Several months had passed since she enrolled at the academy without incident.
"U-um, hi, Elline?"
A girl approached cautiously with her friends and spoke to her.
*Again...*
A conversation she'd grown used to by now—she'd lost count of how many times it had happened.
"What."
"…I don't understand this problem. Could you help me?"
The girl held out her work timidly, and Elline glanced over at it.
She stared for a moment, then scribbled a few marks without a word and turned back to her own book.
"The formula at the top is wrong."
"Oh… I see. Thank you!"
The girl expressed her gratitude and lingered, watching Elline, but she had already returned to her reading.
Many students had tried to strike up conversations with Elline this way, and the result was always the same.
Indifference.
In the end, the girl gave a half-dejected smile and spoke up hesitantly.
"I'll… be going, then?"
"Okay."
Elline answered without looking up.
Having never made a friend in her life, she couldn't help treating even those who approached her with goodwill as though they weren't there.
Just like this girl, many students had come to her at the start of the semester hoping to get close, but Elline had ignored every outstretched hand.
She had no need for friends.
Or perhaps, having never made any since childhood, she had simply grown to not value their existence at all.
One by one, those reaching hands disappeared, until no one gathered around her anymore.
A frightening person.
That was the image Elline had acquired.
She didn't mind.
No—she had no time to mind.
"Miss Elline, this is an official document sent down from the Mage Tower. Would you take a look?"
"Yes."
"You did exceptionally well on the exam. The Headmistress has called you in for a meeting."
"Understood."
Proving the standing of her family.
Showing the world what House Pailless was.
That was the entirety of her life.
Her father, her grandfather, and her brothers—all of her blood—had been the same.
She thought it only natural that she should be, too.
The path was already set.
Walking was her only solace.
In quiet places, she could hear the beating of her own heart, and if she closed her eyes and stayed still, she felt as though she had merged with nature itself.
She loved breathing in the scent of earth, feeling the soft wind, and sensing the sunlight on her skin—the simple proof that she was alive.
*…*
She always spent her weekends walking alone, and on the days she didn't, she studied.
That was Elline's routine. That was her life.
Time passed without incident.
Summer arrived—blazing heat and the relentless shriek of cicadas.
And then something happened.
"The trolls have escaped!"
Beneath the scorching sun, someone's sudden cry sent the academy spiraling into chaos.
The trolls—mid-rank monsters kept for practical training—had somehow broken free of their enclosures, whether through negligence or something else, and were rampaging through the grounds.
They were less dangerous than trolls encountered in the wild, but monsters were monsters, and the academy issued an emergency evacuation order and cancelled all classes.
Elline had been in the middle of a lecture when the urgent command came; she set down the old tome she'd been reading and joined the evacuation.
"Follow your assigned instructor to your designated shelter!"
The academy's directives rang out in sharp, coordinated succession.
The alarm—a sound she had never heard before—mingled with the commotion of students and the heavy footfalls of safety personnel echoing through the corridors.
The academy shelter.
A place she had only heard mentioned in passing during the campus orientation in her first week.
*That place was built during a great war long ago…*
Not long after Irasion Academy was first established, a massive civil war had broken out across the empire, and the second Headmistress of that era had installed shelters throughout the academy to protect the students.
Of course, she had been told that after that time, the shelters had almost never been used again—kept now only as a memorial to that period—but no one could have known they would be needed again like this.
*…*
It wasn't particularly important to Elline.
She was already mentally rearranging her schedule, revising her plans as she walked.
The academy had more than enough capability to resolve this quickly.
"Students, this way!"
She stopped.
Before her was a rust-eaten staircase leading downward, and the smell of old iron weathered by years hit the tip of her nose.
*Thump.*
It wasn't the same place—she knew that—and yet the smell and the structure were so uncannily alike that her skin prickled.
*Thump. Thump.*
Narrow, dark, damp. The kind of place she hated most.
A memory from the past.
*Go inside. Think about what you did wrong.*
Her father's stern voice—not here, not present—echoed through her mind like a reverberation in a hollow chamber, and her heart began to race.
The instructor leading the group grew flustered at Elline's sudden halt and urged her to move, but her feet would not lift.
"Hurry up! The students behind you are waiting!"
"…"
Under the relentless pressure, she had no choice but to take one step, then another, down into the dark.
She forced each foot forward, moving carefully, trying to quiet her mind.
*It's in the past. This isn't that place. I didn't do anything wrong.*
Even so—
She couldn't stop her body from trembling.
She managed to descend the stairs, and at the bottom, pitch-black darkness swallowed her vision. Only a small red mana-stone lamp cast its dim light through the shelter.
"I'm scared…"
"It'll be okay…"
"Ugh…"
Inside the shelter, she could hear the quiet sobbing of the students who had come in with her, and the sound dragged her childhood memories to the surface.
The place she had been sent to as a child whenever she made a mistake, whenever she failed to meet expectations.
*I'm sorry, Father.*
The solitary room in the Pailless estate.
*…Please let me out.*
Dark. A place where the only sound had been her own weeping.
*I'm scared.*
The trembling wouldn't stop.
Her hands grew damp with sweat, and the sound of her own heartbeat pounded up through her skull.
She stumbled to a corner and found a spot to sit.
"…I didn't do anything wrong."
She murmured it into the air, turning her hands over and over in her lap.
As the frightened murmuring of the other students began to drift around her ears,
she instinctively curled inward, bowing her head low.
Elline's reason slipped into the abyss far too easily.
*What did I do wrong?*
Why had she come to a place like this?
What had she done?
Her body began to tremble faintly.
She could only squeeze her eyes shut and pray for it to be over soon.
Even as time passed, even knowing this wasn't that place, the fear that had been branded into her instincts was not something she could simply control.
*…Just let it end.*
The door opened again. More students arrived from another direction, and the urgent voices of instructors filled the space. She curled tighter, drawing herself smaller.
*Thud.*
Someone bumped into her, and she flinched upright on instinct.
"…!"
"Oh, sorry. Couldn't see."
The voice that came from the darkness was calm, with a note of genuine apology.
"Hey, move over a bit. There's no room."
"There are people here too—stop pushing, Ross."
Students' voices.
The shelter was small and cramped; bumping into each other was unavoidable.
But.
*…*
The voice was familiar.
"Sorry, excuse me for a moment."
The boy settled in right beside her, sitting down as though he'd found his spot.
Then he let out a quiet breath and began talking softly with the friend beside him.
"What's with the trolls all of a sudden?"
"No idea. At least we get out of class, right?"
"…Fair enough."
Ordinary conversation.
Wasn't he afraid?
The calm, unremarkable exchange seemed to say something without saying it at all.
*This is nothing.*
"Weren't you supposed to meet that guy today… Balrod?"
"Yeah. Apparently he's from the east—sounds like a character."
Under any other circumstances, she wouldn't have cared. She wouldn't have even registered it. But for some reason, Elline found herself listening to every word.
Fear was contagious through atmosphere, and their conversation felt like it was diluting hers.
"Hey. Are you okay?"
The voice that had been drifting through the dark turned toward her.
Caught off guard by the sudden question, Elline froze, unable to find an answer.
"You were shaking pretty badly. Try taking a deep breath—it'll help."
It was the most ordinary thing to say.
Breathe deeply, and you'll feel a little better. Simple advice.
Too simple, really—but in the grip of fear, it was something she hadn't been able to think of herself.
*…*
As though she had just barely recovered her reason, Elline slowly followed his words and breathed in.
A few seconds passed.
Her heart, which had been hammering wildly, and her lungs, tight with near-hyperventilation, began to settle.
Her father's voice, echoing through her mind, started to fade.
And in its place, the quiet voice of a boy having an ordinary conversation took root.
She had heard it before.
She couldn't remember where.
But… it was unmistakably familiar.
"Hey, Rutess."
"What?"
"It's so dark in here—do you have anything?"
Open flames were prohibited in the shelter, so matches and lamps were restricted.
Only the eerie red glow of the mana-stone at the entrance lit the space.
"Hmm… we're not supposed to use magic either."
"Just for a second. My cord got tangled."
The boy beside her thought for a moment, then murmured something under his breath.
"Just for a moment, then."
*Fwoom—!*
*…!*
Light bloomed in the darkness.
*…Holy Light.*
Magic that converted mana into light.
"What is that…?"
"It got brighter."
The students, startled to see light appear in the dark, naturally turned their eyes toward it.
"Is this enough?"
Elline remembered that voice.
No—she recognized it now.
With a half-disbelieving feeling, she looked at the boy illuminated by the wavering light.
"…"
It was the boy she had met at the entrance exam.
"That works. Give me just a second."
His friend—a blond-haired boy—bowed his head and began tying his cord, while the light flickered and swayed, burning unsteadily.
The boy's magic was bright and warm.
"…"
Elline didn't look away. She watched the light, and the profile of the boy holding it.
"Hey."
"Yeah?"
Perhaps she had been staring too long—Ross seemed to notice Elline and gave Rutess a quiet nudge.
He turned his head, and his eyes met hers.
"…Oh."
They were very close.
"Um… sorry, is it too bright?"
Rutess's eyes darted back and forth, visibly flustered.
The ease he'd carried until a moment ago was gone, and Elline found herself wanting to speak first.
*You passed too.*
She was about to open her mouth—
"Hey… Elline, right? Are you okay?"
*Oh.*
Elline understood.
The first time they'd met, she had been wearing a mask. Her hair had been covered.
Of course he didn't recognize her. It was only natural.
From his perspective, this was their first meeting.
Elline, feeling the warmth and soft light beside her, gave a small shake of her head.
"…I'm fine."
"O-okay."
Rutess quietly looked away, as though meeting her eyes was too much.
"Hey, you there! No magic!"
A professor who had just entered shouted, and Rutess let the spell go. Darkness swallowed them again.
But Elline no longer trembled.
The warm presence beside her,
"I wonder what's for lunch today."
His easy, unhurried voice kept reaching her ears, and her fear had long since disappeared.
*…Rutess.*
In their second meeting, she felt that warmth again.
Shortly after, the trolls were subdued, and the students sheltering inside returned to their usual places.
The troll escape, resolved as a minor incident, left many students with stories to tell—and left a small ripple in Elline as well.
After that, whenever she passed him in the corridor, she would look.
*…*
He still startled slightly when he saw her and stepped aside like any other student, but that didn't matter to her.
When had it started?
Elline found herself wanting to speak with him again.
She wanted to understand that warmth.
Perhaps it had been an illusion—something conjured by encountering him at the height of her fear.
But if it wasn't, then what was this feeling?
In just two brief meetings, Rutess had taken root in her heart more deeply than any other student at the academy.
*I want to talk to him.*
But how would she even start?
She didn't know how. She had almost never been the one to speak first.
And on top of that, they were in different classes, different disciplines, different academic standings—the circumstances for such a conversation simply never arose.
Time passed, indifferent to the feelings she kept to herself.
And then winter came.
The season when life seemed to extinguish itself in the mountains, leaving only bare branches behind.
The season when snow piled softly over the academy, blanketing everything in white.
Elline encountered Rutess once more.