Chapter 69: The saintess of the academy (4)

I briefly scanned the scene unfolding before my eyes.

In the middle of a group of flamboyantly dressed students stood Aisha, a small girl with her head bowed pitifully.

“……..”

Disheveled hair, swollen lips, and clear tear tracks on her cheeks.

Seeing the girl’s bright red, swollen cheek, I felt like something inside me was about to snap.

But I managed to regain my composure, tightened my grip on the opponent’s wrist I was still holding, and asked one last time.

“Answer me. Why were you bullying my friend?”

The female student, taken aback by the question, soon contorted her face into a venomous expression and yanked her hand away.

“What? Let go of me?!”

I took a step back from her momentum.

The flashy-looking female student brushed off her sleeve where I had grabbed it and let out a scoff of disbelief.

“Ha, really. How absurd. Does she think she’s the police or something?”

The female student, who was about to continue her mockery, stopped mid-sentence.

She flinched involuntarily under my steady gaze. Then, she stammered out a defensive-sounding answer.

“D-do you really not know? She’s a scholarship student. A parasite leeching off the academy while we pay expensive tuition. If you bring a street beggar here to study, she should know her place, but she keeps trying to act like she’s on our level, the nerve. If she’s from the bottom, she should just quietly stay at the bottom. Does she think she’s going to become an executive or something just because she gets good grades? As if.”

She spat on the floor near Aisha, “Ptooey!”

The girl’s shoulders slumped once more at that attitude.

“…….”

I knew that academy students were sensitive about their rankings. It was reflected in their personnel evaluations when companies considered hiring them after graduation.

I understood that even a student like her, who looked like a delinquent on the outside, would stake her life on her ranking as long as she was part of the academy.

‘But just for such a ridiculous reason?’

Was it really because of such a pathetic excuse, that a scholarship student had better grades than her, that she had tormented this small child so much?

It was dumbfounding.

Something was boiling inside me.

Whether she knew my feelings or not, the flashy-looking female student spoke with narrowed eyes.

“Come to think of it, I haven’t seen your face before. You seem like a new student, so I’ll let it slide this once. Be smart about it.”

“…….”

When I stared straight into her eyes without saying anything, she flinched again.

The female student avoided my gaze and tried to put on a brave front, saying.

“I-I’m letting you off because you seem to have acted without knowing any better! Got it? Watch yourself! Do you… even know who my dad is?”

“Haa.”

I couldn’t hold back a sigh.

I couldn’t believe she had actually uttered those words.

So I replied calmly.

“I don’t want to know, and I don’t think I need to.”

“….I was going to let you off, but you’re being insolent to the end!”

At my retort, the female student’s face contorted, unable to hold back any longer.

It was the moment she raised her hand to slap me.

ST, who had suddenly stepped forward, grabbed the opponent’s wrist and squeezed it hard, causing a scream of pain to erupt.

-Crack

“Aaack!!!”

The groan echoed throughout the alley.

Seeing her unhesitating grip, the group of students nearby also flinched.

“Hey, what do we do.”

“I-I don’t know… Sh*t….”

Soon, they began to avoid ST’s murderous gaze and started to flee, one by one, out of the alley.

“Kkeuk, heueuk….”

The female student, left alone, clutched her broken wrist and struggled to lift her head.

Between her ruined eye makeup, venomous eyes glared at me.

A cracked voice escaped her twisted lips.

“You, I’ll never let you get away with this….!”

I met her gaze clearly and said.

“You won’t let me get away with it?”

“……”

“That’s my line. If you bully that child again, it won’t end like this. Understand?”

After finishing my warning, I gestured towards the exit of the alley.

The female student then clutched her swollen wrist, hesitantly stood up, and, glancing around, quickly fled outside.

The situation was thus resolved.

Now, only a single girl, disheveled and slumped, remained in this place.

I took out a handkerchief. And carefully wiped the dust and tear stains from the child’s face.

Gently dabbing, so as not to irritate her swollen cheek.

“Aisha, are you okay?”

At that, her large eyes, which had been looking at me, wavered in bewilderment.

“If you experience the same kind of bullying after today, please tell me. I’ll resolve it somehow.”

Aisha’s expression wavered at those words.

The girl, who had been bullied without making a sound until now, finally stammered out a reply in a stuffy voice.

“Ah, Young Lady… No, Milady…”

“Oh dear, did you perhaps forget my name in the meantime?”

When I joked a little to lighten the mood, the girl frantically shook her head.

“No, absolutely not…. M-M-M-M-Ms. Eve….”

“I’m kidding. You don’t need to be so tense. Here, take a deep breath comfortably-“

Aisha took deep breaths, following my guidance.

After taking deep breaths for a while and seeming to calm down a bit, the girl looked up at me and carefully asked.

“Um… If it’s not too rude, may I ask you just one thing…?”

“Anything.”

“Why…. why did you help a useless kid like me….?”

A voice mixed with various emotions. My answer was simple.

“Don’t you remember? We decided to be friends, didn’t we? “

“Friends…?”

Aisha repeated blankly.

“That’s right. Do you need a grand reason to help a friend in trouble?”

“……”

After a long silence, she asked again.

“Do I… really… even someone like me… deserve to be friends with Ms. Eve?”

At those words, I slowly shook my head. At that, disappointment instantly spread across the girl’s face. She seemed to think I had refused.

I told the child the truth once more.

“We’re already friends.”

“………”

The girl stared blankly at me.

Then, her face suddenly crumpled like an ugly crybaby, and she finally burst into tears she couldn’t hold back.

As the small child sobbed bitterly in my arms for a long time, saying “Heo-eong-,” I simply patted her gently.

============

Roxy sat fuming in the self-driving taxi.

Her makeup was a mess, smudged all over her face. Clutching her swollen wrist, she vented her anger.

‘Crazy bich…. A real crazy bich….! How dare she do this to me?! I’ll never forgive her!’

After a long taxi ride, she finally arrived at her apartment.

Roxy deliberately ruffled her hair even more in front of the entrance, then kicked the door open.

“Dad! Daaaad!!! Huwaaang!!”

Just then, she saw the back of the family member she most wanted to see, standing in the living room.

“I, hic, at the academy….. eoheuk-“

She sobbed in a tearful voice, holding out her swollen hand as if to show off her injury.

But somehow, her father showed no reaction.

“……?”

Roxy, who had been feigning pain for a while, stopped crying, slightly puzzled.

Only then did her father’s gaze turn to her.

His face, cold as ice, was an expression she had never seen before in her life.

“D-Dad….?”

At that moment, it felt like stars were exploding in front of Roxy’s eyes.

Smack-!!!

When she came to her senses, she was lying on the floor in a corner of the living room.

‘Huh…. What?’

Her own body, rolling pathetically on the floor, felt unfamiliar.

And she belatedly realized that her father had slapped her.

Not just a light slap, but a full-force blow with no restraint.

The impact had been so severe that she had briefly fainted and woken up, and her head still felt like it was reeling.

Her swollen cheek instantly became as hot as if it had been seared by fire.

“Ah… Dad?”

Roxy lifted her head with a confused expression amidst the pain.

But the kind father she always saw was not there.

Instead of the figure who would never refuse any of his daughter’s cute requests…. only a terribly cold voice echoed through the living room.

“Roxanna Peregrine. From now on, answer my questions as if your life depends on it.”

A gaze so ruthless it was hard to believe he was looking at his own child.

Standing there was no longer her father, but Pierce Peregrine, a middle manager of a Lumina Group affiliate.

Looking down at his terrified daughter, the man asked, his teeth clenched.

“What in the world… did you do at the academy.”

=========

Lumina Academy, Year 1, Class C.

The classroom was unusually noisy today.

Blair, a female student who had just entered the classroom, frowned at the commotion.

‘I’m already annoyed as hell….’

“Ah, seriously! It’s so f*cking loud!”

When she snapped, the classroom instantly fell silent. And the surrounding students all watched Blair’s expression.

Well, she was a member of the ‘Raylink Crew,’ the power faction in this class.

A faction formed by the children of employees from [Raylink Express], a distribution subsidiary of Lumina Group.

Adults might scoff at calling a group of students hanging out together a faction, but among peers, there was a certain order and hierarchy.

The clout of a crew formed by children from the same subsidiary was quite powerful within the academy.

In the now quiet classroom, someone spoke to Blair, who had just taken her seat.

“Why is our princess so irritated today?”

Sharon, a cheerful-looking female student sitting next to her.

She wasn’t a crew member, but they were on comfortable terms thanks to having parents of similar status.

Blair replied indifferently to Sharon, recalling yesterday’s events.

“I don’t know, it’s just something.”

That day had been no different from any other.

Someone in the crew with a nasty temper, taking out their frustration about a failed relationship on the weaker students in the class by picking fights.

The fact that the trouble had fallen on a scholarship student with no backing was also a common occurrence.

But yesterday, the ending had been a little different.

‘Some weirdos interfered….’

She had ended up having to flee. The aftermath couldn’t help but feel a bit unsettling.

“……”

Blair, wanting to shake off some ominous feeling, idly asked the person next to her.

“Has Roxy not come yet?”

“How would I know? Shouldn’t you guys know her situation better?”

“Tsk, forget it. So, why is everyone so restless today? It’s been noisy since earlier. Did something happen yesterday when I was absent because of crew business?”

“Ah, that. You don’t know about that incident yet?”

Sharon grinned.

Like a reporter relaying a huge scoop, she lowered her voice and whispered.

“Yesterday, a special class transfer student, a young lady, accidentally came to our class.”

“Special class?”

Blair’s eyes widened slightly.

Unlike the general class students, whose parents were typically employees or middle managers of subsidiaries, the special class was where the real elites gathered.

Usually, they were on a different floor of the building, beings they would never even encounter.

Sharon lowered her voice again, as if whispering a secret.

“And not just any special class transfer student….. she’s ‘Royal Family.’ Rumor has it she’s a relative of the Chairman from another city.”

“The Chairman’s relative….? Really? Wow, that’s crazy… What kind of mistake happened for such a young lady to come down to our class…?”

“I don’t know. But it’s a big deal, right?”

Until then, Blair had simply been marveling at a story from a distant world.

In an academy established by a corporation, a blood relative of the Chairman was like the sky above the sky.

It just felt incredibly remote.

In fact, she was even feeling a sense of interest, as if listening to entertainment gossip.

Therefore, she urged the story on.

“So, what was that Royal Family young lady like, the one we’ve only heard rumors about? Is she different from us?”

Sharon replied in a voice full of envy.

“Well…. first of all, she was incredibly pretty. Sparkling silver hair, clear blue eyes, I thought a fairy had appeared. It was really unbelievable. Think about it. With those looks, and being the Chairman’s relative, doesn’t she just have it all? No matter how you think about it, this world is unfair.”

“Agreed.”

Blair nodded.

Certainly, if there had been such an exciting event, it was understandable why the classroom had been noisy since morning.

She marveled inwardly and began to listen with interest to Sharon’s continuing story.

But for some reason, a corner of her mind felt increasingly uneasy.

The description of the ‘young lady’ that Sharon kept repeating felt strangely familiar.

‘Incredibly pretty silver hair, blue eyes….’

But there was no way she could have met a celestial being like the Chairman’s niece.

It must be some kind of misunderstanding, Blair shook her head inwardly.

Just as she was engrossed in gathering the various rumors and speculations floating around the classroom.

Suddenly, a memory from yesterday flashed through her mind.

An ominous premonition followed simultaneously.

‘No, wait a minute. Could it be…. No way, no way, no way….!’

As the memories slowly resurfaced, the color began to drain from her face.

Soon, her pale complexion was no different from that of a corpse.

Even Sharon, who had been chattering obliviously beside her, tilted her head and genuinely worried.

“Hey, your face right now…. it’s completely blank. Are you sick? Should I call an ambulance?”

“………”

Blair didn’t answer. No, she couldn’t. She wasn’t in the right state of mind.

Her mind was turning completely white. It was so dizzying that she could barely breathe.

“Ah……”

Ding-dong-daeng-dong- ♬

Through her fading hearing, the academy bell signaling the start of class rang out just in time…..

But to Blair now, it just felt like the sound of her life ending.

“Aaaaaaaack!!!!!!”

“Hey, what’s wrong with you?! Are you crazy? Why are you suddenly screaming?”