Worthless Skill Escape (WN)

Chapter 169

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TL: ALT

Chapter 169 – Letter

After comparing my current status with the list of A-rank dungeons that Haitani-san had sent me, I was planning my future exploration.

It was at that time that I received the item “Bungeikai” from the ‘me’ in the job world via the Item Box.

The will that Sayuki in the job world should not have known about.

It was almost a perfect match with a passage from Sayuki’s work “Mushikago,” which won the Bungaikai Newcomer Award.

If you think about it, it wasn’t like there wasn’t a sense of discomfort even back then.

Sayuki, who was good at writing and had a particular preference for writing utensils and notebooks, would never have scribbled her suicide note on a scrap of notebook paper.

In the skill world, Sayuki and I weren’t as close as the two of us in the job world.

Even so, I couldn’t believe that Sayuki, who seemed quiet but had a strong core, had chosen to commit suicide.

How did Sayuki’s “will” end up being spread all over the SNS?

And it even named me as the boy who caused her suicide.

Although my personal information wasn’t exposed, the content was still enough for anyone involved in the high school to know it was me.

As a result, I was no longer able to stay at the high school, and the involvement of Junko Tozaki (at the time, Junko Himuro) in the bullying was also made ambiguous and swept under the carpet.

“If you think about who benefited from this…”

Of course, it would be Junko Tozaki.

After all, she was able to obscure the stigma of having driven a female student to suicide through bullying.

Or is that not the case?

Sayuki did not commit suicide.

If that is the case, then someone made Sayuki’s death look like a suicide.

Then, how did Sayuki really die?

“During the bullying, Sayuki died in some kind of accident or on purpose.”

It’s probably going too far to say that Junko Tozaki killed Sayuki.

Although Junko Tozaki was able to make the people around her turn a blind eye to bullying with her dominance, as expected, the adults around her had no choice but to move if she killed the target of the bullying.

Junko Tozaki was bullying Sayuki to satisfy her sadistic tendencies, not because she wanted to kill Sayuki.

Even if, as Seiji Tozaki said, she was a natural-born sadist, it’s hard to imagine that she would go as far as murder just for the pleasure of it.

But she was also a violent bully.

It’s possible that Sayuki died for some reason.

I’ve been pushed down the stairs by her before.

I think it’s possible that she resisted, the violence escalated, and some kind of accident happened…

When Sayuki died, even the perpetrator, Junko Tozaki, must have panicked.

However, when she discovered the creative notebook that Sayuki was carrying, Junko Tozaki focused on a passage in it.

She spread it around on social media, making it look like a suicide note, and made Sayuki’s death look like a suicide.

… That’s just a guess based on the circumstances.

“If that’s the case… what should I do?”

The ringleader of the bullying, Junko Tozaki, is already dead.

She was betrayed by the “Rakan” explorers, whom she treated like a slave.

The “Bungeikai” magazine that was sent to me had an envelope sealed with masking tape for girls.

I hadn’t noticed it before, but there was a message card attached to the envelope that said, “Please read this first.”

The contents weren’t the usual contact information from me.

“From Honoka-chan…?”

“To the other Yuto-san,

I am sending you the Bungeikai magazine, which contains Sayuki’s winning story.

However, when reading the story, please do so with a calm heart.

I thought about explaining it beforehand, but I can’t seem to put my thoughts into words.

Please read it with the understanding that it contains content that will be shocking to you.

And after reading the story, please read the following letter.

Honoka.”

This was the content of the first of the several sheets of paper.

“…Was she warning me?”

I didn’t read this message and jumped into the literary world, wasting her kind concern.

I turn over the first sheet of paper.

“The contents of Mushikago were also a shock to me.

I read your mind without permission during the battle at Okutama Lake Dungeon after the collapse.

Perhaps because the battle was so intense, I seem to have penetrated deeper into your mind than usual.

First of all, please let me apologize for stepping into your mind without permission.

I’m sorry.

I have come to understand, albeit in fragments, what kind of life you have led.

I was able to see clearly, in particular, the events from your high school days that are still in your memory.

It was a vision that was so painful for me that it felt like it was tearing me apart, but you lived through it, didn’t you?

In that memory, there was a scene where you witnessed Sayuki-chan’s “will” on social media in that world.

I also saw the contents of that “will” in my vision.

And I was surprised to see that the exact same text appeared in “Mushikago.”

What does this mean?”

At this point, the second sheet of paper has run out.

“I’ve considered a few possibilities.

First, it’s possible that Sayuki in this world and Sayuki in that world wrote the same sentence, with one as a work and the other as a suicide note.

However, I think this possibility is slim.

Even though both sentences were written by Sayuki, it’s hard to imagine that two sentences with different purposes would be exactly the same.

When I asked Sayuki about it, she said that she wrote these sentences as the words of a character in the story and that they did not represent her own feelings exactly.

Even though it is a work of fiction, I think it is possible to write about your own feelings by putting them into the words of a character, but for Sayuki, this girl named Kureha is “just one of the bugs in the insect cage.”

Sayuki herself says that the main focus of this work, “Mushikago,” is to look down on all the characters and to draw them with a cold, detached eye, like you would draw insects, and the people who selected the award also gave the same evaluation. They said that, even though she is still in high school, or perhaps because she is still in high school, she is able to draw the human drama with a detached, cold eye.

Sayuki herself complained that she wanted the judges to look at her work without taking into account her profile as a high school girl and that it was not the way for a long-established literary magazine to try to attract attention by using the “attribute” of being a high school girl.

On the other hand, I think that the fact that she complained about this shows that she wrote the work “Mushikago” as pure literature and that she took it seriously.

There is another possibility that may be painful for you.

The “will” that Sayuki wrote in that world was not a will.

Someone may have torn out a page from the notebook that Sayuki in that world wrote for her creative work and made it look like a will.

After that, I had the chance to see Sayuki’s creative notebook.

It seems that she had been hiding it because she was embarrassed, but now that she has won an award, she no longer needs to do that, and sometimes she even writes her novels in front of us these days.

Her writing process is to write down fragments in a notebook and then clean them up on a laptop.

Although she usually writes beautifully, there were many pages in her creative notebook where the handwriting was messy.

The reason she doesn’t write on a laptop from the start is that she likes handwriting, and the other reason is that she can write her novel in class without being caught.

I took a photo of Sayuki-chan’s notebook with my smartphone while she was away from her seat (sorry, Sayuki-chan).

Sayuki-chan is now working on a different piece, so it’s not the part in question, but I thought you might be able to get a feel for the atmosphere of the notebook, so I’ve enclosed it in this envelope.”

“Is this it?”

I found a piece of paper that looked like a printout underneath several sheets of letter paper.

Although the content was different, the way the notebook was used and the way the letters were written were very similar.

“I haven’t told Sayuki-chan about this.

As you can imagine, I hesitate to tell her that in your world, Sayuki committed suicide…

Even if she found out in this world, there’s nothing we can do…

I told Yuto-san, who shares your memories, but I haven’t told Haruhara-san.

Yuto-san and I discussed it and decided to tell you about it.

At first, I was afraid that it would only confuse you and cause you to relive your past pain.

However, when I thought about the four months we spent together and the things we achieved during that time, I thought that you would want to know this truth and that you would be able to overcome it.

After all, you are the other Yuto-san, who I love so much.

In closing, I wish you all the best in your future endeavors.

You chose another woman over me, so I hope you are happy.

I hope you will be kind to me from time to time, even from your world.

Honoka Shinozaki.”

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