As soon as I returned to my room after the meal, I locked the door.
Then I stood still for a while.
The bed. The desk. The window. The wardrobe. It was the same room as it had been that morning, but it felt completely different.
Now I was certain.
This house wasn’t just some poor noble family’s estate.
It was poor, yes.
But that wasn’t all there was to it.
The gray booklet I’d seen in the accounting room. The scraped-out sentences. Father’s expression. And the black line I’d glimpsed beneath the stone wall outside the dining room window.
If I took them one by one, they might not amount to anything.
An old ledger in an old house, an old father’s sensitivity, a hallucination that might appear when I was tired. Plausible enough.
The problem was, I was far too desperate right now to just let it pass like that.
When people grow desperate, they split into two types.
Those who pretend they saw nothing.
And those who latch on to even the smallest thing.
I was the latter.
Because I’d always been that way.
A guy who had clung to one shitty game, digging through event logs, deleted flags, and scraps of its busted balance, wasn’t suddenly going to develop a healthy mind.
If something felt off, I had to dig.
Dig into it, confirm it, and then feel even more disgusted afterward—that was my specialty.
“Nice.”
Muttering to myself, I went to the desk.
I counted the money I had again.
Four silver coins. Thirty-seven copper coins.
That was what I’d counted yesterday, and that was what I counted today.
If money could duplicate itself, would I be stuck in a place like this?
Once I went to the academy, this would be the first problem.
Textbooks, food, consumables, medicine, repair costs.
On top of that, it was apparently a place where even commoner scholarship students barely scraped by, and I wasn’t even a scholarship student.
A fallen noble. The most awkwardly expensive type.
Until evening, I pretended to organize my luggage while sorting through what I needed in my head.
One coat of the best quality I had. Two shirts. Writing tools. Basic textbooks. The documents Father had given me. And cash, just in case.
On the other hand, there was plenty I could throw away.
Face. Bluffing. Pretending to be a noble. Things like that.
Honestly, the first thing I ought to throw away might have been my pride.
If I threw even that away, though, I felt like I’d collapse out of human shape too quickly, so I put it on hold for now.
I closed the wardrobe door and went to the window.
Outside, it was late afternoon.
The wind passed over a field of weeds that was embarrassing to call a garden.
Untended rose vines tangled over the stone wall.
The mansion itself was large.
But there were too many traces of people having given up on it.
Then.
I saw it again.
Beneath the stone wall. Where the weeds grew.
Across empty air where nothing should have been, a very thin black line swept by, as though drawn in a single stroke.
I held my breath.
This time, I saw it clearly.
It was too distinct to dismiss as a mistake.
The black line did not sparkle like cracked glass.
It was the opposite, if anything.
Like it was eating light, a thin fissure darker than its surroundings.
The problem was that it wasn’t simply hanging in midair. It had a direction.
The line began beneath the stone wall and continued along the corner of the garden toward the western annex.
The western annex.
I hadn’t noticed it that morning, but that side showed signs that people especially didn’t go there.
Two of its three windows had been boarded up, and dust had clumped along the railing near the entrance.
I stared quietly at the line.
Then, very slowly, I turned my head and looked around the room.
…They were there.
On the corner of the window frame. On one leg of the old clothes rack. Beneath the bedside table next to the bed.
There were black lines.
Short. Faint. But unmistakable.
My heart pounded hard.
“Ah.”
A low sound slipped out of me.
This wasn’t just a hallucination.
I carefully approached the bedside table.
The black line coiled around the joint between the table’s right leg and the floor. I pressed it with my hand.
Crack.
The wood split easily.
I withdrew my hand at once.
It’s real.
It was real.
At that moment, my head became strangely clear.
Yes, this is it.
The game I’d known had been like this too.
Cracks appeared first in places that seemed perfectly fine.
People, places, relationships. Nothing showed on the surface, and then much later, they burst.
And yet I.
I can see it?
It didn’t mean I could see the correct answer.
It didn’t mean I could see the future either.
Just… a strange sense of where something would collapse first, catching on my eye.
Fuck.
It felt too disgusting to decide whether this was a good ability or a bad one.
I pressed my temples.
The headache had grown a little worse than before.
Even so, I had no intention of stopping.
If anything, I was more certain now.
The black line I’d seen outside the dining room window.
If it hadn’t ended at the stone wall, there was a high chance it led somewhere inside the mansion.
And at the end of it, nine times out of ten, there would be something I needed to see.
I put on my coat and left the room.
The corridor was quiet.
At this time of day, the servants should have been busy preparing dinner, but there was no sign of anyone near the western annex, as if it had always been empty.
I went down the stairs, passed through the long corridor, and went out through the narrow back door.
The smell of dust mixed with the smell of grass and stung my nose.
Up close, the western annex looked even worse.
The bottom of the door was slightly rotten, and spiderwebs clung to the gaps in the windows.
Just looking at the exterior, it was practically plastered with a sign saying, “This place is not in use.”
But the black line led clearly all the way to that door.
I pulled the doorknob. It was locked.
“I figured as much.”
This world was consistent when it came to pissing people off.
I felt along the wall beside the door.
A rusted iron ornament, crumbling plaster, a cracked window frame. Just when I thought there was nothing to gain, I saw that one small stone beneath the window was oddly raised.
These things were always like this.
Either meaningless, or fucking meaningful.
I crouched down and pressed the stone.
Click.
A small sound came from inside the door.
“Wow.”
It’s actually there.
At this point, the Valter ancestors had fairly nasty hobbies.
Like a proper ruined house, they’d left behind only the secret-door aesthetic and failed to leave any actual fortune.
The door opened.
It was dark inside.
The windows were blocked, so sunlight barely entered.
Dust floated in the air.
The smell of old wood mingled with the damp smell of paper.
It was a small library.
Once, it had been a library; now, it was closer to an abandoned storage room.
Bookshelves lined the walls, and dust-covered document boxes sat atop them.
In one corner, I could see a folded family banner, and several old portraits were covered with cloth.
And.
In the middle of the bookshelf straight ahead.
The black lines gathered.
The lines ran down through the gaps in the bookshelf and sank into one drawer at the very bottom.
I stared at it for a while.
Here.
That was what it felt like.
I bent my knees and pulled the drawer.
It didn’t budge. I put more strength into it.
It didn’t seem locked, but it felt like something inside was caught.
I was irritated. But I didn’t force it open.
There was a reason for the place that would collapse.
If I yanked it by force, I might break that reason along with it.
I examined both sides of the drawer. There was a spot on the inner wood that was especially smooth.
When I slipped in a fingernail and pushed it lightly, a small piece of wood moved sideways.
Only then did the drawer open.
“Ha.”
I really fucking hate this.
This house worked damn hard at hiding things.
Inside the drawer was a bundle of papers.
No, to be precise, things that had once been a bundle of papers.
They were torn, scorched by fire, and some pages had been cut out entirely.
They weren’t traces of someone hastily burning them. They were traces of someone selecting only the necessary parts and removing them.
I picked up the top sheet.
A date. The Sacred Radiance calendar. Beneath that, a half-erased sentence.
…transfer records …Valte… …supplementary…combin… …recovery postponed
My fingertips went cold.
Even though I couldn’t read the whole thing, it felt disgusting.
These weren’t words that would appear in ordinary family documents.
This wasn’t a tax ledger, or land records, or a list of vassals.
It was a record of transferring something, classifying something, postponing something.
The fact that the family crest was stamped on it made it even more chilling.
Whatever House Valter had done, it meant that at the very least, they hadn’t been a baronial family that simply managed their territory.
I turned to the next page.
This one was even worse. The entire middle had been cut out.
Only two lines remained.
…impossible to sustain …nominally discarded
Discarded.
It didn’t take long for a person’s mind to turn in a bad direction.
I immediately thought.
An object? A record? A person?
This world was a nation where people were classified as assets.
The Marked, the Apt, the Responders, scholarship students, special management subjects.
They attached all sorts of plausible names to them, but in the end, it was classification.
A system that measured where to use them, where to confine them, and how long they could endure.
In a country like that, the word “discarded” could never be taken lightly.
Then.
Suddenly, a black line spread across the paper.
The line that had only been visible in the gaps until now seeped between the letters this time.
My head throbbed.
My vision wavered for a moment.
I reflexively closed my eyes.
And very briefly, truly briefly, something brushed past me.
The smell of candlelight. A wet stone floor. Someone’s low murmuring voice. The sound of pages turning. And—
“Yurian.”
A voice fell from behind me.
I spun around as if I’d nearly leapt out of my skin.
Ethan Valter was standing in the doorway.
His face was expressionless.
That made it more frightening.
There are two kinds of people who are truly good at startling others.
One is the bastard who bursts in with a blade.
The other is the one who stands there quietly and freezes your heart first.
Ethan Valter was the latter.
I was still holding the paper in my hand.
There was no getting out of this. No room to make excuses.
Usually, in a situation like this, there are three options.
Deny it.
Get angry.
Or simply admit it.
The first wouldn’t work because I had evidence in my hand.
The second wouldn’t work even more because the other party was my father.
In the end, it was the third.
“…It was open.”
Even as the words left my mouth, I found them ridiculous.
What was I, an elementary school kid? It was the level of a kid with a snack bag in his mouth saying, “It was already open.”
Ethan entered the library.
He closed the door.
The inside grew darker.
“So you came in.”
“Yes.”
“And searched through it.”
“Yes.”
At this point, it was basically an interrogation room.
I slowly put the paper down.
If I kept clutching it for no reason, I thought I’d look even more suspicious.
Ethan looked down at the papers inside the drawer.
For a very brief moment—truly, just for an instant—his expression wavered.
It wasn’t anger. It was closer to fatigue.
Looking at that face, a strange thought came to me.
It can’t be his first time seeing this, so why does he look so exhausted, like someone who has just been caught for the first time?
Then I saw it again.
Over Ethan’s shoulder. Beneath the line of his neck. Between his collar and his spine.
A black line.
It was very thin, but unmistakably there.
I held my breath.
It appears on people too.
It wasn’t just walls, bedside tables, and window frames.
It appeared on people too.
But this wasn’t as simple as a crack in an object.
It wasn’t an actual split wound, nor was it a mark of illness.
It was just… the place that would collapse first after holding on.
The moment I saw it, a peculiar chill ran down my spine.
Not because I liked my father.
But because it was too clear that this man, too, was someone being pressed down somewhere within this structure until he cracked.
Damn it. Empathy is the biggest obstacle when you’re trying to hate people.
Ethan asked,
“What are you thinking?”
“Why you erased it.”
His eyes narrowed.
“You could read it?”
“A little.”
“A little would have been enough.”
He was right.
Even reading that little had been enough to make me feel disgusted.
Ethan pushed the drawer closed.
His fingertips were rough.
They weren’t a soldier’s hands, but they weren’t the hands of someone who had lived only holding a pen either.
They were hands that had done all sorts of things.
“This is not something you should see.”
“Then who should see it?”
“No one.”
I swallowed a hollow laugh.
Why leave behind records no one is supposed to see?
Why not just burn them all?
The words rose all the way to my throat.
Instead, I pressed them down and asked,
“What did House Valter do?”
“What changes if you know that?”
“At the very least, I’ll know what I’m ignorant of when I go.”
“Go where?”
“The academy.”
Ethan was silent for a moment.
In the darkness, his face looked even more rigid.
I did not take a single step back.
If I backed down here, I’d regret it more later.
I was certain of that.
This world always devoured first the people who pretended not to know what they didn’t know.
“As I said earlier,”
I spoke first.
“You told me to survive there.”
“Yes.”
“Then I need to know.”
“You can survive without knowing.”
“I don’t think I can.”
This time, Ethan stopped.
I had blurted those words out almost impulsively.
But they weren’t wrong.
The original Yurian died because he didn’t know.
Or I died after being swept up in it without being able to do a thing.
I’m not going out like that.
Never.
Ethan spoke in a low voice.
“I knew you’d been acting strange lately.”
Ah. So that’s what this was about.
I still didn’t know exactly what state Yulian had been in before I possessed him, but at the very least, it seemed he had been different from how I’d been acting lately.
Of course he was.
I was more desperate than the original owner of this body.
“They say after being ill, a person
can change a little.”
“That can happen.”
“Then tell me.”
Ethan looked at me for a while.
In the end, he lowered his head first.
It was closer to resignation than defeat.
“House Valterga was never a great house to begin with.”
He spoke slowly.
“But it was an old one. A place neither far from the center nor too close to it. It didn’t stand out, but it was also awkward to get rid of.”
I listened in silence.
“Long ago,”
he continued.
“we were connected to a certain facility.”
“A facility?”
“Don’t ask any further.”
“No, that’s—”
“Enough.”
His voice suddenly dropped low.
I shut my mouth.
Ethan pressed a hand to his eyes.
It was the habit of a tired man.
“We weren’t a house that created anything, nor did we have some great bloodline. We were closer to people who guarded what we were entrusted with, passed it on, and recorded it.”
Records. Transfer. Assistance. Recovery on hold.
The words I had seen earlier surfaced in my mind again.
“But at some point,”
Ethan said.
“those records disappeared.”
“Who did it?”
Ethan answered with silence.
They couldn’t have simply vanished on their own. Someone must have erased them.
But it seemed this man didn’t even want to put that name into words.
“After that, House Valterga’s standing fell,”
Ethan said.
“All that remained was the shell of a title. That’s all you need to know.”
I clenched my teeth.
Phrases like that’s all you need to know always hid the most important part.
“Is the Academy connected to that matter too?”
This time, Ethan did not answer right away.
The silence stretched on.
I took that silence as the answer.
So it is connected.
Fucking hell.
“Is that why you’re sending me?”
“No.”
“Then why?”
Ethan looked straight at me.
“Because I can’t leave you here.”
My heart beat one moment late.
Because those words were unexpected.
For a moment, I was at a loss for words.
Even after seeing my reaction, Ethan added no explanation.
“What is in this house?”
“Nothing.”
“You just said you couldn’t leave me—”
“There is something that should not exist.”
It was a strange sentence. But because it was strange, it sounded sincere.
I was certain now.
This man had no intention of telling me everything.
Even so, he couldn’t send me away while pretending I knew nothing.
That was why he was only letting things slip like this.
What a truly infuriating type of person.
I let out a long breath.
“Fine. Then answer just this.”
Ethan said nothing. I simply asked.
“Should I hide the Valterga name at the Academy?”
This time, the answer came quickly.
“As much as possible, don’t reveal it.”
“Why?”
“Because there may be more people who remember it for other reasons than people who seek it out favorably.”
Those words were rather heavy.
It would be better if we were treated as nothing more than fallen nobles.
But some people might remember that name in a different way.
In other words, the erased records of House Valterga weren’t just some old family secret. They were the kind of clue that could become dangerous if someone recognized it later.
Ethan said nothing more.
Instead, he took a small leather pouch from inside his clothes and placed it on the desk.
Clink.
I heard the sound of silver coins.
“Use it when you go.”
I looked down at the pouch.
It was heavier than I expected.
“This house had this much money left?”
“No.”
“Then—”
“That is why you must not waste it.”
I picked up the leather pouch.
It was weighty. In a good way.
I wasn’t moved.
That man was far too unkind for me to be moved.
Still, if I was being honest, I was a little grateful.
Because the chances of humiliating myself over money from the very first day at the Academy had gone down a little.
Ethan walked toward the door.
I thought he was about to leave, but he stopped at the threshold.
“And.”
I raised my head.
“Don’t take that paper with you.”
I thought he meant the torn record I had looked through earlier, but Ethan did not take out everything in the drawer. He pulled out one sheet from the very bottom. It was a half-burned piece of paper.
It looked almost like a blank page, but near the corner, the faint crest of House Valterga remained, and beneath it were a few strokes of scratched writing.
He looked at that paper for a moment, then, unexpectedly, held out the torn record I had examined toward me.
“Take this instead.”
“…Why?”
“If someday you put your hands on it again, at least you won’t be called a madman from the very start.”
The way this man spoke made me feel strange to the end.
It was hard to tell whether he was helping me or cursing me.
I accepted the paper.
“Don’t open it at the Academy.”
“Then where?”
“When you truly need it.”
I wanted to ask when that would be, but I didn’t.
This was as much as I was going to get.
If I pried for more for no reason, I’d only bleed myself dry.
Ethan left just like that.
Only after the door closed did I let out a breath.
“Hah.”
What an exhausting family.
There was no money, the records had been erased, my father only spoke halfway, and I had to go up to the capital clinging to the other half of what he had left unsaid.
It was the worst, but strangely enough, I could see a direction.
First. House Valterga was not merely a ruined baronet house.
Second. In the past, it had been entrusted with something like records, transfer, and management, and that something was connected to the Academy or an even larger system.
Third. Those traces had been deliberately erased.
Fourth. Which meant I had to be even quieter at the Academy.
Good. Survive quietly.
It matched my original goal.
The problem was that this world rarely respected such modest plans.
That night, I barely slept at all.
I repacked my luggage, divided up the money I had, and hid the paper Ethan had given me deep inside my coat.
Near dawn, I finally managed to close my eyes for a bit, only to wake again when I was told the carriage was ready.
The morning of my departure was pointlessly clear.
Weather like this was the unluckiest.
Because it made people lower their guard.
I looked at the carriage standing in front of the mansion.
It was not a fine carriage.
Still, it wasn’t terribly shabby either.
It was an object perfectly suited to House Valterga, which barely maintained its dignity in the most ambiguous way.
Two servants were carrying the luggage, and Ethan stood beneath the entrance.
We did not exchange many words.
“Don’t die.”
As far as that man’s farewells went, it was the best possible one.
I climbed into the carriage.
“Yes.”
That was the end.
The wheels began to turn. The mansion grew distant.
Beyond the window, the old walls and weed-choked grounds slid away behind us.
It felt strange.
There was something like a sense of liberation, there was unease, and above all, there was a very realistic fear.
Now I was truly going to the Academy.
The stage I had seen countless times in the game.
The place where the heroines appeared, where ranking battles were held, where the student council and faculty, Sanctuary-recommended students and noble children all became tangled together, a place that looked like a school on the outside but was a selection device within.
And the place where Yulian died in the early part.
How wonderful. Fucking wonderful.
I pressed my temple.
It was just as I thought drowsiness was beginning to overtake me.
One side of my vision darkened again.
This time, it was much clearer than before.
Black lines.
On the floor of the carriage. On the left wheel axle. And stretching long along the slope to the right side of the road.
I blinked.
They did not disappear.
If anything, they grew darker.
The grass at the top of the slope was trembling little by little.
Even though the wind had not strengthened. One of the horses suddenly pricked up its ears. The coachman had not noticed yet.
I rose from my seat.
My heart was pounding like mad.
It was a sensation I knew.
No, a sensation I had only just come to know.
That was not just a crack.
It was a place that would soon collapse.
“Stop.”
The words leapt from my mouth first.
Whether the coachman hadn’t heard me or not, he kept holding the reins as they were.
The black line connected the wheel axle and the slope more thickly.
I flung the door open and shouted.
“I said stop the carriage right now!”
At that moment, from somewhere above the slope, came the sound of stones sliding.