End-of-Term Evaluation (7)
At last, the rain began to fall.
The chill of the winter downpour soaked the mountain soil, turning a steady drizzle into a relentless torrent. Panic stirred among the students scattered across the slopes as the fragile earth of Mount Utulum softened, gradually brewing into a catastrophic mudslide.
Yet even in the midst of the brewing disaster, one girl remained wandering, desperately searching for a single person.
"Ngh... where on earth is he...?!"
Determined to strike a deal with Junon, Sylvia had made no preparations for the storm, nor had she sought out shelter. Not even the protective barrier of the Talbrut Ark could ward off the biting chill of a winter deluge. Heavy drops battered her ash-grey hair, pasting it flat against her skin, while her soaked clothes clung uselessly to her shivering frame. With every passing minute, the rain grew exponentially harsher, draining what little strength Sylvia had left. Before long, she would trigger an emergency distress signal.
Squelch!
"Ah! W-what is this...?!"
Turned to thick mire by the sustained pounding of the rain, the sodden earth gave way beneath her, greedily sucking her down by the ankles.
"Damn it...! As if this wasn't miserable enough already...!"
The storm had arrived. This was her last, desperate gamble; she had to find Junon somewhere in the testing grounds and force him to accept her terms. Furious tears welled in her eyes as Sylvia struggled against the mud, humiliated and exhausted, wondering why she had to endure such degradation.
Splatter!
A heavy thud echoed through the mire. Her flailing efforts had shattered what little balance she possessed. Instead of freeing her trapped feet, her thrashing only pulled her entirely off-kilter, pitching her forward into the muck.
Caked completely in filthy, freezing mud, Sylvia could no longer find the strength to rise.
...Where did it all go wrong?
"Are you not my daughter—a daughter of Count Coutelli? You must carve the dignity befitting your station into the eyes of those lowborn wretches. This is the duty entrusted to you. I trust you will not bring disgrace upon the prestige of our house."
All to avoid becoming a blemish on the family name.
"Oh, Lady Sylvia! The way you thoroughly disciplined those lowborns so they wouldn't dare step out of line was truly noble and magnificent! Nobility itself!"
All to live up to the shallow expectations of high society.
"Thank you, Sylvia. Thanks to your efforts, the vanguards have finally learned some discipline. Unlike the other students, you make no mistakes—so very clean and neat."
All to bask in the high praise of the faculty and secure her graduation.
Over and over, she had repeated the same cruel performance. What was asked of Sylvia was deceptively simple: take the targets designated in the letters sent to her, crush them, and demean them in full public view as an example to the rest. The excuse was always the same—upholding aristocratic dignity and enforcing hierarchical discipline among combat roles.
At first, she merely jumped onto the stage that others had set for her, playing along. She gritted her teeth, forced down her bile, and mirrored their cruelty. In response, her targets bowed their heads. They fell to their knees, prostrating themselves and shrinking into the dirt.
"I'm sorry... It was my fault..."
"I won't ever do it again! Please...!"
"I made a mistake because I was foolish and ignorant. Please show mercy..."
It had begun back then. An uncomfortable pang had settled deep in her chest, prompting her to pull her strikes or break off early and walk away. Because in their broken, trembling figures, she saw none other than her own reflection. What real difference was there between the crude hierarchy she maintained by tormenting the weak, and her own desperate sycophancy to avoid being cast out by the Count? None at all.
Yet even though she held back at the margins, she never stopped. No, she couldn't stop. Because cruelty was the only thing that ever earned the Count's satisfaction.
She had endured it all, biting her tongue and hoping things would turn out fine someday. But in the end, it was an empty illusion. A single mistake had driven a fatal wedge into her precarious life, and now everything was teetering on the verge of total collapse. She had walked a razor-thin tightrope just to cling to her station, yet here she was, realizing none of it mattered anymore.
"I see..." Sylvia murmured into the muck, retracing the fractured pieces of her past until she finally pinpointed where the path had diverged. "It was... ruined from the very start..."
Only now, lying face down in freezing rainwater and filthy mire without a shred of noble dignity left, did she realize there had never been a proper starting line for her to begin with.
Sylvia closed her eyes.
She was sick of walking on eggshells around the Coutelli family simply because she was an illegitimate child. She was tired of the empty praise from nobles calling her noble and magnificent. She had twisted herself into knots to appease the professors for the sake of an easy graduation, but every thread of her life was tangled in knots. She never wanted to do anything she hated ever again.
With this, it was over. Everything was finished.
As the tension drained entirely from her limbs and the roar of the rain faded into a dull, muffled hum, a single voice surfaced in Sylvia's mind.
"Keep this in mind...! If you keep tormenting others like this, the day will surely come when you lose everything!!!!"
The boy with fierce, glaring eyes and a voice laced with raw venom, refusing to bend his pride no matter how much he was beaten. The black-haired boy she had persistently harassed in the past—the very same boy who had later reappeared completely transformed, shattering her magic circle in an absurd, incomprehensible display to defeat her.
His defiant shout felt so vivid it was as if he were yelling right beside her ear, drawing a faint, bitter laugh from her lips.
You were right all along...
The prestige of House Coutelli? The authority of the nobility? Flaunting the superiority of the strong? None of it meant anything now. There was nothing left for her to do, no way to turn back the clock, and no path forward. Resigned to her fate, Sylvia cleared her racing thoughts and surrendered to the sound of the rain, letting sleep take her. She clung only to the quiet thought that dying here might finally bring her peace.
"────!!"
"──... ──."
Before long, two figures arrived at her side. They shook her limp shoulders, but Sylvia's eyes remained shut, her ears deaf to their calls.
"What about those two...?"
"What should we do? Do we let them proceed?"
"Shh. Stand by for now."
The proctors monitoring Sylvia had already signaled an emergency. Under the command of Professor Jake, who happened to be nearby, the plan was to suspend Sylvia's exam and escort her out of the testing grounds immediately. But events did not unfold as scheduled.
"The rain's making it impossible to see..."
Junon had stepped forward and lifted Sylvia onto his back—an act that, depending on how one viewed it, could be considered part of the evaluation criteria.
"Damn it... I can barely tell where the path is...!"
In that instant, a radiant ribbon of light burst forward, piercing the gloom and casting a brilliant glow over the trail ahead. It was Renias's magic. Unless one was utterly blind, navigating such a vividly illuminated path was effortless.
"Is this enough light?"
"It's fantastic! How long can you keep it up?"
"Unless I suddenly faint, I can maintain it for several hours."
"That's a huge relief. Let's get her back to shelter first. We need to raise her body temperature, so get a fire going as soon as we arrive."
Professor Jake and the monitoring squad halted in their tracks, arrested by the flawless coordination of the pair. Anticipating the downpour, Junon and Renias had packed up their tent without hesitation, abandoning standard procedures to secure a safe vantage point against the impending mudslide. While other students across the mountain were scrambling in disarray to escape the surging waves of wet earth, this two-person team not only had the presence of mind to handle the crisis, but they also possessed the leeway to carry out rescue efforts within the remaining exam window.
"...Let them proceed as they are," Jake muttered quietly.
The most unusual student in the entire exam had just added another extraordinary footnote to his record.
"Please lay her down over here!"
"Hup."
I gently laid the soaked, unconscious grey-haired girl onto a makeshift bed of moss and foliage prepared beside the crackling campfire.
"Can I leave the rest to you?"
"Pardon? Leave what to me?"
"I'm a guy, and you're a girl. You need to take off her wet outer layers so they can dry. I can't exactly strip her myself, can I?"
"Ah... r-right, of course...!"
"I'll stand watch near the entrance for a bit. We don't have the luxury of stripping her down to her underwear, so just peel off her outer garments and wrap her in the spare cloth over there."
Leaving Renias to handle the task, I stepped toward the cave entrance just far enough to stay out of the downpour. Turning my back to them, I wrung the freezing water from my own soaked sleeves.
How the hell did things end up like this?
We had anticipated the cloudburst the moment the cumulonimbus clouds began stacking up, prompting Renias and me to hurriedly fold our tent and relocate. We scouted a sheltered nook, dismantled the tent poles, and lashed together fallen logs, foliage, and dirt clods to construct a crude but serviceable storm shelter. Just as I thought we were safe enough to resume the exam and take turns resting, Renias suddenly called out that someone had collapsed nearby.
I wondered what she was talking about, only to rush over and find a face I knew all too well—and for all the wrong reasons—half-buried in the mud.
Leaving her there wouldn't have kept me up at night. I could have easily turned my back and called it none of my business, but...
"She's your friend, Sunbae! We have to go save her!"
When your junior teammate practically shoves you forward by the shoulder, demanding a rescue, what else are you supposed to do?
Though for the record, she isn't my damn friend!
"Haaah..." A weary sigh slipped through my lips.
What was done was done. To think that within moments of putting the finishing touches on our shelter, I'd end up carrying Sylvia—the very girl who had tried to break my spirit time and time again—back on my own shoulders. Leave it to an exam designed by Professor Muniher to produce the most absurd, unpredictable developments.
"All done, Sunbae. You can turn around now."
At Renias's call, I glanced slightly over my shoulder, but seeing Sylvia lying there still felt surreal. Shaking my head, I directed my gaze back toward the falling rain outside.
"...I'll keep watch for a while longer. I rested earlier, so it's your turn to get some sleep, Renias."
"Are you still worrying about the evaluation...? You really are relentless, Sunbae... Even with your friend lying sick right beside you!"
"I told you, she's not my... tch, whatever."
There was no point in arguing. Letting her babble on was easier than explaining the complicated history between us. In truth, I was simply uncomfortable looking at Sylvia. Once she woke up and reacted to me with her usual hostility, Renias would understand on her own soon enough.
Still... this isn't like her at all.
Sylvia Coutelli.
A daughter of House Coutelli, one of the noble bloodlines that had conspired with corrupt faculty to spark friction between combat roles. In my past timeline, she hadn't acted any differently from what I had seen of her in this life. Because of that, my memories of her were overwhelmingly foul.
Yet there was an undeniable anomaly.
Just before the end-of-term evaluation began, she had approached me looking unusually rigid, practically begging to strike a deal. My initial thought had been that she was seeking revenge for her previous loss. But did that make any sense?
Attempting retaliation in plain sight of everyone—especially right in front of Professor Jake, who had repeatedly witnessed our clashes—would have been completely contradictory. If revenge were her aim, she could have simply mobilized her four usual lackeys after the exam concluded, rather than going out of her way to initiate a conversation with me alone. Most bizarre of all was the fact that she had offered a negotiation. A girl who had maintained an overbearing, haughty attitude toward me without fail was suddenly offering a deal.
...Could this be connected to that strange moment back then?
In the past timeline, because she had consistently acted the part of a bully, I had never given it deeper thought. But there had been one specific day among the many times she forced me to my knees.
"...Please. I don't want to hurt you anymore, so just stay still like this."
A memory from long ago. Those were the quiet words Sylvia had whispered to me after forcing me down for the last time before the regression. It had felt jarring back then because, on that single occasion, her voice carried the tone of someone being hunted into a corner—someone who had entirely given up. Following that day, Sylvia had vanished from the academy altogether. There had been no rumors, no word of her whereabouts, and I had never learned what became of her afterward.
"Um... Sunbae. It's time for our shift change."
Lost in thought, I hadn't realized thirty minutes had already slipped by. Well, I could always ask her directly once she woke up.
"Right. Keep an eye out like before, please."
"Your clothes are mostly dry, so you should try to close your eyes for a bit, Sunbae. You went through a lot carrying her all that way."
"Sleep? Don't worry about me. I'll just sit by the fire and finish drying off."
More importantly, it was nearly one-fifty in the morning on the final day of the evaluation. In other words, two full nights and one day had passed. Considering that the testing ground was Mount Utulum, I had expected the exam to be called off immediately for the safety of the remaining students. Given how the rain had destabilized the terrain into dangerous landslides, canceling the trial was the only sensible choice.
Yet nothing had happened. The fact that this wasn't an unforeseen accident, but an intentional hazard prepared by Professor Muniher, was terrifying. It meant his curriculum had become even more ruthless than I remembered. But dwelling on it would only give me a headache.
As I warmed my hands over the fire, idly worrying about our upcoming academy life, a faint mumble drifted from the moss bed.
To my utter shock, the words that slipped from Sylvia's lips were completely unexpected.
"I'm sorry... for everything..."
A single murmur, carrying an apology I never could have anticipated.