Bonus: Reicia’s Struggle to Present Her Research

“...I... I’ve done it now…”

After overcoming a fierce battle with Accelerator, getting some sleep, waking up, and partying… August 23rd arrived. And with it, Reicia was stunned.

What’s the problem?

It couldn’t be clearer.

“Th-th-th-th-the deadline is… tomorrow…!!”

…Surely, this is a fear that anyone can relate to.

Chapter 3: I Won’t Let You Win and Run (N)ever_Give_Up.
Bonus: Reicia’s Struggle to Present Her Research

And naturally, as a result, that day brought a shockwave through GMDW.

“W-why have you all completely abandoned the work!?”

“B-but… when Reicia-san suddenly collapsed, we were so worried…”

“Ugh… nngh…!”

Day One.
One of the research labs used by GMDW.

Reicia had called everyone together, but so overwhelmed with stress, she blurted out a pointless scolding—and was left speechless when she saw everyone looking dejected.

To be fair, from a professional perspective, the correct response would be, “You can still work even if Reicia collapsed,” and there’s no doubt that’s valid. However, the fact remains—these girls aren’t professionals.

They just happen to have special abilities, but at their core, they’re adolescent girls. When a dear friend suddenly gets attacked by someone, and you can’t go back to work as if nothing happened—who in their right mind would blame them?

…If blame must be placed, it should fall on the careless fool who put herself in danger in the first place, Reicia thought bitterly. Besides, they all partied too—so in terms of falling behind, they were all equally guilty.

“…I’m sorry. I lashed out because I was panicking. And really, I’m in no position to lecture anyone…”

“Well, well! Either way, there’s no point going over it now. …Let’s move forward, shall we?”

As Reicia bowed her head, Sonai wrapped things up neatly. At moments like this, Reicia truly appreciated having her around.

Pulling herself together, Reicia addressed what lay ahead.

“…Anyway, at this rate, we won’t meet the deadline. I’ll contact the presentation organizers and try to negotiate a short extension. In the meantime, you all… please tidy up this room.”

Saying this with a troubled expression, Reicia stood amid the chaos of their lab—which looked more like the aftermath of a battlefield.

And understandably so. This room had been the staging ground for the recent Level 6 Shift project. In the rush to set up computing equipment, papers had been shoved off desks and scattered all over the floor. Files were restacked in haste, and no one knew where anything was anymore.

And this mess stretched across a room large enough for ten people to walk around in comfortably.

……Yeah. This was going to be one hell of a cleanup job.

“…Well then. I wish you the best of luck.”

Leaving that monstrous task to the others, Reicia stepped out to make a call, where she would have to bow her head to some higher-up.

…Sure, they had it rough—but Reicia was walking straight into her own kind of hell. For the first time in a while, she could feel that familiar pain twisting in her stomach.

“…Yes, yes. That’s right. I’m terribly sorry… It was entirely my fault.”

“…No, well, I collapsed… Ah, yes? I see. So that’s how it is…”

“Yes… Eh? Ah, right. As you can see… But the rest of the team was shaken up, so we couldn’t get much done until now…”

“I sincerely apologize… Eh? Ah—yes… Thank you very much. Yes, yes…”

“……………………………………Thank you so much! Yes, I look forward to working with you. Yes, yes… Alright, then, I’ll take my leave.……………………”

“…They didn’t scold me nearly as much as I expected, did they?”

“How’d it go, Reicia-san?”

Roughly twenty minutes later, Reicia returned to the still-busy lab, looking somewhat dissatisfied after her phone meeting.

“Well, they did agree to the extension…”

She responded hesitantly to Shika’s question.

It should’ve been good news, but Reicia still seemed conflicted. Sonai tilted her head.

“Is something wrong? You don’t look very pleased.”

“It’s just… something felt off about the whole thing…”

Reicia replied while continuing to sort through documents, her expression still suspicious.

She had gone into the call prepared to be chewed out for blowing the deadline. But the elderly-sounding teacher on the other end hadn’t raised their voice at all. The moment Reicia explained what happened, the tone had shifted—almost like they understood everything immediately, and expressed concern for her instead.

“They asked things like, ‘Are you feeling alright?’ and ‘Please don’t blame yourself’… What was that all about…?”

“Maybe they heard about someone attacking you somewhere?”

“There should be a strict gag order about that whole incident, though…”

Unbeknownst to Reicia, rumors that she had attempted suicide had become somewhat well-known among educators familiar with issues like truancy or student suicide. Naturally—this was a suicide attempt at Tokiwadai, a premier development school. It wasn’t made public out of concern for other students, but it had caused such a scandal that nearly a third of Tokiwadai’s upper management had been replaced.

Given that, it wasn’t surprising that some empathetic educators—seeing Reicia working hard and bouncing back—would feel a sense of guilt, thinking, We, the adults, are responsible for this burden she carries, and become overly lenient in turn.

“Well, no point overthinking it. Let’s focus on the task—wait, where did the long desk that was here go?”

“Ah… that? During that last incident, we brought in a computer for calculations, and the desk was in the way, so we moved it somewhere else.”

“…And where, exactly, would that be?”

“Uh… Rinka-san, which room did you put that table in again?”

“Eh? Ah—right, I asked Amiya-san and Tsunemi-san to move it down to Classroom A on the lower floor…”

“Whaaat!? That huge thing!?”

“Yes, so the two of them carried it together…”

“W-w-wait a sec! T-there’s no space left for that big desk anymore…!”

“Haa!? Kiryu-san, what do you mean by that!? It was there before, so it should fit just fine!”

“Yumetsuki-san! I think maybe we changed the arrangement, so…”

“…So in other words, we have to reorganize everything again!? Noooo!!”

Watching the scene unfold, Reicia muttered softly to herself.

“…Yeah, there’s no way we’re getting anything done today…”

As you might expect—indeed, that’s exactly what happened.

—Day Three.

During a break between research tasks, Shika casually approached Reicia to chat—only to catch a rare sight.

Reicia was tucked into a corner of the room, writing something in English.

“…Reicia-san? What are you up to?”

Well, if she’s off in the corner, she probably doesn’t want people looking. Shika knew it was rude, but having seen it, she couldn’t help being curious and decided to call out from a respectful distance.

“Hyah!?”

As expected, Reicia jolted, instantly covering the writing with her hands. Shika thought to herself, Good call not getting any closer. She wasn’t one to enjoy prying into others’ privacy.

She already had a vague idea—Reicia had been jotting something down like a diary or notes even during this hectic time, which made it clear how important it must be to her. No need to bring it up.

“…I, I just needed to send some information to a friend in the UK. It’s a bit urgent, so I wanted to write it down now.”

“I see. My apologies for intruding.”

Frankly, Shika wanted to say something like, This is break time—use it to rest, or better yet, get some sleep, but she knew it would be useless.

And considering that Reicia had the fastest work speed in the whole group, it wasn’t even possible to use work efficiency as a reason to make her rest. Honestly, how is she this suited to desk work? Shika couldn’t help but wonder, given how the rest of them were struggling with unfamiliar tasks.

“…Still, I think you should loosen up a little. You’re writing a letter during break time with a frown on your face. Not a great look.”

“…Was I really making that face?”

“Yeah. Even more than usual.”

“…I see.”

Reicia silently rubbed her brow. She looked oddly mature—no, worn out.

“…I don’t really get it, but thanks for your hard work.”

“I don’t really get it either, but thank you.”

They exchanged words, and somehow that made them both chuckle.

Maybe I actually helped her relax a little, Shika later thought with a quiet sense of pride.

—Day Five.

The research was mostly complete, and with the finish line in sight, the team was pushing through the final stretch—fatigue building fast.

And then, yet again, disaster struck GMDW.

Reicia would later reflect on this moment by saying, “Yup yup yup, human error always happens when you’re running on empty.” And she wasn’t wrong.

What happened?

“…Haa!? You overwrote the file with the old data!? There’s no backup on the server!? Why not!? We all agreed we’d share every single bit of data!”

“I-I forgot to upload it… I’m so terribly sorry…!!”

…That’s what happened.

A first-year member—Amiya—had apparently forgotten to upload the experimental data to the shared server. As a result, about 20% of their progress was lost.

Shika’s outburst was more than justified. Losing progress when they were already past the deadline was nothing short of a nightmare. Amiya herself seemed well aware of the gravity of her mistake—her face pale, eyes brimming with tears.

“…What’s done is done! Everyone, pick up the pace and get back to work!!”

Shika didn’t say anything more and returned to work… but Amiya remained rooted to the spot, her head lowered in guilt.

“…………”

Reicia, while continuing her own report writing, noticed the scene. Waiting until Shika had stepped away, she quietly approached Amiya from behind and gently tapped her on the shoulder.

“R-Reicia-shan…”

“…Haaah. Don’t make that face. Crying won’t help anything.”

Using a handkerchief to wipe Amiya’s tears, Reicia did her best to offer a reassuring smile. Seeing that, Amiya looked just a little more at ease.

“I’ll help with your work as well. Mistakes happen to everyone. Shika-san… well, she is who she is, but I’m sure she doesn’t bear any ill will toward you. She’s just… blunt, for better or worse.”

“Y-yes… but I still feel terrible…”

“If that’s how you feel, then make up for it by working hard. If you do that, she’ll probably praise you instead.”

“…Okay! Thank you so much!”

Reicia gave her a gentle pat on the head, and Amiya finally managed to smile again.

Seeing that, Reicia felt a sense of relief—She’s back on her feet…—but she knew that Amiya would still be a little unstable for a while, emotionally. So in the end, Reicia continued to help her whenever she had a moment to spare between her own tasks, which meant her own progress was slower than she’d hoped.

And so, the final day arrived.

“…Where did you put the documents from here…?”

“Oh, those… they’re over there…”

Needing to submit everything by today, the members of GMDW had been working non-stop since that morning, and now resembled a field of corpses.

Back when it was decided they’d be staying overnight, using the lab showers gave the whole thing a sort of sleepover vibe. But now, they all looked like hardened soldiers.

Even Reicia had tossed aside her elegant, upper-class image. Her hair was tied back in a ponytail, a cooling patch stuck to her forehead, and energy drinks rolling all over beside her. Incidentally, she hadn’t slept a single second that day.

(This feeling… it’s kinda nostalgic, she thought vaguely while working—but we’ll ignore that.)

…but even if Reicia gave off the air of a former office worker, her body was still, at its core, that of a fourteen-year-old girl.

And that—was the trigger for disaster.

“Reicia-saaan… I’ve uploaded the data you asked for to the server, so you can check—Reicia-san? …Reicia-san??”

No reply.

At first, it just seemed like she was absorbed in her work—but there wasn’t even the sound of typing.

Feeling a bad hunch, Shika came around to check her face.

“…S-she’s asleep… sitting upright…”

“R-Reicia-san! Reicia-san! You can’t! If you sleep now, we won’t finish in time—!! …!! Wh-what a peaceful look on her face…!”

Su… suu…

…It was a rare sight. Reicia, who was usually so composed and serious, now wore an expression of total serenity. It was… well, so peaceful that it felt wrong to wake her.

“…Let’s let her sleep.”

That was the quiet decision made by the members of GMDW.

No one could bring themselves to slap this girl awake just to force her back to work.

Yes, the task was grueling. There wasn’t a single second to waste. And yet—after everything, waking up a girl who hadn’t slept in days just didn’t feel right.

…Granted, from a rational standpoint, they absolutely should have woken her up. But all of them were running on no sleep, and their collective sense of reason had clearly gone off the rails.

“In her place, we’ll…”

“…do Reicia-san’s writing for her!!”

……In the end, Reicia woke up thirty minutes later and rejoined the front lines. But because of this incident, she would later scratch her head and mutter, “Huh… I don’t remember writing the last part…”