Bad∞End∞Night Vol 2 Chapter 9

Chapter 9: Betrayal

When I reached the study, the door was slightly ajar, and I heard a voice from inside. 

“Come, Len, you know it’s forbidden to take her into the library. Won’t she find out?” 

Those words I overheard without even attempting to made my right hand freeze on the door handle. That was the Mistress’s voice. And she said something I shouldn’t have possibly heard. Had I misheard it? The voices in the room echoed off the tell ceiling, wood walls, and floor, reaching slightly outside as well. I brought my face near the gap in the door and peered into the room. The seven had already gathered. They were scattered around the room, keeping their distance from one another. The room was dim, so I didn’t think they could notice me. 

The Mistress stood next to the fireplace on the far left side, the Lady sat in the big sofa in front of the fireplace, and on the right was the Butler gazing out the window. Sitting in two armchairs closest to the door were the Doll Twins. Right and ahead from the door was the Maid sitting in a chair pulled out from the desk. And in the center of the room, under the extravagant chandelier, stood the Master with arms crossed. Everyone’s faces were stern. 

“Don’t be rash. Focus on the performance, all right? It’ll be bad if she opens those coffins.” 

"And what if that put her on guard, hm?” 

“…Thought there was someone there. It was you, huh?” 

“That’s cutting it a little too loose. We’re all taking this seriously. I’m glad Rin at least refrained from following up on what you did. But on the off chance something happened…” 

“Meiko’s right! I was passing through the hall, and I thought something was up with you two upstairs, so I just went to take a peek! And then what do you know…” 

“…Miss Lukaaa? Are you okay…?” 

“Kaito’s right, Luka. Keep your head up! What’s that gloomy face about? If you have concerns, we can talk them out.” 

“…To our star actress. But I have the better resume, don’t I?” 

“Yes, Mr. Len does have more experience than Miss Luka, and quite a lot of talent! And good looks, too…” 

“You’re always the most useless one of us, even when we were chasing her! You’re just a pokey turtle! Is your head too heavy with all that useless knowledge?” 

“Now, calm down, everyone! This is no time to be fighting. We still don’t have the letter, after all…” 

“…Isn’t your blunder the reason we’re all hasty, Rin?” 

“I-I can…! Just, that time I… the timing was… not the best…” 

”…!“ 

"Hey, Len, cool it. Rin’s tired, too. Girls are more delicate than you might think, you know…?” 

”…We all fall to exhaustion sometimes. It’s got nothing to do with gender, Kaito. If there’s any reason for it, it’s being in this crazed night.“ 

“…?” 

“…” 

“What… You too, Gack…?! Len, what have you said to him?” 

“Haven’t I gotten results? I’ve experimented with those stairs again and again. And this time, the timing was perfect! I feel we’re almost there.” 

“Don’t get ahead of yourself, Luka. We can’t speak with certainty yet, even if we are gradually getting results. If we can’t see it through to the end… there’s no point.” 

“Meg… There you go again…” 

“Miss Meg, that’s a bit forceful of you to put me "Team Force.” I just thought I’d try something a little different…“ 

“It certainly does… if this were merely a detective story. But if we all want to cooperate together, we don’t need a neutral party.” 

“That’s right, Rin. Meg and Len have been throwing off our teamwork lately.” 

“Speaking of "everyone” and focusing on the whole… certainly, there’s a point that it disallows making use of our individual talents. The assembly of individuals may appear magnificent, but when it becomes a group, it can lose the ability to demonstrate its full potential…“ 

"To think I’d hear that from you, Gack… Look, can we all just take a break? We’re starting to go mad here.” 

“It’s not, Rin. In this play, we can’t speak of whose fault anything is.” 

“…Oh, can’t we? Seems far worse to keep up that pampering. Sometimes a scolding is in order.” 

“Meg, enough. And the rest of you. Enough of this discord. …At any rate…” 

“AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!” 

Suddenly, Luka burst into laughter. The quarrel came to a halt, and everyone stared at her. Giving off a momentary aura that monopolized the audience’s gaze, she had a deranged smile. I felt the illusion that a spotlight was fixed on her. Such overwhelming charisma… Just as her laugh was making me wonder if it would go on forever, it came to a sudden halt, and she fell silent like a wind-up doll stopping. 

“Luka…?” 

“…” 

“Of course I haven’t forgotten that abominable night… Even if I wanted to, it sticks in my head like it only just happened. It makes me just want to forget it all at this point… like her. And just go mad… A crazy night… Just like the title says!” 

“What?! No, what I meant is…” 

“Hey, stop it! Don’t say that, Mr. Gack… Hey, Kaito!” 

Rin stood up, ran to Kaito in the center, and clung to his left arm. A common sight… I always saw her clinging to his arm, like a child clinging to a parent. In her small doll body, she could barely even reach his arm. He stooped down slightly and patted her head, saying it would be okay. His hand nearly covered the Doll Girl’s head. Rin had the same scared look as when she showed me the stray cat she picked up. 

“Miss Luka, you’re pretty weak-minded, huh? Giving in to something like this…!” 

“…"When they actually become reality, then no thanks,” hm? Well, you seem to get quite a kick out of it, considering. …I’ve been thinking. Could it be that you…You…“ 

"I tell you, I’m not having fun at aaall! I just know it’s a necessity to put on a droll character in such a gloomy situation…” 

"You too, Len?!” 

“Ahaha, you said it. All the scripts you write have characters like that, don’t they. They help keep a good balance. But don’t you think always striking a balance that way is a bit lukewarm… a bit boring? True art, you know, is much more piercing!” 

“…I favor that viewpoint, too. Going "too far” is just right. Any less, and nothing gets through.“ 

Meg bit her lip regretfully at Luka and Len’s comments. 

"My, so you feel that way too, Len? Yes, we don’t like always thinking with our heads. Following intuition, our natural senses… that makes us feel alive. We’re simply not suited for something so dull as "working together to accumulate results” in the first place!“ 

Meiko grimaced and admonished Luka. 

”…Luka, I know… no, we all know you’ve been cooperating with us. Please, don’t trample on those memories any more…“ 

”…True. Then we’ll all go mad together.“ 

“I kinda noticed at the point where Mr. Gack stopped chiding me for my slip-ups…” 

“Stop… Stop it… Guys…” 

“Ahahaha! Yes, we’re mad! All of us, already! Ahh, how funny!” 

“…Oh my. Was I right? So sorry.” 

Kaito’s right hand which he held out to chastise Luka came to a stop, and he stared as if caught in a lie. 

“…Well, then it’s a good thing you have such a fitting role, Miss Luka. Your selfish attitude just got an upgrade, and you’re more malicious than ever. Now, you might be perfect for a lead villain!” 

“Oh, I’m fine. We’ll put an end to this now… Yes, we’ll put an end to all of this, this whole night!” 

Luka yelled with eyes open wide. Everyone froze with surprise at the mention of “putting an end to this.” Silence fell again. Rin, who’d watched the fight anxiously while clinging to Kaito, slowly stepped toward Luka. 

“…Hey. Do you really want to make all our effort go to waste? That’s just foolish. I misjudged you, Luka…” 

Rin stood at the same height as Luka sitting on the floor, and met her deranged gaze directly. Unlike when she was afraid, her face now had a cold look, and emitted a threatening aura hard to imagine from her small body. The two stared each other down, and Luka was the first to turn away. As if readjusting her posture, she sighed loudly, stood up, and spoke looking down on the small Doll Girl. 

“…Rin, always playing the good girl… But I know you can’t help feeling lonely either. I know you want to escape from here…” 

“Well, I mean… I’m sure someday…” 

“That locket… You’re always talking at it with tears welling up, aren’t you?” 

”…! I-It’s not like dad…“ 

”…My, so it was your father. It was too far away for me to see the photo inside. So you want your father to come save you? Ah, but… who knows if he’ll even come to see the likes of you!“ 

“Heehee… Oh, ouuuch. It really hurts… like it were real!” 

“…Len. Enough of your teasing. What good will it do to bring us even further apart?” 

Meiko reprimanded Len for his joking comment on the tense situation between the two, keeping her stern gaze. She was said to have once lived a rough life where she would answer to any fight picked with her. Now, she was the most concerned for those around her, and tried to mellow the situation, but if the quarrel escalated into a scuffle… she would probably be the victor. 

She glared coldly at Len. That glare must have been congatious; the temperate in the room seemed to drop. Even I, hiding outside the door, trembled a little. Her anger was frightening. But why was it…? The angrier she got, and the more the others quarreled terribly, an indescribable exaltation welling up from my heart. I felt like I was watching an amusing play. 

“Scary…! But I’m not particularly trying to drive anyone apart. Ahh… I see. So that’s his aim…” 

"I mean the mastermind. Stories need action. A play that’s all lulls and no conflict, all comfort and pretend friendship, is just boring, isn’t it? He’s watching as close as he can get… There needs to be more excitement.” 

Len slowly stood up from his armchair and moved to the center of the room. 

“…I’ve been thinking about this a while.” 

The Doll Boy’s round, glass-like blue eyes wavered eerily in the soft orange light of the chandelier. 

“The mastermind… He’s really among us, isn’t he?” 

“I always thought it was strange. That night, it was just us eight there. No one else. And now, too… it’s just us.” 

My heart jumped. Did he know I was out here, hiding behind the door…? I held my hands tighter and shut my eyes. 

“That’s right. Though I was the last to come in… That night, too, everyone else went home before us…” 

“In that letter, the mastermind wrote: I’m always watching the play up close. But they didn’t say from where exactly. Say this were a world inside a book, and they could just turn the pages whenever they wanted… viewing us from the outside world. I considered it might be a very detached kind of viewing like that. But…” 

Len came to a stop to think. Then he put his left index finger to his lips, and turned his gaze right and down. He looked toward the blue roses Luka had knocked off the table earlier, sleeping restlessly on the white sheets of the shattered vase. 

“If it were me… If I were the mastermind, where would I watch this play from…? …I would slip among the actors, become one myself, and watch as I performed alongside them. That would be most enjoyable…” 

The mastermind is among us? Burlet himself…?! 

Time, temporarily stopped from fright and tension, resumed with a sigh. Kaito, the oldest, had been raised to become a leader, so he could regain composure from even the most shocking events. 

“Your intuition is often correct, so it scares me… But could you tell us what evidence led you to think that?” 

“…Sure. When Rin started hyperventilating, and Luka got slapped by Meiko… I felt it. When you put on a good play, a sense of delight and excitement comes from the crowd… something completely different from the excitement from a fight. An emotion full of pure expectation and curiosity… and I’m sure I sensed it coming from somewhere in this room. Though I can’t pinpoint who.” 

“It can’t be…! One of us…? One of us was watching this awful discord and enjoying it?!”, Meiko retorted at Len with anger. 

“…I see now.” 

Kaito spoke up with a bitter smile. 

“We’ve all been in this together, haven’t we? No such mingling could happen; we’ve been friends for years, and we can still fondly remember our time since meeting to now… That’s undoubtable, is it not?! You’re not suggesting that someone’s been possessed by the ghost of Burlet, are you?” 

“Who knows… I just had a hunch of sorts that he was among us. I didn’t say I had solid proof. That’s why I’ve been looking for some.” 

“If we can make the conjecture, then it’s a possibility.” Gack spoke chidingly with concern. 

“…Maybe just like we’re fooling Miss Miku, he could be fooling us too.” 

The cutting words hit me like a knife in my chest. At once, I was torn away from the play I was watching unfold before me, back into reality. 

All this time, I’d yearned for a voice to finally say my name - but as soon as I heard it, the faint light of hope I saw went out. The fearful possibility I kept out of my thoughts as soon as it popped up… that everyone else was leaving me out, and tricking me… That terrible idea was now confirmed as reality. “Miku, you lack insight. Miku, you’re honest and easy to fool… So you’d be a good audience member” - it was just as I’d been told. 

I mixed in with the comedy they were putting on, and thought I’d become an actor on the same standing as them. But that foolish girl wasn’t their friend and colleague, just their audience. And certainly not the star of the show. If they were being fooled by a greater mastermind… What an absurd comedy this was. 

“But now we’ve proven ourselves capable of considering the possibility. Maybe we were able to splash him with some cold water, hm? 

“If there is a mastermind among us, deceiving us… Identifying who it is may not have any impact on their goal, nor the completion of our objective. Surely you’re well aware of why that is, yes?” 

Everyone’s doubtful eyes suddenly widened, like Kaito’s words reminded them of something. Slowly, they turned to unease and fear. 

“Yes… Kaito is right. Even if we go hunting down the mastermind, I can’t imagine it’ll be of much benefit to us,” Gack remarked with a distressed tone. 

“There’s a good deal we’ve learned, you know. Slowly but surely, we’re reaching our objective. With each repetition, we learn more about the rules that govern this play world.” 

Kaito summed up his opinions to control the situation which could soon turn sour again, and Meg and Gack added their own persuading comments. Even knowing the mastermind who sucked them into this world could have been among them, they were somehow gaining back their usual team ethic. 

Rin raised her head, stood up, and spoke with light in her eyes. 

“We’re almost there. We’ve gotten to a pretty good spot. There’s just… somethingwe’re missing still… I’m sure of it.” 

“Yes, certainly. Our actions are causing minor deviations. If only by a little, time in the real world is being shortened. Interference is gradually occurring between that night and this world. But of course, we can’t precisely measure the effect it’s having on reality. Even so, we’ve learned it’s not just futile.” 

“True… But I still think we need to avoid slipping up in haste at any cost. We can’t have another mistake like that night again…” 

“…” 

“All right, if it’s come to this… It might be a bit rough, but I don’t care how you do it. Just get the letter.” 

“You know, she seems a lot more wary than usual this time. I’m thinking that afteran ending like that, a few fragments of her forgotten memories of it stuck around, influencing her thoughts. She didn’t even drink my second cup of tea…” 

“We have to protect the fact that she died… and the contents of the coffins. If we can’t do so, we’ll never return to reality. No matter what, Miku can’t know the truth. She can’t go back to reality like this.” 

“Miss Meiko’s right. The lead role of this play will die, even if she says and does nothing. That’s her fate… Because it’s the law of this world…” 

“Len… You’re right. Yes, we understand.” 

“Well. Let’s end the meeting here. She’ll probably be finishing her search of the stockroom and coming up here soon. It’s full of junk, so I’m sure it’ll take some time to search it all carefully, but…” 

I was so shocked, I forgot to even breathe, intently listening in on the long conversation. 

Thump - 

“……………Miku? Are you there?” 

The wind outside howled as usual. The branch by the window would occasionally whack into it, making a knock-like sound. 

“It seems it’s just the wind. It’s part of the script for the storm outside to get most intense around this time. The climax is approaching… Is it time for the thunder effect…?” 

Gack stood looking out the window. But my back was already turned, and I only heard part of his words. 

Chapter end