Chapter 35: Pop~!

The quiet student’s head hit the floor before his body followed.

THUD.

The sound echoed in the cramped storage room, louder than it should have been. Maybe it was the silence that followed, the way even the dust seemed to hold its breath.

The remaining four stood frozen.

Marcus’s face had gone pale. Daemon’s legs shook so badly he had to brace himself against a stack of old crates to stay upright. The calculating woman had stopped trying to force the door. Her eyes were fixed on the headless body, wide with the kind of terror that only made sense when you realized you were next.

"W-What the hell...?"

Marcus whispered, his voice cracking.

"Lady Rose... you... you actually..."

Anna turned to him, and he flinched so hard he nearly fell. The smile was still there, but her eyes were wet. Tears streamed down her cheeks even as her expression remained terrifyingly serene.

"I told you."

She raised a hand, and a second chain of light slithered from her sleeve, coiling at her feet like a serpent waiting to strike.

"You all should just die."

POP!

Marcus was dead.

Then Anna turned to the quiet one that was pinned.

POP!

Another, their heads bursting like overripe fruit under the crushing force of her chains and the magic reinforcing them.

The remaining two broke.

Daemon threw himself toward the door, clawing at the wood, his nails splintering against the grain as he screamed. While the calculating woman didn’t move. She just stood there, her eyes darting between Anna and the bodies, searching for an angle that didn’t exist.

"Please, please, Lady Rose, I didn’t... I never touched him!"

Anna tilted her head, considering.

"You didn’t?"

"No, I swear it, I just watched, I would never—!"

"Liar."

The word came out soft, almost kind. Like she was correcting a child who’d told a harmless fib.

"Complicit."

Anna said, then the chain moved.

SNAP!

The woman crumpled.

One left.

Daemon had stopped screaming. His throat was raw, his fingers bloody from the door. He turned slowly, back pressed against the wood, and faced her.

"Please... I’ll do anything..."

"Anything?"

"Anything! I’ll leave the academy, I’ll leave the country, I’ll never come near him again—!"

"Silence."

Anna took a step toward him, and the distance between them felt like nothing at all.

"I can’t trust you."

POP!

The last body fell.

Anna stood alone among the carnage, her breathing ragged. Blood, not much, but enough, had spattered across the front of her uniform. She looked down at it, then at her hands, then back at me.

"Now then..."

She surveyed the room, her expression softening as she took in the bodies, the blood pooling across the floor.

"That’s going to be a problem..."

But her eyes were already moving past it, already dismissing it. A problem for later. Right now, there was something far more important.

"Stay still, Reyn. Let me heal you."

Her voice was soothing and gentle. A voice meant to comfort someone who could hear, even though I was perfectly still, feigning unconsciousness.

She didn’t know I could hear her. Yet she still said it.

She really is perfect...

✧ ✦ ✧

Before I even realized it, I had already fallen asleep to the sound of Anna’s voice. The bruises and the strain of controlling my mana had exhausted me more than I initially thought.

Then again, perhaps her voice really was that gentle.

Knowing the nature of this world and what she would eventually become in the later arcs as a villainess, I suspected the latter was more likely.

"W-What...?"

I sat up from my own bed back in my room in the mansion, and there I found Trish stopping me from standing, her palm pressed gently over my chest.

"Please don’t move, Reyn, you need to rest. Anna told me what happened."

Trish said, and I definitely locked onto the fact that she had addressed Anna using only ’Anna’ instead of using honorifics.

"Then...?"

"We took care of it. Don’t worry."

Trish smiled, and quite eerily while she was at it. Whatever "taking care of it" meant, I was sure it wasn’t too over-the-top to think that Trish had a hand in cleaning up the dead bodies.

It was her signature back in the actual story itself, after all.

As innocent as Trish seemed, her pragmatic and cold side had always been there, even if it was twisted into something far worse in the original story following the fall of her house.

Unlike Anna’s villainy, which required a certain trigger to emerge, Trish’s was simply part of who she was.

"I think I’m going to need details."

I said, trying to fish for more without saying things outright. I needed to make sure I wasn’t assuming. This was Trish, after all.

Once Anna arrived, I’d be more direct. She was the one who’d committed the murders directly. The last thing I needed was to be direct with Trish and find out she knew only a little of what actually happened.