Why had I done it?
Even I couldn't say.
My body had simply moved, and my brain seemed to have briefly stopped functioning—leaving everything to instinct.
What I did know for certain came down to three things.
That the students in the hallway were watching us.
That Elline was beside me, holding my hand and walking along.
And that my heart was pounding like mad.
Just those three.
Climbing the stairs, the walk to the main building where she attended lectures felt impossibly long.
"…Was it real?"
"Apparently so."
Even students who'd only half-believed the rumors were left gaping the moment they saw it with their own eyes, or else too busy whispering to do much else.
Either way, it had made for excellent gossip.
I glanced sideways.
Elline was there, expression as neutral as ever, matching my stride.
…What was she thinking?
Now that I thought about it, I'd grabbed her hand without even asking.
And then there was Saturday at the dining hall, ordering food for her without checking.
In every way that counted, I was giving nothing but zero-point answers as a romantic partner.
Consideration for the other person was supposed to be the golden rule—so why did I keep making everything about myself?
*This won't do.*
"Rutess."
Her voice saying my name snapped me back.
"Hm?"
"We go up here."
"Oh."
I turned my head. A white staircase stood right in front of me.
Alpha Class specialty courses were held in separate rooms on the upper floors, so she had to go up.
"You can go now. You have class too."
Elline said it in a flat, matter-of-fact tone.
When I loosened my grip, she naturally began climbing the stairs.
What was the right thing to say at a moment like this?
*Take care. Have a good class. Good luck today.*
Plenty of words came to mind, but I couldn't decide which to reach for.
It should have been the most ordinary exchange in the world—yet for some reason, saying anything at all felt difficult in front of Elline.
Why was that?
But time doesn't wait.
Regardless of my deliberating, she was slowly moving further away.
Turning around and leaving without a word felt too cold.
Calling something out felt hollow when nothing came to mind.
So I settled on what I always said to friends.
Nothing too heavy.
"See you later."
A promise of *later*.
Then I turned to go.
*Good. Natural. No pressure.*
Maybe that hadn't been such a bad answer after all.
"When."
I stopped walking.
I turned around. Elline had one hand on the stair railing, her body turned to face me.
"Sorry?"
"When are we seeing each other?"
…
Right.
Usually when someone says *see you later*, the other person just says *yeah, sure* or *you too*—that's how it goes. I suppose I'd expected the same.
Her question caught me off guard.
"Uh…"
Elline stood motionless on the stairs, watching me, waiting for an answer as though she had no intention of moving until she got one.
*When…?*
Right, it was a weekday now—we'd have a hard time meeting for a while.
I had my own schedule, but she was almost certainly busier than I was.
If there was any window of time… today was probably the best option.
"What time does your lecture end?"
"Seven."
Seven in the evening.
Late, certainly—but the academy dining hall ran until nine, so…
Should I suggest dinner together?
No, I'd figure that out when the time came.
"Then let's meet today at seven."
"Today?"
"Yeah. I'll wander around and come back here when you're finishing up."
My class ended at five, which left about two hours—I figured I could just plant myself in the library.
"…"
She studied me quietly.
*Did I say something wrong?*
I noticed the faintest narrowing between her brows.
As always, so subtle it was barely visible—but did it mean she was displeased?
"Alright."
But she only said that one word and nothing more, then turned and climbed the stairs.
…
Only after she disappeared did my thoughts begin to settle.
We'd barely been talking for a few days, and yet… I was starting to see a pattern in the way Elline conversed, if I could call it that.
Never leave an ambiguous answer.
Always give a definite one.
*I'll have to be careful.*
Even offhand remarks—I'd need to watch those too.
My heart was still beating fast, but perhaps because I was slowly accumulating experience, it was beginning to calm, little by little.
Or maybe it was simply because Elline was gone.
I couldn't say which.
The warning bell for class starting soon was the only thing that cleared my head.
It wasn't until she had fully disappeared that I finally turned and walked down the corridor.
* * *
Sunlight settled over the white lecture room.
The Alpha Class classroom was smaller and more modest than its reputation might suggest, but the equipment and instruments inside were in a different league from Beta Class entirely.
And unlike Beta Class—always loud, always buzzing—Alpha Class was a gathering of the talents who would one day lead the empire.
The atmosphere was orderly and composed, conducive to serious study.
Even those who spoke did so quietly, in low murmurs, or were already preparing for the lesson ahead.
Of course, even here students had things to talk about—it was still a place where young people studied.
And right now, more than a few of them had their eyes on one girl.
Elline Pailless.
Alongside Sereen Rugvida and Tirion Altaran, she was one of the three most closely watched students of this cohort.
And unlike those two, who were famous for their extraordinary eccentricities, Elline drew attention for a different reason entirely—the air of quiet coldness she carried around her.
The reason they were watching her now was simple.
Rumors had spread that this very Elline was in a relationship with a student from Beta Class.
The academy valued personal freedom and placed no ban on romance—but since relationships inevitably affected academic performance, a culture of avoiding them had taken hold in Alpha Class.
So when word got out that Elline, of all people, had taken a partner, it was only natural that curiosity followed.
*Elline, of all people.*
Who was this person? Where did he come from? What could possibly make him worthy of dating Elline?
And what on earth was Elline thinking?
These were questions anyone would ask.
If anything, the Alpha Class students who had watched her up close for years found themselves even more curious than most.
By now, Elline seemed accustomed to those looks. She paid them no mind and simply read her book.
*Advanced Magic: Application and Practice in the Field*—a text dense with incantations and formulas that would make most people groan—she read through it steadily, copying passages with one hand as she went.
…
Tap.
Her pen stopped.
Not because she'd hit a difficult passage.
Even the harder sections were manageable with a bit of applied thinking and variable substitution—nothing she couldn't work through.
Tap. Tap.
She quietly tapped the quill against the page.
*Seven o'clock.*
Elline sat by the window, and whenever she turned her head, the full view of the academy spread out before her. Even with thorough soundproofing, there was no blocking the windows entirely—that much was unavoidable.
She had always chosen a window seat, and so it had become natural to glance outside once or twice.
To watch the clear sky. To watch the sun sink into the evening glow.
It was something she did to clear her head.
And after two years of doing it, she had come to know one thing without ever meaning to: Beta Class ended at five, when the sun was setting.
The students pouring out in a rush were always mixed into the view whenever she turned to look at the evening sky—so she'd learned it whether she'd wanted to or not.
Tap. Tap.
*I'll wait.*
Two hours.
Two hours of waiting after his class ended.
…
Elline closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them. She picked up the quill again and began writing out the formula.
Tap.
She stopped again.
"…"
She should have told him to go ahead and eat dinner without her. She hadn't.
When he said he'd wait, she had known—known that he would be waiting two full hours after his class ended—and she had said nothing.
She knew it was selfish. She knew it was the wrong choice.
She had done it anyway.
Because she wanted to eat together.
The quill was pressing into the paper, and the ink had begun to bleed and spread—but Elline didn't notice.
* * *
It bothered me enormously.
*Why did Elline make that expression?*
The thought had hit me the moment I walked into the lecture room.
At first I'd brushed it off, told myself it was nothing—
But thinking back, hadn't I gone and set the plans on my own terms again?
Hmm…
*Alright.*
I was certain of one thing.
I was someone with absolutely no natural talent for romance.
People say you learn by making mistakes, that getting it wrong is part of the process—
But even accounting for that, the things I kept doing were strange enough to make me feel genuinely ashamed of myself.
"So when facing monsters, the basic formation would be…"
The professor knocked on the board and continued the lecture, but the worry had lodged itself in a corner of my mind and refused to leave. I couldn't focus.
Well—honestly, would I have been focusing much even without the worry?
How had it come to this?
It had started as a forfeit.
The fact that she'd accepted my confession still didn't feel real. The fact that we'd gone on a date Saturday felt even less believable.
*Should I tell her now that it started as a forfeit?*
I had fully expected Elline to turn me down.
Because that was the obvious outcome.
But she hadn't.
My feelings toward Elline hadn't been anything complicated, really.
She was beautiful and remarkable, and I'd assumed she was simply someone whose world would never intersect with mine.
We'd crossed paths briefly in first year, but after that we'd never exchanged a word.
So even I found myself confused.
But I couldn't keep carrying this confusion around.
Everything needed to be made clear.
First—how did I actually feel about Elline…
"Rutess."
"Yes?"
"You look so deep in thought. I suppose that means you're finding the lecture fascinating?"
Ah.
I'd been too far inside my own head—and of all people, the professor had noticed. Whether he'd genuinely mistaken me for an attentive student, I couldn't say, but he pointed straight at me and rapped the board.
"Care to answer? What magic would you use in this situation?"
I looked quickly at the board.
A narrow, straight corridor was drawn on it, with markers labeled *lower-rank monsters* lined up in a row.
It seemed to be a scenario involving a monster encounter.
"Uh…"
I hesitated for a moment, then pushed back my chair and stood.
*Think. Think.*
"Holy Light, sir."
Holy Light. One of the support-branch spells—a magic that detonated radiant energy using sacred power.
"Your reasoning?"
"A narrow corridor where lower-rank monsters appear simultaneously can only be a cave or a sewer."
The professor nodded.
"So you position your allies behind you with the light at their backs, then cast Holy Light to use it like a flash grenade."
While simultaneously giving your allies a clear line of sight.
The professor smiled, the corners of his eyes curving with what looked like approval, and clapped.
"Eight points. A satisfying answer."
A short ripple of impressed sounds from the students.
"We have about twenty minutes left—but I doubt anyone wants more lecture, do they?"
At the playful remark, the students nodded in unison.
"Right, it's Monday, so we'll end here. The assignment is due next week—don't forget."
Before he'd even finished speaking, the students were already rising from their seats as if they'd been waiting for exactly this moment.
On the way out, no one threw comments at me as openly as they had in the morning—but plenty of them glanced at my face as they passed.
Rumors travel fast.
Someone seemed to be trying to say something to me, but I cleanly ignored it and got up.
I must have walked the empty academy corridors for about two hours.
The evening light slanting through the windows had deepened, and the shadows cast by the window frames had grown long and dark. I was sunk in thought as thoroughly as any philosopher contemplating the origins of the universe.
When I checked the time, it was already past seven—she would be coming soon—but my thoughts still hadn't sorted themselves out.
The subject, no matter how I approached it, was the same.
How did I feel about Elline?
I couldn't keep stumbling around like this.
I needed to settle my feelings, clearly and honestly.
It had started as a forfeit.
And she had accepted.
Something in my chest kept aching, and I pressed a hand against it.
"Hff."
…
…Right. What was the point of tormenting myself like this?
This wasn't the time to be agonizing. What Elline does is Elline's business.
So I just… I just had to do things my way.
My way.
I slapped both cheeks.
If I let myself get tangled up in feelings like this, I'd only make another mistake in front of her—
So I cleared my head and told myself to think calmly.
I could do this.
Tap tap tap tap.
The moment my brooding ended, rapid footsteps came from the far end of the corridor and my head turned on its own.
Elline came into view.
She was breathing in small, quick gasps, a faint sheen of sweat on her skin,
and her eyes, when they met mine, held something restless in them.
"…Were you waiting?"
Her voice was plain and direct—but underneath it, I could hear the faintest tremor.
She was adorable.
I wasn't sure what to say,
so instead of answering, I took her hand.
"I'm starving."
Naturally,
naturally,
"Let's go eat, Elline."
I said it with a smile.
