Hypocrisy
If what the original Louis felt for Leni was closer to fond affection for a fellow human being, what he harbored for Justina was unmistakably romantic love.
He had used that longing as an excuse to obsess over her and torment her. Whether I, the transmigrator who took over this body, ever truly loved Justina remained unclear to me. All I knew was that accepting the lingering emotions imprinted on this vessel was far easier than casting them aside.
And so, I tried.
I managed to push our relationship to that ambiguous border between friends and lovers. I gave it my all to make progress, and I believed she was doing the same. Yet, like a broken pocket watch, everything ground together with a jarring creak. Perhaps our gears had merely turned in twisted contortion, never once truly meshing into place.
I strove to derail the original plot just to keep her alive. Was it to save the world? Was I swayed by the remnants of Louis's feelings, or had I fallen for her myself at some point along the way? I couldn't say. Perhaps it was all three.
I swallowed a mouthful of liquor that had now grown more familiar than water. When ordinary alcohol refused to grant me drunkenness, I switched to vodka, though tossing it back in hearty gulps proved far harder than before. Instead of a heavy fullness settling in my stomach, I was rewarded with the searing pleasure of my esophagus burning alive.
I had lost count of how many days had passed since my fight with Leni. Living like this was something I had never done since transmigrating into this world. I had acquired a stem dotted with blooming forget-me-nots, placed it in a water bottle, and set it where the sunlight fell brightest. There was no reason for it. Time simply slipped away while I stared at them, and in a strange way, gazing at that vase felt like peering into a space completely severed from my own existence.
Where the sun hung in the sky no longer mattered. When drowsiness came, I slept; when I woke, I drank. Whenever the haze of intoxication lifted, a heavy weight crushed my inner chest, and a searing, fiery agony flared beneath my skin.
A descent into ruin.
Only now was I finally living the sort of life that suited Louis Belmont.
The air in the room was damp and stifling, as if saturated with the stench of alcohol. Perhaps because of the liquor, the faded words of the late Chloe drifted faintly back into my mind.
"I... I can't do it!"
Chloe had been a timid girl. I told her I would protect her, urging her to trust me and follow. Yet panic overwhelmed her, and she broke formation, bolting from the ranks. I set out to find her, begging the rest of our classmates to trust me just this once and hold their ground. When I found Chloe, she was already wounded, a monster having driven its horn clean through her abdomen. When I carried her back, the footprints left in the snow led away toward the opposite ridge. In that instant, I realized the trust I had painstakingly built was nothing more than a castle made of sand.
I remembered the dying words she breathed against my back.
"You're... a hypocrite, Louis."
I couldn't refute it. Because perhaps, deep down, she was right. By the time I fought desperately through the blizzard to rejoin the others, her body had already turned cold.
"If he had just stayed quiet and waited for the instructors..."
"He only charged in because he wanted to show off and catch someone's eye, and look what happened."
Public consensus had hardened, pinning the blame squarely on me for initiating the subjugation. In the absence of clear proof, mob mentality dictates reality. I was merely a pawn on the board, and everyone except me had their hands on the piece.
In the original story, many students died a chaotic, disorganized death while waiting for instructors who arrived too late. What if I hadn't stepped forward to lead the subjugation? What if I had simply stood back and let them all die? Such impulsive thoughts churned through my head. It was less of a regret and more of an aimless question.
I brought a hand to my face. The sharp contours of bone pressed against my palm, emaciated enough to be called skin and bones. With every passing day, I could feel my body rotting away. It wasn't a figure of speech; starting from the extremities furthest from my heart, the flesh was decaying inward.
Not that it mattered much. The far more pressing issue was that I had run out of money for alcohol.
And when I thought of money, a few particular faces immediately came to mind.
For the first time in days, I stepped out of my room.
Justina swung her sword.
Whenever her thoughts tangled into chaos, this was what she did. Plant the foot, twist the waist, watch the arc where the tip of the blade would trace. As long as she repeated the sequence ingrained in her muscle memory, she didn't have to dwell on anything else. Raised in a strict knightly household, uttering words of weakness or exhaustion was foreign to her. She did not even realize how tired she truly was. Yet, deep down, she had unconsciously yearned for someone she could lean on.
And somewhere along the way, Louis had been there beside her—a man she had once believed she could never grow close to after witnessing his irredeemable behavior.
Her sword cleaved through the empty air.
On that day, Justina had also been in the snowfields, though separated from his group. For better or worse, Louis was always at the epicenter of every storm. At some point, whenever an incident occurred, she had fallen into the habit of assuming Louis was behind whatever went wrong. She assumed he was desperately thrashing about just to maintain the facade of a model student, clinging to the reputation he had painstakingly contrived.
Chloe's tragedy had been no different in her eyes. Justina believed that human nature never truly changed.
Lowering her sword, she noticed a small nick on the blade. It was a trifling blemish. It had already been over a week since she last saw him. Rumors ran rampant across the academy—whispers that he was terminally ill, or that he was dropping out.
Just then, a familiar figure caught her eye across the training grounds.
It was Louis.
The moment she recognized his disheveled attire and staggering gait, an abrupt surge of irritation flared within her. Reflexively, she called out to him.
"...Senior."
Even while under disciplinary probation, he had been the sort of person who wouldn't touch a single drop of liquor. Or so she had believed, thinking he refrained because he cared about public perception and sought to leave a positive impression. She had sworn to expect nothing from him, yet paradoxically, she found herself wishing he wouldn't revert to the scoundrel he once was.
Even if that reform had been nothing more than a lie steeped in hypocrisy.
Justina started toward him to speak, but someone else reached him first. Before her voice could carry across the yard, several figures slung their arms around Louis's shoulders. The motion was smooth and practiced, as if this had already happened multiple times in recent days.
They were familiar faces. About a year ago, they had been the lackeys trailing behind Louis. Back when Louis was half-cast out by his ducal family, he had taken money from them, while they used his name as a shield to torment other students. It was one of the many reasons Justina had once despised him. To Justina, who held chivalric righteousness as her family's inviolable creed, such behavior was utterly incomprehensible, no matter how desperate one was for coin.
Why is he meeting them again?
Louis had severed ties with them long ago.
"Man, it's really something watching someone fall apart like this."
"Seriously. You used to treat us like dirt under your boots, but now that you're out of cash, you come running back?"
They snickered at Louis and patted his cheek in mocking slaps. Louis didn't answer. His head merely swayed slightly under their touch; he didn't even lift a hand to swat them away.
"Cat got your tongue? Say something."
"The great scoundrel Louis Belmont has completely lost his mind."
With a derisive scoff, one of them threw a handful of bills right into his face.
"Happy now?"
Justina stopped dead in her tracks. They were sons of mere viscounts. No matter how cast aside Louis had been by his house, he was still an undeniable member of the ducal Belmont family. Even if the academy preached equality regardless of status, it did not condone such blatant humiliation.
"Stop—"
Before her warning could finish leaving her lips, several more notes fluttered against Louis's face. Justina moved to intervene, but the scene unfolding before her made her doubt her own eyes.
Louis was hastily scrambling across the ground, picking up the fallen money as if his very life depended on it.
"Go ahead and chat, you two. We're taking off."
The boys snickered and sauntered away. Louis didn't even look up at them. He tried to pinch a banknote with his gloved fingers, but fumbled and dropped it twice. His fingertips seemed unresponsive, dulled by drink or something worse. In the end, he pressed his entire palm against the dirt, dragging the bill toward himself.
"Senior."
Louis slowly raised his head. His appearance was an absolute wreck. His cheeks were hollowed, dark shadows carved beneath his eyes. Seen up close, even the corners of his lips were cracked and chapped. Even during his worst days as a good-for-nothing scoundrel, he had never looked like this. He might have peddled his family's authority, but he had never offered up his cheek to be struck by the very people paying for it. He was a man who couldn't rest until he repaid every slight ten times over.
"What is wrong with you all of a sudden? You're not this kind of person."
Louis remained silent for a long moment. Then, his dry, parched lips parted.
"What do you mean, 'this kind of person'? What kind of Louis were you expecting? What on earth do you even want from me? Tell me, I want to know... Or does it not even matter anymore?"
Goosebumps erupted across Justina's arms. It was like looking at a person who was fundamentally broken.
"Why are you acting like this...?"
"...Didn't everything between us end back then? You have no reason to meddle."
"That's... fine, I understand."
Justina found herself at a loss for words. After all, she was the one who had drawn the line first.
"...Just stay out of my sight. I don't want to see you."
Lacking anything substantive to say, she lashed out with pointless cruelty instead. She had already said everything there was to say back at the training grounds. Running into him again today didn't change the resolution she had made then. She repeated that truth to herself over and over.
Something was undeniably wrong, yet Justina desperately forced herself to look away from it.
Shoving those thoughts aside, she lowered her gaze back toward her sword. The small nick on the blade caught her eye once more. Just moments ago, it had felt so insignificant. She tried to remember when the notch had appeared, but let the thought go. She maintained her blade daily; opportunities for it to chip were exceedingly rare.
The day she had hurled her wooden sword across the training grounds—had that been the last time she drew this real blade? Louis had been beside her back then too, she was sure of it, yet the memory refused to come into sharp focus. A visceral resistance welled up inside her at the thought of him.
Grinding down the blade would erase the flaw, but the steel would thin by that exact measure.
Justina sheathed the sword back into its scabbard. Strangely, that tiny nick now throbbed with an ache, as if the wound had been carved into her own flesh.