Chapter 48: I Am Forced to Say It Was Doomed to Fail from the Very Beginning
And then, Saturday arrived.
As promised, Aoba-senpai and I once again found ourselves standing before the entrance of the facility in question.
The current time was 2:00 a.m.
The world was silent.
Inside the facility, every child was still fast asleep, wrapped in blankets and dreams, blissfully unaware of the chaos, scheming, and preparation unfolding around them.
“Hey, Gouto-kun.”
Aoba-senpai rubbed his face tiredly.
“I just wanted someone to help carry stuff, okay? That’s all. We were short on manpower, so honestly, anybody would’ve worked.”
He gestured helplessly at the dark building before us.
“So why am I standing here at two in the morning helping prepare some gigantic event?”
“I’m sure there are many reasons,” I replied thoughtfully. “But if we trace everything back to its origin, wouldn’t the root cause be that you failed to recruit enough personnel?”
“Oof.”
He clutched his chest.
“That one hurts.”
Well, thanks to Aoba-senpai’s spectacular incompetence in staffing, I’d been able to insert myself into this operation.
From my perspective, that was nothing short of a blessing.
Truly, friendship was a wonderful thing.
One should always cherish the friends one acquires.
I silently offered my gratitude to this newly forged bond.
In fact, I was beginning to understand the feelings of those textbook-light-novel protagonists who stubbornly rushed back whenever there was a part-time job event for which they bore responsibility.
The desire to see something through to the end.
The satisfaction of personally overseeing a project.
Yes.
Once again, I had deepened my understanding of the habits and psychology of the perfectly ordinary college student.
The facility’s entrance was naturally locked at this hour.
However, Aoba-senpai had obtained the security code beforehand, so there should have been no issue.
The code itself was considered sensitive information, so it had never been written down anywhere. It had only been communicated verbally.
Even I hadn’t been told.
With confident movements, Aoba-senpai strode toward the keypad.
He cracked his knuckles.
Then began entering numbers.
One after another.
And then—
“…Gouto-kun.”
“Yes?”
“This is bad.”
“What happened?”
“I forgot the code.”
“…………”
The door remained utterly unmoved.
Not even a beep of sympathy.
If I remembered correctly, too many failed attempts would automatically alert the security company.
Not ideal.
Panicking, Aoba-senpai immediately reached for his phone.
Presumably to call the director.
I stopped him at once.
If, by some terrible chance, the director had forgotten to silence his phone and the ringtone woke up the children—
That would be a disaster.
Hallucination.
Do your thing.
──────
“Door Lock”
Passcode:
8932750916041327
Comment:
“Did it really need to be this long?”
──────
No.
No, it absolutely did not need to be this long.
But then again, making a password excessively long didn’t really hurt anyone.
Well.
Except for people trying to remember it.
Without saying a word, I stepped forward and entered the sixteen-digit monstrosity.
A moment later—
Click.
The lock disengaged.
“What the heck?”
Aoba-senpai blinked.
“So you knew it too?”
“I suppose I did.”
I offered a calm smile.
“But please don’t tell anyone.”
“…?”
He tilted his head.
“Okay?”
Some truths were better left undiscovered.
After that, we reunited with the facility staff and joined the preparations.
Much of the work was being done in a rush, but fortunately a great deal of groundwork had already been completed beforehand.
Tonight represented the final stage.
The space we’d reserved in advance was transformed as members of the Event Operations Department installed equipment they had loaned us.
Projectors.
Web cameras.
Audio equipment.
Monitors.
Cables stretched across floors and walls like the veins of some mechanical organism.
Everything had to be checked.
Everything had to function perfectly.
Meanwhile, the facility staff moved through the building with practiced familiarity.
They quietly prepared their own surprises and mechanisms for the event.
Everyone knew their role.
Everyone knew their timing.
Everything was proceeding smoothly.
Perfectly smoothly.
Then morning arrived.
By the time the children began waking up, the staff were already in the kitchen preparing breakfast exactly as they always did.
The atmosphere was carefully maintained.
The illusion of a normal Saturday had to be preserved.
Some of the sharper children noticed subtle differences.
An unusual tension.
Staff members exchanging glances.
Things that seemed slightly out of place.
But none of them knew the truth.
Not yet.
The real performance would begin at the exact moment the children attempted to start their First Errand event.
More specifically—
The moment they tried to retrieve something from the large communal safe known as “Everyone’s Safe.”
The moment they reached for the letters they had painstakingly written for the benefactors who supported the facility.
And discovered—
“Huh?”
A child’s voice echoed through the hall.
“Teacher! The letters are gone!”
The children realized it.
The heartfelt letters they had spent so much effort writing had vanished.
Gone.
Without a trace.
The ten older children selected as representatives immediately rushed to inform the staff.
And the moment they did—
It was my turn.
I put on the Venetian mask borrowed from Kuwajima.
The handcrafted masterpiece of adolescent embarrassment.
The thirteen-thousand-yen monument to chuunibyou.
Then I took my place before the camera.
The projector activated.
A video feed appeared across the large whiteboard in the facility’s hall.
The staff simultaneously switched off the room lights.
Darkness fell.
The children gasped.
And then—
“KU-HAHAHAHAHA!!”
My voice boomed through the speakers.
“GOOD MORNING, CHILDREN!”
“I AM THE PHANTOM THIEF… MONSTER X!”
The character wasn’t particularly well thought out.
My primary concern was ensuring that none of the younger children burst into tears.
So instead of acting genuinely threatening, I exaggerated every gesture.
I widened my eyes.
Moved dramatically.
Grinned like a cartoon villain.
A ridiculous villain.
A fun villain.
The kind children could enjoy hating.
“I HAVE TAKEN YOUR LETTERS!”
I pointed dramatically toward the camera.
“IF YOU WISH TO SEE THEM RETURNED… THEN YOU MUST PARTICIPATE IN MY GAME!”
Thus began the new event.
No longer My First Errand.
Instead—
A death-game-inspired treasure hunt.
To understand the event, one must first understand its core principle.
The single most important thing I considered during planning was:
The children’s safety.
The original plan had been astonishingly reckless.
Pairs of children would leave the facility on their own.
Each pair would secretly be monitored by a university student working part-time.
The moment I heard this proposal, my immediate response had been:
Are you people idiots?
Parents throughout the world struggled to supervise even a single child.
Two adults could watch one child and still lose track of them for long enough to witness unimaginable nonsense.
Children possessed supernatural abilities when it came to creating chaos.
And yet these people expected one university student to secretly monitor two children?
Impossible.
Absolutely impossible.
Even Meiko had immediately agreed.
“Exactly!” she’d said.
“Tell them!”
And there was another issue.
A much larger one.
No matter the circumstances, if a university student spent the day secretly following children around and taking photographs of them—
That was an incident.
A serious one.
The police would not hear the explanation and say:
“Ah, I see. Perfectly understandable.”
No.
The police would hear:
“I’m secretly photographing children.”
And then they would arrest someone.
The original plan had been doomed from the start.
Which was why I’d lectured everyone involved.
The staff.
The director.
The Long-Armed-and-Long-Legged benefactors.
All of them.
“You trust these children so much you’ve lost perspective.”
That had been my argument.
“Regardless of how responsible they are, don’t outsource their safety to part-time workers.”
This wasn’t a matter of confidence.
This wasn’t:
“Our children can handle their first errand!”
The world contained people whose depravity exceeded imagination.
Their risk assessment had been absurdly optimistic.
Using that line of reasoning, I thoroughly dismantled every objection raised by the staff, the director, and the eccentric benefactors.
Then, after seizing control of the discussion—
I completely rebuilt the event from scratch.
Unfortunately, that meant abandoning the original outing.
The children had been looking forward to it.
I felt bad about that.
But the outing’s purpose had been delivering the letters.
Remove the letters—
And the reason to leave disappeared.
Naturally, simply cancelling everything would have left both the children and the strange benefactors disappointed.
Thus:
The Death-Game Treasure Hunt.
The benefactors’ true desire wasn’t the delivery itself.
What they wanted was to witness the children struggling, thinking, overcoming obstacles, and giving their all.
The original request for extensive photo and video documentation made that painfully obvious.
Frankly, their tastes were a little warped.
If that was what they wanted—
Then why not show them everything from the beginning?
Web cameras rented from the Event Operations Department had been installed throughout the facility.
The benefactors would be free to watch the footage in real time.
Compared to having university students secretly trail children around with cameras, this approach was infinitely healthier.
And infinitely higher quality.
At the same time, instructions had been issued for the benefactors to gather at the facility when the event reached its conclusion.
Instead of making children travel to them—
They would come here.
A remarkably simple solution.
Once the benefactors were handled, only the children remained.
Originally, only ten older children would have participated.
Everyone else would write letters and then be done.
An event enjoyed by ten people.
In a facility housing nearly twenty children.
Ridiculous.
So I changed that too.
Everyone would participate.
Everyone would contribute.
Everyone would matter.
On the screen, Monster X raised a gloved hand.
“YOUR LETTERS ARE IN MY POSSESSION!”
“TO ENTER THE MONSTER X ROOM WHERE I RESIDE, YOU MUST OBTAIN FIVE KEYS!”
“I SHALL PRESENT A SERIES OF CHALLENGES!”
“SOLVE THE RIDDLES!”
“FIND THE HIDDEN KEYS!”
“AND WHEN YOU HAVE OVERCOME EVERY PUZZLE…”
“I SHALL ADMIT DEFEAT AND RETURN YOUR LETTERS!”
The children stared silently at the masked figure.
Half intimidated.
Half fascinated.
The Event Operations Department had been invaluable here.
Creating puzzles suitable for children aged five to ten was surprisingly difficult.
Far harder than I’d expected.
Some were extremely simple.
For example:
① ○○ + picture of a watermelon
② ○ + picture of a pear
③ ○○ + picture of a banana
Answer: Sandpit.
Others contained slightly more wordplay.
Still manageable.
Still solvable.
Just challenging enough to encourage teamwork.
And solving riddles wasn’t the end.
Each answer led to a location.
Each location contained an item.
Each item unlocked the next clue.
The structure resembled an escape room.
A chain of discoveries.
A continuous adventure.
The Event Operations Department truly never stopped thinking about festivals and celebrations.
It was both impressive and mildly concerning.
Some portions might prove difficult for younger participants.
But that was easily addressed.
If they became stuck, we would provide hints.
Perhaps even whisper special clues exclusively to the younger children.
The difficulty could be adjusted in real time.
Everyone would have an opportunity to shine.
This wasn’t like the disaster involving Inugashi.
Everything here was under my control.
Every variable.
Every contingency.
Every outcome.
All I needed to do was satisfy both the children and the eccentric benefactors.
Complete the job successfully.
And once again prove that I was nothing more than a perfectly ordinary college student.
“ONE MORE THING!”
Monster X declared.
“If YOU FAIL TO SOLVE THE PUZZLES BEFORE THE DAY ENDS…”
“I SHALL KEEP THE LETTERS!”
“AFTER ALL, THE MEN AND WOMEN WHO DONATE TO THIS FACILITY WOULD PAY A FORTUNE FOR THEM!”
“KUHAHAHAHAHA!”
“I WISH YOU ALL THE BEST OF LUCK!”
Having said everything I wanted to say, I cut the feed.
The screen went dark.
Incidentally, the mysterious and ominous Monster X Room was actually just the director’s office.
After all, we needed somewhere inside the facility to store and monitor the equipment.
Nothing more dramatic than that.
I removed Kuwajima’s Venetian mask and exhaled.
Beside me, Aoba-senpai—who had been operating the camera—looked at me with visible fear.
“Gouto-kun.”
“Yes?”
“Do you… regularly come up with events like this?”
“Aoba-senpai.”
I folded my arms.
“A perfectly ordinary college student always maintains a broad reserve of event ideas, allowing them to respond appropriately no matter what situation they become involved in.”
I nodded sagely.
“You didn’t know that?”
“The definition of ordinary in my world is completely different.”
“Then your studies are lacking.”
With preparations complete, there was little left to discuss regarding the event itself.
The conclusion was already decided.
Eventually, the children would recover their letters.
Their heartfelt messages would break the curse of the Venetian Mask.
The game master would be redeemed.
Everyone would be happy.
The end.
After all—
Once you’ve successfully dealt with one irregularity, the next usually works itself out.
Or so I liked to believe.
──────
Incidentally, the Hallucination had also contributed ideas while working alongside the Event Operations Department.
Such as:
──────
“Riddle”
What is destroyed the moment you say its name?
Answer:
Silence
──────
Unfortunately, the puzzle was rejected.
The staff determined that:
One, it was far too difficult for children.
Two, it carried a faint but unmistakable scent of sadness.
And so Monster X’s treasure hunt proceeded without it.