Will You Treat Me Like That?
...Our eyes met... What do I do...?
Elise quietly lowered her head and made her way toward the dormitory.
Her mind was still a tangle of noise.
Unable to master the anxiety clawing at her, she slipped away to a secluded corner of the Academy grounds, far from any watching eyes. There, with careful fingers, she drew out a single mana herb and lit it.
Ever since that incident, a restless dread had taken root deep in her chest and refused to leave. Only by periodically smoking the finest-grade mana herbs sold through her family's trading company could she force her heart to settle at all.
Smoke and mana from the herb sank deep into her lungs.
Yeon Bennet.
To the world, she was nothing more than a wicked, selfish villainess — a stain upon House Bennet. But to Elise, Yeon meant something else entirely. Perhaps, to Elise, she was the most important person of all.
The only being who had come into contact with Contamination and walked away unscathed.
Given Yeon's twisted, malevolent nature, plenty of people suspected she had secretly become a Contamination worshipper. It was a natural suspicion. And yet, astonishingly, Yeon had passed every meticulous examination administered by the Holy Church State itself. Not a single trace of Contamination had been found in her body. Had the results been otherwise, not even Duke Bennet's protection would have saved her from immediate execution.
When word spread that Yeon possessed an abnormal resistance to Contamination, all of Tera stirred. And the first to move — more swiftly than anyone — was Elise's own family: the Ducal House of Lapellacia.
They insisted, with great force, that Yeon Bennet must be made a test subject — for the sake of humanity, for research into overcoming Contamination. They dressed the demand in the language of a greater good, but Elise knew the real reason.
It was because of her little sister. Sera.
The one person in the world Elise would never trade for anything. A bright, lovable child — a tiny sun who had somehow managed to change every member of House Lapellacia, a family so consumed by research that they had long since grown indifferent even to one another.
"Unnie, unnie! Look at this! I made a new medicine, and the color changes like a rainbow! Isn't it amazing?"
"Sera, I told you not to do dangerous experiments. Still... it is pretty."
"Hehe. You think so too, right? Later I'll help with your research!"
Even Elise — blunt, closed-off, knowing nothing but her research — had been able to smile in front of Sera.
But that happiness did not last.
Sera was caught, horribly, in a terrorist attack by Contamination worshippers, and became severely infected. Even House Lapellacia, famed for the finest alchemy in the land, was helpless. Every medicine and every spell they could muster only watched as Sera's condition worsened. Time passed. Hope withered.
The Duke of Lapellacia could not bring himself to kill her, and so he locked her deep beneath the manor. It was a decision that would have drawn ferocious condemnation if word ever got out — and yet every member of the family agreed to it.
And it was then that Yeon Bennet's existence became known.
The only human who had touched Contamination again and again and suffered no consequence. To House Lapellacia, she was the last remaining ember of hope — the sole key that might save Sera.
But their attempt was crushed without mercy. Unexpectedly, the forces shielding Yeon Bennet proved far too powerful. Not only did Duke Bennet throw his full weight behind protecting his troublesome adopted daughter — even Dorothy, the Academy's headmistress and a Transcendent, stepped forward in person to refute House Lapellacia's claims outright.
Once a Transcendent had voiced opposition, not even House Lapellacia could press further to make Yeon Bennet a test subject. In Tera, no one was bold enough to defy a Transcendent's will.
And so, with even that final hope extinguished, Elise was left to find another path through her despair.
The family had given up on curing Sera. Elise never could. Night and day she scoured ancient alchemical texts, searched dangerous ruins no one else would touch, hunting for rare materials and methods that might save her sister — between Academy lectures and research, and sometimes at the risk of slipping out of the Academy in secret. It was the only thing she could do.
The memory of that day was a nightmare.
An ordinary day. Late evening, after regular classes had ended.
Elise quietly pulled on a coat and slipped out of the Academy.
This time... I have to find it. I must.
She tugged an old hood low over her face and walked the winding alleys. The usual quiet, the usual gloom. Somewhere a drunken merchant was bellowing and staggering; pigeons and rats scrabbled through puddles. She had walked this road for months. She knew it well.
But that night...
Something was different.
"……?"
The moment she stopped walking, cold sweat ran down her spine.
It was quiet. Too quiet. The drunkard's shouting, the irritated cries of a junk merchant hauling his load — as if someone had flipped a switch, every sound had evaporated.
"Wh... who's... there...?"
She turned her head carefully.
Something stepped out of the shadows. A hood with no eyes, no nose, no mouth visible. Hands wrapped in black, gleaming leather gloves.
"So. The child of Lapellacia."
A voice damp and gloomy, like wet cloth being wrung out.
"……!"
Her body would not move. She had meant to run — and yet her legs would not even tremble, as if they had been nailed to the ground.
A cold hand touched Elise's forehead.
And then...
The light went out.
The world blurred and warped like fog, the sensation eating through her mind. Her body moved without her will. That alien feeling was so repulsive she could barely endure it.
"N... no... please... stop...!"
"...Stop it... just stop…"
Elise stared at her own arms. Dark, strange magic circles rose across her skin, and from her fingertips the aura of Contamination began to leak.
If this spreads like this...
The whole dormitory — no, the entire Academy...
"I don't want this... I don't...!!"
Black waves of brainwashing tried to paralyze her self, but Elise groped through her own emotions and clung, as hard as she could, to the scrap of herself still hiding inside them. It was the only resistance she had left.
And then...
"It's all right. Everything's going to be all right."
A warm voice, heard in the final moment before she lost consciousness.
When she opened her eyes again, everything had been set back in place — with the culprit of an incident that had clearly been her own doing rewritten as Yeon instead...
Was it the anxiety? Elise had always preferred solitude, but now more than ever she wanted to meet no one at all. And yet she could no longer be alone the way she once had. The moment she reached the dormitory, her roommate would be waiting.
Elise found herself quietly regretting the day she first enrolled, remembering it all over again.
She had always disliked people — never made a single friend, so socially inept she could barely speak to the servants. She hated that about herself. She had wanted, even a little, to change. Her grades and her status more than qualified her for a single room... and still she had deliberately applied for a double, thinking that living with someone else might help her become different.
But...
The roommate she met turned out to be one of Camilla's people — the girl who, from the moment of enrollment, had gathered the nobles who flocked to her and built a faction. The Five Great Ducal Houses were rivals by nature, and so the two of them never managed a proper conversation, always avoiding each other with mutual unease.
And then, today.
When Elise arrived at the dormitory, the girl was packing her things.
"Huh...? Where are you going?"
"Ah. I'm sorry, my lady. I've been moved to a single room. They said they'd switch me over with no conditions attached..."
Her mouth said she was sorry. Her face said nothing of the kind. If anything, she looked relieved.
After she left, a short while later, someone opened the door and came in.
Elise lifted her head without thinking — and her eyes went wide.
Yeon Bennet stood there with her luggage in her hands.
"Hey."
Elise was stunned.
"...Why... are you here...!?"
"We've got a lot to talk about, don't we?"
Yeon slowly curled the corner of her mouth upward. To Elise, that smile felt more wicked than anything else in the world.
"Mind helping me unpack first?"
Yeon said it with a face of perfect nonchalance.
"Wh... why should I...?"
The answer left Elise's mouth on pure reflex. Had her voice come out too sharp? Worry surged for an instant — then she steeled herself. She could not show weakness in front of this girl. Her influence might have been broken for now, but she was still Yeon Bennet: the woman known as the worst villainess in Tera. Give her even a crack, and there was no telling what she might do.
But one snort of a line from Yeon was enough to shatter her.
"Why should you? After what you did got me thrown in prison — you're going to treat me like that?"
"......!"
So she knew after all.
Elise carefully raised her head. Yeon's face was smiling. Her eyes were not.
...I can't provoke her any further.
Elise pressed her lips tight, quietly stepped closer, and began helping unpack the bags.
But... if she knew everything, why did she let herself be taken so quietly back then?
A new question bloomed in her mind.