Chapter 205: ~Chapter 70~ Part 1

"I'm telling you Dormouse; I'm not sick, just tired."

Despite my protests, my dear assistant continued hold her palm against my forehead in search of any sign of a fever. The placeholders in the classroom were giving us odd looks (I liked it better when they ignored our shenanigans, but I don't think reversing their development was possible, or ethical for that matter), so I gently removed her hand from my head. I honestly didn't know what I found weirder: the fact that Judy could tell that I was out of it against my best efforts to appear normal, or that she waited until lunch-break to raise a fuss about it.

"Couldn't sleep?" came the well-meaning question from Josh sitting behind his desk, though considering he also had giant bags under his eyes, he might have only tried to avert attention. As such, it was only fair that I threw the ball back into his court.

"Nah, I slept exactly as much as usual," I opened with a half-truth, followed up by, "Speaking of which, you look pretty out of it yourself. Did you stay up all night yesterday?"

"Ah, yeah. I kinda got fixated on finishing a quest in a game, and before I knew it, it was past midnight."

Oh? Now would you look at that? No awkward shuffling, no averted eyes, just a straightforward answer. It was almost like he expected me to ask that very question and made preparations in advance. In other words, the plot thickens.

It was at this point that I sent a sneaky glance at the class rep standing a little apart from the rest of us. In return, she gave me an 'I know you know' kind of look, to which I responded with a 'I know you know that I know' smirk, which she answered with a 'I know you know that I know you know' flavored raised eyebrow, and while I was sure we could continue this until the cows came home, I figured this was good enough.

"Game? What game?" Elly asked out of pure curiosity, much to my friend's well-disguised chagrin.

"It's... an RPG. You probably never heard of it," Josh deflected her with a smile.

"We can talk over the details during lunch," Judy urged us along, but I had no choice but to disappoint her.

"You do that. I have something to discuss with the class rep first."

Once I declared my intentions, the two of us spent several seconds communicating only using our eyebrows, and once we cleared things up (I hoped), my dear assistant sharply nodded in agreement.

"All right then. We'll go ahead. Don't dally for too long."

"Hold on for just a second!" The expression on Josh's face somehow appeared even more gravely wronged than his voice implied, and he followed his interruption up with the question, "If Leo stays behind, who's going to pay for my lunch?"

"Oh, shaddup ya muncha'!" Angie exclaimed in an undecipherable fake accent. I was sure it was another one of their esoteric inside-jokes that I simply had no chance of understanding due to not growing up with the two of them. Maybe for the best, I reckoned.

Anyhow, she put her hands onto Josh's shoulders and began to push her childhood pal out of the classroom while telling him, thankfully without the accent, "For once you can lower yourself to us lowly mortals and eat a ticket menu like the rest of us! Trust me, you'll survive!"

"Ow, wait! This was just kidding! Leo, help!"

Even if I wanted to (which I didn't), I couldn't aid my friend, as he was already out in the hallway and being pushed even further away. My girlfriends shared an uncertain look at the pair's expense, so I urged them to follow after the two, and they soon did so, though not before Judy made me promise that I would catch up with them as soon as possible. That left me alone with the suspicious class rep. Well, her, and all the placeholders still paying an unnecessary amount of attention to us.

"Should we go somewhere more secluded?" I proposed, and she nodded without any delay.

For a moment I almost wondered where we should head, but by the looks of it the class rep already had a destination in mind. I simply followed her lead, and in a few short minutes later we were already inside the library. It's been ages since the last time I've been here (subjectively speaking, objectively it's been less than three months), but the place was just as unnecessarily spacious and fancy as I remembered. At first I thought we would sit by one of the desk at the back, but the class rep went the extra mile to find the most secluded corner behind the rows of bookshelves on the first floor before she came to a halt.

"Were you spying on us last night?"

Straight to the point, eh? It was a little surprising, but I had to give it to her; it made things much easier than spending who knows how long dancing around the topic.

"I wasn't exactly 'spying' on you per se, but yes, I've noticed that you were up to something," I corrected her. "Something about sneaking into a building with Josh and Mike, if I'm not mistaken."

The moment those words left my mouth, Ammy's shoulders immediately slouched in defeat. It only lasted for a moment though, as right after that she glanced around the empty corner, probably just to be sure, before she gestured for me to lean closer.

"Listen, Leo." Her whispers were barely audible, so I had to lean even closer. She looked a little uncomfortable by my invasion of her personal space, but hey, she was the one who wanted to do this double-secretly. Once she collected herself, she took a deep breath, looked me in the eye, and told me, "Please don't get involved."

"Okay." My answer apparently took her aback, so I told her, "I am really busy already, so if it's your personal business, I have no reason to stick my nose into it."

"Erm… Yes, it is personal." She kept eyeing me as if she was expecting a theatrical 'However!' from me, but when I remained silent, she tentatively asked, "How much did you see?"

"Practically nothing," I admitted without any reservations. "As I said, I was insanely busy last night, so I didn't have the time to pay attention to whatever you guys were doing."

"All night? What were you doing?"

"Nuh-uh, class rep," I chided her as I waved my finger in front of her face. "I don't ask about your business, you don't ask about mine. It's common courtesy. All I say is that it involved some negotiations, waiting for someone to sober up, and then some more negotiations."

"I… see."

With this, the conversation came to a natural halt, but there was at least one last thing I was curious about, so I softly cleared my throat.

"So, details aside, is the thing that you guys were doing dangerous? Say, on a ten point scale."

Ammy hesitated for a second, but instead of giving me a straightforward answer, she responded with, "I don't have a frame of reference, so I can't answer that."

"Ooookay then, how about this: One is taking a candy from a baby, ten is taking a certain key from a certain underground office."

My clarification prompted her to fall silent for several seconds while she contemplated, culminating in a single word.

"Five."

"That… is actually a bit higher than I expected," I admitted, but then I also shrugged my shoulder and added, "Oh well. If you need help, you know where to find me. Either way, be careful."

"I will be. You should just focus on recovery."

"I try, but honestly, it's not something I can just recover from on my own. I appreciate the sentiment all the same," I told her with a reassuring smile, yet for some reason it only made her frown deepen. "Don't worry, I actually have multiple experts lined up to help me. One of them surely can fix my hand."

I wanted to punctuate my words with a thumbs up, but my fingers refused to play along, so in the end I had to use my left hand to bend my thumb into position. That… might have done more harm to my point than good, but there was no sense crying over spilled milk.

"I understand."

"Good." I opened and closed my right hand at this point, but since she still looked a little uncertain, I decided to add, "Anyhow, if it's something I can help with even in my current condition, don't be afraid to ask."

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I figured we would be leaving it at that, but then in a sudden one-eighty-turn she threw an unexpected question at me.

"In that case… can I ask you a favor?"

"Wait, is it related to the conversation we were just having, or a separate favor?"

"The former," she admitted, making me even more baffled by this turn of events. "There is a… box I need you to hide."

"A box," I repeated after her, and she reaffirmed it with a nod.

"I need you to put it somewhere safe, and more importantly, a place I wouldn't know about." I probably looked quite confused at the moment, as she also told me, "It is in case 'someone' starts suspecting me. I originally wanted to leave it with Michael, but I don't want to endanger him. He already helped more than he really needed to."

"And don't forget that he is technically an agent and he might leak it to the Celestial Information Network," I pointed out, even if only half-seriously, yet she took quite an offense to my words.

"He wouldn't do that!"

Seeking how vehemently she was glaring at me, I had no choice but to backpedal a little.

"… On second thought, no, he probably wouldn't," I agreed with her, and after one more huff, she returned to the previous conversation.

"As I was saying, I need to get rid of this 'box', but I can't destroy its contents. I can't give it to Josh or Michael either, and I can't hide it myself. Unlike me, you cannot be interrogated, so it would be safer in your hands."

"Wait, what do you mean 'I cannot be interrogated'?"

The class rep gave me a look that said she couldn't decide whether I was serious or not, but when she finally realized I was sincere, she let out a long sigh and lazily readjusted her glasses.

"I don't know what you did to grandfather, but he apparently doesn't want anything to do with you. So long as you are not directly implicated, he would rather swallow the indignity than to deal with you again. If I didn't know him better, I would almost think he was afraid of you."

"Oh, please. I'm not that scary," I jested, but Ammy remained entirely serious, so I left it at that.

"If you do this for me, then even if I get interrogated, I can say under oath that I don't know where the hom— I mean, the contents of the box are."

"Is that so?" At first I wanted to question what kind of incompetent interrogator would leave things at that, but then I remembered my own experience with Onikiri's apparent truth-detector capabilities and how easy it was to circumvent them, and I figured it might not be such a far-fetched idea after all. "If that's all, then I suppose I could accommodate you. How about I pick it up after school today?"

"Sounds good to me. Just promise me you handle it with care, and that you don't get involved any further."

I wanted to point out that hiding incriminating evidence was  getting about as far involved as possible short of doing the actual deed, whatever that was, but I refrained from doing so in favor of another idea that just popped into my head.

"Can I ask you a favor in return?" She immediately nodded, so I told her, "Do you have any books on enchantments?"

"You mean technical manuals, or theoretical works?" she asked back, and while I was tempted to answer with a cheeky 'Yes', it was probably more productive to explain myself in detail.

"Anything you can give me. The symposium for the Artificers is coming up soon, and I was invited as a guest speaker. The problem is, I'm completely clueless of the jargon and how enchanting is normally done by normal people under normal circumstances. In other words, I'd like to do the absolute minimum research on the topic so that I won't sound like an utter simpleton."

There was an uncomfortably long beat of silence after I finished my explanation. In fact, I was just about to break it myself, but before I could do so, Ammy blurted out an incredulous, "You were invited to the symposium."

"Yeah, Gowan asked me to attend. Why, is it a big deal?"

For a moment Ammy opened her mouth wide in preparation of a retort, but then she just as quickly closed it with an audible clack of teeth and she soon buried her face in her hand.

"Yes, Leo. It's a 'big deal'," she finally told me, her voice suspiciously sounding like she was squeezing her words through her teeth.

"Really? Well, all the more reason why I should do some homework beforehand," I responded in a chipper voice. She didn't seem to appreciate it. Oh well, tough crowds happen.

"You know," she told me once she removed her hand from her forehead, "Sometimes I wonder if you are doing this just to mess with the heads of everyone around you."

I didn't know what she meant by that, but that never stopped me from responding.

"I'll leave it up to your imagination. So, do you have those books?"

"Not yet, but I will borrow some from the School library." I very nearly pointed out that we were already here, but then I realized she said the word with a capital 'S', so I swallowed my words. "Where should we meet to conduct the exchange?"

"I'll just hop over to your place," I said without thinking.

"Very well. I'll make sure to wear the Magiformer."

I was once again stumped for a moment, but then I recalled that my cover story said I could only Phase over to enchanted anchor objects. Sheesh, keeping all of these different cover stories in mind was starting to be a bit of a hassle…

"You do that. Have we discussed everything we wanted?"

"I think so," she told me, so I immediately took half a step back.

"Great. In that case, we should head to the cafeteria before the rumor mill starts moving."

Ammy agreed and the two of us started walking in silence. That didn't last long though, as there was one last question I couldn't get out of my head.

"So, class rep? Is getting invited to this symposium thing really that big of a deal?"

She sent me one last sharp glance in response, and after holding my gaze for a while, she suddenly slouched her shoulders and muttered something about 'achievements of ignorance'. That didn't sound good.

"Oookay then. I guess I better ask Judy to help me study beforehand."

"Yes, you better," the class rep agreed, and with that, we left the school library behind, with my stomach suddenly feeling heavier than when I entered.

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