Investigating the Akaia family starts with investigating Isiah.
Of course, I won't do anything too excessive. I’ll just go over the existing information again. As a teacher, of course.
But before I do that, there’s something I need to check first.
Instructor Giotto’s eavesdropping… It was just a suspicion of mine, but Arald was almost certain.
Instructor Giotto, who knew what classes I taught and what I said faster than rumors could spread.
I suspected him of eavesdropping, and Arald agreed.
I actually didn't really care if Instructor Giotto was eavesdropping on me. As much as he gives me a lot of work, the more influence I have in this Atlas, the better.
As I became able to handle homeroom, magic theory, and combat theory without any problems, Instructor Giotto must have felt it too, because these days he rarely touches me.
Or maybe he’s too self-conscious to do anything more.
Anyway, I’m not interested in what Instructor Giotto is trying to do with that petty act of his, I’m just interested in the wiretapping device itself.
I had such a conversation with Arald.
“A magic engineering device that’s completely undetectable by Mana Detection? Is such a thing possible?”
I even told Elodie about this eavesdropping, and she came to my classroom for a while to use Mana Detection, but she couldn't find anything at that time.
Arald answered my question.
“Then there’s no wiretapping device.”
“No, that’s not it. It’s just not made with magic engineering.”
A wiretapping device that’s not made with magic engineering.
If this were common sense in my previous world, it would be very natural, but not here.
In this world, magic does most of the work that electricity does. So, from my point of view, a wiretapping device that’s not magic engineering sounds like a wiretapping device that doesn't use electricity.
“I don’t know exactly how the wiretapping device works, but products that don’t use Mana have always been researched at Hitchcock.”
“Why? To do something bad that would get them caught by Mana Detection?”
It was a refreshingly honest answer, like a true devil.
“It’s not that we’re trying to do anything that goes against the law or human ethics, but there are many things in the company that we don’t want to be known to the outside world. The process of moving those things is a real pain.”
“Really? Not to do something cruel to satisfy the devil’s desires?”
“If that was our goal, we wouldn’t have established Hitchcock in the first place.”
Anyway, I became interested because even Arald didn’t know the specific principle.
So, I tried to find out where the wiretapping device was while teaching, but it was difficult to find it while teaching.
I couldn’t very well clean out the locker while explaining the subject matter.
Besides, if Instructor Giotto found out that I found the wiretapping device, there was a good chance that the blackmail material I had worked so hard to find would be wasted. When I told Arald about this, he said, “As expected of Frondier-nim,” and it made me feel bad for no reason.
So, what I chose was to act one more time after class.
“So, what is it this time, Instructor Frondier?”
“A student who took the magic practice class came to me, and…”
As always, Elodie and I were arguing in Atlas.
This time, we set the stage for our fight in our classroom.
We exchanged blunt and curt words, searching every nook and cranny of the classroom without looking at each other.
We’ve been doing this act for quite some time now, so Elodie and I have become quite adept at arguing.
I don’t know if I should be happy about that.
But even if we search this thoroughly, we can’t find it.
A classroom may seem like a complex space, but it’s not a good place to hide something for a long time.
It’s impossible to hide anything in the desks or lockers that the students check, and the same goes for the teacher’s desk.
That leaves only the walls. So Elodie and I looked for hidden doors or secret spaces, but to no avail.
If there was such a space, Weaving or the Workshop would have found it.
My Weaving copies the structure of an object as it is, so I can tell right away if there’s something strange about it.
But at least there’s no such space in this classroom.
Was there no wiretapping in the first place? Were Arald and I wrong?
“Answer me. How long do I have to keep cleaning up after the students?”
“I’m the one who cleans up after them. You just have to do it over and over again because you don’t do your job properly.”
We were running out of topics to argue about.
I was thinking about giving up and coming back another day, or trying a different method.
That was when it happened.
[Attention all students. This is an announcement from the broadcasting room. All remaining students, please return home immediately. Again, we ask that all…]
A voice came from the speaker on the ceiling. It was a typical announcement telling students to go home.
And then we both lost our words for a moment and listened to the broadcast. It was only natural, since we were in the middle of a conversation when the broadcast came on.
It was only natural, but…
Elodie’s whisper was heard.
I really wanted to believe it, so I put the broadcast speaker installed on the ceiling into the Workshop.
Of course, I don’t know the blueprint for a speaker. Especially not if it’s magic engineering. So I wouldn't know what was wrong even if I looked at it.
That’s not what I’m looking at.
The moment I put the speaker in the Workshop, all the wires connected to the speaker came into my Workshop.
What I want to see is where the speaker’s wires are connected to.
[Frondier, you said Instructor Giotto was wiretapping you, right? It’s impossible to install a wiretapping device inside a speaker without people noticing.]
[You think it’s possible to install it?]
[That’s not the kind of disagreement I’m talking about.]
And my eyes followed the speaker wires as they continued on and on.
I confirmed that the wires were connected to the broadcasting room and one other line.
[…What if it’s the opposite, Elodie?]
[What do you mean, the opposite?]
[What if Giotto wasn’t originally trying to eavesdrop on me?]
[What if he wasn’t interested in me from the beginning, and I just happened to enter his wiretapping zone?]
Elodie’s face turned pale at my words.
In other words, the order was reversed.
It wasn’t that Giotto installed the wiretapping device because I came here.
It was that Giotto had installed it before I came, from the very beginning, a very long time ago, in every speaker in the entire Atlas…
[…This guy’s completely insane.]