The truth was out in the open, and no one remembered how to breathe.
Sally collapsed beside the shattered vial, trembling. She covered her face and broke—sobs raw, ugly, unguarded, like every last thread of composure had snapped at once.
Tara dropped beside her immediately, pulling her the girl she thought of as her unlucky little sister into a tight embrace—shielding her from the room’s eyes.
“All right,” Rein said, cutting through it.
He didn’t look angry. He didn’t look sympathetic either. He yawned—wide, unapologetic—as if this were an inconvenience more than a tragedy.
“The circus is over.”
He lowered his hand, half-lidded eyes settling on Tara and Sally.
“Confess,” he said lazily. “I want to sleep.”
Tara lifted her head. Her eyes were bloodshot—yet steady.
“This isn’t Sally’s fault,” she said. “If anyone is to blame… it’s me. I planned it.”
“N-no, Lady Tara… it’s because of me—” Sally tried to protest through sobs.
Tara squeezed her shoulder once—gentle, final. Silence.
Then Tara looked at Rein again, as if she could turn words into evidence.
“Before this… Sally decided to tell Lucien the truth. That she wasn’t Tara Wyndfield—just a maid. A commoner.”
A breath—sharp, controlled.
“She thought—stupidly—that he’d show mercy. That he’d accept her as she was.”
Tara’s jaw tightened.
“But Lucien laughed at her.”
The next words came out like ice.
“He mocked her. Insulted her. Called her a curse that would drag him down… and threw her away like dirt.”
She swallowed, forcing the ache down.
“Sally broke,” Tara said. “She wanted to withdraw from the Academy. Run.”
“I stopped her.”
Her voice turned bitter.
“Then Lucien came back.”
Tara’s fingers dug into Sally’s shoulder—protective and furious at once.
“He offered a deal.”
A small pause.
“No—he offered a leash.”
“We become his pieces. We assist his research from the shadows. And in return… he ‘keeps’ Sally’s secret.”
Tara’s gaze didn’t waver.
“And if we refused… he threatened to report it. Expose her. Let the Wyndfields know.”
For a heartbeat, the library went dead-quiet.
Not fear.
The stunned silence of a rule being broken so openly it made the air feel wrong.
Mirela’s expression twisted—shock, then disgust, then something uglier.
She stepped forward and pointed at Sally, her finger trembling with righteous outrage.
“You.” Her voice shook. “How dare you? You deceived the Academy. You deceived House Wyndfield.”
Her eyes burned.
“Do you even understand the punishment? Expulsion would be merciful. You could be branded a criminal for life.”
“Mirela, that’s enough,” Julian tried to pull her back.
She tore her arm away.
“Enough?” she snapped. “She’s a servant, Julian.”
The word landed like a slap.
“You wanted to cling to noble blood,” Mirela said, sneer sharpening, “but blood doesn’t lie. If you aren’t one of us, you aren’t.”
Sally shrank—as if she could fold into the floor and vanish.
Then Tara lifted her head.
The guilt in her eyes hardened into steel.
“Yes,” she snapped. “Common. Low-born. And what of it?”
Mirela flinched at the force.
“So you’re ‘right’ just because of blood?” Tara’s voice dropped—thin, razor-sharp. “And Sally is ‘wrong’ the moment she’s born?”
Her stare cut clean through Mirela.
“You really are short-sighted.”
Then she pressed her lips together and looked down again, her hand still rubbing Sally’s back in slow, steady strokes.
Mirela opened her mouth to strike back—
and Rein raised a hand.
“Enough,” he said flatly.
His eyes were cold, bored—done.
“I don’t care about your class war.” A pause. “Save it for a manifesto.”
His gaze returned to Tara.
“Back to what matters.”
“You accepted Lucien’s orders?”
“Yes,” Tara said evenly. “We had no choice. We procured restricted materials from outside—through Noah.”
Noah jerked like he’d been slapped by his own name.
“W-wait! I’m not involved! I swear!” he blurted. “I was just a middleman. I took a small fee—that’s all!”
Lenora’s head snapped toward him, eyes blazing.
“Because of you, I got dragged into this,” she hissed. “I told you I wasn’t going back to the black market—and you—”
The argument started to rise—
Rein lifted his hand.
Both of them went silent instantly, like someone had cut the string.
“Tara,” Rein said calmly. “Continue.”
“He taught us how to brew,” Tara went on. “He told us about Poison Domain… but research in alchemy is supposed to be individual work. So Lucien forced us to hide. To work in silence behind him. If anyone found out, he’d lose his qualification.”
“Stealing the book?” Rein cut in.
Tara’s eyes shifted—like the next sentence tasted like poison.
“Tonight… it was coincidence,” she said.
A breath.
“We thought—if we took the book first… we could use it as leverage.”
Rein’s brow knit.
“…So you weren’t stealing it for Lucien.”
Tara shook her head and held Sally tighter—anchoring her.
“You can’t trust someone like him,” she said. “We wanted something to hold over him.”
Her voice tightened.
“Something we could trade… for our freedom.”
“Heh.” Mirela cut in, disdainful. “So when bargaining failed, you killed him to shut him up?”
“No.” Tara’s reply was immediate—sharp, absolute.
“We didn’t kill him.”
For the first time, her voice carried pure seriousness—unwavering.
“I’ll admit everything else,” she said. “But murder? No.”
Her stare locked onto Rein’s.
“You have to believe me.”
Rein narrowed his eyes.
Something shifted in his mind—like the final piece he’d been holding might be shaped right…
…but placed wrong.
“Then…” Rein murmured, more to himself than anyone.
He lifted his eyes again.
“You didn’t summon Lucien. Lucien came to you.”
Tara swallowed and nodded.
“Yes. He smelled it—the Forget-Me-Not we burned. He recognized it instantly.”
Her voice tightened.
“He walked straight in. Forced us to hand over the Arcane Key.” A beat. “Then he drank the antidote we prepared… and waited.”
She glanced toward the dark stacks, as if seeing the path again.
“Soon the poison took effect. Everyone started to drift. Lucien took the opening and went for the Forbidden Section.”
“And when we tried to follow, he drove us back,” Tara said quietly. “Ordered us to watch the others—make sure no one noticed.” A thin, brittle pause.
“Then… the lights went out.”
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Rein rubbed his chin, counting the missing time like a physicist counting seconds after a failed trial.
“The blackout,” he murmured. “About three minutes.”
His gaze sharpened—cold, demanding.
“In those three minutes…”
His voice dropped into something carved from stone.
“…did you hear anything? See anything?”
A pause—deliberate, crushing.
“Tell me everything,” Rein said. “Don’t leave out a single word.”
Tara and Sally exchanged a glance.
Sally swallowed before answering, her voice trembling.
“There was a crash—the first one. And then… in the dark, I felt someone run past us.”
Her hands clenched together, knuckles whitening.
“After that… there was another sound. Smaller. That’s all. I swear.”
Rein nodded once—lightly—like he was confirming a number in an equation already running.
“If my math is right…” Rein said flatly,
“the first impact came from the Forbidden Section. The second—from the librarian’s office.”
Tara’s eyes widened. She stared at him like he’d been standing beside her in the dark.
“H-how do you know that?!”
The messy-haired boy only shrugged, raking a hand through his hair again in irritation.
“Basic inference.” His tone turned sharper. “But the more interesting point is this—when you returned here, the number of people in the library stayed the same. No one appeared. No one vanished. Correct?”
“Y-yes,” Tara answered, voice unsteady. “Everyone was poisoned—dazed, piled up near the counter. Except me, Sally… and Lucien.”
Her brows knit. “Why are you asking?”
Rein pressed his lips together. Those blue eyes swept past the seven students, toward the darkness between the endless shelves.
“Because there was a ninth variable,” Rein said quietly.
“Hidden in this room.”
The temperature seemed to drop the moment the words left his mouth.
Julian and Mirela went pale. Their eyes darted left and right, as if the shadows had grown pupils.
“W-wait…” Mirela whispered. “You’re saying these two aren’t the murderer… and there’s someone else—someone we never saw—who killed Lucien?”
Noah, Lenora, and Seris instinctively backed closer together, staring into the gaps between shelves that looked suddenly deeper than they had any right to be.
Rein nodded once, slow and deliberate, then returned his gaze to Tara and Sally.
“I already knew you were Lucien’s accomplices,” he said. “But you’re not the killer.”
He raised a single finger.
“This room didn’t just host one crime tonight. The first case created an illusion—one that covered the truth.”
“The first… case?” Tara repeated.
“Yes. The first case,” Rein said calmly,
“was the theft of the forbidden text—Poison Domain.”
His eyes flicked to the two girls still clinging to each other on the floor.
“The culprits were Lucien, Tara, and Sally. Opportunistic. Reactive. Clever…”
A beat.
“…but clever in a childish way.”
He waved a hand through the air, as if swatting away an insect.
“You didn’t plan to kill anyone. You just reached for something beyond your grasp and misstepped. Honestly, if Master Rachel had a little time to investigate, she would’ve seen through that one easily.”
Another dismissive flick of the wrist.
“In the end, it’s just theft,” Rein said dismissively.
“A school rule violation.”
He waved a hand, bored.
“Even if you stole it in broad daylight, I wouldn’t care.”
Then he stopped.
The indifference on his face hardened into something cold.
“But what I don’t like,” Rein said, voice turning razor-flat, “is you trying to keep spinning melodrama at me—thinking these shallow tricks would keep me from seeing the director standing behind the camera.”
He paused, exhaled long, tilted his head slightly, and opened both arms as if genuinely baffled.
“Be honest… do I look that stupid to you?”
“N-no… you—” Seris muttered, adjusting her glasses out of pure shock.
Even Mirela, stunned by his sheer audacity, blurted out—
“This guy really is… a piece of work.”
Silence smothered the room again.
Then Rein began pacing, slipping back into his private world.
“The second case…” Rein murmured.
Now his eyes sharpened.
“That one is interesting enough to keep me awake until dawn.”
His gaze snapped toward the wrecked librarian’s office.
“This one is murder. Real murder. And not just one corpse—there was almost another body in there.”
He stared at the ruined doorway like it owed him answers.
“The perpetrator is vicious. Precise. Purpose-driven. Not petty ‘kid motives’ like yours.”
“Kid, kid, kid…” Mirela couldn’t help herself. “You’re basically the same age as us. If we’re counting birth months, you might even be younger than me.”
Rein ignored her completely.
He lifted his eyes to the ceiling and went still, as if reading an invisible blackboard.
“Delay Casting magic…” he murmured. “First trap used Lightning Bolt to kill Lucien… Why?”
He paced again, brows knotted tight.
“The equation is—if Tara and Sally acted opportunistically, then the killer couldn’t have known beforehand that a book theft would happen tonight. Meaning the killer’s move had to be improvised too…”
His steps slowed.
“…which means the target wasn’t the forbidden book. It was something else.”
His eyes sharpened, bright and predatory.
“First strike: every forensic trace pointed at me. That’s why Master Rachel dragged me here.”
He breathed out, slow.
“And everyone in this room is first-year or second-year. It’s nearly impossible to pull that off without specialized tools.”
He stopped dead.
Those blue eyes gleamed.
“Whoever it is… they know Rein—me—well. They know what spells I specialize in… and what I don’t.”
His gaze returned to the librarian’s office.
“Second strike: Darkness Arrow. The target was me. But Ingrid touched the brazier first by sheer bad luck—so the plan misfired, and Librarian Belle took the hit instead.”
His jaw tightened.
“Meaning the second trap wasn’t just about framing me.”
He strode back to the center of the circle, where everyone stood frozen, minds lagging behind the speed of his thoughts.
“From framing…” Rein said quietly.
“…to silencing.”
His gaze hardened.
“Why did the objective change?”
The question hung in the air like a blade.
And before anyone could answer—
The library door mechanism moved.
Crrrk—BANG!
Boots struck stone—thud… thud…—steady and controlled.
A tall elven woman with flame-red hair stepped into the doorway. Her sharp eyes swept the room, then she spoke—calm, powerful.
“Hm… everyone’s still here? No one’s hurt?”
Several students nodded rapidly, relief flashing across their faces.
But Rachel’s gaze snapped straight to Rein—still standing rigid in the middle of the room, as if his soul had wandered off and forgotten to return.
She strode toward him, suspicion etched across her features.
“Rein? What happened? Why do you look like that?”
Instead of answering, Rein lifted a finger and pointed at the heavy door that had just slammed shut behind her, eyes wide like a man who’d just remembered the most important fact of his life.
“Wait—hold on.” His voice sharpened.
“That door,” Rein pressed.
“When it closes—does it always make a sound like that?”
Rachel blinked, genuinely thrown by the absurdity of the question in this situation.
“Huh?” She frowned. “Normally it doesn’t make any sound. This library has sound-dampening inscribed magic circles built into the structure.
If there isn’t a blackout, the opening and closing noise gets swallowed completely.”
The answer hit Rein like lightning.
His face changed instantly—like a man who’d just found the exit in a maze.
“Yes… I remember,” Rein muttered, words spilling out in rapid fire.
“At noon, that door was completely silent.”
He lifted his head, eyes locking onto Rachel.
“But the crash Tara heard…”
“…happened during the blackout.”
A beat.
“Which means,” he said quietly,
“the sound-dampening magic cycles weren't functioning then.”
Mirela, arms folded nearby, frowned.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Mirela scoffed.
“Power goes out, spells go out. Isn’t that obvious?”
Rein didn’t answer her. He stood perfectly still, mind slicing through a hundred possibilities until only one remained. Then he snapped his gaze back to Master Rachel—his voice suddenly hard.
“You obtained the Magical Code Key from Librarian Belle,” Rein said sharply.
“Correct?”
“Uh… yes,” Rachel answered, still confused. “When I came in the first time—after we found Lucien’s body—I asked Belle for it so I could open the library door and go after you. Why?”
“Then at the very beginning… before you entered and found the body… you were waiting at the library door the whole time, weren’t you?”
“Yes—like I told you. The library door was locked, so I waited out fr—”
Rein cut her off, voice rising.
“Master Rachel…”
There was something feverish in it—wrong, urgent. Those blue eyes looked past the elf instructor, spearing into the darkness beyond the door.
“…and Ingrid?”
Rachel blinked. A faint smile surfaced—unaware she’d just struck a fuse.
“Hm? Why do you always ask about her first?”
She waved it off.
“The holy water worked. The curse is gone. She wasn’t in danger, so I left Ingrid with Librarian Belle in the infirmary and hurried back—”
“Shit.”
The curse-word hadn’t even finished echoing before the boy in front of her moved—fast enough to make even an elven instructor flinch.
Fff—!
Like a black shadow snapping across the floor, Rein shot past Rachel and straight for the double doors. The Magical Code Key ring unfurled over his right hand—light flashing—mechanisms whining as the heavy doors began to part…
Too slow.
“Open!”
He didn’t wait for the enchantment to complete. He slammed both palms into the doors and blew them wide with brute force, then spun back long enough to bark an order that cracked through the stunned silence.
“Master!” Rein barked without slowing.
“Hold the situation here. The forbidden-book case is solved—details, ask Senior Seris!”
Rachel’s expression snapped from amused to grim in a heartbeat.
“Wait—Rein! What is going on?!”
He didn’t have time.
The moment the gap was wide enough, he dropped his center of gravity. Two cyan rings flared at his ankles, spinning so fast they screamed—sharp enough to scrape the ear.
Motus Celeritas!
“Motion—unbound!”
His body flashed—and he launched into the darkness outside like an arrow released from a bow.
Haste.
The acceleration spell hurled him down the third-floor corridor in a blink. The pre-dawn gloom of the academy wrapped around him the instant he cleared the library boundary, but Rein didn’t bother with the normal route.
“Stairs are too slow…”
He made the insane choice.
He vaulted the third-floor railing and dove into open air.
Wind slammed his face. Gravity seized him—speed climbing every second. For anyone else, it would’ve been suicide.
For Rein…
This was kinematics.
The fastest path between two points is a straight line.
A black streak fell through the dim, plunging toward the lower floor—until, just before impact, he roared and snapped his left hand downward.
Aeris Vela, Surgere Leniter!
“Winds of the veil—rise gently!”
Three feet above the ground, an emerald ring flared into existence.
Levitate.
But Rein didn’t use it to float.
He used it as a launchpad.
THUD—!
His boot struck a slab of compressed air—magic made solid—hard enough to jolt his bones. Instead of stopping, the brutal momentum of the fall got revectorized—redirected—exactly as he’d calculated.
His body rebounded off the spell-ring, snapping into a right-angle turn midair—something no human should be able to do—and shot toward the basement stairwell entrance fifty feet away in a heartbeat.
Two more wall-kicks—perfect, economical—and Rein was hovering over a massive wooden door: the entrance to the Healing Department’s underground level.
He didn’t hesitate. A toe-tap forward, fingers reaching to wrench the door open—
And the instant his right fingertips touched wood, his instincts screamed.
WHOOSH—!
His body corkscrewed midair—full three-sixty—reflexes beyond human.
SHNK—!
A Darkness Arrow tore through the space where his head had been—close enough that it might as well have kissed his skin. If he hadn’t twisted away a fraction of a second ago…
He’d have gained a new hole in his skull.
Delay Casting. Touch-activated.
Just like the librarian’s office.
The enemy’s plan was still the same: vicious, merciless, and intimate with death.
Rein landed in a one-knee crouch, steady as a blade set into the earth. His blue eyes burned—cold, brilliant—sweeping the wrecked courtyard ahead.
Two healer instructors lay motionless on the broken ground—right where last night’s fight between Rein and the Intruders had torn the area apart.
Then—
Slow clapping.
A soft laugh from the rubble’s shadow.
“Unbelievable… dodging my magical trap twice, are you… Rein.”
Rein rose slowly. He brushed dust from his shoulder with deliberate calm, then tapped a finger against his temple—once, twice—like he was clicking a metronome.
“Those two bodies are the proof you were waiting nearby,” he said evenly. “And if you really wanted to trap me, the only strategic point you could choose…”
His gaze pinned the door.
“…was this one.”
He stared into the shifting dark, eyes sharp with certainty.
“All right,” Rein said quietly.
His eyes sharpened.
“How long are you planning to hide behind the camera…”
A thin smile cut across his mouth.
“…Kurosawa?”
These entries expand the lore and mechanics introduced in this chapter.
Completely optional—read only if you enjoy diving deeper into the system.
Magical Code Key
– A spell-encoded security key used to lock or unlock the Healing Library’s main reinforced doors.
– Rachel obtained it from Librarian Belle after the murder was discovered.
– Rein uses it to exit the library in the final scene, confirming his deduction about the door's mechanics.
Poison Domain
A restricted grimoire containing high-level poison alchemy.
– Stolen by Lucien, Tara, and Sally as part of a plan to use it as leverage (bargaining chip).
– The theft constitutes the first crime in the story—a separate event from the murder.
The Ninth Variable
Rein’s term for the hidden perpetrator
—a mysterious individual who was present in the library but never directly accounted for.
– Profile: Not part of Tara’s group. Likely a high-level magic user capable of Delay Casting.
– Referred to metaphorically by Rein as “the director behind the camera.”
Key Characters
Tara Wyndfield (Identity Swap)
– The student known to the class as "Tara" is actually Sally, a maid impersonating a noble heir.
– The real Tara acted as the maid to support her.
– They became unwilling accomplices to Lucien due to blackmail regarding this secret.
Kurosawa
A cryptic nickname used by Rein for the hidden mastermind in the final scene.
– References a famous film director from Rein's previous world, symbolizing the culprit's role as the "Director" orchestrating the entire scenario from the shadows.
— Re:Naissance