The Simulacrum - Chapter 68 - Part 2 (Patreon)

It was roughly around ten minutes before the end of the lunch break that I made my way over to the nurse's office. I wasn't exactly in a hurry, as I planned to discuss a number of things with the portly man aside from my PE-exemption, and since the said class was just about to start, I technically had a whole hour to waste.

I didn't exactly have a spring in my steps, but I still made it over to the familiar door with quite some time to spare.

Thinking back on it, this place actually held quite a bit of significance for me. Josh took me here the first day I awoke in this world, we had our first moment with Elly here, and I even had a memory involving Judy when she collapsed due to existential crisis-induced insomnia. All things considered, this place was part of our history now. If only it wasn't inhabited by an annoying nurse with his dumb jokes and silly speech gimmick... 

"O-ho-ho!"

Yeah, precisely that! Just hearing his laughter through the door made me feel like I had an army of ants crawling all over my back. On the bright side, at least now I knew for sure that he was in there But then again, I already knew that thanks to Far Sight, so no, it wasn't a bright side at all after all.

I raised my hand to the doorknob, ready to enter, but then my hand stopped midway as I thought of something else. I glanced around the corridor, and while there were no other students present, I noticed a single security camera at the far end. I didn't know whether that could see me, or if it even recorded stuff or was only watched over by one of those clichéd, overweight security guards balancing a box of donuts on their paunch, but I wasn't going to take an unnecessary risk. As such, I turned to my left and hastily walked into the nearby toilet, got into one of the stalls, and then once I was sure I was in the clear, I promptly Phased into the school infirmary.

The inside of the room was the same as always; clean, slightly cramped, and faintly smelling of disinfectant. I appeared right next to one of the two beds set aside near the back of the room, while the only other person in the room was sitting by his desk and browsing through a series of charts and tables full of numbers. I quietly tiptoed closer to the nurse, but he was still entirely oblivious to my presence. That was amusing in its own way, but not very productive, so I decided to draw his attention with a chipper greeting.

"Good day, sir. What are you studying so intently?"

"O-ho-HOOOOOOOOUUUuuuu?!" The portly nurse's distinctive chuckle trailed into a weird, surprised sound as he desperately turned one hundred and eighty degrees on his swivel chair, yet once our eyes met, all the tension visibly drained from his shoulders, and he soon let out a relieved, "Oh, it's you, Leonard."

"In the flesh," I answered with a cheeky grin, only to then forcefully snap my facial muscles into a neutral expression and ominously add, "Or am I?"

"You... are not really here?" Peabody inquired, his voice sounding just a touch bewildered, but his confused state didn't stop him from methodically retrieving a cloth handkerchief from his pocket and carefully unfolding it.

"Who knows? I might be here, or I might be just outside the door. Heck, I might even be in that storeroom over there!" I exclaimed as I pointed at the open door at the back end of the room. By this point the portly nurse seemed quite befuddled already, but it didn't mean I could add more oil to the fire, so I declared, "Wait here, I'll go and check!"

Saying so, I casually walked over to the storeroom in question, theatrically looked inside, and after a long beat I stepped inside, closed the door behind me... and then promptly Phased next to the nurse intently staring at the closed door, just outside of his peripheral vision.

"Nope, I'm not in there," I spoke up, eliciting another uncharacteristically high-pitched sound from the rotund man in front of me.

"Please stop doing that! My heart is not as young as it used to be!" Peabody complained as his hands mechanically wiped his high forehead with the aforementioned hanky, only to soon stop and ask, "But wait… now you are here, but before that, you weren’t, yet you were here before you went there to see if you are there, but you weren't, and instead you were here again… So am I here?"

"It's better if you don't think about such things," I supplied a flippant answer before I sat down onto a nearby chair. The older man still looked quite rattled, so I couldn't help but follow it up with, "Am I really that scary?"

My question made the nurse stop wiping his face and, after a long moment of consideration, his lips parted into a broad smile as he told me, "O-ho-ho, no, of course not. I have spent my youth being dragged by my good friend Amadeus all around the most dangerous corners of the world. There are few things that scare me." He paused here for few seconds to massage the left side of his chest while adding, "Being startled is another thing entirely though. As I've said, the old ticker is not like it used to be."

"I'll keep that in mind, but I'm not making promises."

"O-ho-ho!" I don't know why he laughed at that. Nor did I want to know. Anyhow, once he finished with that, he put his handkerchief away and directed his full attention onto me. "I'm sure you aren't here just to make a courtesy call. Can I help you?"

"Yeah, you actually can." My answer only made his suspiciously amicable smile widen a notch, so after clearing my throat, I hastily told him, "I'm here for a certification so that I wouldn't have to attend PE for a while."

"O-ho-ho? Are you sick? Or maybe injured?" Peabody mused while picking up a stethoscope. He didn't try to use it though, only put it around his neck before leaning closer to take a better look at me. What the heck was that about?

More importantly, I now had to consider how much I would tell him. My first instinct told me to keep by hand a secret, but then I remembered that he was actually pretty steadfast when it came to nurse-patient-confidentiality, so in the end I went with a curt, "My hand got injured during the incident a few days ago."

"Did it? O-ho-ho, let me take a look!"

Saying so, he unceremoniously took out a small metal case from his coat's breast pocket. It housed a softly glowing monocle, which he put over his right eye before leaning even closer to take a good look at my hand for nearly half a minute.

"Oh? Quite a nasty mana burn you got there, young man. What exactly were you—? No, I shouldn't pry." Saying so, he put his monocle away. In retrospect, it was apparently some kind of magical diagnostic device, which sounded quite useful in theory. Note to self: ask Labcoat guy if he knows how it works, and in case of a negative answer, use my phantom limb to take a peek at the enchantment when I wasn't recovering anymore. But back to the present. "In my professional opinion, treating your hand would require the aid of a specialist. I can put you in contact with an acquaintance of mine."

"No need, I already have a healer lined up."

Even though I just turned him down, the nurse let out an amused, "O-ho-ho", followed by, "There can be no harm in seeking a second opinion. It will cost you nothing, and my Hippocratic oath wouldn't let me sleep at night if I let you be."

"Do what you want then, but can I get that exemption certificate first?"

"Certainly!" The moment he said that he turned on his chair and took a piece of paper from one of the trays on his desk. He began to write something, but only a few seconds passed before he spoke up again without his pen stopping at all. "If I may ask, how is Friedrich doing?"

"Fairly well. They get on each other's nerves with his android all the time, and he is getting bored with military rations, but otherwise he is fine."

"O-ho-ho, I'm glad to hear that," Peabody continued to speak while writing. "I would appreciate if you wouldn't be too hard on him. He is the type who follows only what interests him, so it might be difficult to keep him focused on work he is not passionate about."

"We'll see. So long as he is not trying to make more silly-looking robots, we probably won't have any conflicts in the future." The portly nurse let out one last hearty chuckle before he signed the paper in front of him and handed it over to me. I glanced over the content, and it was just a template document with my personal details and the last bracket saying it gave me an 'indefinite' exemption from PE activities. A bit broad, but I could work with it. "Thanks."

I was about to stand back up and leave, but I was stopped by Peabody calling after me.

"Just a moment more of your time, if you don't mind?"

"Depends."

The hint of suspicion in my voice didn't seem to bother him at all, and instead he let out another of his grating chuckles before telling me, "Are you aware of the Assembly investigators on the island?"

"You mean the ones led by that Saahira woman?"

"So you are aware. O-ho-ho, how naïve of me to think otherwise! I just wanted to warn you that they wanted to meet the famous Chimera slayer of the island, so Amadeus may invite you over rather sooner than later."

Considering I wanted to meet Lord Grandpa anyway, this piece of news wasn't necessarily an unwelcome one, but it didn't make its source any less baffling.

"You are unusually forthcoming today," I noted, my words accentuated by a suspicious look I patented off Josh's face, but the portly nurse didn't take the slightest offense.

"O-ho-ho, I'm only doing my best to repay my debt." It was at this point when I went from suspicious to uncomprehending, though not for long, as he soon provided an explanation. "If not for your intervention, Friedrich would have been held responsible for breaking into Amadeus's office at the very least. While it may not compare to taking a Key of all things, he certainly wouldn't have avoided harsh punishment, and who knows what would have happened to Galatea. While your methods are somewhat…" He paused here while searching for the right word, finally settling on, "Unorthodox, to say the least, yet offering the two of them a helping hand even after the misunderstanding between the two of you was very admirable of you."

So, if I understood him right, he felt indebted to me because I… rescued his nephew? I mean, I suppose he technically wasn't wrongper se, but his interpretation was generous to the point it started to sound like a willful misinterpretation of both the events and my motives. Now, I admit, I was never too shy to accept unwarranted praise, but this occasion still didn't sit well with me.

"There was no 'misunderstanding'. Also, whatever you think I did, it was entirely for my own reasons, not because I'm some kind of good Samaritan who helps out mad scientists and their trigger happy androids on a whim."

"O-ho-ho, I see, I see," Peabody chuckled with his hand in front of his mouth, making even his jowls shake in apparent amusement. "Don't worry Leonard, I understand you."

"You do?"

My blurted-out words were laced with undisguised skepticism, but the nurse only gave me a confident nod in return.

"Of course! Remember, I'm aware of your condition."

At first I wondered what my injured hand had to do with anything, but then I recalled that the man in front of me was the only person outside my closest circle who was aware of the fact that I had a very minor case of amnesia, and then everything clicked together.

"Are you talking about my lost memories?" I asked, just to be sure, and he gave me yet another confident nod.

"O-ho-ho! What else? I can't imagine how hard it must have been for you, getting involved with one incident after the other while you had so much to deal with already."

"Erm… technically you are not wrong in saying that, but…"

"That's why I want you to know that I understand why you act the way you do, building a strong image to compensate for the past you have lost."

"The only thing I've lost is the thread of this conversation," I grumbled. "What are we talking about again?"

"Worry not, your secrets stay safe with me," the stocky nurse declared while completely and utterly ignoring my question. "If you ever need to let your guard down and talk openly to someone, or just ask for advice, remember that I'm here. I'm the school counselor, you know?"

"Yes, I do, but to be frank, I'm not sure I want to ask for advice from someone who wanted to cure my amnesia with a mallet," I pointed out, but I only received yet another increasingly grating chuckle for my trouble.

"It was but a folly of youth!"

"It happened two months ago!"

The old man only kept chuckling at my objection, so I concluded that this entire conversation was heading nowhere fast and that it was time to cut my losses. If he wanted to believe that I was some kind of dogged nice guy trying to act tough to hide my insecurities, who was I to refute him? Thinking as such, I let out a pent-up, exasperated breath and simply headed for the door, only to stop when it opened just as I was about to reach for the door handle.

I stepped out of the way and found myself face to face with the sour face of a certain Armband Guy. Pascal, as the normies called him, looked a little tired and just a tad miffed, yet the moment he laid his eyes on me, his expression took a one-eighty turn to relieved.

"Good. I was afraid I would miss you," he told me with the utmost seriousness before completely ignoring my body language telling him that I was just about to leave and he closed the door behind himself. In fact, he might have mistaken my non-verbal message, as he soon began to explain himself in earnest. "The Lord sent me to find you, but you weren't with the rest of your class. I asked Bernstein where you were, and he told me you left to visit the infirmary. Therefore, we met."

"Yes, we did," I agreed to… something. Honestly, after the last conversation, I was still finding my proverbial sea-legs and just went along with the flow for the moment.

"Indeed," Armband Guy also agreed, following which he cleared his throat and stated, "As you might already be aware, the delegation from the Assembly has arrived to the island, and they are staying for at least a few weeks. The leader of the delegation, Arch-Mage Saahira, expressed interest in meeting with you, therefore the Lord requests that you visit him today, after school hours." At first it looked like that was the end of it, but then his brows furrowed all of the sudden and he hastily added, "Also, I was told to keep giving you full courtesies, so I'm obliged to also say, 'Or in case doing so would be unreasonable on such short notice, please do so at your earliest convenience'."

"O-ho-ho! Speak of the devil!" Peabody exclaimed in the background, and he even slapped his own thigh for emphasis, an act that earned him a disapproving look from the guy in front of me.

"I wanted to talk with him anyway, so tell him I'll visit him after classes are out."

"The Lord would be much obliged," Pascal stated with the amount of enthusiasm in his voice infinitely approaching zero. "Also, the Lord told me to politely ask you to be so kind and use the main entrance this time."

"Sure, sure," I agreed just to get things over with. "Is that all?"

"For the moment, yes," Armband Guy told me, so I gestured for him to get out of the way. Instead he opened the door to let me out. Normally that would have earned him a snappy word or two, but then again, maybe he just wanted to be polite, so I swallowed my words and exited the nurse's office with a polite smile forcefully stretched onto my face.

"Thanks for the voucher, doc," I said my farewell while waving the piece of paper I received, and Peabody let out one last 'O-ho-ho,' before I left and proceeded on my way towards the indoor gym as planned. What I didn't plan on, however…

"Goodbye, Mr. Peabody. Have a nice day."

… was that Armband Guy would start walking beside me without a word. I sent the guy an annoyed glance, but he didn't get the message even after we passed the corner, so in the end I had to voice it.

"Why are you following me?"

"I'm not following you, Dunning. I'm merely going the same way."

"U-huh," I grunted, not even bothering to hide my wariness. However, it wasn't until we were in spitting distance to the gym where the class was, by the sound of it, already playing basketball, that Pascal finally spat whatever was on his mind out.

"Can I ask you a quick question?"

"You already are."

My snappy response fell on unreceptive ears, and he was too busy glancing around the hallways to see if there was anyone around. Considering we were already in the middle of the afternoon classes, the answer was obviously no. Still, the way he acted immediately made a couple of alarm bells ring out in the back of my mind. Once he was sure no one was listening, he actually leaned closer to me, only then did he ask his question.

"Last evening, a number of important documents have gone missing from the experimental workshop on the third basement floor. Did you have anything to do with that?"

That… was refreshingly direct. Also, a little bit confusing.

"No. I was…" I wanted to say 'sleeping', but as a matter of fact, I wasn't. Speaking of which, yes, my crash after the incident with Labcoat Guy and Rinne and the Knights et all seemed to be a one-time thing, and now I was back to my old, sleepless self. But that was beside the point. More importantly, I decided to answer him, "… preoccupied with something else. Were those documents important?"

"Not in a particular sense, but they were something the Lord specifically wanted to keep under lock. Were you really not the one who took them?"

"As I said, I wasn't," I told him a touch impatiently. "While I admit I would have considered myself as the first suspect as well after the recent events, at the moment I have no reason to further antagonize Lord Grandpa yet."

"Yet?"

"Ignore that part. Anyhow, if they are not that important, try looking around the place first. Considering the cock-up from a few days ago and how everyone was running around like headless chickens down there, it might have been just misplaced in the commotion."

"It's… a possibility," he granted me before raising his left hand and taking a peek at his fancy wristwatch. "It is almost time. I must go now."

"Yeah, you must do that," I agreed with him quite vehemently. "You should not let me hold you up. In fact, the sooner you leave, the better. For you, I mean. That way you will be less late from wherever you are going."

Armband Guy let out a throaty sound that I naturally interpreted as agreement and turned on his heel, only to freeze for a moment and then turn back.

"Did you forget something?" I asked with just a hint of industrial-grade exasperation, and he gave me an unabashed nod in return.

"In case you are in possession of the documents anyway, or you may acquire them in the future by any means, I recommend you don't read them. Or if you do… don't think any less of Amelia because of them."

And with that final note, he turned around again and walked away with even, unhurried steps. I, on the other hand, could only blink in surprise before raising a hand to my temple to massage it while simultaneously muttering, "Another plot hook. Lovely. Any more of those, and I will start to feel like a goddamn plot-fish…"