge, this was a Saint—a person who had ascended to near godhood through unlocking the secret of combining multiple elements, and thereby bestowed with the Holy title of Saint as well as a regnal name: Alicia. Before her ascension, she had simply gone by something else, although any clues as to what that was have since been long lost to time.

Despite her superhuman powers, this woman was far from omniscient, and she stared blankly at her mistake with no concrete ideas on what to do next. Should I hit Erica up? No, that vile woman would never let me hear the end of it. How about Anne-Marie? Messing with the timeline would be problematic. As she ran down the mental list of people she could call for help and formed various excuses as to why she could not own up to her mistake as naturally as she breathed, she sighed and announced a rather terrifying thought.

“Well, if he died so easily, he mustn’t have been important anyway. Guess I’ll find another candidate and delay my return?”