“Shot dead with his own weapon!”

Erwin Tees was incandescent with simmering rage. Prier’s attempts to track down and kill Felipe Escobarus had run into difficulties, but to lose his life in the process was beyond his most pessimistic expectations. It was all over the newspapers – the scandalous story of a teacher shot and killed on campus with nobody being able to find the culprit. Erwin was the only one who knew the truth. Prier was his man on the ground, he’d been receiving updates from him for weeks about his progress, and now everything had gone to waste. He tore the paper in two and threw it into the air as the rest of the gang looked on wearily.

He took a deep breath and tried to collect himself; “Listen you miserable lot, there’s a lot of money at stake here. If you think I’m mad, then you should see what the client looks like right now. We’re back to square one!” Erwin had been stuck in this cycle for hours. He bounded rapidly between uncontrollable anger and helplessly emphasising just how screwed they were. A small part of him hoped that someone from amongst their number would step up to the plate and remedy the problem for him. No such salvation was forthcoming.

“Let me take care of it, boss.” Eidos Bolte stepped through the throng and submitted himself, “I don’t know much about what the job is, but if there’s a lot of money on the table – I’ll get it done one way or another.”

Erwin nodded, “Fine. At least one of you has a bloody spine!” He led Eidos through the door and into his office, where a spattering of letters and reports covered the desk. Erwin picked out a select few and handed them to his new agent. “These should get you up to speed. I don’t know how he ended up dead – but Prier had already told me that he was concerned about one girl in particular.”

“A girl?” Eidos scoffed.

“Yeah, a girl. I don’t know what you look so bemused for. When you’ve got a gun in hand, your age doesn't matter much.”

Eidos chuckled, “I get it, boss. I killed my first man when I was ten after all.”

“A lot of us did. This girl here, Maria Walston-Carter. He said that she witnessed him trying to shoot Felipe Escobarus and got him out of danger. Wouldn’t mean much if she wasn’t so damn fast and cool under pressure. He said she was like a pro.”

Eidos studied her file carefully, one pilfered from the archives by Prier before his untimely death. Prier was even more pathetic than he thought if he was killed off by a pretty little thing like her. She’d get blown away by a strong gust of wind, never mind the recoil of Prier’s favourite rifle. He unclipped the small profile picture and put it into his pocket for later.

“Now that our man on the inside is dead, this is going to be much harder. We don’t have access to the campus anymore – and security is going to be tightened with someone dead on the premises.”

Eidos drew a shimmering dagger and held it up to the light, “Don’t you worry one bit, Erwin. I’ll have them burning so fast that they won’t even know what hit ‘em.”

“I’m sure you will. But try to keep the collateral damage to a minimum. We have enough heat on our backs as is.”

Eidos waved him off and headed back through the door. He didn’t need to hear his admonishment before he had even started. Eidos was an experienced assassin and he understood the high stakes that were attached to their latest client. It was the single biggest payday that any of Erwin’s gang would ever see. It would take a serious idiot to throw caution to the wind and get caught. Prier was an idiot and that was why he was dead. Eidos would never air his grievances with Erwin personally, but he never liked Prier in the first place. It was probably for the best that he was gone.

He chuckled to himself cockily, “Maria and Felipe huh? They better say their prayers.”

----------------------------------------

It took two days for the news to break.

“Can every student please stay in the dorm until one of the teachers comes and speaks with you?”

Prier missed one of his lessons with the second-year students, and then another – so the faculty set out to find where he had gotten to. The greenhouse was one of the first places they checked, and an hour later a cordon had been established around it to keep the students from seeing what was going on. Everyone was confined to their rooms and strictly forbidden from leaving until the police investigated the scene for evidence. I had to wonder what those detectives were thinking when they saw the scene.

There was no way to rule his death as suicide. He had been shot twice, in different places, and at an angle from which he could not manipulate the gun properly. It would take an amazing feat of contortion to flip a rifle over your shoulder and shoot straight into your own spine. My room’s window did not face the garden where the greenhouse was located so I was totally ignorant as to what was going on out there. The abrupt nature of our quarantine and the ensuing information vacuum that followed started to generate a large number of theories from the others.

“What do you think happened?”

“Did someone attack the campus?”

“I bet one of the girls jumped off of the roof, my older sister said that it used to happen a few times every year!”

The rest of the students had congregated in the study, but a couple of teachers had been posted by the windows to ensure that nobody broke ranks and took a peek outside. I remained entirely unmoved by proceedings. They were not going to find evidence connecting his death back to me. A closer inspection would only reveal how suspicious Prier was, given that the box that contained the gun was in an area that he regularly visited. It was also possible that he had used the gun without wearing gloves first. The police may have been behind the times in some respects, but fingerprinting evidence was something that they had learned to do. His fingers would be the only marks they’d find.

Why would a cherub of a noble lady like myself kill a man in cold blood anyway? There was simply no prospect of them accusing me of shooting him, even if I did indulge in it as a hobby. From the outside it looked like he’d gotten tangled with the wrong people and flown too close to the sun. That theory would be partly right. I was the wrong person.

Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

“You look rather pleased with yourself,” Maxwell commented - having snuck up on me with Samantha and Claudius in tow.

“Pleased? I don’t have much to be pleased about at the moment.”

“Pft. Says the girl sitting pretty at the top of every exam score table right now.”

I shrugged, “Isn’t that what most people expect from me by now? I don’t find it particularly exciting to top a mock test.”

Claudius was quick to point fingers as usual, “I bet she knows why we’re being kept here in the dorms. That’s the face of a woman who’s in control of the situation.”

“Oh? And what do you suppose I’m responsible for?”

“I don’t know, but I’ve been investigating some strange goings on around here for a week now. I’ll figure it out eventually. Just you wait and see.”

“By the way, did you speak with Professor Prier about another tutoring session?”

He tensed up as I brought the conversation back into reality, “Ah! I did. But he said that he’d need to speak with you first. He never got around to giving me the okay. It’s fine. I’ve been studying on my own anyway if you don’t have the time.”

I had to ask how seriously Claudius was taking his villainess theory if he could then move on to asking me for a one-on-one study session. Was this all just fun and games, or did he actually intend to expose me for a supposed crime that existed only in his mind? It was internally contradictory. I couldn’t figure him out.

The discussion was disrupted by the arrival of Catherine Selldorf – the girl who had tried to suck up to me during my first week at the school. She had a face like thunder, directed entirely at the trio who had approached me without my asking. She pointed a slender finger into Claudius’ face and yelled at him, “Why are you bothering Lady Maria? Can’t you see that she isn’t interested in hearing your worthless common talk?”

“Common talk? Big words coming from a girl who Maria doesn’t even give the time of day to!” Claudius snapped back.

They were starting to attract a lot of attention from the other students who had grown bored of waiting to hear about what was going on. Catherine’s face turned bright red as she stewed in place.

“Who do you think you are? You’re nothing more than a fool who is too entranced with flights of fancy to study properly! Do us all a favour and drop out if you’re not interested in making something of yourself!”

Max stepped in to vouch for his childhood friend, “You should mind your own business and stop starting trouble with the other students. Didn’t Maria already tell you to kick sand last time?”

Catherine turned to me and tried to earn my acknowledgement for her interruption, though it was simply too difficult to hide my irritation at being intercepted by a fangirl once again. I chastised her, “Being spoken to is not so upsetting that I require your intervention, Catherine. Please keep it to yourself.” That took the wind out of her sails. She slinked away like a kowtowed puppy and left us to our discourse.

Max grumbled, “You attract a lot of those people.”

“I never said I liked it. I may be short, but I’m more than capable of handling myself.”

Samantha was giving me a curious look. I had never been completely silent around other people, and if they spoke to me respectfully I would respond in kind. My real intention was to stay a certain distance from them. While my initial assumption that I was being targeted was incorrect, it led me down a different path of thought. I had gotten too close to Felipe. There was clearly some kind of scheme at play, a power or oversight beyond my comprehension. Reincarnating into a new life allowed me to accept many oddities I would have previously rejected out of hand. It begged to reason that I was here for a specific purpose.

The uncertainty over what that purpose was filled me with anxiety. Anything more than the last moments I spent dying in the hotel lobby was more than I could have asked for given my actions. There were two conclusions that could be offered. One, this was some kind of divine punishment meant to show me the error of my ways, or two, whoever sent me here did so knowing that I’d slip back into old habits and kill Prier. That was assuming there was a rational actor behind things, of course; this world was too familiar to the game for me to consider it a coincidence though.

Just like how I had pieced together who the assassin was, I was keeping an eye out for clues as to my own position. My killing of Prier would be key to figuring things out. If I was being punished then I would not be rewarded for it. If my guarantor intended for this, then no such karmic consequence would be coming. It was a simple matter of eliminating the options applied to a complicated series of events.

Back to the topic of Samantha. Like many protagonists, she was kind and friendly to everyone unless they gave her a reason not to be. She was reasonable to a fault because the writers wanted her to be sympathetic. Me rebuffing her with harsh words was not going to cause a serious rift between us. If anything, it had only stoked her curiosity. She wanted to know more about the enigma that was Maria Walston-Carter. Broaching that subject was where she would struggle.

I could shut her down easily by refusing to talk. Considering her importance to the plot and her supposed destiny as a heroine, it would be extremely bad if I were to get her killed through proximity. I could accidentally doom the world that she was meant to save – or whatever else happened in the later entries when I wasn’t looking.

It was a difficult line to walk. I had to be cold and impersonal, while also doing the bare minimum to keep up with my studies. There were some who did not care for my reputation and approached me regardless of how I acted. Felipe was one of them. He appreciated my interest in magic so much that he couldn’t pass by without stopping to see what I was doing. He was an acquaintance I could tolerate, but I would feel awful for getting him hurt if the danger he faced was correlated with my presence.

The doors swung open and one of the senior teachers called for everyone’s attention.

“May I have a moment to speak please!”

The whispers quieted down for a moment.

“I’m afraid that there has been a serious incident here on the campus. I’m very sad to say that Professor Prier has been found deceased.”

That quiet did not last for very long as various questions and exclamations of shock were thrown in their direction. It was so calamitous that none of their inquirers would be answered. The teacher raised their voice to try and shout over the chaos.

“You are now allowed to leave the dorm! But please do not interfere with the police’s work! Classes will be suspended tomorrow while the faculty decides on the best course of action.” The people at the back had no hope of hearing the statement in full, but it would diffuse through the conversations that occurred in the wake of it. The teacher left us to ruminate on the death of someone we had seen just days before in class, a man who lived two lives at the same time and intended to kill one of those students using his access to the campus.

“Professor Prier is dead?” Claudius muttered, “I can’t believe it!”

I closed my eyes and tried my best to look deeply affected by the news.

Max was shocked, “What in Adelite’s good name? Did they find him in the greenhouse? I saw them setting up the cordon around it earlier.”

Samantha’s face was a mixture of different emotions, but the overarching feeling in the room was one of fear and unease. If one of the teachers could be found dead without anyone knowing, what did it mean for the students? I, on the other hand, was concerned about one person in particular. Felipe had been targeted for a reason. I didn’t believe for one second that Prier was going to be the last one to make an attempt on his life. If they decided to close the school and send everyone home until the trouble blew over, I wouldn’t be able to justify sticking around and protecting him.

But since Felipe already considered me a friend and was in danger, perhaps being his friend had more advantages than disadvantages...