The Golden Sun Became My Piggy Bank
I let out a long sigh. The moment I returned to the dorm, I clutched the bag of candy and flopped straight onto the bed. The soft, enveloping sensation wrapped around my whole body, easing some of the complicated emotions still swirling in my head.
That Geumtaeyang archetype—why the hell did she have to talk like she actually meant it? It only confused people. Looking at Lucia Klein’s actions in the original novel, even if she accepted a confession, she’d clearly just toy with the guy a few times before tossing him aside.
“What a vicious bitch.”
I muttered the words half to myself. Staring at the candy bag had brought back the subtle hint she’d emphasized earlier. Feeling irritated, I unwrapped a lemon candy and popped it into my mouth, hoping something sweet would help. But the sour citrus scent only overlapped with Lucia’s own fragrance in my mind, making my thoughts even more chaotic.
“Maybe I should just quit sweets altogether.”
If the suggestion had already been planted, the simplest solution was to avoid the source. I wasn’t even particularly fond of sweet things, so I could just stop eating whatever she’d referenced. Surely she isn’t going to make me eat everything she offers.
No, knowing how wicked she was, it was entirely possible. She might even enchant every meal so that I’d think of her with every bite. Just imagining it was horrifying. From now on, I absolutely could not eat anything she gave me.
…Except for the lemon candy.
Wait, didn’t I basically declare we were done?
I’d told her I didn’t like her and that we should keep our distance. I distinctly remembered saying it on the last day of middle academy. Even an idiot could tell the subtext was basically “Let’s never see each other again under any circumstances, you crazy bitch.”
Does she really hate Heidi that much…?
Everything Lucia was doing reeked of a stubborn determination to screw Heidi over at least once. Even though this kind of behavior could damage not only her own image but the entire marquis family’s reputation.
Was swearing at her from the start a mistake…?
Before that, she’d only approached me casually, keeping a loose eye on me. But after the confession and the torrent of curses I’d hurled at her… she’d only grown more aggressively interested. As if whether I rejected her or not didn’t matter to her at all.
Exactly which of my actions is she even latching onto…?
I had never shown her any favor. I’d never given her the slightest ambiguous hope. If I listed everything I’d actually done to her, it was nothing but double curses, personal attacks, frequent flicks to the forehead, and outright ignoring her. Under normal circumstances, wouldn’t that lead to contempt and distance?
“I don’t get it.”
Whatever the reason—pride, personal conviction—I must have touched something inside her. One thing was certain, though: I would never fall for someone like Geumtaeyang.
“Ugh, let’s think about something else. Stop thinking about her.”
I couldn’t stand the sight of myself holed up in my room, groaning over that girl. I slapped my own cheeks a few times, shoved the candy bag into an inconspicuous corner, and slowly went over what I needed to do.
First, I’ve already cleared one major hurdle…
I’d successfully made it into A-class along with Heidi and all the male leads, just as I’d hoped. That meant I could exert some control over the men who would try to approach her. At least to a certain degree.
Of course, it won’t be easy.
Still, it was far better than the original timeline when Jack had been stuck in B-class. Nihil had left to find his wife, and the crown prince had probably been crushed without landing a single blow, so he’d be placed in E-class. Two major threats removed, for now.
It’d be nice if the classes stayed fixed like this.
Unfortunately, academy classes shifted fluidly based on midterms, finals, and other exams. Someone like the crown prince would likely claw his way back to A-class after just two tests.
I am a little worried about running into him again later…
In this novel, the one most obsessed with Heidi was the crown prince. Just having him temporarily out of the male lead lineup felt like a weight lifted off my chest. Well, I could come up with countermeasures for the future and prepare thoroughly.
What I needed to focus on right now wasn’t some distant future—it was tomorrow.
The new semester and entrance ceremony start tomorrow.
After the class assignments based on the duel results were announced, the dorms would be reassigned accordingly. It was essentially the opening of hell’s gate—the day every major episode would begin in earnest.
There were two things I had to prepare for before the entrance ceremony tomorrow.
But before that, I should head out now.
There was somewhere I needed to stop by to prepare for the ceremony, and it was getting late. I forced my creaking, reluctant body off the bed, slipped quietly out of the dorm, and quickened my pace.
Where was I in my thoughts again…
I picked up the thread I’d dropped earlier.
Right. There’s someone I need to find as quickly as possible before tomorrow.
The only relatively sane character among the male leads—the one referred to in the novel as their suppressor. The man who obsessed solely over the “memories” he shared with Heidi, loving her gently without ever harming her body.
The memory addict, Grayson.
To be honest, he has stalker tendencies too, so I’m not exactly thrilled.
But compared to the ones who wanted to lock Heidi up, use her, or devour her, stalking was practically gentlemanly behavior. And most importantly, he was someone I could actually talk to.
Unlike the insane male leads who completely shut out the world once their obsession switch flipped, Grayson could still communicate to some extent. His emotional control was excellent, so the switch would never turn on in the first place. In other words, he was safe to attach to Heidi.
And then there’s the other attack that will happen on entrance ceremony day—tomorrow.
It was such an old cliché. Someone causing chaos on academy entrance day was practically common sense. Either way, I had to stop the attack that would occur on that very day.
In the original story, the reason they had to find Grayson—who wasn’t even at the academy yet—was because of this.
The main forces who stopped the entrance ceremony attack were the crown prince, the saint, and Nihil, who would hide his identity after the terror incident and join A-class. But since I’d already blocked the train terror and sent Nihil off to Pandemonium, one major combatant was missing. On top of that, the crown prince—who should have been a cornerstone of their power—was currently injured and couldn’t fight at full strength.
Grayson was the person needed to fill that gap.
Wait a second…
In the original work, the train terror had delayed both the entrance ceremony and the attack by about a week. I thought about it for a moment and concluded there probably wouldn’t be a big problem.
They base their plans on the event itself—the entrance ceremony—not the specific date.
Honestly, if I felt like it, I could hunt them down right now since I knew who they were and where they hid. But this attack was merely the first stepping stone they were laying. They weren’t characters who were supposed to die at this point in the story anyway. And their level was far beyond what I could handle alone right now.
Although… what if it’s not a direct confrontation?
They had restrictions, so instead of moving themselves, they planted informants inside the academy. Fighting them head-on was impossible, but blocking or manipulating the information that reached them was doable. Since I was heading out anyway, I might as well take care of that in advance. It would make the upcoming episodes smoother. Maybe I could even reduce the scale of tomorrow’s attack a little.
Either way, what I need right now is Grayson…
He wasn’t at the academy. If he were, I wouldn’t have to go through all this trouble to bring him here.
He’s probably at the black market right about now.
He had no origins, no age, no personal information—nothing except his name and the bare minimum knowledge needed to survive. In that state, he’d been sold as a laborer in the black market and was rented out daily to various places. It was essentially a rental service where people were traded like goods.
Naturally, the work he was given there was never anything good.
From simple crimes to outright murder, he carried out every filthy order like a machine. That was what the black market sold as “laborers.”
And right now, my job is to buy that laborer.
Of course, buying him outright instead of renting cost dozens of times more. For an academy student, it was an absurdly burdensome amount of money. This held true even if Grayson wasn’t one of the market’s best-selling workers.
So what’s the solution…?
My original plan had been to somehow scrape together a huge sum to purchase him. I had brought what money I had just in case, but I’d changed my mind a little.
Because there’s someone who’s shown an abnormal amount of interest in me.
In other words, a way to drastically reduce the cost of buying Grayson had occurred to me.
By the time I reached the door of the person I needed to see, I knocked.
“Who is it?”
A familiar female voice answered from inside.
—Creak.
The door opened, and out popped Lucia wearing an incredibly fluffy rabbit onesie.
“…Jack? Why are you here?!”
Today, I planned to use the suspiciously wealthy marquis’s daughter as my personal piggy bank. After all, the pain of spending money would surely be cut in half if I shared it with someone else.