Episode 106
Translator: RaidenTL
Episode 106
“What are you thinking about?”
Elysia flinched. She had been staring blankly at the plaster model on her desk and looked up in surprise. Evan was looking down at her, a worried expression on his face.
Without thinking, she threw her arms around his neck, clinging to him. It was a childish impulse that surfaced whenever her mind was in a tangle.
Surprised by her unusual behavior, he naturally lifted her into his arms, then sat down heavily in the chair she had just vacated. Elysia, now settled on his lap, leaned her body comfortably against his.
“Did something happen?”
“……”
“I like it when you cling to me like this… but I don’t like seeing you so troubled.”
His touch was warm as he gently brushed her hair back and caressed her ear. Just as she was about to relax, Evan dropped a bombshell of a question.
“...Is it because of me?”
“What do you— No! Absolutely not!”
“That’s a relief. I was regretting it.”
“Regretting what?”
“I was being childish.”
Childish? If you were really being childish, you would have thrown a tantrum or gotten angry, telling me not to go. But he had let her go, swallowing his anxiety alone. Elysia curled her fingers and lightly flicked his forehead in mock admonishment.
“You weren’t being childish. You had every right to be worried.”
Elysia let the tension drain from her body, which had been coiled tight all day, and turned to bury her forehead in the crook of his neck.
“It’s just… I felt bad that all I could say was that I’d be careful not to get hurt.”
“...I did some thinking while you were out.”
His voice was lower than usual, making Elysia shiver slightly and tilt her head. He smiled faintly at her gesture and toyed with a strand of her brown hair.
“I know you’ll be careful, and that you might even back down sometimes for my sake… but a moment will come when you get hurt, no matter what. It’s inevitable.”
She turned to face him, his face reflected in her gray eyes. He fiddled with the hem of her skirt, which was spread over his legs, and continued.
“When that moment comes, don’t be afraid. I’ll be right behind you. Always, no matter what.”
“Haha, that’s reassuring.”
“I’m not kidding.”
Her heart began to pound, sinking at the sight of his green eyes, dark with sincerity. Elysia let out a small laugh and tried to hide her blushing cheeks as she mumbled.
“I know you’re not… That’s why I can charge in so fearlessly every time.”
He let out an exaggerated sigh and muttered playfully.
“You’re too fearless. Did I spoil you rotten?”
“Let’s say you did, so you can take responsibility for it.”
Her light laugh seemed to brush against the skin visible through his loosely buttoned shirt. Unlike Elysia, who was now completely relaxed, Evan’s body tensed.
His lover was melting into his arms, but he wasn’t an animal; he was a man accustomed to acting rationally. Even so, the situation was a bit trying for him… Evan rubbed his brow, looking troubled.
Her gray eyes were cast downward, dark and lost in thought. He was about to ask if she had run into someone strange, but her sudden question made him blink.
“Senior, you said the drugs started circulating two years ago?”
“That’s when it became prominent enough for me to find out, yes.”
“Two years ago… Two years ago at Minerva. Were there any new, unusual people at the academy back then?”
“Well, new students come in every year. I came to this school two years ago, too. Um… but among the freshmen who enrolled then, I think I probably had the most unusual record.”
Elysia smirked and nodded. Of course. After all, he had served as the deputy commander in a war that embroiled all three nations, only to be suddenly dishonorably discharged before changing careers to become a doctor and enrolling in the academy.
Just as she was thinking she needed to look into every student who entered Minerva two years ago, Evan spoke again.
“Ah, now that I think about it, Ror enrolled at the same time I did.”
“...Ror, as in Cain Ror?”
Pale platinum-blonde hair and the gleaming red eyes beneath it flashed through her mind. She recalled the inexplicable hostility that rose in her whenever she faced him, along with a gaze that always seemed to be sizing her up…
In that instant, looking at the plaster model on her desk, something struck her like a bolt of lightning.
“Senior, do you have your school uniform shoes?”
Evan gestured toward his bag with his eyes. Elysia shot up and rummaged through it with a clatter. She found the neatly placed shoes, flipped one over to check the sole, and bit her lip.
“I knew it looked familiar.”
Except for being a bit larger, the sole of Evan’s shoe was an exact match for the footprint she had cast in plaster. A flurry of words raced through her mind.
A tall man, over 180cm, a student wearing Minerva’s school uniform shoes, and someone who can freely use the system’s functions…?
That’s when a memory she had temporarily buried resurfaced. The moment she first realized a part of the system was missing and was lost in confusion, a man had approached her with a meaningful smile and asked a question.
“What are you looking for so intently?”
“What’s it to you—”
“Why, is something missing?”
Don’t tell me… you knew everything? Since then? No, since two years ago?
“No, no…”
Or perhaps, even earlier than that.
*
“Quick on the uptake, aren’t you?”
Not too far from there, a man in a sharp suit took off his hat, a crooked smile on his lips.
His platinum-blonde hair, previously hidden, cascaded down like a white waterfall. The wind held its breath and the moon closed its eyes as the man, standing at the center of the dark night, opened his pocket watch to check the time. One minute.
He closed his eyes as if bored by the wait, then recalled the woman who had been tearing through the forest, tracking his trail. He gasped and laughed.
“That’s right. You have to keep chasing me.”
A game of tag is no fun without a chaser. The knowledge that someone was after him made his actions grow bolder, and an impatient desire to be recognized coiled in his chest.
The woman he had initially considered a mere annoyance was now bringing tremendous vitality to his life. And on top of that, her words…
“God doesn’t care much for you. You are the only one who can save yourself.”
He glanced at his watch again. Twenty-five seconds.
The man pictured Zenia’s face. Or more accurately, the situation surrounding her. He knew someone who had been crushed by the same circumstances she was in. Therefore, he also knew how to save her.
He had been too young to do it back then, but now, he could.
Ten seconds. Cain belatedly realized tears were streaming down his cheek. He let them be, smiling as he muttered to himself.
I’ve wanted to do this for a long time. Since before I turned back time thousands of times, and still, even now. So I have to do it.
The watch struck 9:00 PM sharp. Just then, a loud BOOM echoed from the distance as the temple collapsed. Cain swallowed a sneer and walked forward.
There is no god. And if there is, he’s nothing but a deceiver. So let the temple and all the fools who long for an absolute being be buried beneath the earth.
*
Elysia was staring at Zenia’s house. It was market day, and Zenia had stepped out for a bit to buy some things.
There were still four days until the forewarned date, but she couldn’t let her guard down, just in case.
At 8:57 PM, Elysia began to doze off from accumulated fatigue. When Evan suggested she just take a quick nap, she was about to slap her own cheek to wake herself up. He immediately stopped her and had just gone down to the first-floor kitchen to make her a cup of tea.
Elysia barely managed to stifle a yawn, her sharp eyes still fixed on Zenia’s house. And in that moment…
BOOM!
The distant explosion made Elysia shoot up from her chair. She pulled the telescope away from Zenia’s house and scanned in the direction of the sound. Smoke was rising from an area where houses were clustered together.
Just then, the door burst open and Evan strode toward her, his face hardened. A chilling fear was etched onto his features. Before Elysia could say a word, he grabbed her hand and pulled her out.
“What is it?!”
“A bomb.”
“What?”
“It seems they attached a bomb to the building’s core to bring it down.”
Evan’s tone had reverted to the stiff, military-style speech he used to use. But she was more surprised by his ability to deduce the situation from the sound alone. She stopped him on the stairs, her brow furrowed as she asked again.
“A bomb?”
“The method is uncertain, but it’s definitely a bomb. Direction?”
“It was toward the village. Wait, then we can’t just stand here! The injured…”
Elysia ran back upstairs, grabbed the bag containing her first-aid kit, and held it out to him. A look of dawning realization crossed his face, and he staggered, leaning against the wall.
Ah, this isn’t a battlefield, and I’m not a soldier anymore. A hollow laugh escaped him. Am I still not free from the war? Elysia’s eyes widened in alarm as Evan began to cough as if he were suffocating.
BOOM! A second explosion roared. In that instant, his vision flashed white, and he couldn’t breathe. He had a hallucination of creeping blood coiling around his legs.
Voices cursing the incompetent deputy commander, screams begging to be saved… Just as he was about to slip into another panic attack, he felt someone embrace him and snapped back to his senses.
This is the past.
He desperately, almost as if clinging for dear life, pulled at what was in his hands. Something warm pressed into his arms. The presence, at first indistinct, sharpened into reality and looked up at him.
He buried his forehead in Elysia’s shoulder—her presence swallowing the memories of the battlefield, that eternal nightmare—and breathed.
He had chosen a new path because he never wanted to repeat the nightmare of watching people die before his eyes. If he ran away now because he was scared, he would never be able to become a better person.
He lifted his face, slick with cold sweat, and said resolutely.
“Let’s go.”