“Masquerade!”
Once the mask is donned and the black cloth is clad, the figure behind it can no longer be ascertained.
An exception to that rule would be to see him the moment he dons the mask or if he himself chooses to reveal his identity.
One could use a video camera, but then only a black mist would appear, making it seem as if the camera is broken.
Moreover, the boy known as Nakamura Shinichi, who was the current Masquerade, already knew where all the cameras were. So long as mana (photon) was being used, and so long as he could feel it, being ‘hidden’ was irrelevant.
If anything he’d be more careful to avoid accidentally photobombing someone taking a picture or recording a video.
Another way to put it is that if he’s being considerate of even that, then the moment he dons the mask, then there really is no one capable of noticing him.
He was being monitored and the time he could move was limited, but Youko could just easily use her illusion spells to fool his observers; hence, for all intents and purposes, he truly could move as he pleased.
When you add even mana hacking on top of all that, then there truly was nothing in the city that he couldn’t investigate.
Try as people might to hide their secrets and confidential meetings from him, so long as it was in this city, nothing could escape him.
But then again many of those stories weren’t really of value anyway. Just like the next part.
“As usual, he gets so many complaints… The month is already almost over, and yet…”
In the dead of the night, the man handling the complaints and petitions of the students was the student council president, Amamiya.
He grumbled, fed-up, as he glanced at the sleeping boy projected on the floating screen.
It has already been a month since his transfer to this school.
Although it wasn’t as frequent as before, his continued snubbing of people save for a few exceptions and boycotting of classes has resulted in teachers and students complaining about him to no end.
“Doesn’t seem like he’s planning on adapting either. But when put so bluntly, don’t you think he’s actually quite impressive?”
The vice president, Riltina, naturally handed him a cup of coffee.
Amamiya thanked her, then wryly smiled after relishing in the taste and smell of the coffee.
“Hmm, he’s fitting in plenty well in a different sense…”
Deep inside he felt like praising him for being able to act like that inside the school.
Said praise would be the unpleasant or sarcastic sort, however. After all, it was his fault that his workload had increased.
“Do you just stop caring about your surroundings after living alone in the wilds?”
It was abnormal for such a bad student with such a low status to be able to have his way this much.
Considering his situation, he couldn’t help but blame that for his behavior, but something felt off.
“If you’re going to look at it from that perspective, it actually feels like he’s too used to people.”
“Yes, his interactions with Ruona-kun and the class teachers are too good.”
He was too friendly for someone who had supposedly forgotten how to interact with others.
In fact, it felt like he was a step above them somewhere.
“I really don’t get it. But at this rate, even if we know it’s pointless, this observation job will never end.”
They couldn’t get any results despite relying on a method as foul as putting hidden cameras in his room.
Although part of their job was also to protect him, but ‘she (amaryllis)’ was around, so that was pointless anyway.
“Perhaps it’s about time I induced the normal students to politely leave him alone.”
The normal spoken about here wasn’t pertaining to the difference in classes, but rather whether or not they were their agents that slipped in.
“Sure, I’ll leave it to you. Hopefully I can at least be freed from this mountain of complaints.”
There was an implication behind her words that eventually the teachers would become like that too if they were to use those.
The exhausted student council president nodded to that, and then looked through the text at hand.
“Should I help you?”
“Nah, you’re already going out of your way to accompany me every night. You don’t need to do that much. You just focus on your own work.”
He gently refused her offer and focused on his own screen.
In response, she nodded and went back to her own work.
“A fox and a tanuki trying to outwit each other? What in the world is going on here?”
Unbeknownst to them, however, watching them was none other than the very boy they were meant to monitor.
In clothes that stuck out like a sore thumb no less. Or at least that was so given that the student council president and vice president were in uniform.
And yet he was not hiding behind any shadow or object, he was standing brazenly at the center, watching them work.
The target to be observed was observing his observers as they observed the fake video he gave them.
It was a laughable situation when put like that, but it was actually quite grim within the student council.
These two were executives of their respective factions, and they often worked late into the night like this.
Because of that some of the students have even begun unjustly suspecting their relationship, but they couldn’t be further from the truth.
On the surface, they were good coworkers, but deep inside, they couldn’t be more estranged, and they kept an eye on each other like hawks.
The reason the president acted like he was smelling the cup of coffee the vice-president handed him was actually to analyze its contents.
Shinichi could see the movement of mana (photon), so he was immediately able to tell that.
Of course, the president judged that there were no problems, so he drank it, but Shinichi had been watching the whole time.
“Slipping in drugs like an expert… Well, it wasn’t anything bad, though.”
He checked the drug the girl slipped in just in case she was slipping in something bad, but it seemed to just be an odorless and tasteless nutritional supplement that couldn’t be detected by a machine.
Hence, one could argue that she was just being considerate, but it still makes one wonder why she had to keep quiet about it.
In the first place, why in the world was she even carrying that on her? It was a rather terrifying topic.
Was she trying to work him like a horse? Was this practice for the real thing?
Of course, it was wholly possible that she meant well, but Shinichi leaned toward the more malicious possibilities.
“…Well, whatever, good luck, you two.”
Although the student council had the wrong idea and was suspicious of him, he didn’t really have much of an interest in them.
Bluntly speaking, he knew what they were doing and for what end, and he already had a countermeasure in place.
As such, the student council could be said to have already been neutralized and was no longer any threat or trouble to him.
That didn’t change even if he knew that they were agents dispatched by governments from either worlds.
He would use their surveillance system for his own ends, and have them be his alibis who recognized him only as a weird student.
He would also use them as a convenient source of information regarding matters of security. To the boy known as Nakamura Shinichi, that was the kind of place the student council was.
Leave a Reply