A Headache (6)

— Crash-thud!

Graham leapt out of his chair and kicked the table at Leonard with all his strength.

“Short tempers run in the family, I see. Honestly!”

Leonard honed a barrier to an edge and cut the table in half. As the two pieces fell away, Graham came into view, already over at the workbench by the far wall.

A volley of flasks full of dubious liquids was already flying at Leonard, close enough to graze his nose, but he dodged them easily and launched himself straight at Graham. Graham’s body split in two like a phantom, though, so Leonard’s fist found nothing and drove into the inner wall of the research office instead.

— BOOM!

A heavy tremor ran through the ceiling and the floor. Graham only felt that force secondhand, yet his face went pale on its own.

People say anyone can use body-hardening magic easily once they know the theory, but putting it to work in a real fight takes tremendous strength of mind. And Leonard was pulling it off in the body of a nine-year-old.

I can’t let the brat stay on me.

Graham cast a spell at once.

Mirror Image.

— Shoooo.

Afterimages of Graham appeared here and there around the research office, and Leonard sneered.

“You call yourself a professor, and you’re ducking and dodging a student? Aren’t you ashamed?”

— Snap!

Leonard snapped his fingers, and a pulse of mana swept through the whole office. Graham was still tilting his head at the strange sensation when he saw Leonard looking straight at him, and it gave him a nasty start.

“—Found you.”

Leonard had picked the real body out from the afterimages, and he closed the distance in a single stride.

— WHACK!

Graham threw up a barrier on instinct, but the shock it couldn’t absorb in time went numbing through his whole body.

“Guhhhhh!”

He felt that if he let the strength out of his belly even a little, he’d bring up everything inside it. So he wrung out every last scrap of strength and held on, then raised a light repulsion field and pushed Leonard back.

— Smack! THWACK!

Leonard kept drumming on the barrier regardless. Elbows, knee and shoulder joints, the backs of the feet and hands, the chest over the heart, the point of the chin. Every one of them was a weak point that could reliably put an opponent out of the fight.

Heh! However hard he tries, as long as I block it…

Graham was about to snort to himself when his vision blurred for a moment. How had that happened? He pulled himself together and poured more strength into the barrier. And yet, how could this be?

—Why?

It wasn’t his imagination. The barrier was plainly holding, yet Leonard’s blows were passing through it and landing their shock directly on his body.

This was dangerous. Sensing the crisis, Graham crossed his hands and drew his mana up, and a thick ooze of poison began to seep from the tips of his fingernails.

“Poison Screen!”

— Shhhwoosh!

The lethal gas crept along the floor and filled the research office in an instant. On top of that, the toxins from the flasks Graham had smashed mixed into it, so an even stronger poison cloud formed.

One breath, and the fight would be over.

Graham forced some distance between himself and Leonard and cast a detoxification spell on himself. But what he saw wasn’t Leonard rolling on the floor, poisoned. It was a fist flying at his belly.

— THWACK!

“Kuuugh!”

“You just, have to, make it worse, for no reason, don’t you.”

Leonard bit off one word with each blow, pounding his liver and gut in turn, and at the fifth the barrier, worn to rags, shattered completely.

With his shield gone, Graham could only take the beating, and then he suddenly realized something. His bones were cracking and his blood was spraying, yet his mind was perfectly clear.

This can’t be.

Had the boy been holding back on purpose this whole time?

— Crunch!

Leonard took both of Graham’s hands in his and bore down, and the finger bones twisted all at once.

“Aaaaagh!”

A shrill scream burst out of Graham’s mouth.

Leonard butted him in the face, then kicked him in the stomach and drove him into a corner of the office. Gasping for breath, Graham lifted his head, and the sight of Leonard standing there completely unharmed appalled him.

He’d taken all that poison full in the face, and he was fine?

A — a monster?

This went past anything the word “genius” could explain. While Graham was still at a loss, Leonard walked up to him and raised one leg.

— Crunch!

The kick slammed into Graham’s skull. He felt his brain shake loose, and his body dropped in a heap like a puppet with its strings cut.

His vision went black.

“Ugh… ughk!”

Exactly one hour later, Graham’s eyes flew open as he came out of the faint.

He clung to the hope that the whole thing had been nothing but a vicious nightmare. Sadly, Leonard was squatting right beside him, openly watching him.

Graham’s heart nearly dropped out of his chest.

Only then did he notice that his arms and legs hadn’t been tied. Not that it put any thought of resisting into his head. Try that, and this time he’d obviously die.

“…What are you, really?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

Graham asked again.

“Don’t play innocent. You expect me to believe you’re an ordinary nine-year-old student?”

“Ah, right. I guess you’d be curious about that.”

A meaningful smile rose on Leonard’s face.

“How did I know, I wonder? How did a commoner-born brat like me manage to catch on to the secret you’ve been hiding so lovingly?”

In a future not far off, Graham would be ruined. One survivor who had resisted the bracelet’s mind control would escape the laboratory and lay the research records and Graham’s crimes out before the whole world. That was exactly how Leonard knew his secret.

But Graham had no way of knowing the truth, so his breath caught.

L-let’s think this through, step by step.

That extraordinary skill. That strange confidence, which didn’t so much as flinch even in front of a member of the Vincent house. What on earth was this? Could it be that he wasn’t a commoner at all?

Just then, Leonard drove a wedge into Graham’s doubt.

“Do you really think I handled Amon Vincent all by myself?”

What had really happened was simple. Amon Vincent had come at him, and Leonard Felix had struck back and subdued him. That was all. But Leonard laid a little doubt on top of it and fed Graham’s delusion.

Graham agonized over it for a long while before he asked, in a badly cracked voice.

“…Where?”

He meant: who was backing him?

“Who knows.”

Of course, there was no such house. Yet giving nothing away directly, just keeping a precarious distance and putting on a plausible air, was effect enough. Graham swallowed dryly.

— Trickle.

A bead of sweat ran down his cheek. Whatever conclusion he’d reached on his own, the eyes he turned on Leonard now held nothing but pure terror.

It was strange enough for an unheard-of genius beyond all common sense to be commoner-born. But to have survived against monsters when he’d only just awakened and knew nothing at all? Graham had thought it bizarre, but…

Don’t tell me he’s connected to one of the five great houses?

If so, the likes of the Vincent house were no match at all. If the five great houses so much as lifted a finger, Graham and his house would vanish as though they’d never existed in history.

“If I had my way, I’d kill you with my own hands right here and now, but then the cleanup would be a pain. So choose, right here,” Leonard said.

“Wh-what do you—”

“Those experiments of yours. I could run the exact same ones on you.”

There was no way to take that as a joke, and Graham sucked in an empty breath. Then Leonard put forward his second offer.

“If you don’t like that, turn yourself in and go sit in a cell.”

By hinting that a powerful force stood behind him, he headed off any retaliation later on. Now, even if Graham spouted nonsense in the middle of his confession, nothing would come back on Leonard.

Well, who’d believe a professor got beaten up by a little kid like me in the first place.

Leonard snorted. Graham must have found even that frightening, because he answered carefully, scared out of his wits.

“…I’ll turn myself in.”

“A wise choice.”

Leonard held the power of life and death over him, so to Graham he was no longer an ordinary student. At some point, the way he addressed the boy had shifted into the most deferential speech there is.

“One more thing before I go.”

“Yes, yes! Anything at all.”

Leonard was on his way out the door when he turned back around, and Graham went stiff with tension.

“Valuables, money, whatever you’ve got. Hand all of it over.”

“Sorry?”

“Get moving before I have to say it twice.”

Graham tilted his head without thinking. Why would someone with a power behind him that nobody dared go near be demanding his pocket change and belongings?

No. This is no time for that.

His life was in the balance, and here he was thinking something so pointless. Graham folded his doubt away, went over to the wall cabinet and revealed a hidden safe. Inside were a heavy sack of money and various odds and ends.

“H-here you are.”

“Good.”

It was most likely black money Graham had piled up illegally, so it would leave no trace of where it came from. With no telling what lay ahead, laying in funds for an emergency was extremely important.

“What’s this?” Leonard asked.

Exactly one thing among Graham’s belongings caught his eye: a gaudy key decorated with gold and jewels. Graham hesitated a moment, then answered slowly.

“…It’s the Key of Corbas.”

“What?”

Startled, Leonard asked again, and Graham waved his hands.

“Not the real one, of course! It’s only a degraded copy of the genuine article. But the effect is much the same.”

Leonard looked at the key again with fresh eyes. The Key of Corbas was a precious magic item that hardly anyone had owned even in his previous life. If Graham was telling the truth, then copy or not, it would be quite useful.

“The way to use it—”

“No need. I already know.”

“Ah, of course you would.”

Graham shrank back as though he’d asked something he shouldn’t have. Leonard calmed his racing heart and pocketed the key with a casual air. His business here was done.

“I’ll be going, then.”

“Yes, sir!”

Leonard set one foot over the threshold, then stopped where he stood and spoke to Graham.

“Let me warn you now, just in case… you’d better not even think about running.”

“Hiik—”

The threat in the air made Graham hiccup in spite of himself.

“Wherever you run, even if you leave the country, I’ll chase you to the very end. And when I catch you, I’ll make you wish you’d died instead.”

“I won’t run! I’m telling you, I won’t!”

Graham shouted it over and over with everything he had. His own fate, not an inch of it visible ahead of him, terrified him.