“You have your own ability, right? That’s what we want to know.”
“——”
“Tell us, Alfred. Unlike Mary, I’m familiar with Unlaws, and I even know some. Shizuku here too. We won’t reject you just for being different.”
“———”
His expression is like he’s laughing, or crying.
Like clinging to a cliff, having given up, only to have a hand reach out to save him.
“…Haa”
Alfred doesn’t notice Shizuku exhale with a vague smile beside the puzzled Norman.
“I…I can change the size of my body.”
“Ohh.”
Norman nods.
“To what extent?”
“Like the size of a mouse…or just my arm up to three times bigger.”
“Ah, I see. So that’s how you managed the locked room. You went through the vent. Used your enlarged arm to kill Mrs. Mary.”
“Yes.”
“Hmm. But even just your arm, wouldn’t enlarging it make your clothes too tight?”
“…I…took off my shirt. At the time, I thought after we were done talking, I could just…”
“Ahahah, so you were getting busy before the important talk. Quite spirited for a place with no bed.”
It was a simple reveal.
The doors and windows were locked. There was a vent, but too small to pass through.
But what is normally impassable becomes an easy entrance and exit for someone who can shrink their body.
Ordinarily, that is.
But Alfred Curtis is no ordinary person.
He’s a monster.
The room was a locked room for normal humans, but not for a monster.
Just knowing his ability solves the mystery, with no need for deduction.
A story beneath the level of a mystery novel, inevitably.
“Shrinking and growing, huh?”
“Yes…Yes! I’m not some slum brat anymore. I studied hard, I worked hard. I grew! Mary was supposed to understand that, but instead of accepting it, she—”
“That’s enough, Norman.”
With a wry laugh, Shizuku cuts him off.
She’s smiling.
At the same mole from the same hole.
“No need to interrogate further about his typical Category I [Metamorphic] Abnormality.”
“Well, I did want to ask a bit more for the report.”
“Basically, he was an oppressed slum kid whose lingering childhood complex from being downtrodden awakened an ability to become smaller. But outwardly wanting to appear larger, his subconscious desire to compensate resulted in only partially enlarging parts like his arms—something like that, right?”
“——”
“My, you’ve surprised me. Since when could you read people’s feelings?”
“I can’t read people’s feelings.”
The girl—the monster in the form of a girl.
“But I can understand monsters’ feelings. Category I is pretty straightforward.”
“……..Cate…gory…1…?”
“Category I. That’s what we call the developmental stage monsters like you Unlaws are at. Your abilities aren’t established, and you’re mentally unstable too. That’s why you Unlaws tend to lash out erratically at times when you lose your grip.”
Lose your grip—even if told that, Alfred didn’t understand.
There should have been other ways.
With the crime occurring days ago, he could have run. With an ability to change body size, evading the police should be easy. If he escaped outside and went into hiding, Norman and Shizuku would be helpless.
Or to sow confusion in the investigation, he could have disturbed the crime scene, or caused a similar incident outside to muddy the waters.
Since he could do things normal people couldn’t.
If he thought about it, there were options.
For example—if he truly felt remorseful, he could have turned himself in.
Putting aside how they would handle his ability, that choice existed.
But Alfred did nothing.
He stopped thinking, period.
Simply paralyzed by guilt over the killing and fear of his true nature being exposed.
And now, the only thought he had was:
“——H-Help me.”
“Hm?”
“Please help me! Wh-What should I do!? I killed Lady Mary! I can’t stay here! You, you’ll accept Unlaws like me, right!? Like her, maybe I can do something too—”
“Of course not.”
“———Eh?”
READ THE ORIGINAL TRANSLATION AT LOCALIZERMEERKAT.PAGES.DEV
Norman’s eyes were cold.
The vague aura of a cuddly little animal was gone.
All that remained was a distant gaze, looking across the shores to the other side.
“Wh-Why not!? You said you accept Unlaws—”
“I said no such thing. Why would I accept someone who kills people for not accepting them? If I accepted you, what then? You might kill me over some minor slight. Even if I did accept you, you could kill someone else for the same reason. You reap what you sow.”
“Ugh, what the… Why are you suddenly talking about normal things—“
“Even if you’ve become different from everyone else.”
For a moment, his gaze turned toward Shizuku beside him.
Only a fist’s distance away – if he swayed his body just a little, he could reach her.
Shizuku swayed her body.
“—Heh.”
No, she leaned against him.
Nestling up to him. Supporting each other. Depending on each other.
He couldn’t understand the meaning of her smile.
“Even if you’ve become different from others—we live in everyone’s society. There is no city just for the Unlaws. These castle walls don’t enclose just the Unlaws.”
The Unlaws are different from everyone else.
Though many monsters hide within the walled city of Balldlum.
Still, they live together with everyone.
Lurking, changing, deviating, distorting,
while following the laws and ethics, even if defying the natural laws.
It’s normal.
“If you don’t understand such normality—then you’re just a monster.”
Though stating the obvious, there was no lecturing tone in Norman’s words.
Not “that’s how it is,” but rather as if convincing himself “that’s how it should be.”
A sense that it must be that way.
“I have no intention of helping monsters. And you killed Ms. Mary for your own selfish reasons. Being an Unlaw may not be a crime—but murder is. You studied, didn’t you?”
“But I killed the person who taught me that study.”
“Such a… such a thing… belatedly…!”
Yes, it’s all belated now.
Alfred Curtis killed Mary Wallwood.
Because she didn’t accept him.
Because she didn’t meet his expectations.
“Uuuuu……uwuwuwuwuwu……!”
Scratching his head, shaking, growling.
But Norman and Shizuku heard a different sound from his behavior.
Creaking, creaking.
The sound of strings being tightly pulled to the limit.
“Shizuku.”
“—Yes.”
When her name was called, she was smiling.
Though Alfred’s face was twisted to the limit, Shizuku even had a beaming smile.
Norman took Shizuku’s hand, and with a light tug, she stepped forward.
For a moment, she glanced at the violin case on her shoulder, but immediately looked away.
From these movements, her hood fell off, spilling out her white hair.
Slender and supple, shining silvery-white in the moonlight.
The hair that had been pushed into her hood reached down to her waist.
In an instant.
“Uwaaaaaaaaahh!!”
The string snapped.
The string of reason. The string of instinct. The string of patience. Or perhaps all of them combined, snapped cleanly.
Alfred Curtis’s right arm grew enormous.
Even just the fist alone could easily crush a human chest. The disproportionately massive arm tore through his clothing, becoming three times larger.
“—Ahah.”
Seeing this, Shizuku was still smiling.
She had been smiling the whole time.
Alfred couldn’t understand the meaning behind it.
As the monstrous arm swung toward her, Shizuku simply raised her right hand to shield herself.
“……!!”
Reflexively, Alfred covered both ears with his hands.
His gigantic right hand pressed against one ear, somehow looking rather cunning.
He had judged that Shizuku’s ability involved sound from being summoned to this room.
“—-Hah.”
But Shizuku didn’t mind.
While keeping her left hand intertwined with Norman’s, she elegantly snapped her fingers as if plucking a violin string.
Snap.
“”─────《Lingering Echoes – Tears of the Flowers – Vision》”.”
And then—-Alfred Curtis saw a vision.
●
—-He was seeing a vision.
Mary Wallwood leaning over her desk in her nightgown.
Cowering at the sight of him. Trembling because of him, her expression frozen. When she looked at him, her eyes reflected fear, doubt, astonishment. And rejection. She screamed something at him.
[—-Monster!]
You’re different, she said.
The next instant, he crushed Mary. Her chest was smashed along with the sturdy desk, splitting it in two. With an expression of terror and despair etched on her face, she died. A commonplace death, just like he had seen so often in the slums, despite her efforts to live differently. And he was the one who caused it.
The world spun around.
[—-Monster!]
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