Tale of Discovery

Chapter 123: Siesta ; First Morning in the Academy

Opening my eyes, I lift my body from the bed.

I crack my neck and back before looking around the room.

Louise is still asleep, or at least, she's pretending she is. I guess she felt shy about greeting me first thing in the morning, so she came up with this as a solution.

Well, I'm not in the mood to tease her, I have much more important things to do today.

First, I need to check on Siesta.

She told me that she had to go somewhere. Knowing that this is her world, and she recognizes this place, I let her go do whatever she wanted.

I run a quick scan of the whole academy and finally find her.

Siesta is currently in the kitchen helping out someone who seems to be a chef, judging from his attire, prepare food.

I should go visit her.

--

"Siesta," I call out to the diligent maid upon entering the room.

In response to this, Siesta stops whatever she was doing and beams a smile while looking my way.

"Master," she says before setting the utensils in her hand to the side and walking over to me.

Once she's in front of me, I place my hand on her head and ask her teasingly,

"This was where you had to go?"

For some reason, Siesta fidgets a little as a red hue covers her face before she nervously replies,

"Sorry Master. Those here are my old acquaintances, so I wanted to greet them."

I move my hand and lightly pinch her cheek before saying,

"Don't apologize. I knew it would be something like that."

Then, I look behind her over at the chef.

Upon making eye contact with him, he instinctively lowers his head a little.

Hmm That's most likely a habit he has picked up while working here.

I reckon that this is a 'natural' thing for all servants who work for a noble household to do.

Now then, it's about time that I headed to the dining room.

"Siesta, you are to serve none other than myself over here. I don't mind it if you give a hand to other servants, but anything else is strictly forbidden."

In response to my instructions, Siesta bows before respectfully replying,

"Understood, Master."

"If any problems arise, make sure to immediately contact me."

Having done what I came here to do, I leave the room and head to the dining hall.

There, I find that most of the nobles have already arrived and are patiently waiting for their breakfast.

My appearance seems to cause a lot of commotion as the students look at me and whisper things to each other.

What I find funny is that their topics are mostly about me and 'why' I appeared here.

There a total of three long dining tables and Louise is sitting at the one closest to the door.

Ignoring the looks I'm given, I slowly walk to the table that Louise is sitting at.

I send a glare to a female student that's sitting to Louise's right, which seems to be quite effective as she hastily gets up from her seat and looks for another one.

Then, I take the now-empty seat and pat Louise's head.

"Don't treat me like a child!", she softly exclaims to not attract attention, despite everyone's attention already being on us.

"I'm not," I coolly reply, "You can think of this as a habit of mine."

Feeling a rather keen gaze from close-by, I look toward the direction it's coming from.

Sitting opposite me is a blue-haired female student wearing glasses. Her complexion seems to be lacking energy as she looks like she hasn't slept for decades.

Beside her is a rather long wooden staff and right in front of her is a book written in some language that I'm unable to read.

Right, I should've realized this earlier, but the language I've been using to converse with others in this world different. Weirdly, I can easily do such a thing with an unfamiliar language.

However, reading and writing is not something that's included with this 'auto-translator' part of me.

Irene, do you know anything regarding this?

{Affirmative. What Father 'hears' is the will of other beings decoded through the Mete.}

Hold on, their will? Doesn't that mean lying will be almost impossible if that's the case?

{It's as Father says. Lying to Father will be an extremely feat to accomplish and won't go unnoticed by Father.}

{Even if Father doesn't find it obvious, their statements will appear as extremely suspicious ones.}

This is great news, as not only will this be extremely helpful during 'negotiations', it could also be used to measure an opponent's wits.

Now that I think about it, does this only work when someone utters words?

{Negative. It also applies to body-language.}

I thought so Could this be related to why I was able to Sona Sitri during our chess match?

{Correct.}

Damn, I knew something was odd when I bet her so easily despite her being so confident in her skills.

Should I somehow make it up to her when I return from the Rift? Perhaps, take her out on a date?

Leaving that aside, couldn't books be 'decoded' too? Like, the will of the author or something ridiculous similar to that?

{Affirmative. Father has already made contact with one such book that was written by a much too passionate writer that their will was encoded on it.}

Why do I not remember such an occurrence?

{It was the book: How to Catch Them All 101 by Pink Guy.}

I have no idea what you're talking about.

{}

Forget it, back to the matter at hand.

Basically, I'm not able to read books in other languages except for a select few.

{That's correct.}

{One such book would be Mein Kampf by-}

Say no more. I've already read that book a dozen times, so I understand what you're trying to imply.

"Um, Prince Wales," a girl's voice suddenly reaches my ears.

Looking over, I see a busty dark-skinned girl with red hair.

"What made you want to stay with this pipsqueak," she questions curiously while pointing at Louise.

Before I can say anything, Louise points at her and seems like she wants to yell at her.

However, before she can do that, I pinch her cheek to bring senses back together.

Fortunately, that seems to effective, as she gradually calms down and glances at me from the corner of her eye.

Of course, I'm not just going to let Louise, who is sort of like my little sister now, be insulted,

"I can't speak for the others, but I'd rather stay with an innocent young girl than you."

It takes her a moment, but the girl realizes what I'm implying. Surprisingly, she grins instead of being offended by my words.

"You really think so?" she attempts to tease me by pushing her breasts up using her arms.

Not giving her any more attention, I face Louise and inquire,

"Is there going to be a lecture concerning magic today?"

Louise grins as she glances at the busty girl from earlier for a split-second before turning her attention back to me and replying,

"Yes. Are you going to be attending?"

I nod my head in response and say,

"Of course, after all, it might help in recovering my memories."

Naturally, my claim is nothing but a cover for my true goal, which is investigating the magic system of this Platform.