The library was quiet.
It was a place that ought to be quiet, but the quietness of this library was of a different kind. It was not that there were no sounds. The sound of pages turning, the sound of someone walking in the distance, the wind coming in from outside the window. All those sounds were there, and yet the space felt quiet. There are places that remain still even when sound exists. This library was one of them.
Minjun was sitting at a table by the window with a textbook on magic theory open in front of him.
‘Why am I so naturally in the library?’
Looking back, Chloe had asked, “How about the library for self-study today?” and Minjun had answered, “Let’s do that,” and that was all. Isabel’s bodily memory automatic reply function had operated again today.
‘Starting next week, secure three seconds of review time before answering.’
Chloe was sitting across from him.
She had opened her textbook and placed her notebook beside it. Her studying posture was upright. She did not lean back; she kept her waist straight. It was clear she was someone who could maintain that posture for a long time. A trained posture. Either someone had taught her, or it was a habit she had made for herself.
Chloe’s eyes moved slowly as she read the textbook. Eyes following the lines. Sometimes stopping, then moving again. The parts she understood and the parts she looked at once more were distinguished by the difference in the speed of her eyes. Minjun watched that pattern, then realized what he was doing and withdrew his gaze.
‘Observing someone else’s eyes while they study is outside the scope of work.’
Minjun looked at his own textbook.
‘Focus. This is work too. Think of magic theory as job knowledge training.’
Page 34 of the magic theory textbook. The principles of output control in elemental magic. How to regulate the flow of mana with consciousness. It was interesting material. If it had been confirmed that the deadline-concentration method increased mana output, perhaps the theoretical background was here.
Beyond the window, he could see the trees on campus. The leaves swayed in the afternoon wind. Perhaps because someone was sitting across from him, he felt at peace.
About thirty minutes passed.
---
Chloe reached out her hand.
Toward the bookshelf behind them. It seemed to be for a reference book. From where she sat, she turned her body slightly and reached toward the bookshelf on the right. That bookshelf stood midway between the two of them and the table. Even from Chloe’s seat, it was just barely within reach.
Chloe leaned over the table.
In that posture, her arm passed in front of Minjun.
It was an arm passing by. Just an arm passing by.
Minjun had no way to explain that moment.
Her arm passed by. The inside of that arm—the inner side from wrist to elbow—passed close to Minjun’s face. How close was it? Perhaps about ten centimeters. Ten centimeters was an exaggeration to call close, yet far too short a distance to call far.
Chloe’s hair spilled forward as she leaned in.
Fine strands of golden hair draped over Minjun’s textbook. And the scent coming from Chloe—something that might have been soap or flowers, something different from the musty smell of old paper in the library—passed through Isabel’s nose in that brief moment.
He should not have stopped.
0.5 seconds.
For the first time in that moment, Minjun learned how long that amount of time could be.
And yet, for 0.5 seconds, Minjun’s hand stopped.
Chloe took the book. She drew back her arm.
Once that movement ended, the distance returned. From ten centimeters to one meter. As if nothing had happened.
But as Chloe’s sleeve withdrew, something was revealed and then covered again. The inside of her elbow. Only after seeing what had briefly appeared and vanished right before her sleeve fell back did Minjun realize he should not have seen it.
‘What did I just see? It was an elbow. Elbows are something you’re allowed to see.’
He knew he was lying to himself, but it was the best he could do.
Workplace visual pollution. Library visual pollution. Pollution that occurred regardless of location. The kind that did not exist among the Ministry of Employment and Labor’s complaint categories.
But as Chloe returned to her seat, she saw Minjun’s expression.
---
Chloe stopped.
On the other side of the table, she stopped with the book she had brought in hand. She was looking at Isabel’s face. She was trying to read her expression.
Minjun did not know what expression was on his face.
It was probably not a good one. When a person who had possessed male sensory organs for thirty-seven years suddenly experienced something like that, managing one’s expression was not easy. Twelve years of office life had trained him in expression management, but this case had not been included in the training curriculum.
‘My expression must have been strange. Got it.’
“……I’m sorry.”
Chloe spoke.
Her voice was low. Half a pitch lower than usual.
“I couldn’t reach it from my seat, so I stretched too far.”
As Minjun listened to her, he looked at Chloe’s face.
Chloe’s cheeks were very slightly red. Whether that was because of the light coming from the window or for some other reason, he did not know. He also did not know whether Chloe had noticed it herself. She did not lower her head and was looking this way. Chloe’s eyes were looking into Isabel’s eyes—and Minjun was always unprepared to face how direct that gaze was. This person did not avoid the other person’s eyes. That was the same even when she was facing Isabel. Even before the crimson eyes of Isabel von Ester, Chloe Armand did not lower her gaze. Minjun still could not decide whether receiving that gaze made him uncomfortable or comfortable. Every time he tried to decide, Chloe did something, and the decision was postponed. It was the same now.
“It’s nothing.”
Minjun said.
That was a lie, but it was the only sentence he could use in this situation. If Isabel von Ester admitted she had been flustered when Chloe Armand’s arm passed in front of her face, he had no idea where the conversation would flow next.
Chloe tilted her head slightly.
“Really?”
‘That means she doesn’t believe me.’
“Really.”
Chloe placed the book she had brought onto the table and opened it. Her fingers brushed over the pages. It was the movement of searching for the page she wanted, but the way her fingers touched the paper—Minjun could not explain why that caught his eye.
‘I know what can be seen from that angle. Pretending not to know is the right answer, isn’t it?’
Chloe resumed studying.
Minjun also looked at his textbook.
Page 34. The principles of output control in elemental magic.
He could not see the letters.
‘Focus. You have to focus. This is the library. The library is a place for studying. There is important content in the magic theory textbook. That is what you’re studying right now.’
The light coming in from the window stretched long across the table. It lay over Chloe’s wrist. A slender, long wrist. On that wrist, the light traveled along the texture of her skin. At that boundary, her fingers began, and between each finger, the light passed through again.
Minjun read page 34 of the textbook five times.
Only after reading it five times did the content enter his head.
---
About an hour passed.
The sound of the library door opening was heard.
Minjun only lifted his gaze.
It was Sylvia Kant.
Her short black hair rested against her shoulders. Her golden eyes swept across the library. As she passed between the bookshelves—she stopped.
She looked toward the table.
She looked at Isabel. Then she looked at Chloe. Then she saw that the two of them were sitting at the same table, that the light from the window was falling together over both of their textbooks.
Sylvia’s eyes stopped on the table.
One second.
Two seconds.
And Sylvia did not enter the library.
She turned back in the direction she had come from. The sound of her footsteps grew distant toward the corridor.
The door closed.
‘……Sylvia Kant came in, then just left.’
Minjun sorted out that fact. Sylvia had come to this library for some purpose. But she left without coming in. After seeing Isabel and Chloe. And after seeing the two of them sitting at the same table, at that.
‘A new item will be added to the observation record.’
Minjun knew that prediction would not be wrong. Sylvia Kant was observing Isabel. Since when, and for what purpose, was still unclear. But the fact that she was observing her was certain. Both when she had written something in her notebook at the classroom door after the class in Episode 11, and when she had stopped in front of the library today and left.
‘What kind of content is in that person’s observation file right now?’
Chloe had not looked in that direction. Because she had been looking at her textbook.
The light coming from the window was tilting little by little. That meant the afternoon was passing. The light on the table shifted little by little. From Chloe’s wrist to the textbook, from the textbook to the edge of the table on Minjun’s side. Watching the light move told him how much time had passed.
Minjun did not close his textbook.
Chloe did not close hers either.
The two of them were still sitting at this table.
The sun slanted a little further.
Chloe wrote something in her notebook. The sound of the pen moving over paper. Within the stillness of the library, only that sound could be heard.
‘There are too many variables that can’t be analyzed.’
The analytical ability accumulated over twelve years of overtime did not function properly in front of this one person. Objects that could not be analyzed were usually one of two things. Too simple, or too complex. Chloe Armand was not the former.
Minjun did not look at what was written in Chloe’s notebook.
It would be a lie to say he did not try to look. The only fact was that he did not look.
And that night, inside the drawer of this academy’s student council president’s office, a new item was added to the observation record.
As for what that item contained—no one yet knew.
In the corridor outside the library, the person who had seen it and left kept walking without stopping.