Withdrawal (1)
The words still echoed in my ears.
……No. No, that wasn't me. That wasn't something I did.
The tightness in my chest felt like it would burst at any moment. The "me" from back then was before the possession. I wanted to scream the truth, but I already knew exactly what kind of answer would come back.
…It's nothing. You're just confused right now.
Still, I believed in everything I'd built up until then. The devotion, the support I'd given them. So if I just waited a little longer… just a little… they would surely understand my sincerity.
……
……
……
A whole year passed like that.
And I was still nothing more than trash at the academy, the greatest scoundrel of the age.
"Ha… haha… Fine. I'll disappear. If that's what you want, I'll just disappear."
Thick, hazy smoke curled through the wreckage of my room. I took a long drag. Ash piled high on the floor like dirty snow. With a Magic Grass cigarette between my lips, I stared blankly at the document lying on the desk.
Today, I had decided to drop out.
National Academy. The empire's largest and most prestigious educational institution, without question.
When I finally stepped out of my room and walked down the corridor, I felt the stares immediately. Freshmen. New faces.
After a full year of every kind of contempt and insult imaginable, this was nothing. Honestly, it was almost polite. My fellow students had treated me like a ghost for so long that they didn't even see me as human anymore.
So many things had happened in that one year. Every attempt I made to clear up the misunderstandings only gave them more ammunition to tear me apart. Like an idiot, I kept waiting, hoping things would get even slightly better.
The result? I became the greatest disgrace in the academy's history.
Back then, my family had been in an uproar. There were endless arguments about whether to disown me or not. And the one person I had genuinely thought of as family… I had believed in her.
In other words, my half-sister. The heir and my rival.
Ilia Roenhart. My half-sister and direct descendant of the family. She had cast me out without hesitation and taken the position of official heir.
Well, for a bastard son, this was the obvious ending, wasn't it?
Even without all this, I would have been driven out eventually. Or assassinated quietly in the night. Either way.
Honestly, none of it matters anymore.
My heart was so exhausted that it couldn't even muster a shred of expectation or hope. Resentment and bitterness had burned away long ago. There wasn't even anything left to set on fire.
Paying no mind to the eyes following me in the corridor, I pulled out another Magic Grass.
Huuu.
Magic Grass. A psychoactive herb. A narcotic luxury item. It tasted a little sweeter than the cigarettes from my previous life. The smoke that filled my lungs was sweet, yet bitterly sharp. I exhaled it slowly into the air.
Still feels like shit.
Whenever I walked these halls, memories would surface without warning. Maybe because my time at the academy was finally ending, I was getting sentimental. Or maybe I just wanted to drag out even the smallest pleasant fragment from the past. That pathetic weakness of mine refused to stay buried.
And so the ash-covered memories came crawling back out.
She had been my former fiancée. The girl who smiled so easily.
I was trying to pull up those hazy memories with the help of the Magic Grass when—
"……Aren."
Past recollection and present reality overlapped. The short-haired girl who used to laugh had become a long-haired woman with an icy expression. There was no resentment in her voice, no hint of regret. Only a suffocating contempt and the faintest trace of remorse.
Her ash-grey hair swayed gently in the breeze, as if it were an extension of her heart.
Solia Corpen.
She was still breathtakingly beautiful. But I would never see that old smile again.
"……"
I stood silently before her. What was I supposed to say? That I was leaving the academy? Or… or…
My stomach churned. Heat rose in my head. Forgotten emotions crept up my shoulders like smoke.
The hesitation didn't last long. In the end, what I exhaled was…
Nothing but the thick, poisonous smoke of the Magic Grass.
Huuu.
The harsh smoke enveloped her face. It was an act completely devoid of courtesy. At the very end, I called her by a nickname I hadn't used in who knows how long.
"…It's been a while, Soli."
Her face twisted into a deep frown. The last lingering trace of remorse in Solia's eyes vanished completely, like smoke dissipating into the air. All that remained was pure, unfiltered contempt.
"Yeah. I'll get lost."
Just as she wanted. I was planning to disappear completely now.
Maybe she sensed something off, or maybe she simply wanted to find fault with me. Solia’s eyes locked onto the paper in my hand and she immediately pointed it out.
She mercilessly dug into the wounds inside me. I thought I was used to it. I thought there was nothing left to scrape away. Apparently I was wrong.
I lifted the document high and held it right in front of her face.
"It's a withdrawal form."
"……What?"
"It's what you all wanted. So I'm leaving."
Since there was nothing left to lose, I spoke calmly, stating the reason plainly. Solia still had emotions left to pour out. She shouted at me.
"Reform…?"
A snort escaped before I could stop it.
"Reform my ass. The one who denied all the achievements I've made so far was you, Solia. The one who didn't believe a word I said and misunderstood everything on your own was also you."
It was something I'd repeated dozens of times. And something I'd heard refuted hundreds of times. As if on cue, Solia began to interrogate me again.
The deep-rooted distrust buried in her chest was painfully clear. It stabbed into my lungs in a way far more painful than the Magic Grass smoke. Sharp. Piercing. Agonizing. No matter how many times I heard it, I never got used to it.
"……If you have no intention of believing me, why even bother talking? I'll disappear on my own. Just leave me alone."
Solia's desperate cry from behind me was no different from background noise now.
……I longed for lonely silence. I desperately wanted to return to my room, but it wouldn't be long now. Just a little longer and I would never have to care about any of this again.
The exhausting emotional drain. The ridiculous misunderstandings. The regret, the resentment, the twisted fate. I would leave it all behind in that tiny single room in the dormitory.
I stopped in front of the student council door.
The student council president. A senior one year above me. The most outstanding talent in the academy. The First Seat. The successor to the current Sword Saint.
Isilla looked at the paper in front of her with an expression of utter disbelief before turning her gaze to me.
"It's a withdrawal form."
A vein throbbed visibly on her forehead. Clear proof that she was furious.
"…I'm not joking. This is a decision I made after careful consideration."
With a sharp flick of her wrist, Isilla crumpled the withdrawal form into a ball and hurled it straight at my face. I could feel the faint trace of mana infused into the paper. But it was slow. Whether she was holding back or giving me a warning to dodge, it wasn't fast enough to be a real threat.
Still, getting hit would probably hurt.
I wanted to dodge more than anything, but the moment I did, the paper ball would slam into the wall and shatter into pieces. So instead, I caught it directly with my hand.
Crunch—
Isilla's eyes widened.
"……It's fine."
An object infused with mana has considerable rotational force. My hand, which had caught it, was already a mangled mess. I slowly unfolded the blood-soaked paper ball and placed it back on the desk.
Drip—
Blood that refused to stop flowed steadily onto Isilla's desk and documents.
At my bizarre behavior, Isilla stared at me with an unreadable expression.
"Thank you, senior."
As I turned to leave the student council room, Isilla called out to stop me.
"……?"
The look in Isilla's eyes as she stared at me was filled with deeper disgust than anyone else's. Was it because of her strong sense of justice? Or had seeing Solia earlier stirred up my emotions more than I realized? Something surged up from deep inside my chest. But I didn't show it. Familiar as it was, it didn't mean anything anymore.
"…Understood. Then I'll be going."
The other students in the council room whispered among themselves as they watched me, but I paid them no mind and left the room immediately.
"Hah… Is it finally over?"
Whether it was document review or official procedures, there was still some time left, but it would be soon enough. After submitting the withdrawal form, I felt strangely relieved.