Don't Feed the Professor! - Chapter 35

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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When Bibi pointed at me and spoke, Momo glanced at my face before making an excuse.
“Ah, what am I supposed to do about the rules? I’ve finally gotten into a popular lecture, and if I face some penalty for it…….”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying.”
Bibi looked at me as she spoke.
“Everyone in Hotline is a psychopath, so don’t trust them.”
“Hey!”
Ignoring Momo’s squeaking protest, Bibi disappeared toward the rice section again.
‘Idiots.’
I shook my head and tossed a bundle of instant noodles into the cart.
Fresh produce would’ve been nice, but there’s no need to take unnecessary risks. The mart’s flyers mention the fresh section on the 2nd Floor most often, after all.
Momo wheeled the cart over and asked me.
“Oh, by the way, Amelie—did you get paid by the Student Council President?”
“Ah, didn’t I mention that?”
I’d made my demand rather boldly: “Shouldn’t the party seeking redress propose the compensation terms first, as a matter of principle?”
When we met again afterward, the Student Council President said he’d pay me double the current rate. And there was one more thing.
“I’ll grant you an exemption from expulsion. If you ever violate a major regulation and face expulsion, I can make that particular instance disappear—just once.”
Expulsion is much the same as being replaced, so in a way it meant I’d gained an extra life. But…….
I looked at Momo.
‘No point spelling that out for her.’
“Just negotiated the rate pretty high. Should be able to cover my meals for a while.”
“Meals? At that rate you could eat for years!”
That wasn’t quite true. When I didn’t answer, sharp-eyed Momo pressed on.
“Why, do you have debts?”
“……What?”
“Ah, it figures. Don’t worry about it. We’re all in the same boat anyway. No one with money problems would come to a place like the Castle in the first place.”
Fair point.
“Money…… is something I do need.”
“Then why don’t you try working at Goldilocks? They hire college students every new semester.”
Work at Goldilocks? That Goldilocks?
Reading my expression, Momo hurried to reassure me.
“The arcade side is pretty dangerous, but the diner side isn’t bad.”
“……Then why don’t you work there?”
“I can’t just quit what I’m doing now, and besides, if I get tangled up with Goldilocks’ customers it gets messy. But you—you’ve got something.”
She kept saying “that thing, that thing,” stretching one arm high and waving it through the air. I think she meant someone very tall…….
“The professor……?”
“Yeah, your ‘professor.’ From what I saw last time, he’s quite the possessive god. If you ask him to keep customers from being a nuisance, wouldn’t that work?”
“……God?”
Had I misheard?
Momo frowned at my reaction, then snapped her fingers as if she’d realized something.
“You don’t know! I keep forgetting you’re a newbie!”
And Momo grabbed my wrist and pulled me along.
“We usually lump all the incomprehensible things together and call them Uncanny Beings. But here in the Castle it’s different. See there?”
Momo pointed toward the ceiling where the stairwell to the 2nd Floor began. There was a small booth with a window at the landing.
It was a tiny office for monitoring the CCTV and making announcements. The flyers rarely mentioned it, so comparatively speaking it should be safe.
“That’s an Uncanny Being.”
She meant the manager standing mutely by the window.
The manager was always stationed in that exact spot, completely motionless. I’d never seen their expression change or their eyes blink.
At first I’d genuinely thought they were a startlingly realistic mannequin. If only those eyes hadn’t been there.
Click.
Whoosh—Momo and I both turned our gazes away at once. Either way, it wasn’t wise to hold eye contact with that thing for long.
“What they call ‘Higher Beings’ here are on a different plane entirely from ordinary Uncanny Beings. My grandmother called them ‘gods,’ and among Uncanny Beings who can speak, they’re called ‘esteemed ones’ or ‘exalted ones.'”
Now that I thought about it, the Central Library’s librarian had called Mallo an exalted one. I hadn’t known who that referred to at the time.
Pretending to browse dog food on the lowest shelf, Momo continued.
“Of course, they’re only called that—we don’t actually know what they are exactly. If the ‘manager’ in the booth or the ‘undergraduates’ at school are accidents, then Higher Beings are…… natural disasters.”
Oh, found a good one, Momo murmured, straightening up. In her hand was a tin can with a black dog painted on it.
“Anyway, Russell and Kay didn’t just happen to have a dogfight for no reason. Divine Favor, no less—just hearing the words makes it sound sweet.”
That was…… yeah, certainly true.
I recalled the bizarre form Kay had taken in the Maze. How it all became meaningless the moment I called out to Mallo.
Momo went on.
“At first no one could stop Russell. Then Kay got involved. The two of them competed, kept driving up the price, until now even cheap offerings don’t work anymore.”
Offerings. I remembered Kay’s memo left on the Student Council Building’s bulletin board.
Dear fellow students, the day has finally come! Make an offering to your favorite professor!
“……So what exactly is an offering?”
When I asked, Momo tilted her head.
“Well, it’s like bait, you could say. You attract a god with an offering and request their Divine Favor. Whether they accept is unknown, and if they do, you’ll have to pay an equivalent price.”
That sounded pretty frightening.
“But do gods even want anything from humans?”
Fish heads?
“That varies from god to god. Plenty of humans have met terrible fates jumping in too carelessly. It happened a long time ago, but there was someone who became bewitched by a god and ate their own brain.”
“Ugh…….”
“Oh, but Kay did tell me something.”
“What……?”
“Gods are drawn to unstable things. In their eyes, humans are incredibly fragile, and easily corrupted—apparently that makes us quite…… ‘delicious-looking’ to them.”
“You mean they eat us?!”
“In a manner of speaking. Though it’s somewhat different.”
Momo smiled wickedly.
“……? Oh.”
Could it be. That ‘intimate relationship’ Russell had mentioned was actually…….
“So the Divine Favor too……. Wait, so they really did sleep with the professor for grades, they actually……?”
Unlike me stammering in confusion, Momo seemed unbothered.
“What’s wrong with it? We’re not really college students anyway, and most importantly—they’re gods. Can’t judge them by human standards, can you?”
“Even so…….”
“Besides, from what Kay told me, she said it felt so good she almost died. Though I guess she actually did die in the end.”
Momo laughed, but I couldn’t bring myself to laugh along.
After registering for class, Kay was expelled and soon replaced, according to what the Student Council President told me. The reason was…… probably because she’d tried to kill me.
More precisely, because she’d tried to kill me while I was with Mallo.
Mallo had said I didn’t need to worry about things like Divine Favor. Such things had nothing to do with “us,” he’d said.
Yet in reality I was receiving extraordinary special treatment. Everything the other survivors struggled for came so easily to me.
All because Mallo was…….
Me?
‘What does Mallo actually want from me?’
It was no longer possible to think about this complacently.
It doesn’t make sense that he only needed a student to attend lectures. There are plenty of other survivors in the Castle, and there will be more in the future.
Could it be that I ‘look delicious’ to him? Though I’d never sensed such a thing from Mallo—but what would I know?
I’d spent my whole life paying off debts, never had a boyfriend, and didn’t even have a girlfriend to talk about things like this with.
“But Momo, how do you know all this stuff……?”
“Ah, it’s the family business, so to speak.”
Just as I was about to ask what that meant, a speaker on the ceiling crackled to life.
An uncannily distant, viscous and dreamlike electronic piano sound.
[When the lights go out……, I stay a little longer…….]
Signal Music.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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