Chapter 53 – A Brief Respite (4)

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Translated by Jinmu

Read only at Novelbyu.com & Utoon.net

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One early summer day scented with the fragrance of grass. The written exam had just ended, and countless youths had poured out across the academy. The green of the trees sparkled like jewels in the sunlight, and birdsong tickled the ears of youth.

There was even a pair of a man and woman whispering love to one another in a secret spot among the foliage, and female students sitting on a bench, laughing brightly together while cheerfully gossiping about their classmates behind their backs.

But the atmosphere around the cadets seated here on the picnic mat was a little different. Air that had gone beyond chilly into downright cold.

The club members’ gazes all turned to Chloe. Sensing the shift in atmosphere, Weapon swallowed hard. Judging by his appearance alone, he looked like the kind of guy who could punch a tiger to death barehanded, but he was far too timid.

“Chloe?”

“……”

Weapon called her name like a question. Outwardly she was clearly Chloe, but the strange atmosphere made her feel like someone else entirely.

Her eyes were cold and empty, and her cheeks twitched faintly. They say that when a woman harbors resentment, frost falls even in midsummer, and this felt exactly like that.

“Huh? What the hell? What’s wrong with Chloe?”

“Damn it, get away from her already!”

“What? Why? Geom-ma, you’ve known Chloe for a while now. You ought to know why she’s like this.”

Saki tilted her head with a puzzled expression. At the same time, Chloe tilted her head at the same eerie angle.

Eyes ringed around red irises. What had they called that again, sanpaku eyes? I had only heard of it before. It was the first time I had seen the real thing. Using the hand I had braced on the ground, I pushed my body back and slowly widened the distance between us.

“……”

Normally, she had the face of a baby bird and a soft personality, but Chloe’s expression right now was that of a viper through and through. The eyes filled with venomous intent were losing their light.

“Geom. ma.”

Then Chloe, who had been staring at me, spoke my name in clipped syllables with a thin voice.

A shiver ran swiftly over my whole body, more than it had even when I faced the mermaid and the Cow King.

“…You never even told me your phone number.”

“Chloe, that’s because your phone number is classified.”

I offered an excuse in my own way, but it seemed not to reach Chloe’s ears, because she kept moving her small lips.

“…And you’re always hanging around with girls other than me.”

“…I always do my best for you, Geom-ma.”

“…But you always make me sad.”

“…Even though you promised you’d become my prince alone.”

What was she talking about? Leaving the rest aside, I could not simply let the part about hanging around with girls and the prince thing pass.

The stammering way Chloe had spoken was nowhere to be , and she muttered like a machine gun. Her pupils kept widening and shrinking.

It seemed the two selves inside Chloe were clashing head-on against each other.

‘…Ha.’

Chloe right before full yandere mode.

It was a trait I could not get used to and had no desire to get used to. She had been quiet for a while, so I thought things were getting better, but I had let my guard down.

“What the hell? Why is she really acting like this?”

Saki poked my shoulder and asked with a puzzled look. The moment she made physical contact, Chloe’s reddish-brown brows curved even further. I let out only a low murmur and answered under my breath.

“…Ryozo, do you know what a yandere is?”

“Andere? Jeez, why is that pronunciation so hard? You know I’m Japanese, right? I’m not used to English.”

Sticking out her tongue slightly, Ryozo made a prim expression.

‘No, you crazy…’

Even I, who did not know much about subculture, knew the word, so it was a ridiculous situation that she, who came from the homeland, claimed not to.

‘…But what language was yandere from, anyway?’

I shook my head hard to chase away the stray thought. Maybe Ryozo knew perfectly well and was only pretending not to.

If so, I wanted to flick her square on the philtrum. Even in the middle of that, I noticed Chloe’s fingers stealthily crawling toward her pocket. A hand searching for a box cutter.

Why in the world did this girl carry a box cutter around? That thought formed, and then I remembered my own appearance this morning, where I had left my phone behind but had brought my sashimi knife.

“What a piece of work I am.”

I shook my head with a sigh. Judging by Chloe’s eyes, she had not completely let go of her reason yet. If I was going to calm her down, it had to be now.

While Ryozo kept tugging at my sleeve with obvious interest and repeatedly asking why Chloe was acting like that, Weapon, who seemed to have roughly grasped the situation, smacked her on the forehead and pulled her backward. Seeing that made a small trace of regret rise within me.

He should’ve hit her harder.

Ryozo rubbed her forehead and growled with a fierce expression. Did she realize Weapon had just saved her from almost having a blade at her neck?

While Saki and Weapon bickered like that, Chloe, at last, took the angle to either draw the box cutter from her pocket or not.

There was a lot to think about in the way she went straight for a tool without bothering with dialogue.

Why was Chloe reacting this sensitively? I had confirmed her twisted feelings toward me through her diary, but was helping her once during the class assignment test enough for this?

To begin with, the members of Auditore should have undergone training to cut away their emotions long ago, so were the feelings Chloe held for me really even romantic feelings? No, and besides, did people normally point a knife at someone they liked first?

All sorts of thoughts filled my head. But for now, calming Chloe down came first.

The way to do that was, naturally, with words.

Click.

With the ominous sound of a blade catching against plastic, Chloe approached. Her eyes, clouded once more, carried a blood-red tinge.

Mentally scolding my past self for having neglected my yandere studies on YouTube before bed lately, I steeled my resolve to solve this through conversation.

I firmly suppressed the urge to shove a sashimi knife in front of her.

I did not want to see bloodshed for no reason.

And besides, I still felt guilty about cutting her hair the previous time.

Of course, at the time it had been self-defense to preserve my life. But conversation carried out with blades was not the universal answer.

Resolving problems with words when trouble arose. Was that not the clearest standard separating humans from beasts?

“This is insane.”

With a horrified expression, Weapon blurted out his alarm. He seemed to have inwardly realized Chloe’s abnormality, but unlike his appearance, his body looked frozen by his soft heart.

Even in the middle of that, Ryozo kept shifting her bright eyes between me and Chloe. The way she watched with obvious interest made it infuriating, as if she had not the slightest intention of stopping this.

I’m definitely flicking her forehead later. I can’t let that slide.

Whoosh.

Suddenly, a bleak wind that did not suit broad daylight brushed past my earlobe.

Chloe raised the blade halfway and began to mutter while holding the box cutter.

“Geom-ma.”

“Chloe.”

Step.

“I’ll make it so you only look at me from now on.”

“Should we try talking this out?”

One of Chloe’s brows twitched.

“What kind of talking can we do when you won’t even contact me?”

“Chloe, I wanted to talk to you face-to-face. If we communicate through a lump of scrap metal like a phone, it’s too cold between us. Isn’t it?”

“…Between us?”

“Yeah. Between us.”

I worked hard to parry Chloe’s threats. Little by little, signs appeared that her complexion was calming down.

Step, step.

I strode toward Chloe. Caught off guard, she faltered and took a step back. The fingers gripping the pink box cutter trembled faintly.

Soon I stood right in front of Chloe. She raised only her eyes slightly.

‘If I say even one thing wrong here, I’m getting stabbed.’

I quietly steadied my breathing so it would not show. With a composed attitude, I concealed my complicated feelings. A man’s bluff. It was time to put on some swagger.

I rapidly worked my brain and went over the yandere-related videos I had watched on YouTube.

Dozens of filmstrips flashed by in a row like a train. Maybe my brain was overloaded, because I could smell something burning at the tip of my nose.

“Geom-ma?”

At her call, I shoved one hand deep into my pocket and extended the other arm to stroke Chloe’s head.

“Chloe, thank you for always thinking of me.”

“E-eh?”

A small, adorable sound of her biting her tongue slipped out, perhaps because she was flustered. Then the light slowly began to return to the eyes that had seemed covered by a murky film.

‘This is where I drive in the final nail.’

I leaned my mouth close to her ear and whispered. My tone, honed by twenty years in customer service, was steeped in falsehood.

Maybe I had trained the muscles around my mouth for this very moment. The smile I forced onto my lips felt like it might make them cramp, but I endured it.

“Just like during the Buffalo Dungeon, I’m always relying on you. So don’t feel too hurt.”

“Y-you really mean that?”

I lifted my head and nodded. A deep blush rose to Chloe’s cheeks.

“Of course. Please keep taking care of me from now on too.”

“Hehe.”

A sound that was neither quite from her nose nor her mouth escaped Chloe. Soon her expression melted away.

“Phew.”

I let out a long sigh of relief. Chloe hopped up and down on the spot with an excited look.

Having grasped that the situation had calmed down, Weapon was also rubbing his chest in relief. For some reason, Saki only twisted her lips.

‘What’s with her now?’

Once the taut tension subsided, the mood of early summer drifted back in.

Only then did I loosen my grip on the hilt clenched tight inside my pocket. My palm was drenched with sweat.

* * *

After the somewhat violent gathering ended, Weapon and Saki were each heading back to their dormitories. Their dorm buildings were different, but they were side by side, so their direction was the same.

“Kang Geom-ma, that guy…”

Weapon muttered as he walked. He had not known Kang Geom-ma for long. But without exception, Weapon had always been present at the scenes where incidents broke out.

Because of that, Weapon thought he had a rough grasp on Kang Geom-ma’s disposition and how far he would go.

‘President is changing more and more.’

A bleak sense of incongruity stirred in him. At their first meeting, Geom-ma had seemed like nothing more than a classmate with a chilly impression, but lately a deeper coldness had settled into his eyes. His atmosphere, sinking day by day, made it seem as though his humanity were wearing away.

Weapon acted as boldly as he could in front of him, but every now and then he felt his spine go cold.

Today had been like that too.

The situation just now. At some point, Chloe had suddenly given off a dangerous killing intent. Judging from it, she seemed to be the type to throw herself into fire and water alike for anything related to Kang Geom-ma.

Even a child passing by on the road could tell that Chloe liked Kang Geom-ma, that was how obvious it was. But Kang Geom-ma always seemed to struggle to keep a proper line.

‘…Twisted love.’

Weapon shook his head to himself. Since she came from a family of assassins, it was only natural that her common sense regarding emotion would be greatly lacking. Though there were differences from an ordinary person, Chloe was always devoted to Kang Geom-ma.

‘But that Kang Geom-ma guy…’

A faint chill ran over Weapon’s whole body.

Kang Geom-ma had soothed Chloe after her mood had changed. At a glance, his words and actions had seemed gentle, but even if no one else had noticed, Weapon had clearly seen it.

Kang Geom-ma had been gripping a sashimi knife in the hand shoved deep into his pocket. It was surely so that, if things turned truly dangerous, he could draw a blade without hesitation.

‘President mixes persuasion and violence.’

A person who, as much as possible, pursued persuasion and conciliation through dialogue, but who also knew how to use the fear of violence in an emergency.

At first glance, he might appear villainous, but that was unquestionably the quality of a ruler. And yet the president seemed to already possess that quality at the age of seventeen.

‘Kang Geom-ma is definitely going to become someone big.’

He had martial strength unrivaled among those his age, along with both mercy and ruthlessness. For now, they ate together and shared trivial conversations, but later, Kang Geom-ma would become someone they could not even dare look up to.

As he thought that, a strange thrill welled up from deep within Weapon. Finishing his thoughts, Weapon turned his head. Saki was tapping at her phone screen with a sulky expression.

“What’s wrong with you?”

“What about me?”

“You’ve had that pouty look on your face this whole time.”

“Like you care.”

When Weapon asked, Saki answered coldly. He almost smacked her with another forehead flick even harder than before, but barely held himself back.

The Saki Weapon had seen until now basically never laid bare what she felt to others. But for some reason, when she was with Kang Geom-ma, she occasionally showed a more honest side.

Weapon had no way of knowing what that meant. He let out a short sigh and changed the question.

“…Forget it. What are you doing on your phone? Don’t tell me you’re searching to see if your written exam answers were actually wrong.”

“Do you want to keep spouting nonsense or what?!”

At his playful tone, Saki narrowed her brow and glared at him coldly. Startled, Weapon looked off into the distance and let out a pointless whistle. Without taking her eyes off her phone, she tossed out a single answer.

“I’m deleting some of the videos I uploaded to YouTube before.”

“What, you did YouTube too?”

“Not professionally. I was just bored, so I uploaded stuff where I organized miscellaneous knowledge.”

“Hey, you sleep around lazily all day, but you’re weirdly diligent about all kinds of things. Then how many views did you get?”

As if annoyed, Saki turned the phone toward Weapon.

Soon, the videos Saki had uploaded and their view counts appeared before Weapon’s eyes. The videos averaged close to five hundred thousand views.

“Satisfied?”

Saki swiftly pulled the phone back. With a puzzled look, Weapon muttered the title of the video she had been deleting.

“Carl Sagan’s Cosmos, The Dangers of the Bubble Economy, What to Do When You Encounter a Yandere…”

It was all content that was hard to understand.