Contract Dating (1)
Summer vacation was approaching.
For most students, there was no moment more eagerly awaited—but that, at least, did not apply to me. The grades were coming out.
Not long ago, the Academy had posted the first-semester final exam results. My rank: 1,535 out of 1,537. About as close to the very bottom as a person could get. I'd at least lingered in the lower ranks during midterms, but now I'd dropped all the way to the floor.
"Pathetic..."
I'd been sure I'd done everything I possibly could, but the results only made me feel more miserable. To be precise, I hadn't given it my all. I couldn't give it my all. You could call it my best, but it was also my worst.
Even so, I couldn't comfort myself with that.
"That's just an excuse."
Because that was all it was. I was the only one who knew it. I was long past the age of hoarding a secret nobody else knew and telling myself I was special.
I was muttering words at no one in particular when I checked a message from my girlfriend.
The tone of the text was far colder than usual.
"She's disappointed, huh..."
Of course she was. She'd cheered me on and helped me so much... and this was all it had come to.
I hadn't seen this coming either. At the very least, I had never once imagined our end would look like this.
Those were the words my girlfriend spoke when we met at Eldich Cafe. Even with my terrible grades, she had always been there beside me, cheering me on.
"What are you talking about all of a sudden?"
Through my trembling vision, that lovely face from my memories stared back at me, frozen stiff and cold. My voice shook as I spoke; the whole thing had come far too suddenly.
"I thought a lot after seeing your grades. At midterms, being in the lower ranks was fine. I wanted to believe you could still get better. But... dead last is a bit much, don't you think?"
Her cold voice made my gaze slowly drop. I couldn't lift my head.
"Fifteen hundred. That's how many freshmen there are at the Academy. And you're dead last among them. You getting this?"
Technically, I wasn't dead last. But there was no way those words were coming out of my mouth. Everything she said was driving into me.
One thousand five hundred thirty-five out of one thousand five hundred thirty-seven Academy freshmen. That was my place. What difference was there between the dead last she was talking about and who I was now?
None.
"I'll be honest. The way you work hard, your personality—that's all fine. But being with you makes my future feel uncertain."
"But..."
I was about to offer some excuse that didn't even exist when her voice exploded out of her, slamming my mouth shut.
"There's no 'but'! I'm tired of it now. Knowing full well you can't actually do it, still thinking maybe this time will be different, maybe you can pull it off, stressing over it like it's my own problem. I can't take it anymore."
There was nothing I could say. Nothing she'd said was wrong. For someone like me, who couldn't use mana, there was nothing I could do.
"Thank you."
And I'm sorry.
"..."
Through my lowered gaze, I could see her skin flushed red. In the harsh silence, I turned and walked away without looking at her face. If I looked at her face... I wouldn't be able to hold it together.
She'd been more than I deserved. Unlike me, who'd fallen from the bottom of the bottom, she was steadily growing. And she was famous even at the Academy for her beauty. Her friends must have asked her plenty of times why she was dating someone like me. I'd heard it too.
The walk back to the dormitory was lonely. I'd never even imagined this path could feel so desolate. Whenever I walked this road, we—no, I—had always been two.
Not anymore. It wasn't like that anymore.
Just as that fact was sinking in, a dull ache spreading through my chest, a voice struck my ears from behind.
"Hey! Park Yeonho!"
My roommate, Kim Seongchan. One of the two people ranked even lower than me, the guy who couldn't use mana. Even so, he was one of the few friends I had.
"Hey, take this. We're going till dawn tonight."
I looked at the can he handed me. This was soda. And what was with this bag?
"What's with the soda... why's this so heavy? What is this?"
"What else? It's soda."
He bragged about buying twenty cans of soda as he slung an arm over my shoulder, and I became certain of one thing.
"You saw, huh?"
"Well, I happened to."
"Haa..."
"Look, half the world's women. Kang Areum isn't the only girl on the planet."
"Whether the other half will love me as much as Areum did—that's another story."
"If she loved you that much, would she be pulling this?"
Was this bastard here to mock me for getting dumped?
"You've never even dated anyone, so you wouldn't get how I feel."
I tried a petty counterattack, pointing out he'd never had a girlfriend, but I was getting absolutely wrecked in this exchange.
"I don't date just anyone, you know."
He defended himself every day by saying he didn't date, but the difference between "won't" and "can't" was enormous.
"If I'm gonna date someone, it's gonna be someone like the valedictorian."
"The valedictorian? Rosemary?"
"Yeah."
The way he nodded so calmly almost looked sincere.
"Are you out of your mind?"
The question of whether he was serious got filtered through my brain and came out as are you out of your mind. Then again, he really did seem crazy.
"Would I be serious? Obviously I'm joking."
And how was I supposed to know that?
"Whatever, drink! Fuck! Drink and die!"
Like I was going to get drunk off soda...
"That's why even if I drink soda I won't get dru— mph!"
Fuck! He poured it up my nose!
"Pwah...! I almost died!"
"You think you're the only person in the world?"
Kim Seongchan's expression looked surprisingly serious. For a guy who always walked around with that weird grin on his face. I took the soda he offered and forced it down even as my throat burned.
"Eat and die!"
I was actually going to die at this rate. I closed my eyes for a moment against the sting in my throat, sharp enough to bring tears.
"Whoa..."
Maybe I should have been grateful the amount had gone down from him pouring it in my nose. That thought crossed my mind, but—
"You drink too, you bastard!"
Not a chance. Drown in soda and die!
"Khhhaaa...!"
Once we got back to the dorm, he ate and drank soda and snacks until his stomach was about to burst, then passed out on the floor all by himself.
"He can fall asleep after eating that much..."
And on top of that, he was snoring like hell. I couldn't sleep, so there was nothing I could do about it. I left the sleeping guy where he was and headed for the Academy Training Grounds. I felt like I had to punish my body somehow, or I wouldn't be able to stand it.
"It's been a while..."
It had been four months since I'd switched from swordsman to marksman as a freshman who couldn't use mana. If I became a marksman, at least I could fire a gun. Naturally, I hadn't held a sword during the entire period of marksman training—but right now, I wanted to use one.
The sword in my hand after so long didn't feel unfamiliar. I'd been holding a sword for nearly my entire life. Four months was a long time, but not long enough to carve away a lifetime. And the swordsmanship I'd honed wasn't so dull that it would rust away in that short a span.
I called it swordsmanship, but it was a cheap knockoff with no pedigree. I'd be lucky if it even got treated as cheap. If the swordsmanship I'd created myself could even be compared to techniques crafted over long years, that would be enough.
"It's a little awkward."
Even as I said that, my body swinging the sword was already finding its original form. It wasn't even swordsmanship you could call forms—but it was the stance and trajectory I'd swung for a lifetime. And it gave me that much stability.
That was why I dug even deeper inward. More, more. Until I forgot everything except the sword.
"......go......er"
It cut off.
The voice I'd heard nearby was clearly a woman's. Could it be? Had she come looking for me? Even as I told myself that was impossible, a part of me hoped.
An unfamiliar presence emerged from where the voice had come. The silhouette I saw when I turned my head, the presence I felt from the footsteps—it wasn't Kang Areum's. I'd known it wouldn't be, but that didn't mean I hadn't hoped. Maybe that was only natural. There was no way I wouldn't recognize Kang Areum's voice.
I was only briefly sinking into disappointment when another thought occurred to me. Then who was that?
The presence that appeared under the lights was a female student. And an extremely beautiful one. I was sure I'd seen her somewhere. That reddish-crimson hair that almost looked pink, and those azure blue eyes. Something about her was familiar, but I couldn't place it.
What I could be certain of was that she was extremely beautiful. Until now, the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen had been Kang Areum. Now there were two.
"Who are you...?"
It wasn't that I had no immunity to women, but this was a beauty who might even surpass Kang Areum. And she had a completely different atmosphere from her, besides. I naturally grew cautious, and asked carefully.
"Are you Park Yeonho?"
The answer that came back to my careful question was another question. She knew my name exactly. But was there malice in it? No. Rather, she'd asked in a voice that was polite and refined, with a certain dignity running through it.
So if I thought about whether anything had ever happened between this girl and me, I could be certain nothing had.
"I am, but... who are you?"
The answer that came to my careful question threw me into confusion.
"I am Amelia Rosemary. Please, do call me Amelia."
Amelia? Rosemary? Countless question marks floated through my mind. Rosemary was one of the great magic houses, as far as I knew. And Amelia was this year's Academy freshman valedictorian. The one Kim Seongchan and I had been talking about just a while ago. He'd been calling her Rosemary.
I wondered if she'd overheard our conversation, but there was nothing problematic in it. Then again, maybe just having her name come out of mouths like ours was enough to offend her.
"What business might the young lady of House Rosemary have with me..."
I'd come to the training grounds to forget my heartbreak, and now I might be about to ruin my entire life. Why on earth was the valedictorian here at this hour?! No, wait—maybe she was here at dawn precisely because she was the valedictorian.
That thought lasted only a moment. Was I imagining it, or did her expression look a little sulky?
"Please call me Amelia."
"I'm not a child of a noble house."
I was just an ordinary citizen. Asking a commoner to call a scion of a great house by her first name...
"It's all right. Please, I insist you call me Amelia."
She asked me three times in a row, out of nowhere, to call her by her first name. No matter how I took it, I was in an awkward position. Asking a regular student to address a noble family's daughter by her given name. I never imagined the Academy valedictorian would be this kind of person. I'd never had occasion to meet her, so I didn't know—but maybe it would have been better not to know.
I racked my brain and offered a compromise.
"...Lady Amelia."
Amelia seemed satisfied enough with that, nodding as if she'd let it slide, then cleared her throat.
"Ahem, ahem. Park Yeonho."
I was experiencing the miracle of time slowing down, tense with anticipation over what words would emerge from those beautiful lips, when—
"Excuse me?"