Chương 37: The Ghost in the Glass

"Do you have any concept of accountability, Mr. Saitama? Any at all?!" Glynda stopped, pivoting on her heel, her eyes flashing behind her glasses. The Headmaster's tower was suffocatingly quiet, save for the rhythmic, agonizingly slow ticking of the giant brass clockwork gears overhead. Sunlight streamed through the floor-to-ceiling windows, but it offered absolutely no warmth. Saitama stood dead center in the room, his shoulders slumped so low his yellow jumpsuit looked three sizes too big.

His industrial mop was leaned casually against a mahogany side table, and his plastic bag of discounted groceries sat on the floor by his bright red boots, the green onions weeping slightly over the edge. Directly in front of him, Headmistress Glynda Goodwitch paced like a predatory cat. Her riding crop was tucked tightly under her arm, but her hands were free to gesture with a terrifying, rhythmic intensity that felt less like an academic reprimand and more like a generational curse.

"We are in the middle of a delicate global transition! Beacon is rebuilt, yes, but the security protocols are in place for a reason!" She stepped forward, pointing a manicured finger directly at his chest.

"And yet, the moment the faculty is occupied, you slip out of the gates like a truant toddler because of... because of what?!"

"The coupons were eighty percent off," Saitama mumbled flatly, his dotted eyes staring at the polished floorboards.

"You can't just let a bargain like that die. It's against the laws of nature."

"I do not care about the coupons!" Glynda's voice raised an octave, her posture shifting into a stance that radiates pure, unadulterated parental fury.

"You went out alone! Without a scroll! Without notifying a single soul! Do you think this academy is a hotel? Do you think I enjoy staying up until midnight drafting contingency plans because our resident invincibility anomaly decided he needed cheaper dish soap?!"

"It was a mop handle, actually," Saitama corrected softly, his voice dropping into a defensive whine.

"And some backup janitorial suits."

"Whatever it is, you are still reckless!" Glynda pinched the bridge of her nose, her eyes closed as she took a deep, shuddering breath to steady her exploding blood pressure.

"If the citizens of Vale had spotted you, the entire media apparatus would have swarmed the lower districts. The chaos alone would have crippled traffic for hours!

'The Hero of Vale' wandering the domestic sectors unsupervised. Do you have any idea what kind of administrative nightmare that creates?!"

"I didn't get spotted, though," Saitama muttered, rubbing the back of his bald head, a comical sweatdrop bead forming on his temple.

"I took all the sketchy back-alleys and the empty mountain paths. I was super stealthy, like a ninja. The only things I ran into were those weird black wolves and the big monkeys, but I just swatted them away so they wouldn't get hair on the new suits." Glynda opened her eyes, glaring at him with an intensity that could melt steel.

"That is not the point! The point is obedience! The point is protocol! If you ever, and I mean ever, endanger the administrative stability of this institution for a discount grocery sale again, I will personally ensure that your daily duties include scrubbing the entire exterior grid of the cross-continental transmission towers with nothing but a toothbrush! Understood?!"

"Yes, ma'am," Saitama squeaked comically, his face twisting into a caricature of pure, defeated remorse as he raised his hands in submission.

"Sorry. I won't do it again. I'll wait for the weekend sales next time." Glynda let out a long, exhausted sigh, waving her hand dismissively toward the door.

"Pick up your things and go, Mr. Saitama. Before I find a reason to assign you detention."

"Awesome. Thanks, Glynda lady." Saitama immediately reached down, grabbing his plastic grocery bag and hoisting the industrial mop back over his shoulder. He turned toward the elevator doors, eager to escape the suffocating aura of the deputy headmistress. But as his hand touched the brass call button, a sudden, random memory flashed through his blank mind. The image of a weird, squiggly translucent eye refracting the light of the Forever Fall Forest drifted past his thoughts. Saitama paused.

He let go of the button and turned his torso back around, his face maintaining its usual flat, unblinking expression.

"Oh, right. Hey, Headmistress?" Glynda was already mid-stride toward her desk, sorting through a stack of data pad reports. She didn't look up, her tone clipped.

"What is it now, Mr. Saitama? The elevator is fully operational."

"Back in the forest," Saitama said, his casual voice echoing flatly across the cavernous room.

"Right after the kids got packed onto the stretchers by that fast coffee doctor guy. I ran into something weird." Glynda's fingers stilled over the data pad. A subtle, instinctual tension gripped her shoulders, though she kept her back turned.

"A weird Grimm, I assume. You mentioned clearing the path."

"Nah, not the ones I punched," Saitama said, adjusting his grip on the mop.

"It was this floating, jellyfish-looking thing. Super squiggly. Lots of tentacles. To be honest, I've actually seen it a bunch of times before. Like, whenever I'm sweeping the courtyard or taking a walk out in those woods by the cliffs, I'd catch this little floating blob out of the corner of my eye. It's pretty good at hiding, but it always follows me around." Glynda slowly turned around. Her face was perfectly composed, but her eyes were sharp, calculating.

The inner circle of Ozpin's group had kept a strict inventory of every known variant of the Creatures of Grimm, but a localized, stealth-based tracking entity didn't match any standard archives.

"A jellyfish? I am unfamiliar with any aquatic Grimm migrating into the woodland sectors of Vale."

"Yeah, well, it wasn't swimming, it was just hovering in the trees," Saitama continued, completely oblivious to the weight of his words.

"So, since it was bugging me, I snuck up behind it and grabbed it by the head. It tried to zap me with some black smoky magic, but it just felt like a cheap car battery, so I didn't really care." Glynda took a slow step forward, her hand instinctively tightening around her crop.

"And what did you do with it?"

"Nothing. It broke," Saitama shrugged.

"But right before it turned into dust, I brought it real close to my face to see if it was edible. And when I looked straight through its squishy head... the light flipped around or something. I didn't see the trees. I saw a room. A really dark, creepy room made of black rocks." The air in the Headmaster's tower grew instantly, deeply cold. Glynda's breath caught in her throat, a sudden, violent tremor threatening to break her rigid military posture.

"And..." Glynda managed, her voice dropping into a tight, strained whisper.

"What did you see in that room, Mr. Saitama?"

"A woman," Saitama said simply, blinking his small, dotted eyes.

"Just for a second. She had really weird, super pale white skin. Like, ghostly white. And her eyes were completely black, but her pupils were bright red. She looked pretty surprised to see me, honestly. Then the jellyfish thing just went pop and turned into smoke. I think I broke the connection or whatever." Salem. The name screamed through Glynda's mind like a physical blow. A cold, primal dread seized her chest, making her stomach violently drop. You could be reading stolen content.

Head to the original site for the genuine story. She was watching him. Glynda's thoughts screamed in pure panic. And now he saw her. A cold sweat broke out along Glynda's neck. Months ago, back in the hidden war room, she, Qrow, and General Ironwood had made a strict, absolute agreement. They had sworn to hide the existence of Salem from Saitama at all costs. They couldn't risk a god-like anomaly wandering the world, hunting down the Queen of the Grimm without understanding the cosmic consequences.

They had deliberately lied to his face. When Saitama theorized about whether there is a "Demon Lord" or "Final Boss" hiding in a dark castle in this world like in the comic books he read, they had looked him dead in the eyes and told him no. They told him the Grimm were a natural, mindless disaster of the world. A force of ecological chaos. Nothing more. Now, that lie was straining against the seams of reality.

Saitama stood by the elevator, his flat face tracking the sudden, absolute paleness that had overtaken Glynda's features. He tilted his head, the mop swaying slightly.

"Hey, Glynda lady," Saitama asked, his voice entirely devoid of suspicion, carrying only a mild, passing curiosity.

"You look like you just saw a ghost. You know who that white-skinned lady was? Or what that squishy thing was doing?" Glynda's heart hammered against her ribs, a violent, suffocating rhythm. She forced her knuckles to unlock, smoothing down the front of her jacket with a slow, agonizingly rehearsed precision. She looked Saitama dead in his small, empty eyes, her face hardening into a mask of pure, academic dismissal.

"I have absolutely no idea what you are talking about, Saitama," Glynda lied, her voice remarkably steady, though her throat felt like sandpaper.

"As I stated, there are no recorded aquatic or specialized tracking variants of Grimm in the Vale encyclopedia. As for a 'white-skinned woman' inside a magical projection... the Forever Fall Forest is heavily saturated with volatile, unrefined Fire and Burn Dust. The ambient fumes are well-known to cause mild, visual hallucinations and heat-induced distortions, especially to individuals who navigate the sector without proper protective gear or a basic understanding of atmospheric toxicity."

She crossed her arms, fixing him with a stern, authoritative glare.

"You simply suffered a minor optical illusion brought on by the dust veins. Nothing more. Now, return to your quarters before I decide to catalog your grocery trip as a formal breach of contract." Saitama stared at her. His face remained a perfect, unreadable circle of deadpan simplicity.

For three long, agonizing seconds, the absolute silence of the room stretched, the gears above grinding against one another as Glynda held her breath, her entire body braced for the moment he questioned the logic, the moment he realized the structure of the lie... Saitama shrugged, his shoulders lifting and dropping in a fluid motion of complete indifference.

"Oh. Okay," Saitama said flatly, turning back around and slamming his thumb against the elevator call button.

"Yeah, that makes sense. The air did smell kind of funny out there. Sort of like burnt cinnamon. Guess it was just some weird gas. Remnant has some funky nature stuff going on." The elevator doors slid open with a soft, mechanical chime.

"I'm gonna go wash my jumpsuit. See ya later. Oh, and don't forget to look at those coupons I left on the counter, the dish soap sale starts on Tuesday," Saitama called out casually, stepping into the cabin and letting the brass doors slide shut between them. The moment the elevator began its descent, Glynda Goodwitch collapsed slightly against the edge of her mahogany desk. She let out a long, ragged gasp, her trembling hand flying to her forehead as a cold sweat broke across her skin.

"HE WHAT?!" General James Ironwood's voice erupted from his screen, the audio clipping from the sheer volume of his shout. The holographic projections flickered with volatile blue light in the center of the dark Headmaster's office, casting sharp, distorted shadows across the gear-laden ceiling. General James Ironwood's face filled the screen, his features contorted in a mixture of disbelief and absolute panic.

The backdrop of his feed showed the sterile, metallic interior of an Atlas command ship, but his focus was entirely pinned on Vale. His right fist slammed onto the console before him, the mechanical whine of his prosthetic arm audible even through the audio compression.

"Calm down, Jimmy," Qrow Branwen's voice cut in from the adjacent screen. He was sitting in a dimly lit, nondescript tavern somewhere in Mistral, a flickering oil lamp casting long shadows across his stubble. His flask was already in his hand, but he wasn't drinking. His thumb just traced the rim, his dark eyes wide with a rare, sober dread.

"Shouting at the glass isn't going to erase what the bald guy saw."

"Calm down?!" Ironwood leaned closer to his camera, his chest heaving.

"Qrow, you don't understand the tactical nightmare this presents! We are talking about an entity that defies every known law of physics, Aura, and Semblance. We agreed, strictly agreed, that his involvement had to be localized, controlled! If he decides to bypass our entire defense network because he's curious about a 'white-skinned woman', the entire global strategy falls apart!" On a third, split-paneled screen, the bright, sun-drenched sands of Vacuo offered a sharp contrast to the gloom of the other feeds.

Headmaster Theodore of Shade Academy sat back in his heavy canvas chair, his usual boisterous demeanor completely vanished. Beside him stood Professor Xanthe Rumpole, her gold-rimmed glasses slipping slightly down her nose as she leaned over his shoulder, her knuckles white where she gripped the back of his chair.

"A jellyfish creature..." Theodore murmured, his voice uncharacteristically low as he rubbed his chin.

"Ozpin's private journals mentioned deep-tier Grimm variants used for reconnaissance, but he never gave us specifics. He never told us she had a direct line of sight into the kingdoms like this."

"Because Ozpin kept his secrets buried where the sun doesn't shine," Rumpole spat, her sharp, Vacuan accent cutting through the transmission static. She adjusted her glasses, her eyes darting between Glynda and Ironwood.

"But that's secondary right now. The real problem is the link. If this... this Saitama stared directly into the eyes of the master of Grimm, then she already knew exactly what he looks like. She knew all of his abilities." Glynda stood straight at the center of the console, her hands clasped tightly behind her back to hide the slight, persistent tremor in her fingers. The cold air of the tower seemed to settle deep into her bones.

"He described the connection as 'breaking' the moment he compressed the entity's head. He treated it like a minor nuisance. But his description was flawless. White skin. Black sclera. Red pupils. He saw her, James. And he asked me, directly, if I knew who she was."

"And you lied?" Qrow asked, his voice deadpan as he finally took a slow, heavy swallow from his flask.

"Of course I lied!" Glynda's composure cracked for a split second, her voice rising before she forced it back down.

"I told him it was an optical illusion. Dust pocket fumes in the Forever Fall sector. I played into his... his utter lack of worldly awareness."

"We can't let him know," Ironwood snapped, his projection leaning aggressively forward.

"Look at the collateral damage he caused in Vale just trying to buy groceries! If he finds out Salem exists, he won't stop to plan. He won't coordinate with our military. He will simply march straight into the Grimmlands, drop a fist into the planet's crust, and God help us all if the shockwave takes half of Sanus with it! We maintain the cover story."

"Maintain the cover story?!" Qrow let out a harsh, bitter bark of laughter, taking a long swig from his flask before pointing it directly at the Atlas General.

"Jimmy, the guy isn't stupid. He's oblivious, sure, but he isn't blind. Glynda just had to look him in the eye and lie through her teeth. How long do you think we can keep telling him that the giant, floating, telepathic jellyfish are just 'hallucinogenic variants' before he starts asking questions we can't answer?"

"And what choice do we have, Qrow?" Rumpole interjected, her voice sharp and clinical.

"If we tell him the truth, we lose all control over the narrative. He becomes a rogue element with the power to alter the tectonic plates of Remnant. We have to contain the information."

"Contain it? The cat isn't just out of the bag, Xanthe, the cat just stared into the eyes of the ultimate evil and made her blink first!" Theodore threw his hands down, leaning over his console.

"Ozpin never told us these... jellyfish-like creatures, could bridge a direct visual connection like that. We didn't even know they existed until tonight! If Salem is actively scouting him, she's going to change her strategy. She's terrified of him, which makes her twice as dangerous." Silence descended upon the holographic conference, heavy and suffocating. The leaders of the kingdoms stared at each other through the blue-tinted static, the weight of their collective deception pressing down on them.

"Glynda," Ironwood said, his voice dropping into a cold, command-oriented rhythm.

"Did he buy it? When you gave him the explanation, did he show any signs of suspicion?" Glynda closed her eyes, recalling the agonizingly long seconds where Saitama's blank, oval-eyed face had simply stared into her soul. Her heart gave a phantom flutter of anxiety just remembering it.

"He shrugged," Glynda whispered, opening her eyes to look at the screens.

"He muttered something about Remnant having 'funky nature stuff', took his bag of discounted cleaning products, and went to wash his jumpsuit. He bought the lie completely." Qrow let out a long, slow breath, running a hand through his messy dark hair.

"Unbelievable. The man has the power of a god and the deductive reasoning of a turnip."

"Then the decision is made," Ironwood declared, his expression hardening into a rigid, military mask.

"We reinforce the narrative. We tell the faculty that any unusual Grimm sightings are strictly classified variants. We keep Saitama isolated from the core intelligence of the Maiden project. If Saitama asks again, we stick to the script."

"We are playing with fire, James," Glynda warned, her voice trembling slightly as she looked out the grand glass windows of the tower, toward the quiet, dark silhouette of the Beacon dormitories.

"Tonight, we survived on a shrug. But if he ever realizes the truth... if he ever discovers that the 'Final Boss' he has been searching for was someone we were actively hiding from him... the wrath of Glynda Goodwitch will be the absolute least of his concerns."