Chapter 09
“Let’s go back—!”
“Shh.”
Daisy covered Milo’s mouth as he tried to return to the fork and listened carefully.
Chirrrk!
Gregor had already passed the fork and was coming down the curved path.
Tack, tack, tack.
Listening to the distinctive footsteps of an arthropod hitting the stone floor, Daisy looked around.
“Damn it, if only there were somewhere to hide…”
That was when—
Clink.
A clear, cheerful sound came from somewhere near her knees.
She lowered her head and found a small, old brass plate attached to the wall.
[↓Hiding Place↓]
“Huh?”
Chirrrk!
“Daisy! Dais! Daaaisy!”
Milo screamed as though he were about to lose his breath and pointed somewhere.
Mr. Gregor Samsa, furious after waking up as a cockroach, was standing at the end of the curved corridor.
Yes.
Standing.
Did you know?
Cockroaches are even more disgusting from underneath than they are from above.
Chirrrriiiirk!
The details are way too damn realistic…
Barely holding on to her consciousness, Daisy slowly raised her leg and touched the area beneath the brass plate.
Slide.
The stone wall trembled.
Looking closely, she realized it wasn’t actually a stone wall.
It was a curtain made to look like a stone wall.
“Daisy, Daisy…”
The puppy whimpered.
“I think I’m going to throw up…”
Me too…
Daisy covered her mouth with a distant expression.
She had found somewhere to hide.
But it was useless.
She had already made eye contact with Mr. Gregor.
Going inside now would be no different from kindly telling him, We’re going in here!
She had to distract the cockroach.
“Oh! What’s that?!”
“What?! Where?!”
Only the puppy fell for it.
Daisy awkwardly lowered the hand that had been pointing at empty air and started thinking of something else…
Chirrrriiiirk!
…when the bastard charged at them.
Talk about having terrible manners, Mr. Gregor!
Seeing the enormous cockroach charging straight at them, Daisy instinctively pulled Milo into her arms.
At that moment—
BOOM!
A deafening explosion rang out, and a thick cloud of dust billowed into the air.
What had just exploded?
But there was no time to figure out what was happening.
Daisy realized it.
With her vision completely obscured, this was her last chance.
Feeling around, she grabbed the puppy’s fluffy head, shoved him straight beneath the curtain, then rolled her own body inside.
Fortunately, neither of them was particularly large, so there was plenty of room behind the curtain.
“Dai—”
“Shh.”
Daisy covered Milo’s mouth and held her breath as she watched through the chiffon curtain, which offered a blurry view of the outside.
Hissss…
Along with the nauseating smell of something burning came the tack, tack, tack of footsteps.
Mr. Gregor’s enormous legs kept pacing around near the curtain.
Suddenly—
The shiny brown tip of one of his legs slipped inside the curtain and brushed against Daisy’s leg.
“……!”
Daisy swallowed a silent scream.
Please, please go away! It’s not our fault that Mr. Gregor turned into a cockroach!
At that moment, the enormous cockroach stopped.
As though it had somehow heard Daisy’s thoughts.
Fwoosh.
Then it began shrinking.
Until it was about the size of an actual cockroach.
It was clearly planning to search for them after becoming smaller since it couldn’t see them.
Damn it, it’s smart, too.
The shrunken insect scurried around.
At times, it stayed in one place for a while, as though sniffing for something.
Then…
Its antennae turned toward the curtain.
Scuttle.
The cockroach approached the curtain, deliberately making no sound with its footsteps.
Does it really have to be this intelligent?
Gulp.
Milo, clutching Daisy’s clothes, swallowed nervously.
Then, just as the cockroach extended its long antenna beneath the curtain—
“Die!”
BAM!
Daisy raised her foot with lightning speed and stomped down on the cockroach without even breathing.
“……”
“……”
“D-Did it die?”
Daisy cautiously lifted her shoe.
“……”
“……”
May you rest peacefully.
Avoiding the remains of the cockroach, Daisy stepped out from behind the curtain and took off her shoe, rubbing it against the stone wall.
Ugh.
Milo crawled out after her, burst into tears, and hugged Daisy tightly.
“Daisy!”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“As soon as we entered the maze, I was left all alone…!”
“Don’t cry.”
“I thought you were dead!”
“I’m not dead.”
“You fell beneath the dormitory hall and got crushed under the rocks until there was nothing left of you, so I had no choice but to bury an empty coffin and hold a funeral. Then every night you appeared in my dreams, grabbed me by the collar, and screamed, ‘You were supposed to be the advance party, you bastard! Find my body immediately!’ And I was thinking I absolutely had to find you, but then that giant cockroach came out…”
“……”
What kind of things do you imagine in the middle of the day?
Sighing as she patted Milo, Daisy suddenly noticed the smell of something burning and pushed the puppy away.
“Hey, wait…”
And what she found was Milo Everett…
“Wow. You look like some crazy scientist whose experiment went horribly wrong.”
Daisy stared in surprise at his completely blackened face and his curly hair, which had been singed into a mess of curls.
“Let me get this straight. You’ve been accidentally causing explosions since you were a child?”
“Yep.”
“And then you blew up half of your estate.”
“Yep.”
“And your family disowned you.”
“Yep…”
“And then you accidentally caused an explosion just now.”
“Yep!”
His answer was cheerful.
But his light-blue eyes, shining through his soot-covered face, contained a hint of anxiety.
It seemed he was worried that Daisy might avoid him after hearing his story.
Daisy stared at him for a moment before reaching out and gently ruffling Milo’s curly hair.
“Good job.”
“……”
“Thanks to you, we survived.”
Then she suddenly came to her senses and pulled her hand away.
Oops. He’s not actually a puppy, but I’m treating him way too much like one…
“Do it again.”
“……”
Ruffle, ruffle.
Seeing Milo’s satisfied expression, Daisy decided that if he liked it, there was no harm in it.
“But how did you know?”
“Know what?”
“That there was somewhere to hide.”
There had been a sign right there.
“Daisy, you have amazing eyesight!”
“No.”
“You’re really good at catching cockroaches, too!”
“That was just to survive—”
“You’re awesome!”
“……”
“You were cool when you took me and ran out of the dormitory hall, too!”
“……”
Instead of denying it, Daisy simply ruffled the puppy’s hair again under his sparkling gaze.
The puppy happily purred.
“Well, putting that aside…”
Daisy looked around and sighed.
Where the hell are we?
Because they had been running around in a panic, she had absolutely no idea where they were or which direction they had come from.
She had turned right at the fork where they had previously failed, but…
“Wow, Daisy! Look! It’s chocolate!”
Milo suddenly shouted excitedly after picking something up from the floor.
It really was a chocolate bar wrapped in plastic.
“Puppy, don’t just pick things up and eat—”
“Nom.”
Ma…
“Wow, it’s yummy!”
Well, he wasn’t actually a dog, so he probably wouldn’t die…
“Daisy! There’s more over there!”
Following Milo as he moved from one fallen chocolate bar to another, Daisy shrugged.
Well, they had already seen a 180-centimeter cockroach.
How much worse could things possibly get?
“Puppy.”
“Yeah!”
“From now on, don’t pick up things like chocolate and eat them without permission.”
“Yeah!”
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
Running from the thunderous noise behind them, Daisy thought,
Crazy academy.
We deal with a 180-centimeter cockroach, and now it’s a 280-centimeter giant?
She glanced back.
A one-eyed giant was charging toward them with a club in its hand, its massive body shaking the ground.
It wasn’t particularly fast, but its strides were so enormous that the distance between them was shrinking rapidly.
“ROOOAAARRR!”
Apparently, the increasingly narrow corridor was getting in its way.
The giant swung its club horizontally.
Whoosh—! BOOM—!
The club tore through the air with a terrifying sound and mercilessly smashed apart the solid maze wall.
Daisy felt like she was going to be smashed apart just like that soon.
“Daisy!”
“Keep running!”
Even the ironclad stamina of a teenage body was reaching its limit by now.
Caught somewhere between the faint hope of Surely they wouldn’t actually kill a student? and the despairing certainty of Yeah, this crazy school probably would actually kill us, Daisy kept running.
Damn it, I’d rather deal with Mr. Gregor!
Chirrrk!
At that moment, the giant cockroach appeared from the opposite end of the corridor.
No! Not both at once!
“Daisy! Chocolate!”
“That damn chocolate!”
“No, there’s chocolate over there!”
Just as Milo said, there was a chocolate bar sitting in the middle of the corridor.
Come to think of it, all the chocolates they had found so far had been placed at forks in the path.
Realizing this, Daisy raised her head.
There was a narrow side passage beside the corridor, so narrow that it looked like even the giant would have trouble putting one leg inside.
“Go in first!”
Daisy sent Milo in first and squeezed her body into the side passage before looking back.
Chirik! Crunch!
The cockroach trying to enter the side passage was mercilessly crushed beneath the giant’s foot.
A cold sweat ran down Daisy’s back.
The giant stared intently into the side passage with its enormous single eye.
Then it slowly turned around.
Apparently, it had decided that even if it smashed the passage, it wouldn’t be able to get inside.
“Phew…”
Daisy watched the giant disappear and breathed a sigh of relief…
But then she suddenly realized something.
Wait. Was this passage always this narrow?
“Daisy!”
Milo, who had gone ahead, spoke in a frightened voice.
“The walls… The walls are closing…!”
“They’re shrinking, you crazy thing!”
Crack, crack, crack.
The two walls of the side passage were slowly closing inward.
Daisy and Milo ran like mad as the passage narrowed around them, threatening to crush them both.
A thin gap, like an exit, appeared ahead.
“Puppy, jump!”
Milo threw his small body through the opening.
“Damn it…!”
Daisy ran sideways through the increasingly cramped passage and instinctively reached out toward the entrance.
That was when—
Whoosh.
Someone yanked Daisy upward as though pulling a radish from the ground.
“Ah!”
THUD!
Behind her, the passageway closed completely.
If she had stayed there for even one more second…
A cold sweat broke out at the simple thought.
“Are you all right?”
At that moment, Daisy heard a polite yet coldly sarcastic voice.
She looked at the person who had pulled her out.
The cold-looking boy had a large, sturdy build and short bluish-gray hair. He wore sleek, thin silver-rimmed glasses.
Daisy habitually asked,
“Name.”
The boy adjusted his glasses and narrowed his cold, sharp eyes.
“Stroud Burnham, if you don’t mind.”
“Burnham… Wait, Burnham Trading Company?”
“How do you know that?”
“……”
Because your family goes bankrupt…
Daisy quietly swallowed the somewhat inappropriate answer she wanted to give her lifesaver and stared at the ceiling.
