Chapter 6 : Chapter 6
Chapter 06: Chang Rong Knows Nothing, Okay~
“The time the warden gave us is limited, and we still have to continue searching for evidence afterward, so I could only bring towels and a change of clothes for now. How are you, Hiro?”
“I collapsed at the crime scene, ended up covered in filth, got identified as a suspect and locked up, and even let that bastard successfully provoke me—yes, I am doing just great.”
“Hiro-chan...”
Inside the confinement room, after the initial uproar had passed, Nikaido Hiro had more or less managed to restrain that “killing intent,” and was now speaking with the two people who had come to visit her.
“You were the one who suddenly went feral.”
This time, Chang Rong did not avoid Hiro’s murderer-like glare. He shot back directly.
With Emma Sakura and the self-proclaimed Hasumi Reiya—that is, the so-called “Prince”—backing him up from the side, this was exactly the moment to let that walking mushroom of destruction know who was boss.
In any case, things like begging for mercy, admitting defeat, and asking whether they could make up could all wait until after those two left. A real man had gold beneath his knees; if he wanted to cash it out on the spot, what could anyone do about it?
“Hah? How lacking in self-awareness do you have to be to—”
“Waaah... please don’t start fighting again, Hiro-chan, Chang Rong-kun!”
Nikaido’s second attempted outburst was forcibly stopped by the flustered pink-haired girl.
“Let’s at least clean up a little first. At this rate, the witch trial is about to begin. Hiro-chan, I know it absolutely was not you... ngh!”
Emma Sakura picked up a towel and tried to wipe the dust off Hiro’s face, only to have her arm violently slapped away by the latter.
“There is no need for you to put on that hypocritical act, Emma Sakura. Had you not all already made your choice through the 【Preliminary Vote】? The fact that I am in this confinement room right now already represents your attitude and your position.”
Nikaido Hiro frowned, looking at the “witches” in front of her with utter disgust, as though their hypocrisy made her physically sick.
“But I am afraid I will disappoint you. I will not be executed. On the contrary, at the trial, I will expose the true faces of you disgusting witches! Yes, I was too naïve. To think I once still hoped for ‘companions’? From beginning to end, the only one standing on this side has been myse—”
Hiro’s vicious speech cut off halfway through, because she saw the boy off to the side, who could not join the conversation and had nothing better to do, so he was reduced to fiddling with the chains.
It was not just me who got thrown into solitary, was it?
That tiny interruption—not even enough to count as a digression—slightly eased the increasingly paranoid direction of Hiro’s thoughts.
In truth, even Hiro herself had noticed a faint, intermittent static. Ever since arriving on this prison island, the frequency with which her thoughts took an extreme and violent turn had been abnormally high.
At the very least, Hiro was certain that under normal circumstances, she would never have reacted to being labeled a suspect by thinking, “I will smash this whole damned world apart with my own two hands.”
...Perhaps she really was becoming a little too witch-like.
—In any case, it was not hard to think it through. This was not some premeditated group conspiracy to offer her up as a sacrificial target. It was simply an “accident.”
The proof was this: right next to her was an idiot who had been dragged in with her just for passing by.
This was not some absurd arena of “one person against the whole world.” Her only enemy was the true mastermind. And all she needed to do in the upcoming courtroom debate was prove that the real culprit existed.
“Hiro-chan... thank goodness, Hiro-chan is back to being that calm and cool Hiro-chan...!”
Emma Sakura had no idea what had just happened, but she had definitely noticed the change in Hiro, and a genuinely delighted smile immediately appeared on her face.
“Tch... do not talk as though you understand me so well!”
Although her thoughts were no longer quite so extreme, Nikaido Hiro’s tone was still deeply hostile the moment she looked at Emma Sakura’s face.
“See? Hissing again.”
Chang Rong poked his head out from behind Hasumi Reiya and offered a running commentary.
“You—”
Hiro started to rise, clearly intending to drag him over, but Chang Rong strictly adhered to kite tactics: after delivering his taunt, he immediately ducked back behind the Prince.
“Ahaha, you have already gotten along this well! I knew it, Hiro, you were never fighting alone! Then let us seize this chance and think in one push about the plan going forward!”
With one hand on her hip and the other raised beside her mouth, Reiya laughed in the most stereotypically theatrical way imaginable.
—This one is not thinking about anything at all. She is simply enjoying the feeling of having him and me gathered around her... The number of idiots keeps increasing. For me, that is actually a good thing.
Hiro thought this as she looked at Hasumi Reiya, who was still laughing grandly to herself.
“Chang Rong.”
“Do not try anything funny. Classmate Sakura and Classmate Hasumi are both still here!”
Startled by Hiro suddenly calling his name in a tone that sounded like a summons from the King of Hell, Chang Rong hurriedly grabbed the straight ruler first and used it to threaten her.
“...I merely need to understand some information. Ju Xueli said that you ought to have been one of the imprisoned participants from some previous session. At present, I have many doubts regarding your identity, but if possible, I hope you can tell me something about the witch trial. It may help with my argument later.”
With one hand pressed to her forehead, Hiro explained helplessly.
Ju Xueli... was that the blue-haired girl who kept carrying a magnifying glass, the one whose expression and way of talking were both wildly off the rails?
“Uh, about that... to tell the truth, I do not actually remember anything at all about this so-called 【Previous Witch Trial】 you people keep talking about. Even now, I still do not understand the difference between ‘witch’ and ‘witchification’ from your earlier conversation.”
There was no way he could pretend to be some seasoned veteran forever. He might as well come clean while the people around him were still relatively willing to trust him.
“—”
—Hiro was glaring at him with the same look a mother might give her child after learning he had reached middle school without mastering the multiplication table...
“Then what do you know?” Hiro asked after taking a deep breath.
“Let me think... Oh, right. Everyone unanimously voted to throw you in here.”
“There is no need to say something everyone already knows!”
“Rong, as in banyan tree Rong. Do not write it wrong.”
“There is even less need to say something no one cares to know!”
“All right. Since things have come to this, I can only reveal the truth—I am a transmigrator.”
“You...!” Hiro’s forehead bulged with veins.
“I-I remembered it! Chang Rong-kun’s Rong is the Rong from the banyan tree!” Off to the side, Emma Sakura suddenly raised her hand like a diligent student scrambling to answer the teacher’s question, repeating this newly acquired piece of knowledge.
“Hah, that eager thirst for learning—Emma, you have the makings of an idol too!” Reiya gave her a thumbs-up in praise, complimenting Emma for being such a good girl.
“If that little routine just now was the last comic skit I ever saw before being executed, then after I die, I will definitely come back as a vengeful ghost and haunt all of you for the rest of your lives.”
“Kiang!?”
“Ugh... sorry!” “Aiee?!”
The trio were so startled by Hiro that all three let out brief little whimpers.
And in the end, the only thing everyone learned was this:
“Chang Rong knows nothing, okay~”
Berber~~
A shrill bell rang out from the confinement room door. Judging from the shocked and worried expression on Emma’s face, it seemed to be the signal that visitation time was over.
“Hiro-chan, I am sorry, I... I know you will definitely find the truth, because you are Hiro-chan! I will absolutely do my best to help search for evidence too, and do everything I can to clear your name!”
Emma Sakura clenched her fists and looked at Hiro with a youthful yet determined gaze as she tried to encourage her.
Even though Hiro had hissed at Emma and slapped her away again and again earlier, Emma still showed her goodwill toward Hiro without the slightest reservation.
“Sorry I could not help more, but I will do my best to tell everyone that you are no murderer. This time, I will definitely protect you, Hiro!”
Hasumi Reiya gave Hiro an exaggerated knight’s salute, and then the three of them had no choice but to leave the cell.
Thirty seconds later, Chang Rong was thrown back in by the guard.
“...” Hiro silently looked at the boy in front of her.
Chang Rong, meanwhile, rose to his feet and dusted himself off without changing expression.
“Tch. Looks like I cannot escape that way.”
“...Are you an idiot?” Hiro asked from the bottom of her heart.
“Because on the way here, I noticed the prison security was actually pretty lax. I did not even see a single camera the whole way, so I thought maybe this place did not really have much defensive strength at all—huh? So there is a mirror in the confinement room too?”
As he spoke, Chang Rong suddenly noticed a standing mirror placed in the corner and walked over curiously.
“It is probably meant for the people being tortured. They say that even someone who can endure the pain of having their abdomen torn open will have their psychological defenses instantly collapse the moment they see their own intestines spilling out in the mirror.”
“Eeeek!?”
Horrified by Hiro’s disturbingly hardcore little lecture—whether it was true or not—Chang Rong instantly recoiled from the mirror. The sight of that seemed to improve Hiro’s mood, if only a little.
But just now, out of the corner of his eye, Chang Rong thought he had seen something that bothered him. After steeling himself psychologically, he cautiously leaned his head over again.
The moment Chang Rong saw the image reflected from the angle inside the mirror, his entire body froze.
Reflected in the mirror was a gray-eyed boy under one meter seventy in height.
The boy had short white hair, with long side locks hanging down to rest against his shoulders.
He wore a clean and tidy white striped shirt with a black ribbon tied at the chest, black loose-fitting shorts connected by leather suspenders, and a pair of black leather short boots with raised soles. At first glance, he looked like the young master of some aristocratic English family.
He stared at the mirror and blinked for a long while before finally saying a single sentence:
“Who is this?”
—Incorrect. There was absolutely something incorrect about this guy. No... rather than “incorrect,” it would be more accurate to say “abnormal”!
Watching Chang Rong stare at the reflection in the mirror and ask who the person was, Nikaido Hiro was instantly overcome with a wave of lingering fear at the thought that, only moments ago, she had actually tried to obtain information from him that might affect her chances of life or death.