Dante’s piercing gaze rested heavily on me.
I did not have the courage to face the clear disappointment in his eyes, so I had no choice but to turn my head away.
Don’t look at me like that.
I’m the victim here.
Who could have known that they would wake up to find a woman sleeping while hugging them?
Naked, at that.
"You say something too."
I snapped at Kafka, who was sitting beside me.
Kafka flattened her ears and opened her mouth in an aggrieved tone.
"But this is how I always slept. It’s uncomfortable to lie down inside a shadow."
"What are you talking about?"
"What do you mean, what am I talking about? I slept like this even when you were lying in the infirmary."
...?
Hold on, I can’t keep up with this conversation.
Kafka’s bombshell nearly made me lose consciousness, while Dante’s disappointment kept growing.
"I don’t remember that..."
So that meant my body had already been sullied beyond all redemption.
Goddammit.
This was truly taking responsibility without any of the pleasure.
"We’ve already seen everything there is to see, so what does it matter?"
Kafka looked at me as though it were no big deal.
This is only the second time I’ve seen you naked... but I’ve never shown you anything, you know?
"But why were you sleeping naked?"
"Because uniforms are stifling."
As though to demonstrate just how stifling they were, Kafka wrapped both arms around her own chest.
Her arms sank into the two ample mounds of her bronze skin, and because I felt like I would be screwed if I kept looking at that scene, I turned to Dante.
"Why are you looking at me?"
Dante stared at me as though I disgusted him.
But still.
It wasn’t as though I could keep staring at that exhibitionist.
I was really glad you were my friend.
"Anyway, put some clothes on."
"No. They’re uncomfortable."
Kafka rejected me without hesitation.
Fuck.
With a sigh, I took a set of casual clothes from my wardrobe.
I couldn’t hold a conversation while looking at her naked body, so I threw the clothes at her.
"Then at least wear these."
She wouldn’t have any objections if they were my clothes.
There was the formidable obstacle of her breasts, but it would be fine.
My chest was rather big too.
Grumbling, Kafka reluctantly put on my clothes.
Once she was wearing them, she at least looked presentable.
And thankfully, they held everything in place, so I did not have to worry about seeing her second pair of eyes.
Wait a second. This girl...
She hadn’t been walking around outside without a bra, had she?
Seeing her blank expression, as though she had no idea what I was thinking, made me sigh.
Well, surely the headmaster had taken care of at least that much.
He had to have.
It wasn’t as if I could ask Dolnesia to give her one.
"So this is what Ian wears."
"I washed it well, so it won’t smell."
"...Really?"
Kafka then brought her nose to the sleeve and sniffed my clothes, making me grimace.
Where in the world had she learned a move like that?
Or was it simply a natural gesture?
Either way, I was completely awake now.
Kafka probably would not be going back into my shadow.
With another sigh, I got out of bed.
I was already wide awake, so I intended to give her the bed for the day.
"For now, you sleep there tonight."
I’ll take the chair.
Kafka tilted her head at my words.
Her face held a questioning expression.
Why?
"Then where will you sleep?"
"I’ve already spent three days sleeping my heart out, and you woke me up so thoroughly that I’ll just stay up all night."
More precisely, it was the screaming that had driven away my sleep.
Still, I refused to become a body pillow.
#
"I found something pretty interesting. Want to hear about it?"
I had laid Kafka in bed and was just about to sit in a chair and look into the Dreamland ticket when Dante spoke to me, perhaps intending to keep my vigil company.
"But aren’t you tired?"
"Not particularly. I can’t get to sleep either. Maybe because what I saw earlier was just too shocking?"
Dante answered in a faintly sarcastic tone.
No, this was fucking unfair.
How was that my fault?
How was I supposed to expect Kafka to sleep naked while hugging me?
"Wouldn’t it be really fun if we told Dolnesia or Isabella about this?"
Dante smiled wickedly.
Did this bastard not have a heart?
"Definitely. Those two would beat the crap out of me and then some."
I did not know why.
I just had an overwhelming certainty that they would.
They had grilled me endlessly just because I gave Iris a ring.
Whenever I got involved with a woman, those two got so angry.
Sometimes I wondered if it was because they liked me, but that absolutely could not be it.
In a romance-fantasy world overflowing with handsome men, would they really choose someone as harsh-looking as me?
I’m not a narcissist like Isabella.
I know my place.
Isabella, being a villainess, was probably worried that her toy would disappear, and Dolnesia was probably jealous about family or something.
I didn’t know.
"I’m joking."
"So, what was this interesting thing?"
"It’s related to Kafka, too."
Kafka?
Dante glanced once at the sleeping Kafka before continuing.
"I looked into things in my own way. A number of traces turned up—both around the academy and in the Empire’s underworld."
...?
Excuse me?
That elf professor had swept the place with spirits and said nothing had come up.
And Dante had found something?
"How did you do that?"
"I used a little influence. I am a prince, after all."
Was it because this was reality rather than a game?
Or because, unlike in the game, Dante had become entangled in this event?
It was a pattern I had never seen in the game.
"Have you heard of the Katai Kingdom?"
The Katai Kingdom.
It was a kingdom that had fallen three hundred years ago after losing a war against the Karl Kingdom and becoming its vassal state.
"Wasn’t that country destroyed three hundred years ago?"
"Well, there’s a group called the Liberation Army that’s causing trouble because they want to restore it."
Of course, Dante had not brought up the name of a country that had been thoroughly ruined three centuries ago for no reason.
Depending on the academy’s route, there was a rabble-rousing group known as the Liberation Army, formed to restore that nation.
They sometimes appeared as random enemies in the train terror incident, and during the upcoming academy raid, they would invade alongside the Dawn Troupe—basically serving as nameless mobs.
They were an organization with a proud three-hundred-year tradition. In terms of villain experience, even most main villains could not hold a candle to them.
You might wonder why they would commit terror attacks in a country that was neither the Karl Kingdom nor even related to it.
Partly because Charles, the prince of their enemy nation, had enrolled at the academy. But the biggest reason was that the Liberation Army itself had become a group of people who existed solely to cause trouble.
Apparently, it had begun with the noble intention of restoring their country, only to turn into a gathering of people who simply hated the entire world.
"Traces of that Liberation Army were found near the academy."
"I see."
"And not only that. It seems that someone deeply connected to the Liberation Army belonged to a certain organization. Its name was—"
"The Dawn Troupe."
"You knew?"
Dante looked at me in surprise, and I gave him the reason with an indifferent expression.
"The headmaster told me."
"The headmaster did?"
"He said an organization called the Dawn Troupe was deeply involved in that dungeon incident."
"Right. The information I received said the same thing."
Dante rested his chin on his hand and thought for a moment before looking at me again.
"You remember Dotore, the person Kafka told us about? Apparently, he belongs to the Dawn Troupe."
"So what you’re saying is, there are traces left by the Liberation Army around the academy. Someone connected to the Liberation Army belongs to the Dawn Troupe. And the culprit behind the dungeon incident also belongs to the Dawn Troupe?"
"Isn’t that too perfect to call a coincidence?"
A secret society whose entire operation was exposed in only three days!
Should I praise the Empire’s intelligence network?
Or call the Dawn Troupe incompetent?
More precisely, the Empire’s intelligence was exceptional, but the Dawn Troupe was also unusual compared to other organizations.
These bastards did not give a fuck whether their information spread or not.
If you dug just a little deeper into the underworld, information on them poured out like bamboo shoots after rain. In that sense, they were hardly a secret society at all.
They were a group so obsessed with privacy that they wore masks and called one another by code names, yet they scattered information about themselves everywhere.
They really were an utterly bizarre group.
But if they were an organization whose information was that thoroughly exposed...
"Couldn’t the Empire wipe them out?"
It was natural to ask whether the Empire could not simply eradicate them.
No matter how formidable the organization was, if the Empire intervened, there was nothing they could do.
There was also the justification that they had abducted Imperial citizens and conducted human experiments on them.
And that was true.
As befitted one of the main villain factions, they did have several people who had reached the realm of superhumans. But even they could not take on the entire Empire.
Even considering that their aim was not to overthrow the state, if they had been strong enough to confront the Empire head-on, they would not have needed the trick of raiding the academy.
But.
Dante shook his head.
"I brought that up, but they said it would be difficult."
Though they had the information and more than enough justification, there were reasons they could not wipe them out. They were powerful, of course, and there was also the romance-fantasy necessity that the story had to continue.
More specifically, it was because they operated in an outsourced fashion, leaving almost all activity to subcontractors while keeping their headquarters hidden.
This was the part they hid well.
What the hell was I supposed to make of them?
At this point, they were such a strange group that I could not tell whether they wanted to conceal themselves or expose themselves.
"Still, since they found traces, I told them to take measures so they could prepare. Especially since we can’t let ourselves be humiliated by Karl."
Dante smiled and nodded.
I doubted it.
There was absolutely no way they could stop it.
No matter how they prepared or tried to prevent it, the attack would get through.
Wasn’t that the nature of romance fantasy and academy stories?
But.
Why was he telling me this information?
Wasn’t it far too sensitive to share with someone else?
"But why are you telling me this?"
"I just thought you might be bored."
"Isn’t that an awfully serious topic for casual entertainment?"
At my words, Dante let out an awkward laugh.
"...I just felt like you should know."
"Why?"
"I don’t know. Call it a feeling, I guess."
After fumbling through that answer, he said that was all he had to say and promptly lay down on the bed.
Stunned by his sudden behavior, I could only watch as Dante burrowed beneath the blankets.
After giving a hollow laugh at the sight of him lying in bed, I opened my inventory and took out the ticket inside.
The academy raid was an unexpected event that occurred before the midterms.
It was not something that would suddenly happen tomorrow, like this Kafka incident, so there was still time.
I had nothing else to do. Should I try tearing the ticket, at least?
I tried to tear the ticket in half to gain some experience in Dreamland, but no matter how much force I used, it would not rip.
Then a notification window appeared before my eyes.
[You cannot use the ticket at this time.]
In other words, I had been rejected.
I had to stand watch until dawn with no one to talk to, and even if I wanted to sleep, sleep would not come.
Because if I lay down in my bed, there was no telling what Kafka might do again.
I pressed a hand to my throbbing forehead and sighed.
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