“Dun, dun, dun, dun, dun. Ta-da!”
When Stefan opened the club room door, a dazzlingly decorated interior unfolded before her eyes.
Stefan, having quickly pushed Jaelin into the club room, moved his mouth noisily.
“Welcome, welcome to our astronomy observation club, ‘The Revolution and Dynamics of Stars’! Wooow! Applause!”
At a tension several times higher than when they had first met, Jaelin felt as if she might lose her mind.
As Stefan continued to coax Jaelin into applauding, Jaelin awkwardly clapped along with him.
“Now! Jaelin. How about joining ‘The Revolution and Dynamics of Stars,’ the club where I serve as president? If you join the club, you can use not only the club room but everything here to your heart’s content!”
“D-do I really have to j-join a club?”
“Of course. Every Academy student is required to join a club. A little hobby activity to relieve academic stress is mandatory.”
After hesitating for a moment, Jaelin opened her mouth.
“Um, Stefan. Then which club is L-Lionel Senior in?”
Stefan’s face, which had been grinning broadly, changed dramatically at Jaelin’s question.
“Jaelin. Don’t tell me……. No! I absolutely won’t tell you! You’re going to join that one, aren’t you? Have you already fallen for Lionel? Am I not enough? You said I was handsome earlier too!”
Stefan clung to Jaelin like a child throwing a tantrum.
“B-but…….”
“No! Please, Jaelin. For my sake, join our club. Hmm?”
Stefan rested his chin on his hands like a flower and batted his eyes.
It was a desperate struggle. A wretched struggle that made even the onlooker feel embarrassed.
But Stefan was earnest, and he had a thick enough hide to feel nothing at such things. It was just that Jaelin’s heart grew a little heavier.
“If not you, our club will disappear. The minimum membership to keep a club is three people. We just need one more. Just one more! So pleeease.”
Stefan, now kneeling before Jaelin, rubbed his hands together with the most pitiful expression he could muster.
If Jaelin were to refuse, he looked ready to throw himself on the floor and force the matter.
‘I want to join the place Lionel Senior is in.’
But flatly refusing Stefan’s invitation felt too unfair to him, who had worked so hard for her today.
As Jaelin kept hesitating without giving a definite answer, Stefan sprang to his feet and cried out with a solemn face.
“All right! Then in exchange for joining the club, I’ll find out in advance which professor Lionel is taking the monster mock class with and tell you! How about it? How about it? Deal?”
“Th-there’s more than one mock class……?”
“Yes. The monster mock class is a course taken by multiple majors, so there are a lot of students. That’s why it’s split into four sections. Aren’t you curious which of the four Lionel is taking? If you just pick one at random, the odds of being in the same class as Lionel are only one in four! But if I tell you, it’s a whopping one hundred percent!”
Stefan spread both palms wide before Jaelin’s eyes and shook them frantically.
Jaelin’s eyes wavered violently. Stefan was certain. Jaelin had fallen for his scheme.
And at last, the permission came.
“All right. I-I’ll join.”
“Oh yeah!”
At Jaelin’s answer, Stefan pumped his fist up and pulled it down, spinning once in place.
It was a triumphant feat won by dedicating an entire day.
***
Having spent time at the Academy after a long while, Lionel could only arrive home after the sun had set.
During the semester, he lived in a mansion he had purchased within the Academy, but because the mansion that had been left empty during vacation was not yet fully cleaned, he had to come to the family’s townhouse in the center of the capital.
Lionel let out a long sigh and undid the button constricting his neck.
His head felt as if it would split.
Because Lionel always acted calculatingly when dealing with people, laying out various possible responses and choosing the best one, days when he dealt with many people left him under enormous stress.
Stress always made its presence known in ways that tormented Lionel.
Before he knew it, migraines had become a chronic illness that always followed Lionel.
Unable to bear the pain that felt as if his eyes would pop out, Lionel opened the desk drawer. He took painkillers from the medicine bottles rolling around inside the drawer and chewed and swallowed them.
He did not even bother to count how many pills they were, simply tipping whatever his hand caught into his mouth.
The medication, far exceeding the dosage recommended by a healer, traveled down Lionel’s esophagus.
Waiting for the medicine to take effect, Lionel stretched his body out on the bed.
A long while passed, but the headache did not easily subside. It seemed the medicine no longer worked properly either.
The semester would begin soon. Just thinking about suffering from headaches throughout his time at the Academy made his nerves sharpen on edge already.
He was exhausted before it had even begun.
His whole body drooped like waterlogged cotton. Lionel knew clearly what he was running toward, but sometimes he was seized by the urge to let everything go.
How much longer would he have to endure?
The headache that tormented Lionel to the point where he wanted to tear off his own head right now was dreadful.
It was when he had closed his eyes, holding his breath, wishing for the painful moment to pass quickly. A faint afterimage of what he had seen in the Academy corridor earlier that day surfaced vaguely.
Jaelin.
A childhood playmate he had shared barely a single season with at the Eduard mansion.
Jaelin had not changed. She had been like a tiny puppy when she was young, and she still was.
Her vivid peridot-green eyes were the same as well, so Lionel had recognized her at a glance.
Suddenly, memories buried beneath the surface leapt up. Fragments of a past he had forgotten completely.
Rising from the bed, Lionel rummaged through the desk drawers this way and that. What Lionel was looking for was a small box.
He clearly remembered putting a box containing miscellaneous items from his boyhood into the desk drawer.
Having opened several drawers, Lionel barely managed to find the box he wanted in one of the inner drawers.
Inside the box were a few wooden figurines young Lionel had carved, a watch his father had given him as a birthday gift, and a tattered book he had no idea why he had put in there.
And what he had been looking for was there.
The doll Jaelin had made for him.
The doll was far cruder than it had been in Lionel’s memory. It was closer to a few blocks of wood of suitable size joined together than a doll.
‘Will it still move?’
Lionel placed the doll on the desk and gently poured mana into it.
The doll creaked and rose to its feet, swinging the stick in its hand a few times. Soon a red fireball rose above the doll’s head and burst with a pop.
A faint smile formed at the corners of Lionel’s mouth.
If she had seen fireworks even once, she could never have made it like this. Much time had passed now.
‘She must have seen fireworks by now.’
As Lionel was about to put the doll back into the box, a sudden, renewed surge of pain made him drop the box to the floor.
The box fell helplessly to the floor, spilling its contents. Only after heaving several ragged breaths did the headache subside a little.
Lionel bent down and put the scattered items back into the box. Then his hand stopped dead.
Where Lionel’s hand had stopped was a very ornate and luxurious fountain pen with a green gemstone sparkling on it.
Lionel had definitely meant to give this fountain pen to Jaelin.
‘But why wasn’t I able to give it to her?’
It was so long ago that he could not remember well. The reason hovered just out of reach.
What did it matter? In the end, he had not given it to her, and it was already a thing of the past.
Cutting off his thoughts, Lionel gathered the scattered items on the floor and shoved them back into the box.
As he was about to put the box back into the drawer, Lionel changed his mind and pushed the box roughly onto the floor beside the luggage he had piled up to take to the mansion at the Academy.
The items in the box were, after all, remnants of a past that no longer held any value to Lionel. He intended to tell a servant to clear them away tomorrow.
Returning to the bed, Lionel closed his eyes.
Tonight, too, seemed destined to be a long night.
***
A week later, the Academy semester began. The first class Jaelin had to attend at the Academy was ‘The Practice and Understanding of Magical Formulas.’
It was a class where students assessed whether formulas they had only encountered in theory were feasible and applied and realized them to fit actual situations.
The first class was not very long. It consisted of a brief presentation on what would be learned over the semester and instructions on the textbooks needed for the class and supplementary materials worth studying.
After class, Stefan, having spotted Jaelin, flew toward her as if on wings.
“Jaelin, Jaelin!”
“H-hi, Stefan.”
“Hi, hi! What did you sign up for the mock class? Did you go with Professor Wallace’s? There was a rumor that Lionel is taking that class, so it was really hard to sign up. Luckily, I succeeded!”
At Stefan’s words, pouring out without pause, Jaelin’s mind went briefly dizzy.
