Chapter 19 : Chapter 19
Chapter 19: Let Me Show You What a Real Small Fry Looks Like!
At first, Chang Rong did not understand what so-called “witchification” actually meant.
Even when he had been sitting in lockup and saw his cellmate Hiro-chan suddenly lose it, he had only thought she was just one of those landmine girls randomly huffing at people for no reason. In fact, Hiro really did enjoy huffing.
But when he witnessed Houshou Margo’s execution, Chang Rong personally experienced “witchification.”
That did not refer to the process of Houshou Margo transforming into a witch in front of everyone.
It referred to the sensation Chang Rong himself felt while facing that process—a feeling as though his brain had completely crashed.
He did not know Houshou Margo at all, nor did he understand her in the slightest. What had this self-proclaimed trickster girl gone through in the past? What kind of answer lay there? He would never know.
And yet, when Chang Rong saw the moment Houshou Margo transformed into a witch, all he felt was boundless fury.
That was right—fury.
He did not care why Houshou Margo had killed.
He did not care what kind of twisted past or old wounds she carried.
Chang Rong was no saint, nor was he sentimental enough to risk everything for a girl he had only met once.
The only thing he cared about was this:
Houshou Margo could not be executed as a “witch.”
That alone was unacceptable. Absolutely unacceptable.
In the instant before reason had fully reclaimed control of his body, Chang Rong had already rushed forward, solely to try to stop Houshou Margo from truly falling into becoming a “witch.”
How was he supposed to explain behavior that so utterly contradicted his own personality?
He did not know.
He only knew that he hated this. He had always hated this. Every cell in his body hated “witches.”
【Rong, this is my “Original Sin.” Even so, do you still wish to continue?】
That voice, pressing against his ear and yet seeming to come from the far edge of the sky, rang out once again.
——————
“Mm... huh? Just now, I...?”
—Did I suddenly charge up there? The fact that the jailers did not kill me outright means I really did pick up a life for free. Tch, that kind of uncontrollable impulse... so this is what they call “witchification”? That is seriously terrifying...
In theory, that kind of impulse should have some sort of “trigger,” right? 【Witch】... was it witches? Could it be that this body had been killed by a witch before, so it had developed some kind of stress reaction, like a conditioned reflex, toward the concept of 【Witches】?
He had been mocking Hiro earlier for being one of those obsessive justice freaks, the kind who turned into some blood-seeking anti-witch maniac the moment the topic of witches came up.
And now it turned out he was sitting at the same table as her?
This was not supposed to be his character setting...
There had to be something wrong here.
Mm...
I cannot make sense of it.
Shaking his head, Chang Rong finally managed to load the drivers back into his dead-as-a-brick brain.
It seemed he was still in the tribunal hall. Sunset no longer streamed in through the stained-glass windows on the walls, and the crystal chandelier overhead had become the only light source, illuminating the now-empty execution platform before him.
—A life was stripped away up there by our own hands just moments ago, and now there is not even a trace left behind.
【Say, little brother Chang... I love you.】
Houshou Margo’s words remained incomparably clear in his mind. He suspected that, for the rest of his life, he would never uncover the answer behind the trickster’s final curtain-call lie.
“Chang Rong-kun...”
Sakuraba Emma’s timid voice came from behind him, interrupting his thoughts.
“Sorry, Sakuraba-san. I think I was suddenly possessed just now—mmph!?”
Chang Rong gathered himself as best he could and turned around to answer Emma, only to find a whole crowd staring at him the instant he did.
Roughly glancing over them, he found that in the eyes of three or four of them lurked pitch-black resolve.
And in another two or three pairs of eyes, there was killing intent.
“R-right, I suddenly remembered I left my sense of shame in the infirmary, so I need to go get it—gk!”
Sensing that things were bad, Chang Rong prepared to go full marathon runner and bolt, but before he could even take a step, Hiro yanked him back by the straps of his overalls and seized him in one motion.
“You idiotic rabbit—are your brains really full of rabbit fur!?”
“S-sorry, that was my fault, please show mercy, spare my life, at least grant me a clean death...”
“Do you even understand how dangerous what you did was? You were this close to getting yourself killed!”
“Uh... huh?”
Looking at Nikaido Hiro glaring at him in sheer fury, it was Chang Rong who froze for a moment.
He truly had not expected Hiro to be this angry over his “getting carried away by witchification and charging out” stunt. Especially when this girl herself was basically a pop-it firecracker in human form.
And the thing Hiro seemed angry about was not that his actions had caused trouble for everyone.
It was that his actions had put “Chang Rong” himself in danger.
“Wait, Hiro. This was my oversight! We have all seen how terrifying the jailers are. They are absolutely not something we can casually fight against. But I did not tell you something that important, and nearly let you walk right into danger. That was my failure, Chang Rong.”
Reiya stepped up from the side, stopping Hiro from throttling Rabbit Head while apologizing to Chang Rong at the same time.
“No... this was my own problem. I do not know why I suddenly rushed out like that, but I nearly caused a serious disaster. There is no way to shift the blame on that one. But in any case, as long as everyone is all right, that is what matters.”
Chang Rong honestly lowered his head and apologized to everyone.
As long as it was not a work-related issue, admitting fault honestly after making a mistake was also an essential quality for a mature social adult.
(If it were work-related, then of course one had to resort to every possible means to dump the blame elsewhere.)
Most importantly, the witch trial was already over. No matter what these girls thought, at least he no longer had to keep pretending to be the mastermind. Naturally, that meant he also no longer had to puff himself up and stubbornly keep up appearances.
“After seeing something like that with your own eyes, there is no way anyone can really say they are ‘fine’... Right! Y-you, are you actually the mastermind after all, desuwa!?”
Tono Hannah’s voice was a little downcast at first, but then she hurriedly pointed at Chang Rong and demanded tensely.
“To be questioned like that by milady herself would hurt even someone like me. If Young Lady Tono truly does not believe me, ngh... then please, do with me as you will!”
Chang Rong put on an expression of heartbreaking grief and struck a pose that said, Please, act at once.
“Eh? N-no, that is not what I meant! I only asked recklessly because everything that happened was just too hard to believe, so... in any case, d-do not take it to heart!”
Tono Hannah was startled by Chang Rong’s act and fumbled in a rush to explain herself, then ended up simply conceding that it was her fault.
—Heh. An innocent, sheltered young lady really is easy to handle. She is even easier to bluff than that dog outside my house after it got neutered.
“No more of that fake act. Behave yourself! Hurry up and say it already—are you in league with the mastermind or not!? And why do you know things about Hikami Meruru!?”
He had only just pacified Tono Hannah when the white-haired girl in the tattered hood and mask, Shidou Arisa, angrily rushed up in her place.
“Calm down, Arisa. Those words were nothing more than ‘false testimony’ he made up on the spot. Granted, using ‘false testimony’ in a witch trial is an utterly vile and shameful method, a completely deranged act no normal person would be capable of, but at the very least, that false testimony led us to the correct conclusion,” Hiro said lightly, blocking Arisa.
—While I appreciate you stepping in to help defuse the situation, Hiro, is it not a little too much to casually dump the entire chamber pot of blame onto my head alone!?
“This old man thinks lying is wrong too, but Little Rong was probably only doing it to protect Little Hiro, right? So there is no need to be too harsh on him, haha...”
Milia, who dressed like a flashy gyaru but in truth had the speech habits and behavior of a middle-aged good guy, also stepped in to smooth things over. Hiro, beside her, responded with her usual one-button huff.
Seeing Hiro acting all prickly and sulky like that, the others all burst into cheerful laughter.
“N-no, hold on a second, all of you! Weren’t we just saying we should tie this guy up and interrogate him properly until he spits out every hidden secret and everything he knows!? How did this turn into some kind of team-building atmosphere in the blink of an eye? And why is the team-building happening around him!?”
Sawatari Coco’s voice popped out together with those trademark cat-ear headphones of hers as she loudly questioned how everyone had surrendered before the battle even began. Had they not all agreed to go down together? So they had all just been messing with her?
“What I am more curious about is why you keep targeting me specifically, Sawatari-san. Lady Reiya should have already explained my situation, right? I do not have any of my earlier memories at all, and I was thawed out from a frozen state. Tachibana-san can prove that too—where is she?”
Chang Rong had meant to call on the self-styled detective Tachibana Sherry to testify for him, but after sweeping his eyes around, he realized she had already vanished.
“Xiao Xue said she saw a beetle that could cast off its shell, so she went to the front yard to catch beetles,” Milia replied with a sigh.
...She really was an extraordinary person in every possible sense.
“Ughhh... anyway, no matter how you look at it, having a man mixed in among a bunch of ‘Witch Candidates’ is strange! And in ‘the other me’s’ perspective, I never saw you at all... anyway, I am right, aren’t I, Kurobe Nayuka—Nayuka?”
“...”
Coco looked toward the mysterious sniper girl Chang Rong feared most, hoping for support, but Kurobe Nayuka said nothing. She merely stared silently at Chang Rong.
Those pale gray eyes locked onto him as though they wanted to bite some answer right out of him.
【I will keep watching you】—that was absolutely what the mysterious sniper girl meant to say.
If he did anything strange next time, Kurobe Nayuka would definitely come charging at him with some “Surprise, motherfucker!” energy while dramatic battle music blared in the background.
—S-still terrifying...! I have absolutely no idea what goes on inside this girl’s head. She is exactly like the kind of quiet loner who never has any friends in class, then one day suddenly shows up at school carrying a guitar case and says to the only desk mate who ever picked up her eraser, “You should skip next period and go home.”
With Keycap Coco, he could at least barely understand her thought process. But with this girl called Kurobe Nayuka, he had absolutely no idea what she was thinking. And yet that subtle sense of déjà vu made Chang Rong oddly concerned about her.
“Noah does not really get it, but Noah does not dislike Chang Rong.”
The draft-leaking little padded jacket, still wearing that slightly vacant but adorable expression, trotted up to Chang Rong’s side as always.
“【As long as you do not bother me, I cannot be bothered with any of that.】”
The sleepy fluffy girl raised the sign in her hand, on which those words were written.
“W-what is this development!? Why does it feel like I am the villain now!?”
The supposedly unbreakable “Anti-Chang Rong Alliance” shattered on contact, leaving Sawatari Coco staring wide-eyed in disbelief.
“Keh keh keh, now the tide has turned, Sawatari Coco. How does it feel? How does it feel now!?”
Seeing Keycap suffer a setback after constantly targeting him, Chang Rong instantly puffed up like an overinflated balloon, laughing loudly as he moved in to mock her.
“With one sentence from me, I can make Hiro obediently get down and support me. With a little casual flattery, I can make Reiya spin in circles. And that silly young lady over there can be ordered around however I like. What exactly do you have that can compete with me? Heehee, what a small fry~ a total small fry—huh?”
As Chang Rong kept talking, he realized he was getting farther and farther away from Sawatari Coco. Turning his head, he discovered that Hiro, Reiya, and Hannah had each grabbed one of his hands and were dragging him toward the corner.
For some reason, all three of them had uniformly entered dark-faced magnetic field mode. But Chang Rong did not need to understand what that meant anymore.
When a pitiful small-fry voice came from the corner crying, “It was I who got carried away, hss, could the three of you maybe reconcile—gwaah!?” everyone exchanged glances.
“This old man feels... Little Rong really does not seem like a bad guy, haha...”
“Well, I guess there is still a chance he is the mastermind...?” Sawatari Coco muttered while filming. “Though honestly, I really cannot picture a guy like this as some grand mastermind.”
Just to mock someone else as a small fry, he personally went and did something even more small-fry than that?
Haki-Rong, you really are terrifying...!
A few minutes later—
“Hiro-chan, Chang Rong-kun, he...”
Seeing Hiro taking off her gloves as she walked out of the tribunal hall, Sakuraba Emma immediately hurried after her.
“That blowfish-balloon sort of personality deserves a beating—cough, I mean, it is Incorrect and must be corrected.”
Hiro gave a cold snort and clearly had no intention of saying any more to Sakuraba Emma, even though Emma looked pitiful and crestfallen.
—Although this case was not your doing, I understand your true nature better than anyone, Sakuraba Emma. You... sooner or later, you will kill everyone. You are evil.
As for that rabbit—
The image of the boy presenting false testimony during the witch trial surfaced in Hiro’s mind, and her tightly furrowed brows eased a little.
Come to think of it, what he did back then... looked very much like a stress reaction during “witchification.”
Did he also have a “taboo” of his own? Or perhaps an obsession? What would it be?
It had been a long time since she had felt this kind of desire to understand someone.
You—
Could you possibly be “Correct,” Chang Rong?
“I am so mad! To think he tricked me by pretending to be a knight—he is the worst sort of person, desuwa!”
“The top spot in the fan club really cannot be given to Chang Rong after all. I never imagined that, as a fan, his purity level would be this low!”
The other two members of the Rabbit-Beating Squad, Tono Hannah and Hasumi Reiya, passed by Hiro while muttering complaints.
“B-but... people of noble bearing are broad-minded existences, so giving him one more chance would not be impossible either, desu...”
“It seems that before teaching him how to become a qualified star of the stage, the first thing I must do is teach him how to become a qualified idol fan! Hmph hmph, for me, that is child’s play!”
“...”
Watching Tono Hannah and Hasumi Reiya chat idly as they went from pouting complaints to self-reconciliation to arbitrarily building up hopeful expectations again, Hiro seemed to find the answer she had been looking for.
There was not even the slightest chance this guy could be “Correct.”
If anything, he was a complete danger to society...!
If left alone, he would definitely drag even more people down with him!