Unedited
As I lost sight, my other senses became more sensitive. I once again found Keran’s accent speaking the continental language to be somewhat special and quite attractive. Although most Illestians, including his mother, had similar accents, Keran’s was something different.
I slowly took off my glasses. Regardless of what Keran said about me, or rather the color of my eyes, I realized that whether or not my body temperature was rising or falling had anything to do with whether my sight was blocked or not.
As Keran’s charming accent caught my ear, the romantic shade of Ariel Dalton brought back to the stage the play that had been playing out in my head for half a day. The title of the play was: ‘A dream doll for the most chaste lady: What happened at Rosemary Blossom’s birthday banquet.’
After being plunged into total darkness, the sudden brightness was blinding. Keran looked at me frowning to adjust to the light, then smiled slightly. I wondered how the seemingly insignificant action of resting his chin on the back of his hand and leaning forward seemed effortlessly graceful.
“… “Seo, what do you want to do?”
“Hmm?”
I couldn’t hear him properly as I was adjusting to the light and to Keran’s good looks. While I sat there with a dumb look on my face, Kellan kindly repeated himself.
“I asked what you want to do about Walsh.”
Keran Illestia, unlike Lady Edwards or Professor Humphreys, seemed to understand most of my arguments. Since breaking up with Bree, Walsh has been spreading rumors about me to everyone he meets, which has been a pain in the ass.
It wasn’t explicitly written in the academy’s rules that gossip was forbidden, but going around saying things like someone had killed a person and was using necromancy to control them definitely should have been banned. Both murder and necromancy were serious violations not just of academy rules but of continental law.
In the first place, necromancy required a considerable level of understanding of magic, magical power, and mana. Even a passing wisp would know that Ariel Dalton had no talent for magic. I couldn’t even begin to understand how such an absurd lie could turn me into a necromancer.
Besides, where in the world would you find a corpse as lively as Briana Mosley? In my opinion, a corpse should have no sexual desire. If she were a corpse, the dream doll for the most chaste lady would never have ended up under my pillowcase. I gritted my teeth and responded.
“I want to beat him up. Just enough to leave him on the brink of death, of course, in a setting where Professor Humphries can’t intervene.”
“A sword fighting competition is held during the Harvest Month Banquet.”
The theme of the Harvest Month Banquet was ‘Growth’. During the nearly two-week banquet, many students demonstrated their growth and earned extra credits.
For the after-school clubs, it was also a golden opportunity to earn money for their activities. The theater department set up a stage for their plays, and the handicraft department held an exhibition. The Gryphon Cricket Department’s ‘Punching Booth’ was in a similar vein.
For loners like me, however, it was common to participate in academy-hosted events such as the sword fighting contests, official language spelling contests, or poetry recitation contests.
Sword competitions and common language spelling contests were usually less crowded—the former due to the risk of injury, the latter because it was incredibly boring. I liked Brianna, but no matter how hard I tried, I could never muster the same enthusiasm she had for unnecessarily long and complicated words.
Winning the poetry recitation contest depended solely on how beautifully and elegantly the poem was written. That was the field in which nobles were most confident. Moreover, there was no need to use one’s body as in a swordsmanship contest, nor did one have to use one’s brain as in a common language spelling contest. It was perfect for Walsh, who preferred to flip through magazines rather than textbooks and whose hair was more frizzy than his blade.
Dalton’s tomboy didn’t have the confidence to act beautifully and gracefully, so I had already submitted my application for the sword fighting competition. I imagined beating up Walsh in front of the entire school. It was absolutely thrilling.
The problem was getting Walsh to participate. As the son of a concubine, he has been cultivating his exterior rather than his inner strengths since he was young. Remembering how ugly Pedro Cantrell’s calloused hands were, he probably wouldn’t have even held a sword, let alone swung it. There was no way Walsh would participate in a sword fighting competition unless he went crazy.
“Adam Walsh is as small-minded as his… shrunken dick. There’s no way he’d show up at a sword tournament.”
At my words, Keran folded the corners of his eyes. It was a very relaxed smile. The meaning of that smile was clear—especially since it came from the all-powerful student council president. Overwhelmed with emotion, I clasped my hands over my mouth.
“Really? You’ll make him join?”
“And I’ll pair him up against you. Would that be enough?”
“More than enough! Oh my gosh, Keran, you’re the best!”
“I’m glad you’re satisfied. Now, shall we discuss something else?
Soon, Lady Edwards’ basket came onto the table. Showing Keran the placard with my name and the word “prostitute” scrawled together was beyond humiliating. The drawings of me supposedly fooling around with boys didn’t help. While I scratched at my ear awkwardly, Keran spread out the basket’s contents.
“When was this?”
First, he pointed at the picture containing Kyle with the back of his quill. Soft white and brown feathers rubbed across Kyle’s red head.
“In the first semester. I’m sorry, Professor Houston, but I hate magic science so much that I always dozed off in his class. Kyle, he hid me because he was my friend.”
“Then what about this?”
“Last week. I don’t know if you know, but your aide reacts really well to teasing. There are kids like that, kids who stimulate the hearts of pranksters.”
“I understand. Then what about this? I thought that the person you are close with is Edgar.”
Two things were surprising. First, of course, he also knew that the younger of the twins was the one on leave from school, and the older one was the one who returned to the academy. Second, why did his tone sound like that? It was as if he were accusing a cheating girlfriend….
“Am I being interrogated right now? Like, whether I’m really a prostitute or not?”
If I were actually Keran’s girlfriend, I wouldn’t have minded, but as things stood, I was deeply offended. Keran then widened his eyes for a split second and rubbed the area near his eyebrow bone as if he was troubled.
“Sorry. I’m just… .”
He trailed off and fell silent for a long time, seemingly unable to find the words to continue. It was clear, as I had suspected in Florence Bell’s world, that Ilestian royal education did not include lessons on how to properly apologize.
In fact, Kaitlyn the Great was a person who walked a path she never needed to apologize to anyone. Just as the personalities of Lady Edwards and Christa Edwards were not different, Keran’s life likely mirrored that of Caitlyn’s.
“Sorry.”
After what seemed like a bit of a tiring period of time, Keran ended his apology in a way that didn’t add too much unnecessary detail. I let out an exaggerated sigh and pointed to a newspaper article depicting an intimate scene between the ‘unknown viscount’s daughter’ and Jaden Spencer. Then I lied outright, boldly and without hesitation.
“I will accept your apology. And for the record, that’s not me.”
Apparently, asking for forgiveness and ignoring my efforts to extricate myself with an appropriate lie were entirely separate matters. Keran instantly took on a stern expression.
“Conveniently, I find that hard to believe. I clearly heard from Dalton’s head maid that you were traveling in the capital, and if Jaden’s ‘girlfriend’ surfaced during the same period, who wouldn’t be suspicious?”
Kellan’s words left no room for interruption. I gave up my counterargument, which would only be like digging a grave, and changed the topic. I also happened to be curious about something.
“Speaking of which, why did you come to Dalton?”
“I forgot.”
Keran answered coolly. His attitude was so casual that I thought he was talking about what was on the menu for dinner rather than what happened after we kissed.
After a moment of dumbfounded silence, I continued to ask in a small voice. Why did he come looking for me on the first day of vacation at the girls’ dormitory, the plaza, and in front of the teleportation magic circle?
“I forgot that too.”
“Then, what about—?”
“Ariel, you know very well… who I am dating.”
Keran said, his voice trailing off as if he were weary. He pressed his temple with bent fingers, staring off into an indeterminate distance.
I scrunched up my face like a discarded bag of golem bread and then pouted like a crucian carp left on land. Finally, I blinked repeatedly, my eyes dry as if scorched by the harsh truth. After blinking twenty times and then ten more times, tears welled up. Lots of them. The bridge of my nose tingled as if I had chewed wasabi root, and my throat and cheeks felt hot.
What on earth was I expecting? Did I think that one kiss made me the crown princess of Illestia? Meanwhile, the person who’s supposed to actually give me a muffin doesn’t even think about it. It felt deeply humiliating. I felt like I was no different from the crowd who called themselves the savior of the masked and cold crown prince, whom I mocked at the beginning of the year.
In the end, the only thing that could melt his frozen heart was the golden locks that made him feel warm just by looking at it. Not a dull brown hair. Kyle compared it to a walnut tree trunk and a squirrel’s tail, but to me, my hair color was closer to an ugly, crumbled leaf.
Until now, to be honest, I had managed a semblance of mental victory based on some reasoning. Keran, like me, suffered from the ‘fourth wall’ and was under the control of the system. Although he completely forgot about <Patch Note> and ‘Ari’, it cannot be said that he was sincere, and this was proven by the sluggish increase in his favorability.
Although the love potion was a cowardly and illegal means, there was no certainty that it had been used. Keran’s feelings for Blossom might very well have been genuine. Perhaps I had been deluding myself, thinking I was saving him from false emotions all along.
A wedge of truth that was difficult to deny pierced me. The rejection I received face-to-face hit me like an ice wave in the North Sea. In contrast to the increasingly heating of my eyes, my mind began to cool down.
I was finally able to see the whole situation objectively. The only question I had at this moment anyway was not about the system but which way Keran would lean when he weighed Ariel Dalton and Rosemary Blossom on the scales he hung over his own heart.
And I just heard the answer to that. I blinked a few more times, but it quickly became unbearable. I bolted up from my seat.
Keran didn’t ask me where I was going or why. Instead, he simply chanted a spell and opened the door to the student council room. It was a cruel and wonderful dismissal.
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