| Author: Starving Wind | Original Source: Joara | Word Count: 4904 characters |
| Translator: Anonymouss | English Source: Re:Library | Word Count: 0 words |
| Editor(s): Silva | ||
“Ooh, you’re so mean! You both had lunch by yourselves without even waking me up.”
After realizing that we had our lunch without her, Esther complained with a teary face, but I couldn’t understand what made her so upset about it.
“But I couldn’t really wake you up when you were sleeping so soundly.”
Katalina lied to Esther without even blinking an eye. That’s right. She never had a single thought about waking up Esther in the first place.
“But still…”
But Esther was unable to realize that fact and seemed to believe Katalina as her words started to trail off. Should I tell her the truth in this situation? I thought about it for a moment, but felt that I didn’t really need to make this situation worse than it already was, so I decided not to.
“Sorry, let’s eat together from now on.”
“Okay!”
Esther’s spirits were raised a bit from what I said as she answered me energetically.
“But are you sure you’ll be fine without sleeping longer?”
“Yes. If I were to keep sleeping, I would end up not being able to sleep at night. I wanted to stop myself from sleeping tomorrow morning.1”
I nodded in agreement. It certainly was difficult to sleep at night once you slept too much in the afternoon.
It would be a different scenario if you were just extremely tired, but that’s for Esther to judge.
“Anyway, since we finished eating, I wonder what we could do to pass some time…”
It certainly had been a long time since I had last logged off the game so early and got out of the capsule in the day. Even so, I couldn’t say that I was feeling tired in any way and just like Esther said, sleeping in the afternoon was not a good idea. In the end, it meant that the decision ended with us going out, but the problem was where to.
If this was Korea, I knew of all the tourist attractions that were popular around my area, which meant that I would easily be able to lead the two for some fun outside, but unfortunately this was England. So naturally, the decision on where to go out to have fun today fell on Katalina and Esther since they knew London very well.
“I don’t think it would be a good idea to head out today since I heard that it’s going to rain.”
“Wha-? It’s going to rain? Then I’m not going out as well. I hate rainy days the most!”
But as opposed to how I wanted this to go, the two of them didn’t feel like going out. I mean, the weather was so great outside right now, why would they want to stay home? The sky outside was so clear as well.
Though the window was covered by a thick curtain, I felt like they were making excuses to stay inside even though there was clearly bright sunlight leaking between the gaps of the curtain, which led me to walk directly up to it and open up the curtain to see outside.
“…”
But as if to prove they were right, what I saw was a huge dark rumbling cloud slowly rolling over to our direction even though half of it was clear skies.
I heard that the weather in England changes as often as a woman’s emotion does, but wow…
“Damn it, it feels like I’ll end up as a ‘hikikomori2‘ at this rate.”
At least in the past, I would go out to eat or have short walks as an excuse to say I had regular activity outside even though I was completely addicted to gaming.
But since the mansion that I live in had all the things I could want inside, there weren’t many reasons for me to go out at all. Katalina and Esther may not care much about it since they were used to it since at birth, but for me that was not going to work. If I were to ask them to go out with me, they would definitely say this.
‘Let’s go shopping then.’
But I would never want that. You would understand why as well once you had lived with a younger sister for several decades.
“Eh? Why are you saying that you are going to end up a stuck-at-home lonely child?”
“Hm?”
Esther’s sudden statement snapped me out of my reverie. Then I realized that I had used a Japanese word unconsciously.
And Esther’s translation of that word was completely correct in terms of meaning.
“Whoa, you know some Japanese, Esther?”
Of course, she may just know simple bits here and there like me, but since it was a word that was hard to know about unless you had specific interest in such things, I asked Esther out of curiosity.
“Hehe, just a bit. I was a little interested in Korea and Japan among the nations of Asia, so I was studying their language a bit.”
“Ooh? What interest do you have about them?”
“Hmm, I guess… You know how in Europe, everyone knows about the age-old hatred that France and England have for each other, right? The same kind of age-old hatred thing also existed for those two countries as well, and is very famous throughout Asia. There was something about Dokdo island, where they were contesting which country it belongs to… So I would say that it was because of my interest in such kinds of histories.”
I didn’t think I would end up hearing about Dokdo in England so I felt quite touched by her words. But it didn’t really seem like I should be lecturing them about how Dokdo island belonged to Korea right now even though I could.
“I see.”
I was going to just let it pass thinking that it’s not such a huge deal when I suddenly had a thought. I was definitely sure that the age difference between Esther and I was only one year. Since I’m going to enroll into university in September this year, it doesn’t really matter but Esther should be going to high school properly every day, shouldn’t she?
Of course I did hear about how rich families teach their children using expensive in-home lessons, but Esther was currently in a state of ‘run away from home’.
“Wait, Esther, don’t you need to go to school?”
“Hm?”
“Eh?”
I couldn’t help but ask due to my curiosity, to which the two of them looked at me with confusion. It felt like I had said something wrong.
“Ellie, what are you saying? Esther is… ah!”
Katalina’s voice trailed off as if she had just remembered something in the middle of her sentence. It appeared she had remembered that I had completely lost my memory.
“Sister Katalina is definitely hiding something from me, right Sister Elizabeth?”
Realizing right away that something was wrong, Esther asked for an answer as she looked back and forth between Katalina and I.
“Well I guess it doesn’t matter if it’s Esther… I can tell her, right Ellie?”
Katalina agonized over her thoughts for a moment before asking for my permission. Since I didn’t disagree with how Katalina was thinking, I nodded to give my sign of approval. Honestly it’s not such a big secret.
“All right. Esther, you have to promise that you won’t tell anyone else, okay? It would be a bad influence on Ellie’s household if word goes around to other people.”
“Okay! I promise.”
I was sure that I would be able to trust Esther with this secret, and Katalina also seemed to think the same way since she nodded and started speaking.
“Well in truth, when Ellie regained her consciousness in the hospital, there was a small problem. I guess you would call it localized amnesia or something. Anyway, her memory is in an unstable condition.”
“Ehh? Really? It didn’t seem like that at all… hmmm. Then again when I think about it, I did slightly get the feeling that your personality has changed. But I didn’t think you’d have such a secret.”
I felt a sting of anxiety when Esther spoke about how my personality changed, but I tried to calm myself thinking that there was no helping it.
I keep self justifying to myself that they wouldn’t believe me even if I were to tell them the truth, and although that’s something I needed to tell them sometime in the future, now was still not the time.
“Sorry for unintentionally deceiving you.”
And that apology was the least I could give. If you were to argue, it wasn’t like I was deceiving them because I wanted to. The situation just turned out this way. Of course I knew very well that from the perspective of the people who are being deceived that may not be the case, which made me feel anxious deep in my mind.
“Ehehe, don’t worry about it. It’s only recently that you and I became friends after all. Of course I understand well that you can’t just divulge such a deep secret to someone who’s not close to you yet. I’m just really happy knowing that you now believe in me enough to tell me your secret.”
Esther, who couldn’t possibly know the actual truth, was happy that I was willing to even just tell her such a secret.
“Ellie and I trusted you enough to divulge such information so can we believe in you not to leak this information to anyone else?”
“Of course.”
And so the problem relating to my memory loss was concluded there. But there was still a question that wasn’t answered in my mind.
“And for Esther, she’s a special case in that she is going to attend Oxford university’s Department of History soon, however, since we are in the Department of Business Administration, we won’t be meeting each other much.”
Just then, Katalina helpfully answered the question I had lingering in my mind. I became curious yet again why she was a special case, but it felt like I would be pointing out something private and embarrassing, and Esther didn’t look like she wanted to particularly reveal that reason either.
“I see.”
Therefore I decided to just accept that. I was simply curious as to why she wasn’t in school, it wasn’t like I was curious about anything beyond that.
It appeared she was anxious about whether I was going to question further, as she let out a sigh of relief after seeing that I simply accepted it.
“Every channel is filled with special programs dedicated to Blue Sky now.”
Katalina complained out loud as she was surfing the TV channels looking for interesting stuff to watch while sitting on the sofa.
“You’re right. They keep showing edited footage of the battles, or predictions of the war that aren’t more than simple guesses. Well it’s only boring to us since we know more than any of them being directly involved in the war ourselves, I’m sure that all the other people watching this must find all this information extremely interesting.”
And because of that, the secretary’s office was up to the knees filled with requests from TV channel companies asking for my appearance. Of course, since there’s no actual need for me to go out to any broadcasting myself, I ordered them to decline every single offer, but the TV channels were extremely persistent in trying to get me to come on air.
Even TV channels in other countries were reporting first about the current situation within the England server of Blue Sky before anything else, so you could tell just how fervant the discussion and interest from the public on our war was.
“I even had to turn my phone off.”
“Me too.”
As opposed to me who only has a very limited number of people knowing my phone number, Katalina and Esther’s numbers were exposed to the public which meant that it was constantly exploding with calls and messages.
They were even thinking about changing their phone number. Thankfully, I had Lucas’ phone number and Terror’s emergency contact number saved on my phone, so I was able to get the latest update from them directly.
[Currently the Camelot alliance has established a powerful defence line while pinning down the frontlines, while the opposing forces have suffered a huge defeat and showed no signs of attacking again.]But even if I didn’t have their number, it was obvious that any movement from the enemy forces would immediately be broadcasted on TV as breaking news so it felt like I wouldn’t be late even if I were to wait for the news on TV.
It was because they had mobilized a huge amount of manpower to place video cameras in each of the cities. Considering that we were able to ambush the enemy forces before any images of us were able to get on air, you could say that we were extremely lucky.
If the video cameras were installed a little bit faster, it would have been much easier to keep an eye on the overall situation and make our ambush on the enemy forces completely meaningless.
“Let’s see, how about the other channels?”
Katalina pressed the button on the remote controller she was holding, and the screen changed. The program ‘Current situation of England’s Blue Sky’ came on the screen, where a number of professionals were discussing general damage numbers, the arrangement of forces for both sides and the locations where each of the battles took place.
[… Currently what we understand is that the only users that died so far are two users who are within the top 10 in ranks.]“Whoa, pretty accurate aren’t they.”
“There’s also the chance that the so-called professional that’s speaking over there could be a guild member within the Camelot alliance.”
That’s right. Even if you were just counting official guild members of the Camelot alliance, it reached 100,000 in numbers. Though you couldn’t say that it’s a lot compared to the total number of people playing Blue Sky, it definitely wasn’t a small number.
It wouldn’t be weird to say that there was at least one person acting as a professional commentator among the guild members. And since it was such a low-level secret information that most official guild members already knew, I didn’t think I should particularly discipline the guild members over leaking it.
“Though he could be one of the Camelot guild members, I don’t feel that such low-level information leaking out could be a problem.”
As the two of them saw the news and suddenly changed their playful looks to a serious expression, I revealed my opinion to calm them
“But you cannot rule out the fact that it could have been high-level secret information as well.”
“What Sister Katalina said is right. I think there is a need to make sure that all of the guild members should not be interacting with the public media. It may be different during other times but right now we are actually in a war with the enemy after all.”
“So your intention is to completely block out all possibility of information leaking as best as we can, right?”
“Yes. Up till now there has been no secret that was of extreme importance so there was no need to worry about such a thing leaking, but if it were to exist in the future and it leaks, it could easily lead us into suffering heavy damages. So we should make sure that such a thing does not happen in the first place.”
In the end, the conversation is flowing in a completely different way from what I intended in the first place.
“So you’re saying we should discipline them, right? The person who came on the TV just then.”
“If that person really is a guild member within the Camelot alliance.”
“I’m sure that it was clearly stated in the terms and conditions for joining the guild so I don’t think it would be a problem. However, the problem is just how harshly we are willing to punish them for breaking the terms.”
Since everything she said was completely correct, I didn’t feel that I could refute her in any way. Though she was right, I also believed that they definitely had a strong enough reason to break the terms and conditions in order to leak the information as well.
Though I did get betrayed in the past, I knew that just keeping my heart closed and rejecting everyone would definitely not be good for me in the long term.
To not believe in anyone at all just because you were betrayed made you nothing but a coward in the end. Instead the thing you needed to learn was why he was led to the point where he had no choice but to betray3, and figuring out what one needs to do to not be betrayed like this again in the future.
In truth, the act of betrayal was like two sides of a coin. To betray is to completely lose the trust of another person, and to stop this betrayal the best solution could be to not give them any trust in the first place, but ironically it would lead you to the trap of being distrustful to everyone in the end. Then what would be the solution? The conclusion I came to in the end was extremely simple. I just needed to give them the minimum amount of trust. Enough so that even if the person were to betray me, I wouldn’t feel hurt and wounded by their actions, and to receive the minimum amount of damage from it.
Meaning that I would not give them unconditional trust but rather calculated trust instead.
“I think that we should give them at least one warning first. Of course if they do it again, we’ll permanently ban them without a doubt.”
“If it’s that much…”
“Then that sounds good enough.”
At a glance it appeared to be a better condition than what was going to happen previously, but to cut them out of the guild completely without even a chance to give an excuse was even more violent and harsh than one thinks.
And that was my warning towards the two betrayers living in Korea as well.
Footnotes:
- Robinxen: Who is this person to be so strict in the way of sleep schedules?!
- E/N: According to Wikipedia: Hikikomori (Japanese: ひきこもり or 引きこもり, lit. “pulling inward, being confined”), also known as acute social withdrawal, is total withdrawal from society and seeking extreme degrees of social isolation and confinement… Hikikomori have been described as loners or “modern-day hermits”.
- Shiro: urgh sounds like one of those hypocritical mcs who would forgive any crime
