CH 88

Hylli, murderous expression still on his face, didn’t hold his sword for long. He soon headed out of the hall. He was so overwhelmed with his own emotions that he couldn’t see the two of us sitting in the corner.

I stared at Hylli’s stiff shoulders from behind him before speaking.

“……..one sec.”

“……?”

“Do you know what’s been happening with Hylli recently?”

It wasn’t that great of a feeling to have to scoop for information like this, but I was worried for Hylli. He was a friend who was like a younger brother. I couldn’t just stop caring about him as if he was a stranger.

“…..I think I might know something.”

Swanhaden kept his silence for a while before responding with a surprising reply.

“Do you want to know?”

At Swan’s question and his curious gaze my way, I thought about it for a long time before nodding. Then, I belatedly shook my head. I wanted to listen to what was going on from Hylli’s mouth. But I shook my head too late. Swanhaden began speaking first.

“He’s constipated.”

Swanhaden said it with such sincerity that I nodded in agreement and went, “Just as I thought.” without a thought. Hold on. What?

Swanhaden continued to speak. His expression didn’t even change once.

“And I’m pretty sure that he left the training hall to go to the restroom right now.”

Swan had summarized the entire scene just now as Hylli being constipated. And for Hylli to have stormed out earlier to go to the restroom?

“Swan. Give me my sincerity back.”

“You saw it, right? Didn’t he look rushed?”

He did look rushed. His hurried footsteps, his tired expression, his angry expressions, his sad face. Hylli, was it….. You! Hylli!

‘………there’s no way that’s true.’

I wondered if Hylli’s situation was something that he couldn’t tell me, so I decided not to pry further. I was originally planning on asking him in the first place. But why did he joke around with such a serious tone? His tone was so sincere that I almost believed him.

Swanhaden just stood up and stared at me. His eyes were such an interesting shade that I couldn’t help but stare back. His jewel eyes that seemed to shift in color at every angle seemed to have an interesting mix of blue and purple. I thought I could also see some gold. After a long staring match, Swanhaden turned around and headed to his bag of belongings.

He put his arm into his bag and seemed to rummage for something before taking out a sandwich. It seemed like he brought it for himself to eat, but Swanhaden walked towards me and threw the sandwich towards me.

“You should take care of yourself first.”

Don’t skip meals. He grabbed at the wooden sword he had dropped onto the floor.

“Didn’t you bring it for yourself to eat? I’m not hungry.”

I just looked at the ham sandwich that was wrapped in thin paper and threw the sandwich back at him. He caught it with one hand, then stared back at me again. He couldn’t even look at me before, but now he just looked straight at me. But his gazes lasted a bit too long to be comfortable. Almost as if he was looking for a fight.

Swan just continued to stare before drawing a small magic circle.

[Appetit Austmeal]

With a brief activation chant, white magic spread from his hand and shrouded my entire body.

He activated some kind of magic that I had never heard of before. White magic wasn’t a specialty of mine, so I didn’t know what he had just cast. I was kind of nervous. I wasn’t trying to figure it out, but I soon learned what it was meant to do.

–Growl.

My stomach twisted in emptiness. My intestines seemed to inhale and exhale as it commanded for food. My pupils grew smaller as I began yearning for food. I licked my lips and looked left and right for any kind of food.

White magic had some interesting spells. They had that relaxation spell from before and now it was hunger-related. I scowled and looked towards Swanhaden. He tilted his head.

“Nutrients are important. Here.”

Swanhaden handed me the sandwich from earlier. It just looked like a piece of bread earlier, but now it felt like it was a wonder of the world that was laid for a king to feat on. The juicy piece of ham couldn’t look more tempting.

I ended up accepting his sandwich.

I was slightly uncomfortable at how Swan continued to stare as I chomped on the sandwich. Was he enjoying watching me look so bad? Whatever. The sandwich was delicious.

“Do you want more?”

Munch munch munch. I couldn’t respond because I was too busy eating.

“I’ll bring more.”

Swanhaden briefly disappeared and returned, holding an incredibly large tray. On top of it were tons of sandwiches, all of different varieties. Swanhaden put the tray down in front of me and watched me eat.

Even as the sandwiches kept going down my throat, I couldn’t help but think of Hylli from earlier.

That afternoon, Hylli left school early for the first time ever.

I asked him where he went, but he just scratched his cheek without telling me.

The green class was especially loud today. All of the students were gathered around one person. It was no other than Hylli.

Hylli’s black hair was now a light brown color.

“Sir Hylli, why did you dye your hair?”

“Wow! Black hair suited you well, but it looks like any color looks good on you!”

Hylli suddenly dyed his hair a light brown. I wondered what was going on and couldn’t figure it out. Hylli seemed unused to his light brown hair. He touched the tips of his hair as he smiled awkwardly at the students’ response.

There were a lot of reasons to why people changed.

And it usually didn’t happen after just blankly staring into the air. Usually, what changed people were hurts or surprises that were enough to shake your entire foundation.

It was the same for me. In my last life, I was a dense, relaxed person. But after my parents’ accidents, I couldn’t help but become tougher. It was the same in my life too. When I was younger I was just an immature, snotty kid, but after the huge shock that was my past life, I changed.

I was thinking that the reason why Hylli was changing externally and internally was the same as me–a huge shock. He who had never cared about appearances suddenly dyed his hair, and he pushed down his anger and ignored it when he was always ready to tell the world how angry he was. When Hylli was angry, he said that he was angry and scowled angrily to show it. He didn’t just push his anger back until he couldn’t hold back.

After our afternoon classes, I ate with Hylli and stared at his face. Hylli had his chin on his hand and just poked his salad with his fork before he stared back at me after noticing my stare.

“W, what. Is there something on my face?”

Hylli smiled awkwardly as he shoved some salad and meat in his mouth.

“Why did you suddenly dye your hair?”

“Just, um…. A change of pace?”

I looked at Hylli, who put down his fork to touch his light brown hair.

“I have a question.”

I put some sliced cheese and apricot marmalade on my baguette and stole some of Hylli’s salad to add onto my sandwich.

“Ask away.”

“I heard that you go straight to the palace without using the dorms recently.”

“Ah. Cory told you?”

I nodded and asked Hylli why he wasn’t using the dorms and was heading straight to the palace. This was something you could ask as a friend, right? I was careful about asking it because I didn’t want to say something wrong and hurt Hylli’s feelings.

“…..I have something to ask you.”

Hylli didn’t answer my question and instead asked me one instead. Seeing how he avoided answering my question made me think that this was a very serious situation. I told Hylli to ask away. At that, he frowned.

“That…..”

“Uh-huh.”

“……….”

“……..?”

“……never mind.”

Excuse me, sir. What am I supposed to do if you cut the conversation off just like that?

Now that he brought up something, there was no turning back. You thought I was going to, what, give up on asking you about your change now that we finally got to the subject?

I glared at him and told him to just ask because I wanted to know. Hylli didn’t respond and just apologized.

“I feel like I’d just keep thinking of it if I ask.”

He held his forehead and muttered bitterly. I put down the fork I was threatening him with and pulled my hands away.

“I want to forget about it while I’m in the academy at least. I don’t want to ruin this time we have right now.”

Hylli said, voice deceptively light as he wiped his face on his hand. He didn’t even get a lot of food in the first place, but his food tray was still almost full.

He walked back after taking care of his leftovers and sat back down next to me and waited for me to finish eating. Hylli fell asleep as he waited for me to finish my meal.

I hurriedly finished eating and stared at Hylli’s asleep figure for a long time. He was sleeping in a hunched position. His huge stature suddenly seemed a bit small.

Hylli, who had laughed and tried to act like normal in the beginning of the semester, grew colder as time passed. He didn’t joke around now, and when I tried to speak to him first, his responses were short.

Here was an example using yesterday’s conversation.

‘You’re going to music theory next, right?”

Nod.

‘Isn’t music theory difficult? That subject is really cutting into my grades recently.’

‘Is that so.’

‘Today’s weather is pretty nice, right?’

Nod.

That was the gist of it. The air surrounding him was tenser than before too. It looked like he was trying to tamp it down as much as he could around me, but he couldn’t hide the murderous aura completely. His emotions felt like a time bomb that was soon to explode at any moment.

But he wasn’t doing that just to me, but others as well. He was worse towards others, to be honest. I was having a hard time looking at Hylli’s eyes. His red eyes seemed dangerous, as if they were filled with blood. I couldn’t see the former Hylli, who was innocent and like a baby deer.

I felt like he was going to lose sight of himself at any moment, so I kept trying to talk to him. I told him about my everyday life, about Hestia’s life, and made sure to give him delicious food.

After seeing him change by the day, I couldn’t help but try to dig and find some more information about what was going on behind his back but nothing really helped. It was almost annoying, how much of my energy and thoughts went into him right now.

The only thing that I learned was what was already known to the public.

After the first emperor killed the dragon, he received his powers by stabbing the dragon’s heart. The royal family continued to marry into their own family to keep that power within themselves.

And that the only people in the empire that could use white magic were members of the Blanche family, and that only royals could use black magic. That was all I could find after collecting all of the information that I could.