When I climbed one more step, the footsteps behind me followed right along.
Light.
Fast.
No hesitation.
I knew who it was without looking back.
“Why do you keep following me?”
When I asked, Mia answered as if it were nothing.
“I’m not following you.”
“Then?”
“I’m going with you.”
Wow. Is this déjà vu?
I swallowed a sigh.
I didn’t have much energy to argue.
The fatigue I’d accumulated today had already exceeded the limit.
The dormitory corridor was a little darker, fitting for evening.
The light coming through the windows slanted low, and the noises leaking from the cracks under the doors were duller than during the day.
Laughter, the sound of chairs scraping, someone chattering.
Even when we arrived in front of my room, Mia stopped naturally.
Her face said it was only natural she’d come this far.
Great.
I’d said I might have to give up on living an ordinary life, and not even thirty minutes after saying it, here I was.
I opened the door, then looked to the side.
“What?”
“What do you mean?”
“Why did you come all the way here?”
Mia blinked once.
Then she said, very honestly,
“I thought you’d be bored if you were alone today.”
In the end, I opened the door wider.
“Want to come in?”
“Yeah.”
Seeing her answer so naturally and step in first, I couldn’t tell who the owner of the room was supposed to be.
The room was exactly as I’d left it that morning.
There hadn’t been much to call organized in the first place, but it wasn’t completely messy either.
It was ambiguous.
Even this room takes after its owner.
Mia walked toward the window like someone used to the place, then plopped down on the floor and leaned her back against the bedpost.
I closed the door and dropped into the chair in front of the desk.
For a while, neither of us spoke.
The silence wasn’t uncomfortable.
Strangely, it was better than all the sounds I’d heard throughout the day.
“Senior.”
“What?”
“That person yesterday.”
I raised my head.
Mia spoke while looking at the floor.
“They smelled strange from the start.”
“The staff member who came later?”
“Yeah.”
“You’re saying that now?”
That kid smells people and reads presence.
She scratches at the directions I miss first.
At this point, it wasn’t so much that I kept her close as it was that she filled in my blind spots.
In any case, I hadn’t expected the Serena assassination incidents to surface this quickly.
There had been unsettling incidents in the original, too.
The problem was that they hadn’t shown their faces this early, or this clearly.
Was it because I’d interfered, or had it always been like this and the game just hadn’t shown enough?
Honestly, I didn’t know anymore.
“You don’t look good.”
When Mia said that, I snorted.
“Was there ever a time I did?”
“Today is worse.”
“Of course.”
“Why?”
I looked at Mia for a moment.
“Because now I know.”
“What?”
“That living normally is out of the question.”
Mia didn’t answer.
Instead, she slowly folded and unfolded her ears once.
Usually, that meant she was thinking the same thing.
The room grew quiet again.
From the far end of the corridor came the sound of someone running,
and somewhere, laughter burst out before quickly fading.
Someone closed a door, and someone turned on water.
It was the distinctive noise of life in a space where students lived.
But for some reason, it all sounded light.
Compared to what I’d seen in the hallway earlier today, it all felt like the surface.
This school was clearly a place where students ate, slept, and chatted,
but the truly important things always seemed to move beneath it.
Mia, still leaning against the wall, asked,
“Serena.”
I looked at her.
“Out of nowhere?”
“She almost died.”
“Yeah.”
“Will she be okay?”
It was a good question.
But it was also a little funny that she was asking me that.
What, am I Serena’s designated savior?
I leaned back against the chair and answered.
“She’ll look fine on the outside.”
“What about inside?”
“I don’t know.”
That was true.
Serena wasn’t the type to show a collapsing face.
She was someone who endured.
After thinking that much, I leaned all the way back and closed my eyes.
“I hope tomorrow just ends without anything happening, like today.”
I meant it.
A person couldn’t live every single day dealing with conspiracies, assassination lines, and unpleasant black lines.
No, I suppose they could live.
They just wouldn’t live long.
Mia answered surprisingly quickly.
“I don’t think it will.”
With my eyes closed, I couldn’t even laugh.
“I really wish you wouldn’t say that.”
“Really.”
We made do with dinner in the room.
I couldn’t be bothered to go down to the dining hall.
More accurately, I didn’t want to see people’s faces again.
This school had plenty of freshmen, plenty of talk, and plenty of eyes.
I wanted to avoid all of that for at least a day.
While I was tearing off half a piece of bread and eating it, Mia was chewing on dried meat and something resembling hard nuts, which she had apparently brought from somewhere.
Very practical.
“Where’d you get that?”
When I asked, Mia paused for a moment.
“I saved it.”
“Nice.”
“If you’re jealous, want some?”
“Just a little.”
She really did share a little.
A very little.
Wow.
More coldhearted than I expected.
As the night deepened, the corridor grew quiet.
I sat on the edge of the bed and began untying my shoelaces, then stopped.
“Mia.”
“What?”
“Why aren’t you leaving?”
“Just because.”
“Just because?”
“I think it’s better if I stay here today.”
Wow.
How impressive.
She stated her reason for staying in someone else’s room, and a guy’s room at that, so simply.
How much time had passed?
Mia really wasn’t leaving.
I opened only one eye and looked toward the wall.
Mia was sitting beneath the window, leaning back.
She had her legs hugged to her chest, her chin resting on her knees, and her ears were half-relaxed.
“You really have no intention of leaving.”
When I said that, Mia only blinked.
“Yeah.”
“It’s someone else’s room.”
“I know.”
“And a guy’s room.”
“So?”
Now I was the one worrying about something strange.
In the end, I only snorted and turned over.
What could I do?
When I was alone, my thoughts got deeper.
When my thoughts got deeper, they usually went somewhere bad.
Staring at the ceiling, I muttered,
“I hope tomorrow is quiet, too.”
“I don’t think it will be.”
“I told you earlier, I really wish you wouldn’t say that.”
“I really don’t think it will be.”
I hated it even more because it sounded like it might be true.
I swallowed a sigh and closed my eyes.
In the end, I fell asleep without knowing when.
The next morning, I thought the first thing I’d see would be Mia, but it was the ceiling.
A sign of a wholesome school life.
Seeing Mia rub her eyes and get up from beneath the window, it seemed she had really spent the whole night here.
Truly impressive.
We roughly washed our faces and went down to the dining hall.
The morning dining hall was as noisy as ever.
Some people were yawning, some were eating in a hurry, and some had already formed groups and were chatting.
The two morning classes passed without incident.
The Strategy and Administration class was still boringly interesting, and the common liberal arts class was still pointlessly long.
When class ended, people poured out in a rush.
Everyone was talkative with lunch just ahead.
After eating lunch, Mia and I headed back along the passage behind the main building.
There was still some time before the afternoon class, and I didn’t like the crowded central corridor.
Mia preferred places like this over noisy ones.
So did I.
The back of the main building had a different atmosphere from the front.
The landscaping was calmer, the walls of the building still held an older color, and there were fewer students coming and going.
There were also plenty of corners where people skipping class could hide.
The moment I had that thought, a clipped voice came from ahead.
“No. What’s wrong isn’t the calculation, it’s the professor’s premise.”
Ah.
Great.
When I turned my head, the side door to the experimental building was open.
And Erka was standing in front of it.
Up close, she looked even more tired.
Her gold-flecked eyes were sharper, and the way she stood with her arms crossed too honestly revealed that she found dealing with people bothersome.
The professor in front of her already had a rotten expression.
I fully understood.
If someone came at me with that tone, I’d be pissed too.
“I believe I’ve told you repeatedly that there’s no reason to change the premise.”
The professor’s voice was restrained, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t angry.
Erka answered immediately.
“That premise is already distorting the loss value. If you set the resonance delay as a fixed value, of course it’ll jump in the middle.”
“For a mere student—”
“Does the calculation change if I’m a student?”
Wow.
She really must not have any friends.
I stopped outside the door and glanced inside.
The interior of the experimental building was more complicated than I’d imagined.
On a round table, several layers of thin metal frames overlapped, and small crystals and things resembling magic stones were embedded between them.
The walls were densely covered with equations and symbols written across black boards.
I didn’t understand even half of it, and I had a feeling it was better that way.
Techniques. Arrays. Resonance. Structural stability.
The words I’d heard during the orientation that day came back to me.
And now, to my eyes, a very thin black line was spreading out from one of the metal frames at the center of the table.
It was small.
Like a crack, a line that crawled only through the gaps.
I unconsciously pressed my temple.
Again.
The professor was still trying to persuade Erka.
“This is not a toy for satisfying your curiosity. If you overlap resonance deviations like that inside the experimental building—”
“That’s why I tied in one more safety loop.”
Erka pointed inward with her chin.
“If the automatic correction intervenes, it’ll actually push it further. It did last time, too.”
The professor failed to continue for a moment, then clenched his teeth once.
“That is exactly why I’m telling you to stop this time.”
“Last time, I hadn’t finished the calculations.”
“And you’re certain you’ve finished them now?”
“Yes.”
The answer came too quickly.
That was a little different from confidence.
In her own head, it was already correct.
No matter what anyone else said, she had no intention of reviewing it one more time.
Dangerous.
Great.
Really, wonderfully great.
Mia asked quietly beside me,
“Why? Do you see something?”
“Yeah.”
“I smell something strange too.”
“What kind of smell?”
“Something burning?”
I couldn’t laugh.
Because I was seeing something similar.
The metal frame at the center of the experimental table, the thin crystal ring surrounding it, and the auxiliary formula attached beside it.
They all looked fine.
But not to my eyes.
I couldn’t see exactly where it would collapse.
But I knew that thing was the problem.
The professor didn’t look like he was completely unaware either.
The problem was that his face also said he knew Erka wouldn’t listen.
What a beautiful scene of education.
“Erka.”
The professor’s voice dropped another tone.
“That’s enough for today. Seal the device and separate the auxiliary formula.”
Erka didn’t smile.
With that same irritated expression, she looked at the table inside, then back at the professor.
“Once it’s confirmed that I’m right.”
“Erka!”
“If it’s confirmed, will you admit that you were wrong, Professor?”
Wow.
I clicked my tongue inwardly.
A dangerous interpreter.
That phrase suited her perfectly.
In the end, the professor let out a short breath.
“You are banned from using the experimental building. Don’t touch it today.”
Leaving only those words behind, he turned away.
Erka still wore an expression that refused to back down, but the professor didn’t look like he had any intention of dealing with her further.
His expression had turned rotten.
The problem was after the professor left.
Erka didn’t look like she would stop.
She looked at us standing beside the door for a moment.
More precisely, she looked, then turned back to the table inside with a face that said she had no interest.
And she walked straight in.
Ah.
Great.
She was one hundred percent going to touch it again.
Mia asked beside me,
“Aren’t you going to stop her?”
I looked inside the experimental building.
The black line over the round frame was a little clearer than before.
Only a little.
And that line wasn’t just circling at the center.
It was crawling toward something resembling the outer safety loop.
Great.
Just great.
Things like that usually didn’t explode one at a time.
Once one thing went wrong, the connected parts would probably go off in a chain.
I let out a short breath.
What should I say if I went in now?
Stop?
It’s dangerous?
That calculation is wrong?
Don’t make me laugh.
Even if I were in her position, I wouldn’t believe it.
No, it wouldn’t just be that I wouldn’t believe it. I’d tell me to get lost.
Erka was the kind of person who had cut off a professor during the orientation.
Life was always like that.
You passed by because you wanted to avoid that moment, and later it came back to you twice as hard.
Looking at the threshold of the experimental building, I thought,
It seemed today wouldn’t be a day that ended normally either.