The Wolf's Den
The day after recruiting Dana, I woke up in my dormitory, took a quick shower, and put on my uniform.
The Knight Department held mock battles only once a week, but that didn't mean I had no classes to attend.
Just like university in my previous life, the Academy allowed students to take as many majors as they pleased.
What was more, in a case like this, one could even choose which year's classes to take.
Some climbed steadily from the first year onward; those who already possessed the prior knowledge were free to jump straight into second- or third-year courses.
And if a student couldn't keep up with the material, the only one throwing away money was the student who had registered for it in the first place.
That was why, unwilling to let the talents I'd been granted as a so-called jack-of-all-trades go to waste, I had applied for multiple majors across several departments.
We didn't run into each other on the way here.
Having cleared my head of stray thoughts, I strolled into the Economics Department building.
I had registered for the second-year curriculum — the same classes as Aria.
If the dormitories had been adjacent, we could have come together, but the men's and women's dormitories were kept deliberately separated by a considerable distance.
Presumably, with people flocking in from every kingdom and empire, the school hoped to spare itself political headaches over mixed company.
In any case, once I stepped inside, finding Aria was not difficult.
It wasn't that the crowd turned away from her — it was that she turned away from the crowd. Alone at her seat, loneliness wrapped so elegantly in antiquated grace, she was visible at a glance.
Good morning.
She was arranging her bangs with a black pin, sweeping them neatly to the side.
Her brow was left bare, yet that look, too, was strikingly beautiful.
You must be curious about something. But you're not asking.
Only a single day had passed, yet rumors about Dana were already spreading through the halls.
"If you'd truly meant to put another leg over the fence, you'd have been far sweeter to me today. Your conscience turns out to be more moral than you look."
You could call it pragmatism, couldn't you?
"Someone pragmatic enough to do that wouldn't have handled the affair so carelessly that the rumors spread this openly in the first place."
Aria gave a faint smirk and rested her chin on her hand, watching me.
"Don't go fishing for petty jealousy. Just pay attention to the lecture."
How was she so effortlessly sharp at turning words back on me?
Having never actually tried anything of the sort, I could only wear a sheepish expression, glance at the professor about to arrive, and sit quietly through the lecture.
Before long, the lecture ended. Aria rose from her seat without ceremony and spoke to me.
"Getting something to eat?"
Lapis is on the fourth floor. Let's go meet her.
"I doubt Lapis has time for that."
Aria and I left the second floor together, and on the staircase up to the fourth, we were fortunate enough to run straight into Lapis.
Behind her trailed a remarkable crowd of students, and the scale of her following made it easy to gauge just how high her reputation ran.
"Rohen!"
Lapis walked demurely toward me with a warm smile.
If you're free, won't you join us for a meal?
"……I'm sorry. I already have a prior engagement. Tomorrow, perhaps."
I'm sorry it seems like I don't take care of you enough.
Reading what I'd written, Lapis slipped quietly into my arms and whispered tenderly.
"Just because I'm your fiancée, you don't need to act out of obligation."
As though she had read every corner of my heart, Lapis continued gently.
"I love you as much as you love me, Rohen. We're promised to be married, yes — but there's no need for this compulsion that we must always eat together, that we must manufacture good memories. If love is something we have to confirm to each other on a regular schedule, like clockwork, then the feeling itself will wither away, and before we know it we'll only be meeting each other out of duty."
Her thinking struck me as remarkably mature.
Honestly, with my memories of a previous life, I rarely managed to feel that Lapis was a full year my senior.
When Lapis, who had an engagement to keep, stepped aside first, Aria — who had been standing quietly beside me — turned a sour look upon me.
Why was her mood in the gutter this time?
"Sorry, but I'm a terribly petty, selfish woman. I can't manage that kind of magnanimity. Don't expect such consideration from me."
I hadn't compared them to begin with.
Watching her walk straight into jealousy on her own, she looked almost — endearing.
I love you including those parts of you.
"It would have been nicer to say that in front of Lapis."
As if even this level of sweet whispering failed to satisfy her, Aria turned away with cool indifference and descended the stairs.
So we left the Academy and began hunting for somewhere to eat.
Ideally somewhere not too crowded. After some deliberation, we settled on a restaurant, and once inside, Aria gave a lukewarm nod of approval.
"For lunch, we'll take two of the house's most confident dish."
"Yes, of course."
Aria placed the order herself, on behalf of the man who couldn't speak.
"No complaints? I have no idea what food you prefer."
I'm not picky.
"Even if you're not picky, there must be things you favor over others. And if even that's nothing to you, then from now on I'll choose every restaurant we eat at. Through that, I want you to memorize what kinds of food I like. Not Lapis's guidebook — build up, page by page, a compendium of the woman called Aria."
It was astonishing that she could say such things without a flicker of change in her expression. I nodded, and Aria turned her head toward the window.
"……What the—. It's raining."
"……?"
The weather had been perfectly clear, so I wondered what rain she meant — but following her gaze, I found a fine drizzle falling against a sky that was still brilliantly blue.
More precisely, it was the kind of sudden shower that catches you unawares.
It'll pass quickly, surely.
"Your order is ready."
The food arrived just then, so Aria and I pulled our eyes from the scenery beyond the window and began our lunch.
But by the time we had satisfied our hunger and pushed open the door to leave, the drizzle was still falling.
If anything, the raindrops had grown a little fatter — it had become, for all practical purposes, a downpour.
It may have been the first spring rain, but without an umbrella between us, it wasn't exactly welcome.
"The rain's coming down quite hard, though."
Aria stretched her hand forward into the falling water, then slowly turned her head to look up at me.
Crack!
Then, with the high-speed casting that might well be called her specialty, she raised from her palm an umbrella of blooming ice, grown like a living stem, and asked:
"What will you do?"
"What do you mean, what will I do?"
Not grasping the intent of the question, I weighed my words with the power of Lingual Magic as I turned it back to her.
"A freak shower out of season. It'll let up on its own in an hour or so. And it's not as though there's nowhere to shelter from the rain around here. Well… if that's not what you had in mind, then we head back to the Academy."
Inns were nearly as plentiful in the area as restaurants.
In a district with such an enormous flow of people, it would have been strange if the lodging trade hadn't flourished.
And there I stood, taking the umbrella of ice crystal into my hand, lapsing into silence.
Another of Aria's provocations dressed as temptation, offered to me as always.
But ever since I'd learned the truth of her heart, I knew this was no mere mischievous game.
Suspended in the wait for my answer, anxious in her own way — perhaps what she wanted was to see, just once, whether desire would overpower reason in me. Whether I would be the kind of man who made that choice.
"Fine. Then let's wait out the rain somewhere for a while."
She surely wasn't contemplating anything beyond that. So perhaps she would be satisfied simply by the fact itself — by the result, that I had made this choice.
"……"
Just as expected — a look that said what's gotten into you crossed Aria's face, and she took the hand I held out to her.
And so we started slowly across the street toward the inn opposite…
"What are you—!"
Just before we reached it, Aria abruptly vaporized the ice umbrella she herself had conjured, leaving not even a shape behind.
Plip.
Shhhh—!
The pouring rain drenched us both through, and I lunged forward, swept Aria up into my arms, drove strength into both legs, and crossed the short remaining distance in a single bound, plunging into the inn's entrance.
"……"
"……"
Once inside, I looked down at her, the question why on earth did you do that written plainly on my face, but she said nothing at all — only slipped out of my arms and walked ahead.
"One room, please."
Aria bent slightly at the waist and paid from her purse.
Whether it was from the rain that had soaked her through or not, the already snug trousers of her uniform clung tight to her body, baring the shape of her hips without a shred of modesty.
Ah…
More to the point — one room?
Before I could even begin to be flustered, Aria had taken the key, turned to glance at me, tipped her chin toward the stairs, and started upward.
Soaked as we were, a bath was in order, that much was certain. But what exactly was she planning with a single room?
Click.
For now, I strode after her, following Aria into the room through the door she'd opened—
I flinched.
There, in front of the bathroom door, Aria was stripping off her soaked uniform as if a trace of embarrassment had never once existed in her.
"Rohen."
"……"
"You thought that if you simply obliged this choice of mine, I would be satisfied… I'm sure that's what you believed, wasn't it?"
Peeling away her drenched blouse and trousers, wearing nothing but a single pair of black panties embroidered with a seductive rose, Aria walked slowly toward me and settled into my arms.
"I'm… greedier than I look."
Was that why — because my body temperature had dropped?
Her warmth alone came through with startling clarity, and her intoxicating scent seemed to spread across my senses like paint across wet canvas.
"They say even a creature caught in a wolf's den can survive, so long as it keeps its wits about it."
"……"
"Shall we put that to the test, then?"
Still in my arms, Aria tilted her head up and smiled.
Far too fearless, for prey that had just set foot inside the wolf's den.