Chapter 29: A Moment of Leisure

"Don't be nervous, it's me!" Kijima Haraai emerged from behind the rockery, clad in a white lab coat.

"Dr. Kijima, what are you doing here?" Wakaba asked, batting her adorable, wide eyes.

"Waiting for you, of course," Kijima sighed. "You've been having remedial lessons every night this week, and I haven't had a chance to find you."

"Why are you looking for me?"

Kijima looked at the fairy-like little girl before her, who wore such a clueless and naive expression, and sighed inwardly. "Have you forgotten? I asked you before if you were still willing to leave this place."

"Ah, that," Wakaba’s flawless, beautiful little face clouded over with a faint look of distress. She pretended to ponder for a moment, then tilted her head up. "I’ve thought about it, and I’ve decided not to leave after all."

"Why?" Kijima asked. "Do you really want to stay in the academy and live this dull life every day?"

"The outside world is too dangerous," the little beauty said, counting off on her delicate, jade-like fingers. "Although the academy is bitter, exhausting, boring, and strict... at least it’s safe."

In truth, if she weren't able to experience life through her clone, she wouldn't have been able to stand it for a single day.

Upon hearing this, Kijima did not refute her. Instead, she stared straight at Wakaba, her tone heavy with implication: "Do you really think the academy is safe?"

"What do you mean?" Wakaba’s cute eyes flashed with a hint of wariness. She took a step back on her slender legs, prepared to bolt.

Since her consciousness had sublimated once, her body seemed to have become more agile. Although she couldn't win a fight against an adult woman, she was confident in her ability to run... or so she hoped.

However, Kijima did not resort to force. She continued, "In a few days, you will know. By then, you should be able to see the tip of the iceberg of the truth behind the Miyagi Hyakka Academy."

"What are you talking about?" Wakaba pressed.

Kijima gave a mysterious smile. "Dance for me, and I’ll tell you."

"Right now?" Wakaba looked down at her attire.

The academy’s dance leotards were made of an unknown material, but they were incredibly thin and soft, like cicada wings; from a distance, it looked as if she were wearing nothing at all.

"Let me go back and change first," she said.

"No! Someone is paying a high—" Kijima stopped herself, realizing she had let something slip, and quickly corrected, "I mean, I just love watching little Wakaba dance in that outfit!"

Wakaba looked at her with a speechless expression.

Do you really think I didn't hear what you let slip?

"I'm tired today, I don't want to dance," Wakaba said, tossing her head and walking toward the dormitory on her own.

She wasn't afraid of what Kijima might do. She had just realized that she was inside the academy. If Kijima tried anything, she only had to scream, and the entire campus security system would be activated.

As for the possibility that the other party could bypass the security system? If they had that kind of capability, would they really be wasting time talking to her?

"Hey, wait! Don't you want to know the truth about the academy?" Kijima asked, her expression turning anxious as she saw Wakaba walking away.

"No! This honor student just wants to sleep!" Wakaba huffed petulantly, tossing her head so that her black ponytail swished behind her, looking every bit the proud and spoiled student.

Kijima thought of the loans she was carrying and gritted her teeth, intending to chase after her, but a patrol robot appeared, forcing her to give up and leave. As she departed, she didn't forget to tell Wakaba again that if she changed her mind in a few days, she must come find her.

Wakaba remained noncommittal.

When she returned to the dormitory, the lights in the large living room were still on. Their honor student dormitory was an anomaly among the surrounding buildings, often leaving the lights on throughout the night—though the academy never cared about such trivial electricity costs.

She checked the rooms of Fire Lotus, Evangeline, and Big Sister Keiko in turn, but they were all pitch black.

"Huh, it's rare for them to be asleep so early tonight," Wakaba muttered to herself.

Returning to her room, she grabbed a change of clothes and headed to the bathroom. With her previous experience, she locked the door and windows with practiced ease and filled the tub with hot water. As the steam rose, the bathroom became hazy.

She changed deftly and stepped into the bath, her petite, pale feet touching the tiles. She concentrated her consciousness to open the status bar on her retina.

"Name: Wakaba
Age: 11
True Spirit Points: 217
Pickup Range: 100 meters (including clone range)
Consciousness Sublimations: 1
Number of Clones: 1"

"I had quite a harvest in the Fog Realm this time," Wakaba thought. Previously, she had only had about 50 points; the current two hundred-plus were naturally provided by the giant beasts, the foul beasts, and those three magical girls.

"With two hundred points, I can sublimate my consciousness twice," she decided.

In an instant, the two hundred True Spirit Points transformed into a torrent of spiritual energy that surged into her consciousness. The miraculous state returned; she felt her consciousness slip into a cold, empty void, as if detaching from her body. Then, a massive influx of information poured in.

The familiar, excruciating pain returned, even more intense than before. She couldn't even lose consciousness; she could only perceive everything with agonizing clarity. Simultaneously, her body, serving as the vessel for her consciousness, began to transform under the washing of the spiritual torrent.

A moment later, the sublimation was complete. A sense of clarity washed over her, like the fresh sky after a heavy rain. Her large, dark eyes, once merely cute and lively, were now even more brilliant and intelligent, like unique black gems.

Wakaba stood up from the tub, her small, exquisite body sending ripples through the water.

"I'm so dirty," she noted, spotting a layer of pale yellow grease on her delicate skin. "I thought I’d cleaned it all out before."

She began to scrub vigorously, spending a full hour before she was satisfied. Despite the rough treatment, her skin was now even whiter and softer. She looked like a flawless porcelain doll, her skin as delicate as milk jelly, radiating an ethereal, otherworldly aura.

She checked her status again.

"Name: Wakaba
Age: 11
True Spirit Points: 17
Pickup Range: 200 meters (including clone range)
Consciousness Sublimations: 3
Number of Clones: 1"

"I’ve become smarter again, and twice as much!" Wakaba nodded happily, skipping out of the bathroom to go to sleep.

Days passed. The academy remained peaceful, and Wakaba encountered none of the "truth" Kijima had spoken of.

"As I thought, Dr. Kijima was lying to me." In the quiet flower-arranging room, Wakaba sat kneeling before a low table, trimming flowers with a distracted air.

The room was located within a breathtakingly beautiful landscape garden. It was as open as a dojo, with no walls on either side, only bamboo blinds that swayed in the breeze. Outside, century-old red pines stood tall, interspersed with mountain cherry and maple trees, while moss-covered rockeries and boulders dotted the grounds. A babbling brook flowed from the depths of the woods, circling the room toward the academy's central lake, creating a sound like a natural symphony.

Twenty girls, including Wakaba, were kneeling in five neat rows on the tatami mats, their backs straight, attending class. They were all dressed in heavy, ornate kimonos—layer upon layer of vibrant fabric—with flashy headpieces. The entire ensemble weighed a staggering five kilograms. Despite the weight, the girls had to maintain a standard kneeling posture, unable to move anything but their hands. This lesson had already been going on for two hours.

*Rustle.*

Suddenly, Wakaba heard a faint sound behind her—the sound of very soft footsteps. If she hadn't sublimated her consciousness three times, she never would have noticed. She knew the owner of the footsteps was the etiquette teacher for the elite class, Tsubaki-ko.

She was an eccentric middle-aged woman who wore a bright, heavy kimono regardless of the season—whether it was windy, sunny, raining, or snowing. She was a teacher all the girls in the academy feared. It wasn't because she was harsh—every teacher was harsh—but because of her punishments. She didn't hit people, but she would make students stand in standard etiquette poses for dozens of hours while wearing that heavy, thick ceremonial dress. Every girl who had been subjected to this turned pale at the mere sight of her.

Wakaba heard the footsteps stop behind her and knew the woman was standing right there. She immediately focused all her energy, working on the flowers with precise, meticulous movements. She followed Tsubaki-ko’s demanding standards to the letter, ensuring that the angle of every petal, every twig, and every leaf had less than a one-degree margin of error.

Tsubaki-ko stood behind her in silence for twenty minutes before moving on, a look of satisfaction in her eyes. Wakaba let out a sigh of relief.

*This damned flower-arranging class, it’s been nearly three hours, right? Isn't it over yet? I seem to recall it’s supposed to be... six hours?*

Feeling a wave of despair, she decided to shift her focus to her clone, leaving only a tiny sliver of consciousness to control her main body so it could perform simple, mindless tasks.

***

In the clone's body:

*Squeak!*

It was a sweltering June afternoon. The concrete road radiated a faint white haze, stray cats walked listlessly through the street corners, and cicadas buzzed in the old trees. This was an older district with dense architecture, narrow alleys, and telephone poles draped in thick, tangled webs of wires.

As her consciousness arrived, Wakaba found herself in an old, rectangular courtyard. When she returned to her main body, she had set her clone to act according to her stored memories, so to outsiders, it would only look like she was a bit slow, which was generally not a problem.

A pungent smell of blood hit her instantly. The ground was dark, stained with sporadic patches of deep red that looked like layers of dried blood. This was a slaughterhouse—a fish slaughterhouse, or perhaps more accurately, a wholesale seafood market.

The courtyard housed an open-air factory with two assembly lines running, the motors emitting a low rumble. Fish were being gutted, cleaned of their internal organs, and sealed into plastic wrap boxes. Robots loaded the boxes into crates, which were then moved to an empty lot to be loaded onto trucks.

In a nearby office, a dilapidated ceiling fan squeaked as it turned. A middle-aged man sat smoking, staring intently at a stock market graph on his computer screen.