OHNIR – Chapter 43
Chapter 43: Amnesia
When Kelusta woke up, her head felt as if it had been stuffed with thousands of cotton balls—seemingly full to the brim, yet so light it felt completely empty.
She blinked in a daze, her gaze drifting toward the ceiling. The pale yellow light of the medical room shone into her golden pupils, making her eyes, still glistening from sleep, appear even brighter.
“…You’re awake?”
A cool voice, tinged with urgency, sounded from the side of the bed. Kelusta turned her head toward the sound in a daze, her gaze freezing as it met a pair of cornflower-blue eyes.
This was—
Ah… she realized with a pang of disappointment that it was Wend, not Gloria.
Where am I? Wasn’t I brewing a potion in the classroom? Why did I suddenly fall asleep? Ugh… even though Wend is just a tool man, it’s a bit much for me to be slacking off so openly, shirking my duties to this degree.
My head hurts a little… What happened before I fell asleep? Why can’t I remember anything at all?
She pushed herself halfway up, leaning against the headboard. Reaching a hand out from under the snow-white duvet, she rubbed her temples firmly and asked in confusion, “What happened to me…? Where is this? Weren’t we in the potions classroom?”
This place was decorated in brilliant white, a stark contrast to the gloomy potions classroom. She remembered Musen once telling her that the whitest place in the entire academy was, without a doubt, the medical room.
It seemed this was the legendary “holy land of death” where patients were told to find the potions professor themselves to get a prescription.
At the same time, a long beep sounded in her mind. An unfamiliar electronic female voice, sweet but devoid of emotion, announced, “Initiating the thirty-eighth attempt to connect to the host’s consciousness… Request accepted, connection successful. Initiating reboot command… Please wait for the World Line Convergence System to respond.”
The system shut down?
Kelusta’s eyes widened in surprise.
Ever since the system had taken up residence in her consciousness, it had never once shut down. Even when Kelusta slept, it would merely enter a synchronized sleep mode. Whenever its temporary host had a command, it was instantly available, providing service so attentive that giving it a mere five-star review felt inadequate.
Yet now, this sudden prompt had clearly mentioned a “reboot”…
It seemed the system had indeed shut down, but what could have caused it?
Before Kelusta could make sense of her confusion, Wend, who was standing by the bed, pressed the call bell. After the small device let out a light, wind-chime-like jingle, he turned to the brown-haired girl in the bed and said calmly, “The wings of a Spotted Phosphorous Butterfly release a colorless, odorless hypnotic gas when they are severed… I’ve handled this ingredient many times and never had a reaction, but I didn’t expect you to be affected so strongly. You fell asleep right at the workstation.”
The severed wings of a Spotted Phosphorous Butterfly can put people to sleep? Well, you learn something new every day.
She only knew of this butterfly because of its absurdly high price and the seemingly chaotic patterns on its wings. As for professional knowledge like its properties as an ingredient, Kelusta, a self-proclaimed potions idiot, was well aware of her limitations: there was no way she would remember something like that.
“Since this is your first time handling this potion ingredient, and your reaction was so strong, I was worried it might affect your health, so I brought you to the medical room for a check-up,” Wend added.
“…Is that so? I must have been sleeping so soundly that I don’t remember a thing,” Kelusta said with sincere politeness. “My apologies, Mr. Silentdis… It was very thoughtless of me to cause you so much trouble.”
“No, the oversight was mine. I should have warned you beforehand,” the silver-haired potions genius replied, his tone surprisingly harsh despite Kelusta’s humility. He stated it as a simple fact, without a hint of sarcasm, yet his words felt intensely offensive. “After all, you truly know nothing, including such basic, common-sense matters.”
“…” Kelusta rolled her eyes inwardly. Deciding not to argue with the academic prodigy, she wisely changed the subject. “How is the potion? What step were we at before I fell asleep? Did I hold up the progress?”
If the system had been online, it would have sighed in admiration. She was truly a model protagonist—so dedicated, asking about the quest item moments after waking up.
“The butterfly wings were the last ingredient for the first stage. The rest of the process requires the potion to simmer for a full twelve hours before we can proceed,” Wend said. “Other than having to compensate for the extra fig skin powder you added, and then adding the Milkweed flower juice out of sequence, there were no other issues.”
…Fine, fine, blame it on me again.
Kelusta pinched the bridge of her nose. She reasonably suspected Wend was saying this on purpose.
You damn kid. You love showing off so much, why can’t you learn a thing or two from your sister?
She secretly pursed her lips and shot Wend a glare, only to notice a comfortable-looking, soft bench less than two steps from where he stood ramrod straight. It was clearly meant for visitors to sit on.
How strange. Why was Wend still standing when there was a perfectly good chair right there? He couldn’t possibly be doing it for exercise, could he?
And she could forget about guessing he was too guilty or worried to sit down. Their relationship was purely a business transaction for a potion, devoid of any emotion.
Kelusta narrowed her eyes slightly, concealing her suspicion. But before she could pursue that train of thought, the familiar ding sounded in her mind. The female electronic voice spoke again, sounding much softer this time, yet still sweet. “Friendly reminder: Reboot command complete. The World Line Convergence System has successfully started. This malfunction will be reported to high-dimension headquarters. Should you have any issues, please provide feedback directly to your assigned system. On behalf of the high-dimension developers, the Debug program wishes you a successful mission.”
After this formulaic sign-off, another ding sounded, and the electronic female voice vanished completely.
“Temporary Host!”
This time, it was the familiar voice that rang out in Kelusta’s mind. The newly rebooted system didn’t even waste time on greetings, speaking anxiously, “A full thirty-eight attempts to connect to your consciousness… How are you feeling now? Do you still have a headache? I’m going to perform an intracranial health scan immediately. Please relax and cooperate with the scan.”
Kelusta relaxed her body, baffled. “Why are you so tense?” she asked, confused. “Are those butterfly wings poisonous? I thought they were just hypnotic.”
“Butterfly wings?” In just a few seconds, the system had gathered enough data. It began comparing the readings to the baseline as it spoke to its temporary host. “What are you talking about? In the potions classroom, you suddenly collapsed from a severe headache while talking to Wend. You lost consciousness, which is why our connection was severed. This all happened just a short while ago. Don’t you remember?”
Kelusta’s expression suddenly soured. She lowered her head, feigning interest in her fingers and letting her long, curly hair fall forward to hide her grim face. “Wend said the wings of the Spotted Phosphorous Butterfly have a hypnotic effect, and that’s why I passed out,” she explained to the system.
“He’s lying to you,” the system, whose expertise in potions far surpassed Kelusta’s, stated without hesitation. “Spotted Phosphorous Butterfly wings do release a hypnotic gas when cut, but the effect is negligible. All research to date indicates that the gas is only effective on subjects three years old or younger. Wend is simply taking advantage of your lack of knowledge to feed you nonsense.”
Kelusta: “…”
Even though you’re on my side, I still have the urge to slap you for some reason.
She suppressed the frustration of having her intelligence repeatedly insulted, composed herself, and returned to the matter at hand. “You said I fainted from a headache? I don’t remember that at all. The last thing I recall is Wend saying Lewis Hippol wasn’t the one who sent the flowers. After that, it’s a complete blank.”
“The headache you experienced was so intense that it caused a massive shock to your consciousness, forcing me into an emergency shutdown,” the system explained. “However, I just re-checked your cerebral health data and found no abnormalities. Temporary Host, have you ever experienced anything like this before?”
“No.” Kelusta denied it without hesitation. “I’m in good health. Other than getting heatstroke at age ten because I insisted on building a sandcastle at high noon, I’ve never had a headache.”
“That’s strange,” the system said, puzzled. “Could you have some unknown family medical history?”
“My dad said my mom’s health wasn’t very good… but she never had headaches either,” Kelusta said with certainty after thinking for a moment.
“…But your condition was terrible at the time,” the system’s electronic voice sounded anxious, having found no answers after running diagnostics. It sounded exceptionally worried. “Especially after Wend mentioned a certain word, you looked as if someone had ripped a chunk of your hair out… except without the blood, the effect was nearly identical.”
“What word?” Kelusta asked sharply, choosing to ignore the system’s scalp-tingling description.
“My apologies. That was a critical point you had instructed me to monitor. I was analyzing the properties of the Fake Illness Potion, so I wasn’t paying attention to what Wend was saying to you,” the system said regretfully. “By the time I finished the data analysis, your headache had already started.”
To ensure the quality of the final product, Kelusta, who always liked to have a backup plan, had specifically instructed the system to run a general data scan after each stage of the potion-making process. This was a precaution in case her “tool man,” Wend, suddenly failed due to a lack of skill, which would have completely ruined her plans.
Unexpectedly, however, this cautious decision had led to such a major oversight.
“…Forget it, it doesn’t matter,” Kelusta sighed. “At least now I know that little brat Wend was just feeding me a line. It sounded so logical, but he was just trying to fool me.”
To think that she, a master of deception, would one day be fooled by someone else… It was the shame of a lifetime.
She glanced at the silver-haired noble at her side, his expression placid and unreadable, then at the empty armchair. “Still, there’s some good news,” she said meaningfully. “A blessing in disguise, you might call it. This ‘self-injury ploy,’ unintentionally deployed ahead of schedule, might just advance my mission progress.”
Kelusta’s fingertips, hidden by her hair, quietly tapped twice in the empty air before her.
She expertly opened the affinity interface. The image of the noble girl seated in an ornate chair smiled back at her. A detailed log of changes was neatly arranged in reverse chronological order, with the topmost entry displayed in bright red, indicating it was “unread”:
“Gloria visited the Temporary Host. Affinity +10.”
“…Senior’s heart is truly a mystery,” the brown-haired girl sighed from her hospital bed. “A full ten affinity points. Even the Pudding Workshop’s holiday sale isn’t that generous. I have to thank the predecessors from other worlds for their valuable experience. Before this, I never would have imagined that the ‘self-injury ploy,’ which sounded so unreliable, could be so ridiculously effective.”
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