The Simulacrum - Chapter 76~ Part 3

After leaving the classroom, I quickly checked the location of the Arch-mage, and to my surprise, I found him in an office on the ground floor instead of his usual underground hidey-hole in the School. Since that was the case, I decided to visit him on foot. Sure, Phasing right next to someone had more flair to it, but overusing it for superfluous reasons was a bad habit I had to curb.

As I walked down the stairs, I noticed that we still had a lot of Placeholders idling in the hallways. I didn’t bother to check the time, but this factoid told me that I still had about ten to fifteen minutes until classes started almost as accurately. I was tempted to peek into Snowy’s classroom on the way, just to see if the Knight girl was still around, but I ultimately decided against it. It’s better to take things one at a time.

The principal’s office was situated just behind the faculty room, and I greeted Mountain Girl with a quick nod while passing through. She returned the gesture, though she looked ever so slightly bamboozled by my presence. I didn’t linger to explain myself, but instead I unceremoniously threw the door in front of me open and entered without any further ado.

It was actually a surprisingly small office. On the left, there was a rectangular wooden table with four matching chairs around it, while on the right I found a large desk with a couple of filing cabinets and a bookshelf behind it. The place also had a few potted plants and paintings on the walls, giving it a nice, cozy atmosphere. Unfortunately, it didn’t help my temper one iota, as the moment I laid my eyes on the dapper old man behind the desk, I was hit by a familiar wave of indignant irritation.

Normally I would’ve tried to suppress my irrational reaction to the  Arch-mage’s mug, but this time I didn’t bother. I figured a more forceful approach was required, so I firmly closed the door behind myself and turned to my unprepared and apparently quite flabbergasted host.

“Hello, old man. We need to talk.”

“… Pardon?” Lord Grandpa blurted out in surprise, but then he hastily put down the bundle of papers in his hand and cleared his throat, after which he sat straight and looked me in the eye. “Good morning, Leonard. While I can certainly remember telling you that you should visit me using the door, I did not quite mean that you should do so without any appointment or forewarning.”

“Cut the crap,” I snapped at him as I came to a stop in front of his desk and placed my hands onto it. Judging by the way the corner of his eye was twitching, the Arch-mage wasn’t exactly happy about my tone, but he maintained a guise of civility by clearing his throat again.

“What exactly seems to be the problem?”

“The problem is the new transfer student,” I stated without beating around the bush, and when the old guy remained silent, I decided to play along by raising one hand to chest level and adding, “Redhead girl, this tall, transferred to my sister’s class this morning, called her a tart. Potentially Irish, have to look into it.”

“Oh, you mean the young miss Penelope Pendragon,” the old man noted with a disgustingly grandfatherly smile. I naturally knew he was pulling my leg, considering there were no other transfer students I could refer to, but my snappy response was thwarted by him continuing with, “I was under the impression you already knew about her transferal.”

“Why would I know about it?” I blurted out, following which Lord Grandpa’s smile slowly withered into a puzzled frown.

“Is she not your sister?”

“Wait, what? Who told you that?” I asked back in mild bewilderment.

“She did, naturally.” When I didn’t respond right away, the old coot leaned back in his padded swivel chair and proceeded to explain himself by telling me, “She made an appointment with me on the weekend, and she visited my office on Tuesday. She informed me of her intent to transfer to Blue Cherry High at the earliest possible opportunity, and she claimed to be your estranged sister.”

“And you didn’t bother to do a background check on her?”

Hearing my question, Lord Grandpa’s brows immediately knit into a troubled frown, and a moment of hesitation later he simply told me, “You see, Leonard, considering the no small amount of headaches our recent interactions caused me, I can say with perfect honesty and without any reservations that I do not want to get involved with your affairs if at all possible. Even if we disregard our previous… disagreements, do you even have an idea of how much it cost the School to repair the auditorium after the stampede you caused during the last symposium?”

“I’m not taking responsibility for your lack of security, and you’re changing the subject. Quit it.”

“I am most certainly not,” the old man huffed a touch indignantly. “I tell you again: I wished to stay out of your affairs at any cost, so I simply approved her transfer request and politely showed her the door before more complications would arise.”

“… So you’re telling me you didn’t contact me or put any surveillance on her simply because you wanted to avoid dealing with me in any shape or form,” I concluded while channeling my inner Judy, and Lord Grandpa nodded without a shred of shame.

“I believe that is the prudent thing to do when it comes to natural disasters, such as yourself,” he commented with a wry look, before thoughtfully adding, “Truth be told, I have actually placed an Observer Orb on her, just out of curiosity, but it was immediately removed upon leaving the premises of the school building. It must be a characteristic running in your family.”

I refused to grace his comment with a reaction and instead stared him down while looking for a hint of deception, but I couldn’t find any. In the end, I turned away and clicked my tongue in irritation. Apparently I completely missed this particular event, and so it came back to blindside me. In my defense, while my Far Sight was a powerful tool that allowed me to gather all kinds of intelligence and learn about all kinds of plots and incidents, it was ultimately limited to me actively viewing one person or group at a time, so there were plenty of blind spots where things could fly under my radar.

Anyhow, with this, I was about seventy percent sure this wasn’t another harebrained plan by the Arch-mage. That wasn’t exactly a chiseled-into-stone-tablets tier of certainty, so I made a mental note to pay extra attention to him in the next couple of days to see if he would slip up, but for the time being it meant there was no point in pestering him any longer.

“I suppose I better go and deal with this new ‘sister’ of mine,” I grumbled under my breath, only to stop in my tracks just as I was to turn away from the desk and then promptly face the old man again. “Before I leave, I just remembered something I wanted to ask.”

“… Go right ahead,” the owner of the room told me, though I couldn’t help but notice the way he became visibly guarded.

“Okay, so, hypothetically speaking, if it turned out that someone was a homunculus, would that be a big deal, and if so, why?”

It took several long seconds for Lord Grandpa to interpret my question, and when he did, his eyes slowly narrowed into a pair of suspicious slits.

“That is a very specific question you just asked,” he whispered as he probed me with his eyes, and when I refused to react, he let out a pent-up breath and stated, “If someone you knew was revealed to be a homunculus, it would be certainly a serious issue to consider.”

“Okay, but why?” I pressed on.

“It would mean they are an artificial being,” the old man clarified without making anything any clearer.

“Yes, I get that, but why is that a big deal?”

My host appeared stumped for a second, as if he was considering whether I was asking a trick question, but at last he uttered, in a grave tone, “It would mean they are not human.”

“I get that too, but why is that important?”

“It is definitely important,” Lord Grandpa stated, though he looked just a tad confused by my insistent questioning.

“I asked, ‘WHY’! WHY is that important?” I emphasized, and it took him several seconds to formulate an answer.

“Because… they are an artificial being instead of a human?”

“That was a question,” I warned him, but by all intents and purposes, he looked genuinely confused by my inquiry. “Okay, let’s start from the beginning. Let’s say someone, whose name we are purposefully avoiding in this conversation, is a homunculus. Are we clear on that?” The old man nodded, so I let out a sharp breath through my nose and continued with, “So, that person wants to do everything in their power to keep this a secret. Why’s that?”

“So that their acquaintances wouldn’t learn about them being artificial beings,” the Arch-mage asserted like it was blindingly obvious.

“And why would it be a problem if others learned about this? Why is it a big deal?” I asked again, this time speaking very slowly and deliberately emphasizing every word.

Lord Grandpa remained silent for several seconds, but then he uttered, “Because they would learn that they are not human.”

“Oh for the love of…! We are going in circles!” I exclaimed in the company of a long groan, but I wasn’t ready to give up yet. “Okay, let’s take a step back. So let’s say others learned that they’re ‘not human’. How exactly does that affect this person? Why is that something that has to be kept a secret?”

“… It would mean they are not who they thought this hypothetical person was?”

“That was another question, and it doesn’t even make sense!” I burst out, my patience wearing dangerously thin. “It doesn’t change who they are, it changes ‘what’ they are, and it’s a completely meaningless distinction.”

“But… it means they are artificial beings. That is a fundamental difference and an absolutely meaningful discrepancy,” my host pointed out, and for a moment I had to gather all my willpower not to blow up in his face.

I took several short breaths, and once I felt under control, I let out the great-grandmother of all sighs and simply told him, “You know what? Never mind. By the sound of it, I’m not getting anything out of you. Forget I even asked. Bye.”

With that, I immediately turned on my heel and marched out of the room, leaving an eminently bamboozled old man in my wake. To be fair, I wasn’t faring much better either. Just why was this question so difficult? Was this some kind of perception filtering thing, like how the guys never noticed the Placeholders acting weird? Maybe this was some kind of hard-wired thing and that’s why he couldn’t even comprehend the question? I simply didn’t get it.

I was still mulling over the question when I reached the first floor, and would have probably done so for a while longer if not for an unfamiliar voice catching my attention. I stopped in my tracks and listened a bit more closely, and it quickly turned out I wasn’t just hearing things.

“Psst! Brother! Over here!”

I glanced in the direction of the voice calling out to me, and before long I found a certain redhead waving at me while half-hidden behind the open door leading into the girl’s restroom. I had no idea why she was hiding, or from whom, as by this point the corridors were completely empty, but considering I was planning to talk with her anyway, I figured I might as well use the opportunity to humor her. As such, I calmly made my way over to restrooms, though I obviously didn’t go in after her.

The moment I came to a halt, she glanced around and gestured me to come closer. When I refused to budge, she let out an indignant huff and came to me instead. Again, I had no idea why she was making such a big deal out of this, as we could talk perfectly fine at our current distance.

“Brother,” she… greeted me, I supposed? I decided to acknowledge it with a small nod, and when I did so, she sidled even closer and whispered, “Listen, we need to talk.”

“Yes, we do,” I replied, and even though my words were all but dripping with thinly veiled exasperation, she remained none the wiser of it. Still, for the time being I decided to uphold my role as her ‘brother’, so I let out a small sigh and asked, “Why did you come here?”

“I didn’t have a choice,” she told me with a frown as she glanced past my side, probably at the classroom door at the other end of the hallway. “I tried to contact you in the past, but I was thwarted by… Why are you living with an Abyssal Seducer anyway?! Explain yourself!”

“Let’s not change the subject,” I told the suddenly agitated girl and pointed an admonishing palm at her. “You still haven’t told me why you transferred into the school.”

“I told you, I couldn’t help it,” Miss Incognito Unicorn grumbled with a hint of a pout on her lips. “I needed to warn you about something, but the last time I tried to go to your headquarters, I was… Brother, who was that swordswoman? And what about that child?! Why are you living with so many women?! Just what were you up to while we were apart?!”

“Focus,” I chided her, though I said it as must as a reminder to myself as well, as otherwise I would’ve already facepalmed myself into unconsciousness.

“Ah, right.” Once again, the girl’s attitude turned on a dime and she pointed a finger at me. “Listen, Brother! We’ll talk about your womanizing later, but for now, you have to know this: there’s a dangerous individual on the island. His name is… Bel of the Abyss!”

What followed after this was about three minutes of her giving a short and fairly inaccurate description of my escapades as my alter ego, thought if nothing else, at least this confirmed that they really didn’t make a connection between me and the flamboyant fake Abyssal.

“… and that’s why you should be very careful, and throw that Abyssal thot out of your house.”

“I don’t see how those two things are related,” I pointed out, only to get summarily ignored as she checked the time on her tiny wristwatch. Apparently she was an analog person.

“I have to go now! Classes are starting, and I promised Sir Roland that I would pretend to be a model student so that I wouldn’t compromise your cover!” I wanted to point out that if I still had a cover to be concerned about, the way she antagonized Snowy would’ve already blown a hole the size of Uranus into it, but I never got the chance. “Be on the lookout, and don’t let yourself be led astray by a pretty face, you hear me?!”

Before I could get a word in, she rushed past me, gave me a small wave, and disappeared into a classroom. Then she came out with a loud “Awawa! Wrong classroom!” and dashed into the one on the other side of the corridor.

For a moment I couldn’t help but stare in mild bewilderment, and once I overcame it, I stopped delaying the inevitable and a moment later the heel of my hand hit my forehead with enough force to make a muffled clapping noise in the empty hallway.