This Is What They Call an Academy
Drip. Drip.
The cold touch of water droplets soaking my forehead made me slowly open my eyes.
What greeted me was a hazy sky blanketed in ash and storm clouds. Rain fell in a steady drizzle, mixed with ash that painted the entire world pitch black.
When I lowered my gaze, the view below was no different. Ruins shattered beyond any hope of repair, a landscape bleached into pure monochrome from never seeing a proper ray of sunlight… a world simply trudging, step by step, toward its own extinction.
It was a sight all too familiar to me—and one I had never wanted to see again.
My vision blurred from the ash-laced rain. I reached up to wipe my face, but instead of skin my fingers met the hard surface of a gas mask and goggles.
Right. In this era, you couldn’t even breathe outside without a mask. Experiencing it firsthand brought the memories flooding back, ones I had thought long forgotten.
They weren’t good memories, so calling them “flooding back” with such a cute phrase almost felt wasteful.
Too mild to count as trauma or nightmare, yet nowhere near pleasant either. Just lukewarm, ordinary recollections.
Still, the fact that they lingered enough to surface like this meant the scenery had left quite an impression.
The whipping wind sliced at my body like a blade. Staring too long at a world of pure black and white made my eyes sting and ache.
There was nothing about this place I liked—except for the silence. Not a single human voice to be heard.
A complete wasteland would have been noisy in its own way, the wind howling endlessly. Dense clusters of hard buildings and towers would turn every gust into a nonstop scream as it forced its way between them.
But these moderately ruined structures, with ash piled thick in the gaps, acted like soundproofing. They created just the right amount of quiet.
Thud. Shuffle.
Even the sound of my own footsteps walking the street was half-swallowed by the stillness. I had liked that. Yes… I had.
Living it again brought those little details back with surprising clarity.
The five senses felt far too vivid for a mere dream. I let out a deep sigh without thinking. The breath fogged through the mask and scattered into the empty air.
Was I dreaming now? Or had everything until this moment been the dream?
Either way, the feeling was equally foul.
More than anything, the last voice I had heard still clung to my ears, irritating me. It had definitely been that woman’s voice—cold as ice, and filled with unmistakable rage.
When I closed my eyes and looked inward, I could faintly sense the connection to the Hives, but not a single trace of mana. Was it simply the difference of whether the soul was linked or not?
Well, if you asked which body this was, it was closer to the one from the previous world. Mana and skills were things I had learned only after reincarnating. There was no way this body could handle something so improper.
Still, the fact that I was clearly alive meant that woman had almost certainly done something. I had erased the curse, but in that brief window my body had been dying—that much was certain.
In that sense, calling this experience a life flashing before my eyes wouldn’t be an exaggeration.
Wasn’t that exactly how it felt? My thoughts were tangled and jumbled, as if the final memories had been clumsily cut away. I couldn’t even be sure whether I had died or lived.
…No matter how I turned it over, there were memories that simply didn’t line up.
At the end, I had cleanly removed the curse devouring my body.
Echidna, empowered by Kallion’s mana, had rushed over and gathered me into her arms. In that instant I transferred the curse—mana and all—through the link into her body.
Divine Aura had caught the faint residual traces of the curse, and the mana Kallion poured in had evaporated every last bit of it. I had witnessed that clearly.
Everything after that was hazy.
Damn this world. I couldn’t begin to understand what it had done. It felt like someone had carved out a piece of my memory and forcibly jammed that woman’s image into the gap. No matter how hard I tried, the original recollection refused to surface.
My brain wasn’t a machine—how could it end up in this half-fried state as if it had been hacked or jammed? Then again, in this insane world, brainwashing and suggestion had been completely ordinary.
Wearing this stifling mask was probably narrowing my thoughts too.
I wanted nothing more than to rip it off and throw it away, but my body refused. Instinct knew better. This thing was no different from a lifeline.
It had been more than ten years since I last lived without that precious mask that had been as vital as breath itself.
And with skills and mana—those completely irregular mysteries—I could breathe fresh air anytime, anywhere, even in the middle of a concrete jungle. Of course this constriction felt alien now.
Three years is long enough for a temple dog to recite poetry. Three times that had passed; even mountains and rivers changing wouldn’t be strange.
I was only remembering this because I was living it again. Otherwise, would I have bothered recalling the days when I had worn a mask as if it were the most natural thing in the world?
When people look back on the past, they only then think, “Ah, there was a time like that,” while in daily life those memories just sit in a dusty corner of the mind as pure information.
“Haa…”
Anyway, this really was a world with absolutely nothing in it. When was this, exactly? Toward the end I remembered it being so noisy there was never time to enjoy the quiet.
Ah, right. Back then we had used the top of a half-collapsed clock tower as a base, and when we got bored we would chat from time to time.
…Who had I talked with? A recon team member? Or someone from the assault team? No—it was definitely further back than that.
“Ah.”
As I turned the thoughts over, a face I had deliberately driven deep into memory and tried to forget suddenly rose up.
The saliva pooling in my mouth suddenly tasted bitter. I wanted to spit it out, but the mask made that impossible, so I had no choice but to swallow it down.
I hadn’t wanted to remember. Not the clock tower, and not the smile on the face that had told me to go down first.
It was a world where everything had withered; not a single blade of grass could grow. And yet that person had said that if we just endured this winter, a warm spring full of blooming flowers would surely come.
I never imagined the one who spoke those words had the talent to bloom a flower on a brutal winter day that wasn’t even spring.
I still remembered the sight of that flower—vivid, blazing red, blooming so brilliantly. The scent had been so strong it pierced even the mask, carrying the metallic tang of iron I had never liked.
A flower that might bloom only once in a lifetime—that person had managed to make it bloom huge and gorgeous.
Which was exactly why I didn’t want to remember. I turned my head sharply, as if trying to erase the image from my mind, and changed direction.
When I crushed the ash-covered ground underfoot, I felt a sticky clinging sensation—probably just my imagination. It had to be the ash mixed with the drizzling rain.
I told myself that and kept walking down the street.
As I walked, my eyes inevitably drifted to the surroundings, and memories rose to match them.
“…So this is the punishment, is it?”
I hadn’t meant to, but I had been the first to do something she hated. So now she was showing me something I would hate in a dream, watching and enjoying it like a voyeur.
Which meant she was definitely watching me from somewhere.
I rested a hand on my hip. Familiar cold metal filled my grip. Without hesitation I drew the pistol, racked the slide to chamber a round, pressed the muzzle under my chin, and pulled the trigger.
Click.
The safety locked itself without me touching it. When I checked the magazine just in case, the rounds that had been fully loaded a second ago were completely gone. The knife sheath on my belt was the same.
In short, anything that could let me die or get hurt had been thoroughly removed. If I picked up a rock nearby right now, it would probably vanish with a whoosh or crumble into sand.
“Hilarious.”
That confirmed someone was watching. Whether it was that woman or the one who had fired the curse at me, I didn’t know. What was certain was that whoever it was did not want me waking from this dream.
“Is that why my mind feels oddly stable?”
If emotions ran too high I would wake up, so they had locked me into a dream set in the place where I could most easily stay calm.
The fact that my previous life was the most calming place for me said a lot about how much I had hated that other world—even for someone like me.
Of course, that didn’t mean I liked my previous life. It just meant I hated the current one even more, with all its ridiculous bullshit.
Even if it was a ruined world where hope had completely evaporated and only tragedy remained. Even if at the end all that was left was taking and being taken, killing and being killed. Even if you were so exhausted you wanted to dream but couldn’t.
At least this world had once functioned normally.
A lucid dream, huh…
I don’t dream when I sleep. People ask if that’s even possible, but only those who have experienced it understand.
When you wake from a dream, fragments of it linger in your head for a while. But when you don’t dream at all, you simply close your eyes as if dead, and the next time you open them it’s morning.
Someone in my previous life once said dreams were a kind of feedback that appears while the brain organizes the day’s experiences into memory.
So what happens when every day is the same endless loop of suffering and exhaustion, and the brain decides it’s “information that doesn’t need to be remembered”?
If that repeats, the brain simply stops dreaming. It varies by person, but at least for me that was the case.
Even when they forced drugs into me under the pretext of forcibly activating the cerebral neocortex by making me recall my happiest memory, nothing came up. Just pitch-black darkness. A void with not a single speck of light.
Ironically, the happiest times for me were when I fell asleep without dreaming at all.
How could the cerebrum function properly while asleep? Sleep is a kind of power-saving mode—a time to rest a brain that runs at full capacity for more than half of every twenty-four hours.
They even administered drugs to find the most active period, only to discover it was the time when the power was off. Does that make any sense?
That was why they switched to more primitive torture, but looking back now, all those days I gritted my teeth and endured feel completely pointless.
In the end, because they couldn’t wait even that short while, they all destroyed each other.
The ones I tried to protect, and the ones who tried to make me talk—every last one of them.
“Everyone died except me.”
It was a truly bizarre turn of events. The research facility where I was imprisoned had been so safe it became a problem.
I kept thinking the next experiment was taking forever… who would have imagined they had all killed each other in an internal purge?
So I picked up a syringe full of drugs. Once everything that had been forcibly shoved into my head was over, I just wanted to rest.
Quietly, without thinking a single thing, falling into sleep as if dead.
I arrived at the place I had once thought was the quietest of all, and simply drifted off.
Blink.
I closed my eyes and opened them again. Right—there it was. At the end of my steps, I found myself. More precisely, the one who had once been “me.”
When I came to my senses, my body had become Jang Sinwoo’s. No mask, nothing covering my face. My body was full of mana, and I could sense the children’s presence as naturally as breathing.
Compared to the powerless, barely-better-than-trash body from moments ago whose only merit was lasting a little longer than others, this robust physique made the message crystal clear.
The past is the past, reality is reality—so please just live in the present, okay?
I let out a long breath with the familiar cynical smile. So this was what the air of this world felt like without a mask.
Every breath made my throat scratchy. In that short time ash must have gotten into my mouth; a dry, chalky feeling rose unbidden. Why on earth had a world like this stayed in my memory?
Honestly, I didn’t even understand myself. If people could change just by deciding to, the saying “people don’t change easily” would never have existed.
So no matter how much of this nonsense I went through, I wasn’t going to change.
“Got your answer?”
At that moment someone slammed into me from the side. I didn’t need to look to know who it was. White hair that seemed to blend into this pure white world caught in the wind and entered my vision.
“I told you not to. Why did you do it?”
A flat, inorganic voice with no rise or fall. It sounded like a child’s sulking, but the rage and sorrow packed inside were so pitch-black that comparing them to anything pure felt almost blasphemous.
Crrraaack!
The arms wrapped around my waist began applying pressure that even this body couldn’t withstand. A little more force and my organs would be crushed, my spine snapped. Cold sweat ran down my back at the killing intent radiating from those slender arms.
My body was screaming danger signals at my brain, begging me to apologize right now and make this stop—but my brain gave the exact opposite answer.
“I’m the one using my own body. What’s the problem?”
“It’s mine. The blood, the body. The life, even the soul—all of it is mine.”
Crunch.
“Kh…!”
Unable to accept my words, the girl furrowed her brow and increased the pressure. My ribs finally broke and pierced a lung. Blood surged up and spilled from my mouth.
“I asked you to make me happy, not to die. Why do you keep doing things you know will hurt you? Did you want to kill yourself that badly? Are you an idiot? Why won’t you listen to me?”
“Shut the hell up!!!”
I clenched my teeth and roared through the blood. I twisted my body with all my strength, trying to force Lee Se-rin—who was crushing me in her embrace—around to the front.
She allowed that much, at least, keeping the pressure while looking up at me. What a talented little shit.
“I like you. I love you this much. So Doctor should like me too. Listen to me. Love me as much as I love you. That’s how it’s supposed to be. That’s what love and affection are…”
Those golden pupils should have been shining brilliantly, yet they were no different from a lightless abyss.
No matter how much she changed her appearance, the essence never changed. The living proof was spouting garbage like that, so I understood perfectly.
“People don’t change easily.”
“…Hug me. Tight, the way I do. So tight that nothing else can enter your mind.”
The conversation wasn’t connecting. She had never intended to listen in the first place. That realization made my hands tighten. Just as she wanted, I raised them.
But the place they wrapped around was not her waist or back—it was the slender neck of the girl.
The texture was so exquisite the word “soft” couldn’t begin to describe it. Not too yielding, not too firm—perfect elasticity that made you want to keep touching it.
A contradictory existence where pure innocence and seductive allure that transcended gender coexisted, stirring desire itself.
Without the slightest hesitation I began to strangle her. The person being choked merely narrowed her eyes and tilted her head as if nothing were wrong.
“Is this the hug Doctor knows?”
“You never planned to listen to me from the start, so why would you think I’d listen to you?”
“…Aha?”
She reacted as if she had realized something, yet it was obvious she still didn’t understand at all. Even without mind-reading I could easily guess what this woman was thinking.
She was operating on the abnormal logic of “But I love you, so you have to do it for me,” as her baseline.
An arrogant, insolent way of thinking—yet it was permitted solely because she was strong. If you were strong, anything was possible. If you were weak, you got trampled underfoot.
The most primitive and barbaric principle of the strong eating the weak was being forced down to the marrow of my bones.
“A bitch more godlike than any god.”
“…That somehow sounds like an insult.”
It is an insult. To me, “god” is just another word for bastard. Seeing my sneering expression, the woman’s face began to pout sulkily.
“If you want to do whatever you please so badly, why don’t you just become a god?”
Steal every last bit of power from the bastard currently sitting on the divine throne and come down to my side—that would be perfect. Whether people were watching or not, I would perform the most cruel torture I could think of right then and there.
“No. That sounds boring.”
Her expression as she spoke—taking it for granted that she could seize the divine seat whenever she wanted—was one of genuine distaste.
“…Ha. And what you’re doing right now is any different?”
“I can’t feel it directly that way. Enjoying it myself is several times more fun than just watching. I don’t want to take on the hassle of being tortured just for that.”
True enough—when there’s a rice cake you can eat right now, there’s no reason to choose the one in a painting. Even as I thought that, I felt irritated at myself for being convinced by this woman.
Having these human remnants left made her even more troublesome. No—this woman only had human remnants left. She was so human that she ended up feeling like a god instead.
The fact that I was thinking this at all showed just how unbalanced and insane this world was.
I was getting tired. My body hurt, and more than anything, being near this woman felt like my mental strength was being ground down in real time. A radioactive bitch who killed your health just by contact.
“How long are you planning to keep this up?”
“I wanted to do more, but time’s almost up… We have to enjoy the main party, after all.”
“Party?”
“The freshman welcome party. It should be starting soon. I wanted to see you looking cool, so I even prepared a coordinator.”
The welcome events themselves started on Sunday, but the only thing that could really be called a party was the evening ball.
In other words, I had been asleep for nearly half a day. Surviving death for half a day was a cheap price, I supposed. The moment I thought that, the pain my body had started adapting to flared up even stronger.
“You were thinking something half-assed again, weren’t you? I’m still not done being angry, you know.”
“…People don’t change easily.”
I ended up giving an automatic-response answer, but there was nothing else I could throw back. What good would excuses do with this woman?
I averted my eyes from the half-lidded, piercing gaze and thought about something else.
A party, huh. A party.
It would probably be the most extravagant one yet. After the incident on Saturday, they would make it even bigger and flashier. They had to show that the Academy was still standing strong.
Originally the evening party was a place to end a week of tense atmosphere, strengthen social ties, and celebrate the newly enrolled freshmen becoming members of the Academy.
It wasn’t a stage for outside eyes, but with first through third years all gathered, information would inevitably flow in and out whether anyone wanted it to or not.
A world that was practically modern, yet the way people acted was pure medieval noble intrigue. I couldn’t help lamenting the bothersome world I had ended up living in.
Things like this might have happened in my previous life too, but since I didn’t know about them, they didn’t matter. This, though—I had to get involved whether I liked it or not.
I wanted to just keep playing dead, but the woman right in front of me would never allow it. She had already said out loud that she had a coordinator waiting outside.
Given how certain she sounded, there was a high chance either personnel capable of catching me if I ran were stationed nearby, or this “coordinator” possessed absurdly overwhelming combat power.
“Ah, time’s almost up.”
The words were thick with regret, and at the same time the far side of the world began collapsing like shattered glass.
“We’ll call this matter settled with—”
In that same moment I clamped my hands around the neck of the woman trying to leave my arms and yanked her face toward mine. Soft lips met mine; I forced my way inside and dragged her soft tongue all the way to my teeth.
The sudden act made the arms embracing me tighten. Blood that had pooled inside me like a squeezed tomato gushed out of my mouth.
Not to be outdone, I raised my mana and bit down hard on whatever was touching my teeth.
Crunch.
The tongue pulled back quickly, but I still managed to bite the lip. A wound appeared on a body that had seemed incapable of taking even a scratch.
A dense sweetness completely different from the metallic taste of my own blood filled my mouth. At the same time I tightened my grip on her throat.
I wanted to kill her right then and there if I could.
This woman was a more powerful obstacle to my peace than anything else. At the same time, the calculation that if I could just bring her fully to my side I could sweep everything else away kept spinning through my head.
To do that, I first had to stand on the same level as her. After all the detours, the need to grow stronger remained unchanged.
I stole her breath as if swallowing it. With the single-minded intent of reclaiming the blood she had squeezed out of me, I stubbornly licked and sucked at the wound.
Gulp.
The moment I swallowed, she ended up swallowing my blood as well on the other side.
Crrraaack!
At the same time my body, unable to withstand the pressure, completely broke. Sensation in my lower half faded. Ribs that had pierced my lungs now reached my heart.
Through vision twisted by the crushing agony I cracked my eyes open and saw the woman’s face—eyes wide, pupils trembling, looking thoroughly flustered.
No acting, nothing. Raw emotion at an unexpected situation came through with perfect clarity.
“…!?”
Her skin was as transparent as snow, so the flush rising to her cheeks was unmistakable. The fact that I had finally landed a solid hit on this woman filled me with a deep sense of satisfaction.
And with that, I woke from the dream.
When I sat up, the first things I smelled were the disinfectant of a hospital room and a faint, sweet citrus fragrance mixed into it.
I checked my body, but nothing felt particularly wrong.
The sensation of my waist snapping at the end had been so vivid that when I naturally looked down, I could clearly see the lingering warmth and the rumpled sheets that told me someone had been right beside me until moments ago.
It was a scene that screamed of someone who had scrambled away in a huge hurry.
Yeah. I knew she would do something like this. She would say she was about to disappear any second, then the moment I opened my eyes she would be sitting right there ready to tease me again.
Knock knock.
“I will assist you with changing.”
Sensing movement inside, a familiar-faced servant entered with a knock. Coordinator this and that, but in the end it was this woman.
The crazy woman who reduced every conversation to “Because I’m a maid.”
When I heard that serving at that woman’s side was the supreme happiness, I had thought they really were birds of a feather.
Twitch.
“…Did something enjoyable happen?”
“Enjoyable?”
The servant who had approached to hand me a glass of water suddenly flinched and asked. I raised a hand to my mouth. Even covered, a faintly bloody smile still sat on my lips.
I carefully replayed what had just happened. Had it been enjoyable? I wasn’t sure about enjoyable, but it had certainly been satisfying. Well, close enough—I’d count it as enjoyable.
I didn’t answer the question. I simply kept my hand over my mouth and swept it up through my face and bangs, pushing them back. After drinking the water and settling my insides, the smile on my lips became relatively calm.
A faint smile still remained. That must have been answer enough, because the servant nodded and took the empty glass.
“Young Miss requested that I make you look as magnificent as possible, but do you have any requests of your own?”
“Something that doesn’t stand out. I’ve been looking at too many shiny things—my eyes are still stinging.”
“Understood.”
Even as she said that, the servant began listing outfits that anyone could tell were flashy with a swish of fabric. I made a thoroughly fed-up face.
Like master, like servant, I swear.