Episode 69. Midterm (11)

The roof of the agoge, where no one was there except Yujin and Yuri, was covered with sleet and the floor was muddy.

Yuri looked up at the heartless sky without expression. A howling wind howled, and the occasional thunder fell, shaking the spirits of the dying.

Even as the chill seeped into his bones, Yuri’s forehead burned hot. Perhaps Eugene is the same.

Eugene’s fresh blood oozing from the wound on his wrist, which he had cut several times, was black, as if it contained poison.

As Eugene’s black ribbon glowed red, all the blood she had spilled spread everywhere.

While barely standing still, Yuri read the mana flowing around Eugene and raised his sword.

Eugene met Yuri’s eyes and was disgusted. Even though the whole body is full of wounds, there is not a single poison, the eyes that I see for the first time in my life.

Distorted by the black haze, Eugene fired at Yuri.

“Are you kidding me now? I’m here to kill you. Know? Like the last time, I’m going to attack you ignorantly!”

“Eugene, who gave you that hairpin?”

“Ha, are you curious about that now?”

“I don’t know who it is, but don’t listen to him. Do you really think I gave it to you? I’m just playing with you.”

“… I know that. The only fool in the student council who doesn’t know that is Holden.”

“Then why-”

“It’s because of you!!”

The rain and snow that had been trampled on the floor froze and began to rise sharply. Yuri silently looked at Eugene, who was trembling in the middle of a field of cold thorns.

“If it wasn’t for you, my school life wouldn’t have been ruined this far!”

Yuri, who was pushed to the limit and her body was dull, blocked the thorns with Miseric Code instead of avoiding them.

The magic was canceled, but an explosion occurred due to the recoil, and ice fragments splashed all over the body.

He was able to avoid fatal injuries by wrapping the wind around his body with free magic, but blood flowed from his cheeks and limbs that had been grazed by shrapnel.

Yuri asked while holding onto his trembling arm from the impact of the sword and ice colliding.

“… Eugene, do you really think it’s my fault? You bullied Jun first, and then you started a fight with me.”

“You call that a question? After losing to you, I lost all my friends. at least you… . There are some kids who are less well off by your side. is not it?”

“If it was a relationship that would end because of that, then you and them weren’t friends from the start.”

“… You always put me down the abyss.”

Eugene eventually poured out the emotions he had been suppressing.

“Yes, neither Filetta unnie nor the class A kids came close to me because they liked me. Everyone around me was like that. I know!”

“… Knowing that, do you want to be friends with people like that?”

“Then who the hell would love me? If I’m not the chief, what’s left for me? If you put that down, I, I just… !”

Eugene was a child who had no reason to be loved by herself.

He was not from a family with high authority, and his personality was very sensitive, so it was tiring to adjust.

In particular, the absence of her father was a very embarrassing scar and weakness for her.

Because he knew this all too well, Eugene was obsessed with external factors, especially grades.

It is also an extension of that that he recognized the talents of Jun and Yuri faster than anyone else and bullied them out of jealousy.

I couldn’t help it. If he was pushed out of competition with someone and had to give up the senior position, at that moment, Eugene would be abandoned by everyone.

And.

Tragically, Eugene’s intuition came true. After she actually lost to Yuri, there was no one by her side.

“… Do you know how I feel?”

“know.”

As Yuri smiled bitterly and raised her arms, Yujin held her breath.

“you you… .”

“Are you too skinny? I want to eat a lot too, but it doesn’t work. I guess it’s because I starved myself since I was little.”

Uri’s white left arm had unsightly lines dug into it. Yuri said calmly to Eugene, who involuntarily looked away.

“The scars left on my arms were difficult to erase. This was the first time I was beaten with a whip.”

“You can’t… ?”

“I also had no reason to be loved by anyone. I was a slave.”

Yujin looked at Yuri with a blank face.

* * *

Shortly after being picked up by Master, Yuri was very ashamed of her thin body and short stature.

Because malnutrition was the evidence of the vivid hunger that he had to suffer because he was a slave.

Now, under Master’s care, he has improved a lot, but Yuri at that time was really skin-to-bone. There were also traces of various abuses that tore open the skin through which the veins were visible.

On the day when he tried to force himself to eat something and then repeatedly vomited it up, Yuri looked down at her arm with empty eyes and said to Master,

‘I can never escape the fact that I was a slave.’

‘… glass.’

‘Look at my arm, it’s too ugly for Master to see. Doesn’t that look like a tree branch? I will be like this until I die.’

‘Yuri, as you said, the wounds of the past may haunt you for the rest of your life. You may not grow taller here, and your body shape may not change. Maybe your scars will settle down like this. but… .’

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Just as flowers that bloom in spring do not know the winter that tree branches have endured, Master said that human beings can be happy even when they have a painful past.

I closed my eyes saying that I loved everything, and the hand that brushed my forehead.

That pleasant darkness, the warmth that draws a trajectory like a comet.

After that night, Yuri did not force herself to swallow food, and as stability came to her heart, the weight she had not gained even after eating like that gradually gained up.

It was so difficult to love myself as I am, but I was able to receive someone’s love and at least not hate myself.

“Isn’t it too much love for a slave to receive? Unconditional, overflowing… . At first, I wasn’t used to it, so I apologized for a long time even if I made a small mistake. Even so, Master always took care of me until I opened my heart.”

With the speechless Eugene in front of him, Yuri remembered why he was learning magic at this school.

‘When I first decided to learn magic, I just wanted to be like Master.’

The reason why Yuri learned swords and magic from his master, in retrospect, was simple admiration.

An adventurer who wanders the world, slicing enemies with a sword and setting the skies ablaze with magic.

For Yuri, just meeting her master made her heart race, so Yuri learned magic to catch up with her.

‘but… . I can never be like Master. I’m a human, and he’s a dragon.’

It was obvious that no one would believe it, so it was Master’s secret that he hadn’t told anyone yet.

It would be difficult for a human, Yuri, to have the same power as her.

‘Really, that’s not what I should look like.’

Yuri now goes beyond her yearning for her master and decides to learn magic and pick up a sword in order to share the warmth she has given him.

‘As Professor Ian said, so that I can be proud when I meet Master someday. Until the day I proudly tell you that I have lived my life practicing the love that embraced me.’

What Yuri wanted to be like Master was not his strength as an adventurer or wizard, but his bright smile when he willingly extended his hand to the weak with no reason to help.

Recalling the first hug that he will never forget, Yuri said to Eugene.

“I have already been overflowing with love from him, so now I have to share that heart with people like me in the past.”

“Hey… .”

“If there is really no reason for anyone to like you, then I will.”

Yuri smiled softly at Eugene and slowly approached him. Under the dark gray sky, Yuri touched Eugene while still soaking wet.

“I know your heart better than anyone.”

Yuri carefully unwrapped Eugene’s black ribbon and dropped it on the floor. Eugene’s eyelids trembled as he closed his eyes.

Yuri gently brushed Eugene’s forehead, just as Master had done, and put a rabbit hairpin instead of a ribbon.

“Let’s apologize to Jun and Karin first. And we go to school together.”

“You, even if you think so, will they forgive me… ?”

“I can still turn it around. If you drop everything and approach them, they will know your sincerity.”

The moment the black haze dissipated and the fluorescent color dyed the two of them.

“Yuri, get away from Eugene first!”

“… Professor Ian?”

“Damn, am I late… !”

The poisonous snake coiled inside Eugene raised its head.

* * *

The blood that gushed out was not black. It was an amazingly bright red color.

Yujin stared blankly at the hole in her wrist. I thought I could hear someone laughing.

“… uh?”

A viper without eyes. As soon as his hideous head pierced his wrist, most of the mana in Eugene’s body came out as well.

“ah-“

“Yuri, wake up!”

While Yuri failed to judge the situation for a moment, the poisonous snake opened its mouth at her, and Ian quickly froze its snout.

Not knowing how things were going, Yuri reflexively swung her sword at the poisonous snake.

The Miseric Code is a sacred relic that has the power to dissipate love. That power is definitely a threat to monsters with 1 water pressure.

however… . The powerless swordsman cut through the air helplessly.

Ian pulled back Yuri, who was staring blankly at the missed sword.

“Keep your distance from him. Since it abandoned its host and crawled out, it will try to burrow into your body or mine.”

“Then what about Eugene? Yeah?”

The poisonous snake wrapped itself around Eugene’s body and ate the blood and mana pouring from his wrist.

Even as she fell, she was looking at the glass. The first friend I almost made at school.

“The drowned body, like this until the end… !”

“professor-“

“Yes, Eugene’s life would be in danger if he waited until the venomous snake suffocated from lack of mana. I will be parasitized by a poisonous snake, so you move Eugene to the infirmary.”

“Yeah?”

“Yuri, keep your mind straight. The only person who can help Eugene here is you.”

The name Lee was shining on Professor Ian’s wrist.

true teacher. Yuri’s heart beat in the light.

Eugene’s body cooled down on the cold floor. The professor who caught the wandering Yuri was approaching to give his body to the poisonous snake.

Yuri learned magic to protect and embrace precious people in order to share the warmth she received from her master.

“… no.”

She made up her mind, but the reality was grim, and everything she longed for was about to collapse in front of her eyes.

“please-“

When a girl with a warm heart is about to collapse in the cold winds of the world.

Something exploded in Yuri’s chest as he watched.

“glass?”

It wasn’t until Professor Ian looked back at Yuri that she realized that her heart had started to glow hotly and brilliantly.

The world gradually became darker, and the sky gradually lost its light from the edge. Winds from all directions were blowing towards the glass.

“What is this… .”

On the roof of the agoge, something that Ian, the possessed chair, did not know was happening.

It wasn’t that the light was shining on Yuri. Riding on the wind, all the light was sucked into her.

As if everyone slowly closed their eyes, the world quickly lost all color.

Darkness. Dana’s endlessly shining paint and Haril’s flames mixed with hatred were all buried in pitch darkness… .

“Eugene… ! it’s okay?”

Paying no attention to all the incidents, Yuri ran to the fallen Eugene and hugged her.

Eugene was surprisingly cold. The ice-like body touched Yuri’s skin.

Dung, Dung.

Yuri’s heart raced. Only glass now contained the light.

All the colors the world originally had gathered in the bosom of glass and shimmered. Everything that was immersed in darkness now lost even a sound.

It was as if all existence around them had been erased by the glass, but everyone embraced by that cozy silence felt a sense of stability for no reason.

Ina, Haril, and even Kiruna’s senior professors looked up blankly at the only shining little star on the roof of the Agoge.

Dung, Dung, Dung… .

The sound of Yuri’s heartbeat echoed through the sky. A warm wind blew like breath on everyone.

The flash of light that leaked out from the bosom of glass shattered like the Milky Way and floated in the blowing wind. As the warm air gradually intensified, the light leaking out also became brighter.

As if an unfinished song burst out, eventually all the light scattered from Yuri’s arms.

After the light returns and the world flickers for a moment, I hear the sound of the wind brushing my ears.

“… yes?”

When Eugene opened his eyes to the tickling breath, it was midnight. Countless stars filled the night sky that filled the collapsed rooftop.

Eugene looked up at the starry sky spread over her shoulder while being held in the arms of a warm glass like an incense burner.

The white stars were spinning slowly in one direction, as if dancing to a convolution.

A meteor shower was falling long and slowly, as if giving time to make a wish. Eugene followed the trail with his eyes without making any wish.

Eugene was afraid that this might not be heaven, and in fact I was already dead.

It must have been raining and snowing, a cold wind blowing, and fluorescent colors filling the school.

‘Where has the sleet gone? poisonous snake? Actually, was this all just a long nightmare?’

All the mana in the school that had gathered in Yuri’s arms soared into the sky, becoming a sea of stars and slowly rolling over.

Dana’s paint and Skillbeck’s portal became one of the unfathomable stars.

Heril’s sparks and Inna’s blizzard also turned into comets and twinkled.

In a place where no one could use magic, everyone lost their will to fight.

Eugene’s poisonous snake and Haril’s grape vine, which could not breathe without mana, stopped breathing.

The drowned body, which was barely able to survive because it borrowed a human body, was lost in thought while receiving the pouring starlight.

A night where everyone doesn’t open their mouths easily.

Eugene quietly closed his eyes and listened to Yuri’s heartbeat.