Some time before midnight, I snuck into Hena"s school campus.The school grounds were as big as a couple of mansions from present-day Earth would be. For a medieval age school, it was certainly quite a big and prestigious place.
That was to be expected though. It was considered one of the most acclaimed inst.i.tutions in the region. The teachers teaching here were all either extremely able teachers or master of a field related to what they taught. As an obvious example, Tim Jake, one of the most reknowned painters in the region was a teacher of painting here.
And he was also the first to arrive of the two people I had called there.
In fact, he had arrived before I had. As such, when I entered the school building, I came across him.
"Ah, Vilome! You are here."
"Of course I am." I said. "I am surprised that you are here though."
"Huh? Didn"t you call me here? That"s what your sister told me." He asked with a confused face.
"Yes, I did call you, Mr. Jake. However, it"s midnight and coming to the school grounds at this hour is against the rules, isn"t it?"
I mean, this was basically a break-in.
"Yes, perhaps. But, nothing matters to me more than the safety of my son." He said, his guilt about breaking the school rules clearly showing on his face.
"Well, about that." I said as I pointed to an empty cla.s.sroom nearby. "There"s someone else I have called. We should wait until that person arrives."
"Yeah, that"s fine but couldn"t we exchange some theories-"
"Be patient, sir! You have already come this far, what"s a few more minutes?" I said and without waiting for an answer, turned to the cla.s.sroom.
"I ... guess." He followed after me, noticing a round device in my hand but ignoring it.
To him, who didn"t know that his son was already dead, every minute would have seemed far too precious.
I mean, he could have been thinking of the possibilities of Jill being in danger at that very moment and so, having to wait was certainly not something he was very happy to do.
However, you don"t become a famous artist without being able to be patient, and while some exceptions always exist, Tim Jake was not one of those exceptions.
For the next five minutes, which I am sure would have felt like five hours to him, he waited patiently, not speaking a single word.
Then, the door to the cla.s.sroom slid open and a girl entered it.
"There you are!" She said with sparkling eyes while looking at me, almost ignoring Tim. "You should have told me you were going to be in this cla.s.sroom. I had to snoop around to find you."
"It"s not like I came here with the intentions to be in this particular room. It just happened to be closest to where I entered the building from."
I said and got up from the table I was sitting on.
I had arranged those tables and chairs such that we have a big enough free s.p.a.ce in the middle of the cla.s.sroom where we could arrange three seats all at 120-degrees to each other.
And so, doing that, the three of us sat down on those three chairs.
"So," in order to take charge of the conversation, I spoke before anyone else could. "we are here to discuss about the sudden disappearance of Jill Jake."
Hearing that, Tim"s expression became extremely focused but Yasmine"s shoulders drooped.
"He has disappeared?" She asked.
"Yes, and it happened today." I said.
"Y-yeah, I saw him heading to your ceremony this morning." Tim said looking at Yasmine, "But after that, I haven"t seen him and all of his friends and everyone else who knows him seems to have no idea about his whereabouts either."
"Oh!" Yasmine said, only half-interested.
"So Yasmine, did you see him at your ceremony?" I asked.
"Yes, I did." And all of a sudden, she answered with complete enthusiasm.
Man, this girl really was infatutated with me!
"When was the last time you saw him?" I questioned.
"Well," pondering over it for a while, Yasmine said, "I think it was right before the ceremony started. I saw him among all of my cla.s.smates who had come to attend my coming of age ceremony. But, after that moment, even though most of those cla.s.smates were there, I don"t remember spotting him even once."
"Is that really the truth?" I ask with an accusing glare.
"Huh? Of course that is the truth. Why would I lie?" She was giving me a confused smile, exactly what I needed.
"I have a theory." I said. "And it leads me to believe that you killed him."
Both of their eyes widened with shock while Tim also got up from his chair and looked at Yasmine with furious eyes.
"Is that true!?" He asked, looking almost ready to murder her.
"It"s not, but even if I had killed him, it would have been a good deed."
Veins popped out of his forehead and he yelled, "You b.i.t.c.h!"
Yasmine got up from her chair as well and took a fighting stance. However,
"Yasmine, did you really kill him?" I asked her, and she quickly turned to me, denying the accusation.
"Well, if you didn"t kill him," I asked, "then whose corpse was your maid disposing of earlier?"
"Huh? What?! She was disposing of someone"s corpse?" She looked only a tiny bit surprised on hearing that as she replied with, "Well, I don"t know, it could have been Jill."
"What!?" Tim"s fury was rising with every word she said.
"I mean, I didn"t kill him. But maybe he broke into my house with some evil intentions and my maid killed him when she found out and caught him. Yeah, that would make sense." She said nonchalantly.
"Ha!" I smirked. "Well, that is how my theory went."
When I said that, Tim"s anger stopped being directed at only person in the room.
"You think my son would do that? He isn"t like th-"
"And yet, the evidence seems to be pointing to him being like that." I interrupted and said so with a smirk.
"What evidence?!"
"Well, this." I said as I showed them a small, spherical object with metal on the base and gla.s.s covering on the top.
"Isn"t that one of those devices that record sound?" Tim asked, suspiciously.
"Yes, it is." I said.
On Earth, devices that record and reproduce sound were created in the 19th century, i.e., much time after Medieval Era. However, on that planet where everything from battle to artistry to craftsmanship was done by learning some kind of Art, some technological developments had happened before others because of the varying degrees of faith people had for their respective G.o.ds.
One of those developments was that little device that was only a prototype for the real thing but it was still effective enough to be used in my little plan there.
"Keep your ears open!" I advised as I tapped a small b.u.t.ton on the side and the the gla.s.s started shining a little with the recorded sounds being played.
"What happened?! Whose dead body is that!?" In those recordings, my surprised voice asked so.
"Of a cla.s.smate of yours named Jill Jake." The voice that very much resembled that of Yasmine"s maid was heard.
"You ... what ... Jill ... what happened?!" I asked, in the recording of course.
"He had broken into milady"s house with the intention of stealing her undergarments." The maid said, disgustedly. "When I found him, I obviously had to take action!"
"M-maybe, but you didn"t need to kill him!"
"The situation we ended up, if I hadn"t killed him, he would have killed me." She said.
"I ... see."
"Well, boy. I wouldn"t want to hurt you in any way so you better be quiet about this all." The maid threatened me.
"W-well, you shouldn"t have told me in the first place." I said, nervously.
"Ha! Maybe that"s true. I may have been too nervous to really think about what I should have-"
I stopped the recording.
The expression of Tim"s face had already become that of someone who had lost all meaning in life. The expression on Yasmine"s face was a mix of disgust and anger though.
"Come with me!" I then said.
***************
I took them to the backyard of the school building and showed a sight of a single burial outside the school premises from there.
"That is the place Yasmine"s maid buried him."
As soon as I said that, Tim ran to that place, jumping over the ledges and started digging it up.
"I can"t believe that pervert wanted to steal my panties!" Yasmine said with disgust. "He deserved what was coming to him."
Well, seeing those reactions, I had to compliment Valerie on her voice acting skills. Seriously, if she was living back on Earth, she could have easily become an award-winning actress as well as voice-actress.
It was also quite thoughtful of her to bury Jill in the most conspicious way possible, clearly potraying it as if Yasmine"s maid was trying to give a message.
"Y-you!" Tim, who had dug out the shallow grave and found the rotting corpse of his son, looked back at the two of us with clear rage.
"What! That a.s.shole totally deserved it!" Yasmine said nonchalantly. "I mean, this wasn"t the first time he tried to do something annoying. While he never did anything particularly perverted before, he had always been trying to cause problems for Vilome, you know?"
She rambled on, unaware that the man she was saying it to was picking up a long piece of wood with pointy edges and preparing to charge at her.
"You b.i.t.c.h! YOU are the one DESERVES TO DIE!" He yelled and charged.
Yasmine noticed that and stepped back but was a little late and got hit in the stomach with the edges of the branch.
"You a.s.sHOLE!" She shouted. "You think you can overpower a Martial Artist like me with petty sticks!?"
As she said that, she adopted a fighting stance while her face was filled with clear killing intent.
I took my distance and relaxed a bit as I waited for the show to continue.
If this was a movie, I may have heard Jill, whose dream girl and father were trying to kill each other, curse me from h.e.l.l with things like, "You"re a villain!"
Well, even if that had been the case, I would have probably replied with, "I"ll take that as a compliement."