16 — Coincidence Can Never Be Freaky

Three days later, I was out of the infirmary after the academy's healer said it was okay for me to leave.

However, apart from that, I didn't remember what was going on.

But right now, Lily, Myra, and I were having fun alone in the council room.

Well, "having fun" may not be the best way to describe how much work we had to do after such a tragic accident.

"Zero casualties," Lily declared while checking the file given to us by the kingdom, given our big responsibility.

Zero.

The number sat on the page like a stone. 

I read it three times. Same conclusion.

Zero casualties. 

Impressive, considering how stupid these people were, as Lily described them to me with her face breaking like a seething teapot.

The file was official. Kingdom letterhead, wax seal, the whole thing. And it said zero, in a clean, printed hand, as if the number had always been there. As if the man who died on that stage and came back had never died at all. 

Because, you know, according to the Kingdom, he hadn't. 

There had been, of course, a "minor disturbance," a "crowd surge," a "brief panic." 

Nobody had died. Nobody had been hurt. The woman in the sky was a rumor. 

The Sleepwalker was simply a bedtime folklore story told by people. 

That was the official story. Three days later, that was the only story anyone was allowed to tell.

If you ever wonder, yes... the dormitory and this room are technically the same picture, except for some parts. Same layout, same tall windows, same long table. Same people, different room. 

Lily is the vice president, while Mireille, a.k.a. Myra, is the treasurer. 

And the councils of Sophia and Goethia had been circling each other for years, talking about a merger everyone knew was coming but no one would dare enough to say that out loud.

"How could that be?" Lily asked herself, as if all she was doing was talking to herself.

"Didn't I already tell you yesterday?" I answered cheekily.

"Can you shut up? I'm not talking to you," she snapped.

Honestly, there have been many questions throughout all of this.

First, how could they infiltrate that place? The Crossing Border isn't just some place where outsiders can simply sneak in and infiltrate it. In fact, there should be a proper explanation for this phenomenon. Second, when that witch first appeared—before the lightning, before the killing, before anyone understood what was happening—why didn't a single person run? Not one. Everyone just stood there, staring up at her, waiting for something. That was extremely strange, and fortunately, nobody was injured and everyone survived. 

Although there was someone who could have easily died on the spot during the incident, since that person could have had a history of heart problems and such... oh, sorry, I went off-topic.

What I mean is more the fact that his surviving on his own was a miracle granted by Goddess Sophia at that moment, and interestingly enough, I don't see this as something good.

As if she had been watching over all those who prayed to her this entire time.

Ren had come to the infirmary the day after. He asked his questions, took his notes, and left without telling me anything I didn't already know. The philosophical inquiry into memory magic turned out to be less inquiry and more formality. He looked at me the whole time like he was waiting for me to say something specific. I didn't. He left.

BANG!

My train of thought was shattered instantly.

"Clara..." Lily said, slightly annoyed.

"Yeah. What is it, you nag?"

Suddenly, I screamed in pain. It felt like a balloon's rubber being stretched and then blown up until it was about to burst. And that rubber was none other than my cheek.

"Ahhhh! That hurts!"

"What did you say?"

"Come on. Say it again," Lily challenged.

"Nag— okay, okay, enough! I give up!"

I couldn't take it anymore. 

The pain in my soft, delicate cheek had made it turn completely red. And strangely enough, she wasn't stretching it at all. She was pressing it with her sharp fingernails like a tiger. This, of course, made me scream immediately as this tiger... I mean, this vicious cat seemed unwilling to give up.

And yet she was doing all of this with such a plain, innocent expression on her face.

I mean, literally, she wasn't showing any significant expression at all. 

But it was painfully obvious from her face that she was actually angry.

A few seconds later, she released the cheeky pressure from those horrifying nails. 

Myra couldn't hold back her laughter.

"Lily! That's enough. She's learned her lesson," she said soothingly. 

She approached Lily and then massaged her stiff joints.

And yeah, Myra is always like this. She's there, and I like having her around as the handler of both wild beasts— I mean, the one who tames and calms both me and Lily.

"Ugh, Mireille. She's really getting on my nerves," Lily grumbled.

"Okay, okay... it's fine. Don't keep going."

She said this while gently stroking her hair. Ah, this atmosphere is way too wholesome. Even someone like Lily can completely melt under the comfort Myra naturally gives her.

Different from when she suddenly lost her memories and the variables in her brain changed.

Terrifying. As if her original personality had almost been replaced just like that.

Could there be a demon here?

Ah, whatever. 

Maybe I was just imagining things too much. It's not like there could actually be a monster in the school who happens to be a genius demon capable of changing someone's variables.

And if that really did happen, surely it would just be a passing incident—

"Clara."

Lily called my name. Her voice was incredibly faint.

No, it was even too quiet for Lily.

Is she afraid of something?

Myra herself was beside her, frozen as she stared at the writing on the yellowed papyrus.

"Take a look at this," she said, showing me the number written on the paper.

Wait, what's strange about it?

I shook my head.

"Idiot. Weren't you the one who said we needed to keep an eye on the school's budget?"

Yeah, so what? I don't understand what point you're trying to make.

"Exactly."

Honestly, yes. Arthur and I had been intervening in and isolating the existing expenditures as a systemic consequence of last year's incident. And yes, both of us understood this very well.

However, what confused me was what made the number "300,000 vels" so interesting to discuss.

Wasn't this normal?

It was quite a lot, sure, but the calculation itself matched what was written at the bottom of the paper: around two point five million vels per year.

"Ugh, you really don't get it, do you? Here."

Lily then pointed at the number, which suddenly vanished just like that.

My eyes widened.

No wonder they had been making those expressions.

"Wait, wait... so that number was fabricated? And you neutralized it?" I asked in confusion.

She merely nodded slowly without answering right away.

"It seems last year's budget was manipulated to achieve some kind of agreement."

That would be quite strange if true.

Because then another question arose:

What were those three hundred thousand vels for?

It was written there in bold:

"STUDENTS ACHIEVEMENT BUDGET."

But with the writing gone, that budget had effectively vanished.

I looked at the page again. The total at the bottom still said two point five million vels. I read it again. Then again. Then I did the math in my head, the way Arthur had taught me—line by line, subtracting each entry from the running total.

300,000 was missing.

2,500,000 minus 300,000 was 2,200,000.

But the paper said 2,500,000. 

The paper said the academy had spent two point five million vels this year. And if 300,000 of that had never existed—if it had been written in and then erased—then the real total was 2.2 million.

Which meant the 300,000 had been added. 

Someone had inflated the budget by 300,000 vels, skimmed the difference, and left the total intact so no one would notice. The number had been sitting there for a year, waiting for someone to do the subtraction.

As we already know—if you don't understand—every budgeting process in this magical academy is carried out with magic too. So, every budget entry that is written down fulfills the required conditions because the ink being used isn't ordinary ink.

Rather, it is ink extracted from the Golden Frog tree and processed in such a way that it can be used with a magical pen to write anything onto papyrus.

This is also why every student is provided with the exact same exclusive pen as part of the budget. We aren't allowed to use other magical pens, because doing so causes instability within the academy, preventing them from tracking academic performance at the school.

That's why, if you fail an exam, for example, then that failure is genuinely and honestly reflective of your abilities at this academy.

However, if this ink had indeed been forged and was merely waiting for someone to notice what was strange about it, then it could be confirmed that the allocated funds had already vanished.

Therefore, even long before this incident.

Lily was simply the only one who had noticed it after the Crossing Border tragedy.