Sothing feels off.
“Kyahhhh!”
Aile tripped over absolutely nothing and fell to the ground, clutching her knee with a groan. I quickly approached, helped her up, and brushed the dust off her clothes.
“Are you okay?”
“Yes, y-yes...”
“You’ve scraped it a bit. Let’s head to the lab, and I’ll put so dicine on it.”
On the way to the lab, I stepped on sothing squishy. When I looked down, I realized it was dog poop. Could it be that Galm had finally lost control and started dragging his droppings around the floor?
Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case. In the distance, a combatant holding wet wipes and a plastic bag ca rushing over in a panic.
“Sc-scientist, sir! I-I’m so sorry!”
“...What is this?”
“I’m sorry! My pet... it, um, went to the bathroom on the floor...”
“A pet?”
“Y-yes, is it not allowed? But I don’t have anyone at ho to take care of them...”
The combatant nervously stamred excuses, claiming the rules didn’t specifically prohibit pets and that everyone else seed to enjoy having them around. I smiled reassuringly, signaling it was okay.
Right, this was that kind of place. Not so much a haven for highly trained professionals fueled by vengeance against the world, but more akin to a social welfare facility.
In a past life, it might be comparable to a rehabilitation center for community service workers.
“Next ti, carry a plastic bag with you too.”
“Y-yes! I’ll make sure to do that!”
After giving a quick bow, the combatant hurriedly began cleaning the floor. I bypassed the ss, took off my shoes, and walked into the lab in just my socks. There was no way I’d let sothing like poop dirty my research space.
Once in the lab, I sat Aile down on the sofa and searched for the red antiseptic to treat her scrape. Strangely, I couldn’t find the dicine anywhere.
When I asked the AI about its location, it inford that a burly beastkin had co into the lab and taken the entire dicine box.
The absurdity of soone walking off with the whole thing without a word left speechless. To make matters worse, I realized I was out of ingredients to make more dicine. Total disaster.
‘What is this? A psychic attack?’
The sheer misfortune was almost too much to chalk up to coincidence. In the end, I treated Aile’s scrape with over-the-counter dicine and added a bandage. If it had been the dicine I made, she would’ve healed instantly without needing any of this.
“Th-thank you...”
“It’s nothing. By the way, Aile, have you ever thought your luck has been particularly bad recently?”
“Huh? W-what do you an...?”
“Anything will do, just tell sothing.”
“W-well...”
Aile began listing off a series of small, trivial grievances. She always got multiple-choice questions wrong when she guessed, failed every raffle for magical girl rchandise despite usually winning nine out of ten tis, and recently, a dessert shop sold out of her favorite item just as it was her turn to order.
Though insignificant on their own, such incidents could build up over ti and cause considerable stress.
“So, so— I tried summoning magical girls to relieve my stress, but the association head said it’s exam season, so I shouldn’t bother them...”
“Hmm, I see. But Aile, aren’t you also taking the sa exams soon?”
“W-well, yes, but... it’s hard to study when you’re so stressed, right...?”
Smiling, I sent Aile off to study and cautiously settled in front of the computer. Booting it up, I started researching events related to our organization and, more broadly, Evilus Corporation.
It didn’t take long to find posts on social dia about mbers of our organization or employees of Evilus and its subcontractors experiencing a streak of misfortunes. It wasn’t just one or two people—tens of thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands, had encountered simultaneous bad luck.
Could this be a sudden wave of misfortune blanketing the entire city? Other cities weren’t experiencing anything similar, though.
A few obscure online news articles noted that sothing strange was happening in E City, but no one seed to take them seriously.
‘Well, statistically, such coincidences are possible...’
If everyone in the world simultaneously stopped what they were doing and stared blankly at the sky for 10 seconds, it would seem like a supernatural event. But it could just be a coincidence, however astronomically improbable.
As low as those odds might be, anything with a non-zero probability is bound to happen eventually.
In this vast universe, even the collision of microscopic particles to form a planet the size of Earth, the ergence of life on that planet, and the developnt of intelligent beings capable of civilization—all are improbable yet occur.
Still, sothing about this felt... off.
But this wasn’t Earth, governed solely by physical laws. This was a world with fantasy elents like psychic powers. I couldn’t dismiss the possibility that this was an attack by soone else.
The next step was straightforward. Find out who could possess such an ability by searching through association and governnt databases, and further, analyze global communications to see if anyone harbored hostility toward Evilus Corporation.
With AI assistance, this task was both quick and efficient. Identifying the culprit was surprisingly easy.
“Riu Spirit... the CEO of a major company in S City.”
The culprit was Riu Spirit.
The head of the Spiritual Center dominating S City.
A self-made woman who rose to lead a major corporation.
‘Her profile says she venerates spirits or so such supernatural beings... and her psychic abilities are telepathy and thought transference?’
Her abilities seed far too weak to cause this disaster. Telepathy? Sothing a phone could achieve? How could that inflict widespread misfortune on tens of thousands of people?
This wasn’t sothing a re psychic power could accomplish. Such a feat would require a being of transcendent power, at least S-class or higher.
‘Could this so-called spirit actually exist?’
Turning to the peculiar details in her profile, I noted her devotion to these “spirits.” Back on Earth, I wouldn’t have believed in such things, but after arriving in this world, my perspective had changed.
In a world where fairies, magical girls, demons, aliens, elves, and dragons exist, spirits weren’t out of the question. If they did exist, it was plausible she achieved this with their help.
Alternatively, it could all be a trap.
The ease with which I identified her as the culprit made suspicious. Could the information from the AI be wrong? Perhaps her entire existence was a decoy, and she wasn’t the true culprit.
This was entirely plausible. Evilus Corporation had countless enemies. Internet forums were rife with idle threats of bombings or other attacks against the company.
The AI had ruled out those individuals as culprits due to their lack of ans. This ant Riu Spirit was simply the most likely candidate among those with both the capability and motive. It didn’t guarantee she was guilty.
That made all the more doubtful.
‘There’s no way it would be this easy...’
Yet, Riu Spirit had boldly declared herself guilty, as if she didn’t care that her communication was being intercepted.
This seed designed to provoke a reaction. Perhaps it was a trap to expose Evilus Corporation’s global surveillance or to provide justification for the world to unite against us if we acted.
“Damn it—is she dumb or brilliant?”
The logical part of insisted this was a trap, yet my instincts argued otherwise, leaving with a headache.
One thing was clear: she was the most likely culprit.
But I couldn’t attack recklessly. If this were a trap, it could jeopardize Evilus, and...
‘If she’s innocent, I’d feel unnecessarily guilty...’
This wasn’t just a matter of personal conflict. The lives of thousands, even millions of employees, could be at stake.
Thinking of the innocent people involved, I had no choice but to proceed cautiously.
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