Miskatonic University

"It's just..." Vanessa hesitated, then decided she might as well throw caution to the wind. "It's just that I can fight when I'm in good shape... um, you know about schizophrenia, multiple personalities, and all that, right?"

"What do multiple personalities have to do with your fighting?" Dorothea asked with a frown.

"One of my personalities is pretty good at fighting..."

"Then bring her out for a moment, and send this useless personality back first."

"What! I'm not a useless personality!"

"Then bring out the one who can fight, and send this stubborn personality back first."

"..."

Watching Vanessa turn away and sulk, Dorothea couldn't help the corners of her mouth curling upward.

"Hmm... I do believe you have a mental illness now. How about this? Go see Randall, the head of the History Department. I'll write you a letter of recommendation..."

"A letter of recommendation?" Vanessa froze. "What does a letter of recommendation have to do with this?"

Weren't letters of recommendation for finding jobs? Wait... Vanessa's eyes lit up. "Can you recommend me for a job?"

"I can recommend you for a job as a research subject," Dorothea said irritably.

"Mental illnesses are different from other conditions. Patients' accounts are less reliable, so it's best to have another doctor's treatment records as supporting evidence."

"And you look ill at a glance..."

"I'm not ill!"

"Mm." Dorothea nodded with an air of solemnity. "It seems it's quite serious, too..."

For a moment, Vanessa had no idea how to argue back.

"Anyway, go see him first." Dorothea's tone softened a little, taking on a businesslike air. "Randall assigned me this investigation. There might be opportunities for us to work together in the future."

She paused, then added pointedly, "Of course, that depends on... curing your 'illness' first."

Vanessa returned to the hospital with a complicated expression.

Dorothea really had given her a "letter of recommendation."

To be honest, Vanessa wasn't particularly keen to see Randall. She was now certain that the entity controlling her was no hallucination, much less hypnosis. Psychoanalysis would most likely be a waste of effort.

But...

The glaring band of bandages around Winnie's wrist flashed through her memories.

What if... what if Winnie really had been caught up in a maelstrom of cultists?

As head of the History Department, Mr. Randall ought to know something about the secret societies and clandestine sects lurking in those dark corners, shouldn't he?

There might be historical records of various cults. Failing that, she could at least stop by the library and look into it.

In any case, she would head back to the university.

Early the next morning, after gnawing her way through a cold, hard roasted sweet potato, she put on her coat and walked out of the hospital gates.

The university and the hospital were both in the Mist Harbor District, only a few streets apart. It was just a short walk.

Her former life as a university teaching assistant, stable to the point of being a little dull, and her present life as an orderly hauling corpses were, in fact, only two streets apart.

Standing outside the university and looking at its cast-iron gates, she felt a mixture of emotions.

Miskatonic University. When she had received her acceptance letter, she had been ecstatic. She and Winnie had hugged, laughing and crying, believing that her fate would change from that moment on.

Unfortunately, nothing had changed. Fate had merely played a cruel joke on her.

Come to think of it, Vanessa still had an outstanding student loan, but she didn't particularly care. She had even lost her job. Where was the bank supposed to find her?

After entering the university, Vanessa headed straight to the History Department's office building. She planned to visit department head Randall first.

But his office door was locked. Vanessa considered asking her former colleagues, yet when she reached the door of the familiar lesson preparation room, she suddenly stopped.

She looked down. She was wearing an old Trench Coat, stained with blood, and her boots were spattered with mud. Her hair was as messy as a patch of weeds.

The girl stood silently for a while, then turned and left.

She really found it hard to face herself in such a sorry state.

Vanessa changed direction and headed toward the Medical School. With no familiar eyes here, she instead felt relieved.

After asking around, Vanessa discovered, somewhat dejectedly, that Dorothea wasn't here either. She had actually left the university on fieldwork today.

"The Medical School does fieldwork too?"

"She's gone along to investigate the infectious disease spreading in the East District. Professor Rosalie is leading the team. It certainly doesn't happen often... you're her...?"

"Friend, a friend..." Vanessa forced a strained smile and hurried away.

Dorothea attended classes at the Medical School during the day, and at night she became "Crow," working as an underground doctor for the Wild Dog Gang. Most of the time, she was on campus.

Only this morning, she had just gone out, and Vanessa had missed her.

It seemed she had been looking for help yesterday for this very operation.

As for department head Randall, he wasn't always in his office either. He was often off doing who knew what. Vanessa had hated that back when she was still a teaching assistant. Sometimes she had documents that needed his signature, but she couldn't find him anywhere.

"Just my luck..." She sighed helplessly. "I'll have to go to the library first."

Miskatonic University's campus was open to the public, and visitors could enter the library too, but a library card was required to read the books.

Vanessa's card hadn't been canceled, which was a relief. She didn't want to climb in through a window.

-The girl used to spend entire days in the library. Forgetting closing time and getting locked inside had been a frequent occurrence, and she knew a few windows she could get in and out through.

The front desk briefly registered her card, then let her in.

Walking between the towering bookshelves, surrounded by the familiar scent of ink and paper, her taut nerves finally found a moment's relief.

This was her favorite place. She could sit here with a book for an entire day, forgetting that she was still in this awful world.

As her fingers brushed over book after book, the girl smiled.

"Let's start with... organizations with a tradition of eating raw flesh and blood."

There was almost no information on cults or secret societies to be found in the university library.

But Vanessa knew this place inside out. She could always find scraps of clues in books and deduce the truth-this was precisely the key to her earning a double degree without doing any fieldwork.

She was practically the only graduate who had managed to write her thesis and earn her degrees without conducting field investigations.

When the professor overseeing her thesis defense heard that she had pieced her thesis together by digging through books in the library, his jaw had nearly dropped.

If looking up information counted as a talent, Vanessa was a genius.

"A Study in Scarlet"

"What Matters Most in Being Human?"

"A Brief Analysis of Civilization and Geopolitics"

"Travels Through the Rivers"

All sorts of books quickly piled into little mountains around her. From sensational novels to dry historical records, they seemed utterly unrelated, yet they gradually traced a hazy outline in her mind.