Chapter 90
Chapter 90
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 90
Chapter Title: Is He Really Arma Cruise? (1)
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The Guardian Angel had told me we'd meet again.
Assuming I'd correctly interpreted his intent...
Relief at having survived mingled with a chilling burden—now that events were finally back on track—threatening to make my heart burst.
The fact that I didn't vomit right there was probably just thanks to my prior training for enduring this kind of stress.
“Why'd you call this kid...”
“Waaah! Senpai, just drop out already!”
Or perhaps because of Shirley bawling her eyes out right in front of me.
“Don't talk nonsense.”
Carried back to my dorm room by Theodore, I staggered about for a while before being surrounded by Shirley, Judith, Theodore, and Arthur the moment morning arrived.
Surprisingly, the patrol results had been swept under the rug as “nothing happened.”
Theodore not only failed to remember the instant I was sucked into the darkness—he couldn't even recall pulling me out of it.
“I'm feeling your mother's mood by proxy. You're such a... filial ingrate.”
Judith pressed the back of her hand to my forehead and declared the fever had dropped in an instant, then shrugged.
She said she'd woken the sleeping Shirley upon hearing I was feverish and on the verge of passing out, then rushed over with her eyebrows practically flying off her face.
Still, having Theodore go to Judith instead of Makina had been a pretty wise call.
*Can't read Makina's intentions...*
Makina Christy was pretty much the last person in the academy you wanted to make an enemy of, but I just couldn't bring myself to trust her.
“Sorry for worrying you all. Theodore was just startled, but honestly, it was nothing major. As you know, I'm always getting sick like this.”
“Hiiing... that's true, but...”
Was she buying it here?
Somehow, I'd been reflecting on my past life more and more lately.
*Anyway, Theodore must've been seriously shocked.*
Waking to find my acquaintances crowded around the bed, peering down at me with worried expressions... It was like some old man on his deathbed. I gave a wry smile inwardly.
“By the way, Arma. Sorry to pile on while you're recuperating, but a makeup schedule just came up. Intensive sessions for a full week, starting next Monday.”
“A week? How does a four-week short term squeeze into one?”
“It's hell: main classes from period one, straight through to makeup up to period three.”
“Oh...”
I'd woken from my delirium to a pileup of stressful news.
With a heavy heart, I sank deep into the bed before sitting back up.
“Since we're all here, let's go grab some food.”
Whatever doom the future held, eating came first.
That was the one lesson I'd taken away from my long nursing home stay.
.
.
.
And so, one hazy day slipped by.
With the short term resuming, the Wooden Cross Class had been entirely drafted as academy repair crew.
Nearly two weeks of storms, contaminated drinking water, rusted gutters causing leaks in the dorms—big problems and small had piled up, demanding urgent fixes.
“Hey—pass up the toolbox!”
“Here.”
Poor Dana Wood, who'd been bedridden until yesterday, moved busily here and there with a pallid face, toolbox and hammers in tow.
The stars of the show were the sculpture majors—surprisingly, their repair tools were almost identical to their usual ones, so they already knew how to use them.
Dana had heard the tale from Unia Rope's room about the wailing ghost commotion and the bloodied water, and she'd rolled up her sleeves, vowing to fix that damn gutter herself.
-Bang! Bang!
“You bastard, time to eat some humiliation!”
-Ting, ting, ting!
It was a form of revenge.
I watched Dana's noisy payback from the first floor for a moment before turning back to the window hinge I was repairing.
*The demon incident wrapped up like that, huh. Figures.*
A laugh escaped me.
-Tick!
At that moment, an ominous sound came from directly above my head.
I didn't even need to look up to know a tool was falling toward me.
“Huh?!”
-Thud.
I caught the dropping hammer with one hand, flipped it so the handle pointed up, then extended my arm and waved it where Dana could see.
“Revenge is fine and all, but be careful.”
“A-are you okay?!”
“Yeah. Here, take it back.”
“......How'd you even catch that...”
Dana Wood muttered to herself as I sensed her slipping into the building through the nearest window from the roof.
All I wanted was to get away from this infuriating window hinge ASAP.
***
“As Theodore says, Arma does seem a bit off.”
Repairs were in full swing that afternoon.
Judith, her hair loosely tied forward over her shoulders, tucked her work gloves into her waistband as she spoke.
“I wouldn't know.”
The response came from Arthur Usher of the Thorn Crown Class—a group unrelated to the repairs.
Though Thorn Crown Class wasn't involved, Arthur had volunteered for the work crew, citing the few days he'd shared a room with Arma Cruise.
“Hmm... He has felt more sensitive lately, but that's been going on for two months already.”
Shirley Spencer—now more accustomed to work clothes than her uniform—narrowed her brows as she gazed at Arma Cruise, who was pouring his effort into hinge repairs from afar.
“His conversation topics, expressions, gestures—they're all just like the senpai I know. It's hard to imagine someone's putting on an act.”
Theodore White, who had been listening quietly, nodded.
“That's how it looks to me too. I haven't known Arma Cruise... for all that long, but it's not so short that I don't have a sense of who he is.”
Theodore White had the shortest actual time knowing Arma Cruise, but no one had spent time with him more intensely.
Shirley nodded in reluctant agreement.
“Then what exactly are you worried about? I know you don't say careless things, Theo, but if something feels off, I'd appreciate it if you spelled out precisely what's nagging at you.”
“......”
Theodore mulled over Shirley's words for a moment.
Theodore's silence—stony and absolute—was one facet of his stubbornly single-minded nature.
“When I pulled Arma Cruise from the shadow—”
After much deliberation, Theodore began.
One of Theodore's unexpected traits was his brazen ability to deceive others when he needed to hide the truth for a purpose.
In truth, Theodore hadn't “completely” lost his memory, as Arma believed.
He remembered with perfect clarity the moment Arma had sunk into the darkness.
Not to mention snatching Arma away from the malevolent presence lurking there, evil-spirit-like.
“I saw a panic response in him—the kind you see in someone facing imminent death.”
Cold hands and feet, pupils hypersensitive to even faint light, twitching eyes, clammy sweat, racing heartbeat.
The moment Theodore had dragged Arma from the shadow, he'd felt like he was cradling a corpse.
Yet from the instant he emerged, Arma seemed to regain his senses, vitality flooding back into his body with his temperature normalizing swiftly.
“When Arma had that hyperventilation episode, I realized he wouldn't properly explain what had happened to him.”
“Arma never opens up about the really tough stuff.”
“500 chestnuts.”
Shirley clenched her fist playfully.
It was Shirley's signature wit, shining even in what could turn grave.
Theodore lifted the corner of his mouth in the faintest smile—detectable only to himself—before replying.
“Hyperventilation can be seen as an escape response. Breathing supplies oxygen to the blood and prepares the body for action.”
In Theodore's eyes, Arma's behavior was pathologically hysterical and excessively cautious.
He often acted in ways that seemed to corner himself.
When gripped by anxiety, he made those snap, unilateral decisions unique to the perpetually jittery—decisions that had Theodore following him personally at times.
“For someone in such an unstable state, he hides it too well. That's the part that's making you all uneasy. I get it now.”
“Yeah, exactly. Tessa Cruise is a wonderful countess and mother, I think, but the Cruise family education is all wrong. He refuses to show any weakness.”
The greatest influence shaping Arma's personality had been the cutthroat competition for family head among the Cruise heirs, vying over resources and talents from childhood.
To claim the seat, Cruise children learned to conceal weaknesses first and foremost—they had to become flawless all-rounders who overcame any hardship alone.
His physically frail childhood, combined with the merchant house's peculiar traditions, had forged Arma's detached yet magnanimous side.
“Theo's right, and so is Judith-senpai, but this time it feels a little strange. It's not just his usual personality... he's hiding something.”
Shirley spoke, her violet eyes—edging toward red—flashing.
When the humor faded from Shirley's face, it sometimes carried the chilling aura of an apex predator.
Arthur, who had been listening silently, watched Arma Cruise's retreating back as he carried the toolbox away. He released his mana, trying to pick up on the suspicious vibe emanating from him.
“That won't work. I already tried.”
Distinguishing mana-bearing creatures or objects was simple.
Release your own mana and see if it repels or absorbs.
Theodore hadn't skipped that basic check.
The moment he'd seized Arma's arm, Theodore had unleashed his mana to inspect for any shadow influence on him.
“Nothing. Absolutely nothing.”
At the very least, the Arma who returned from the shadow wasn't some other entity.
The person before them was Arma himself.
But that was precisely what made it a bigger headache.
What if, without Arma even realizing, he'd been beguiled or possessed by some threatening presence lurking in the academy?
It was a hypothesis too awful to contemplate, but if it had truly happened, drawing it out without harming Arma would be no easy task.
“And yet I gathered you all because, in that briefest instant, I saw something like a ring of light in Arma Cruise's pupils.”
“A ring of light? What the heck is that?”
“I don't know what it is yet. But for now, it's the only clue we have to figuring out what happened to Arma Cruise.”