Chapter 21

I swallowed.

Slowly began preparing to activate the shadow.

How many times had time been rewound?

The person in front of me, perhaps seeing my actions as clumsy, smiled faintly.

“I don’t want to fight.”

“…”

“Even though you were following an academy teacher with such killing intent, I didn’t make any response.”

Something was definitely strange.

All evidence, including circumstantial and physical evidence, was pointing at me right now. If Jay hadn’t appeared, I would have killed Sayu right away, so it was an undeniable truth.

But for some reason, the woman standing before me was just quietly watching me.

As if she had no concern because she wasn’t an academy person.

Slowly, I calmed my ability back down and relaxed my posture.

The muscles and nerves that had been extremely tense complained with pain as they returned to their original positions.

“Good. Let’s have a chat.”

“What kind of chat…?”

“I don’t know why you’re tailing an academy teacher, but it clearly wasn’t with good intentions. Then what remains is the question ‘why?'”

“…”

“—That’s just an excuse. Actually, it just looked interesting.”

“What?”

“My boss is usually pretty, but when she gets angry, she becomes terrifyingly different. Thanks to her, I came to this boring country and have been doing nothing but duels with students day and night… There’s been nothing fun.”

“So… what do you want to ask?”

“If you need a place to work after graduation, come to England. This is an offer. One of the largest organizations in the world is directly scouting you.”

“But—”

“—You were just following an academy teacher with the intent to kill him? It doesn’t matter. As long as you’re strong, it’s fine even if you’re a criminal. Contact me sometime. There seems to be a scramble coming soon in this land.”

She handed me a business card and disappeared in an instant.

It was a speed that was hard to believe was within human physical capabilities.

Suddenly… I had a place to work after graduating from the academy.

I immediately tore the business card into small pieces and threw them into a drain. There was no future for me after academy graduation.

For me, the only future was ‘a future where I never entered the academy in the first place.’

Because that’s what I decided.

More importantly, a scramble? What is she talking about?

♦♦♦

In the end, I lost track of Sayu and returned to the dormitory, falling straight into sleep.

The fatigue accumulated in my body rushed in all at once, and the tension was instantly released.

With a blank mind, my body didn’t leave even the strength to move a single finger, turning into a limp, deflated balloon doll.

My head became complicated.

The first news I heard when I woke up in the morning was the somewhat fresh news that… the invited instructor had arbitrarily fled.

: Now there won’t be any more encounters with her.

‘Yeah.’

As such a threatening factor disappeared so anticlimactically on its own, I felt somewhat deflated.

And I realized one thing.

The status window doesn’t know the intermediate process.

It behaves like someone who skipped the entire story and just read a brief summary or a community post summary.

I’ll have to think about the meaning of the scramble Jay mentioned, and about that book existing in the academy’s basement.

To do that, I need to first think about Jay’s actions.

If I were to ask if her actions were really to extract useful students from the academy— the answer would obviously be no.

It’s somewhat comforting if I appeared to her as a student worth recruiting. Lately, I’ve been feeling on edge, and I’ve been irritable about things I would have just let go of before, so there have been almost no comforting moments in my daily life.

I wondered if I might be having my period, but strangely, since becoming this body, I’ve never had a period.

Perhaps my body is already damaged.

Having lived in the slums for so long, rarely eating three meals a day during my growth period, and as an adult, stuffing 40 cigarettes into my lungs every day—there’s no way my body could be normal.

Indeed, it might be necessary after all. Regeneration of the lungs and airways. I didn’t want to do it if possible. Self-harm is painful.

I stared at the ceiling with blank eyes. Bringing the subject back to the original topic.

When I think calmly, it didn’t make sense that her goal was merely scouting.

Then, is it related to the book she muttered about to herself? What is there in the academy’s basement to begin with? Why does the status window want me to go to the basement?

In the end, I had no choice but to ask.

To my guide.

‘…What should I do now?’

: Attend school as usual. Thanks to her, didn’t we finish all the major events in just one day?

‘That’s true.’

I didn’t expect that the practical and mock battles could really be finished in just one day, but should I be thankful?

While having these various idle thoughts, I began preparing to attend class. Getting ready with a suit, putting cigarettes and a lighter in my pocket, and picking up a notebook full of doodles and swear words.

I wanted to buy a computer, but I still lacked funds.

Strictly speaking, there was still some money left by the mister, and there was the academy student support money from the government, and there was the wallet I got after killing [Paper]…

Was it because habits from my previous life remained?

I didn’t particularly feel like spending it.

Maybe if I kill one more person and get two wallets, who knows? I might suddenly have a lot of money and start impulsive shopping.

As I was almost finished preparing to go out.

Looking at the clock, I realized one strange fact.

An English word written on the digital clock hit my head.

‘…SAT, Saturday.’

I slowly began to recall.

Originally, the academy’s practical exam was on Friday, and the mock battle was on Monday, but due to Jay’s arbitrary decision, it took place on Friday evening.

That means, today is Saturday.

Today… there are no classes.

“Fuck.”

Personally, I didn’t have a habit of talking to myself in an empty room.

To begin with, I disliked how protagonists in novels mutter to themselves when no one is around because it seemed like they had a mental illness, and I was the type to think internally rather than vocalizing my thoughts.

But, now I couldn’t hold back the swear word.

There was a difference in the degree of relief between saying it out loud and just thinking it.

In the end, what I chose was to collapse onto the bed while still wearing the suit that hadn’t even been properly laundered.

For Koreans, the meaning of a bed was almost like a religious holy ground… and the act of lying on a bed without wearing pajamas was extremely sacrilegious.

But my body was now so desperate that it would commit suicide the moment I declared I would shower, wear pajamas, do laundry, and then lie on the bed.

Cough-

In an empty room, the cough was the only sign of life.

For someone with no friends, no family, no one to rely on, nothing.

The only comfort always comes from highly addictive substances.

With a fucking awful mood, I lay with a cigarette in my mouth, sucking the smoke in deeply.

How many hours had passed like that?

I sensed someone outside the dormitory, and then someone cautiously knocked on the door twice.

Knock- Knock-

Of course, there was no reason for anyone to visit my room.

I didn’t have friends to begin with.

Then, who could be knocking on my door now? Could it be that the academy discovered my murders and came to arrest me?

Unfounded fear was overwhelming me.

Perhaps because I had a cigarette in my mouth, I didn’t exhibit symptoms like my body trembling… as it did at other times.

“Are you in there?”

“…Maybe?”

“Hey! Did you really come here without even contacting me by phone?”

“Ah…”

“How many times do I have to tell you not to treat others the way you treat me!”

Voices were heard.

Both voices were ones I had heard before.

Very recently, too.

One voice was male. The other was female.

…It was the protagonist and the protagonist’s childhood friend heroine.

Ryu Seong and Hiyeon.

I don’t know why they came all the way to my room, but it would be better to just not open the door and pretend I’m not here.

Some unknown sensation told me that if I opened the door, I would definitely end up with troublesome business.

“Well, I don’t have any friends besides you. So I don’t know how to treat them.”

“Friends… oh, friends…”

“Huh? What’s wrong?”

I wish they would spare me their flirting outside my door.

The clueless eunuch-like bastard seemed completely unaware of why his pink-haired childhood friend reacted as if she was upset by the mention of the word “friend.”

I wanted to open the door, rush out, and shout “Why don’t you just have sex already?” right then and there.

But the status window’s instruction to “become friends” was stopping me from acting.

Yes. All these actions are to stab them in the back at the last moment.

I slowly got up from the bed and casually stubbed out the cigarette I had in my mouth on the ashtray.

‘…I didn’t even smoke half of it.’

It was a waste, but I had no choice.

Since smoking inside the academy dormitory was prohibited, I roughly pushed the ashtray under the bed to hide it. A perfect disguise.

Dragging the rubber slippers that I normally only wore in the bathroom, I laboriously turned the doorknob and opened the entrance wide.

Ryu Seong and Hiyeon looked at my face with slightly surprised expressions.

Ryu Seong looked at me with an awkward smile, but Hiyeon openly frowned and covered her nose.

In response to their reactions, I slowly smelled the inside of my suit. I couldn’t smell anything. Typically, smokers can’t smell their own cigarette-saturated scent.

“Sorry….”

“Ah, it’s fine!”

“More importantly… why?”

“We’re friends. Since it’s the weekend, do you want to go out together?”

Becoming friends and then asking for a weekend meetup just one day later.

And bringing the childhood friend too.

Is he saying he wants to take two women to a café and study together?

I really wanted to kill this bastard right now.

“…Okay.”

Next to me, Hiyeon was glaring at me as if she wanted to kill me.

She was probably mentally revising her assessment from “the good person Ryu Seong personally mentioned” to “competing fox bitch” or something like that.

Don’t worry.

It’s true that I’m targeting Ryu Seong, but not in that way.

I just want to someday make someone happier and more perfect than me into someone similar to me.

As the status window wants.

And as I want.

What expression will the protagonist show at the last moment?

After everything precious to him, his precious story, has been ruined completely.

Heh.

I couldn’t help but laugh.