The library was quiet.
Truly quiet. The library was always like this right after classes ended. Everyone was flocking to the cafeteria, and this place lay in the opposite direction. That was exactly why Minjun had chosen the library as a refuge.
‘All I have to do is sit here. No one will come.’
That premise collapsed not long after he took his seat.
Footsteps sounded. Tap, tap. At even intervals. In a space this quiet, the fact that the sound of shoe soles could be heard so clearly meant the steps held no hesitation. They were the steps of someone with a destination in mind.
And those footsteps stopped in front of Minjun’s table.
“This seat is empty, isn’t it.”
It wasn’t a question. It was confirmation.
Minjun lifted his gaze from his book.
It was a face he was seeing for the first time. No—more precisely, it was a face he was meeting directly for the first time. She was a student he had taken note of while mapping out the classroom’s social structure during class. The seat at the far end by the window. Alone. Neither in Ester’s sphere of influence nor Chloe’s.
Her short black hair rested against her shoulders. Her eyes were a sharp gold. The kind of gaze that reflected light like metal when it caught it. Her uniform had no adornments. No badge, no pin. Not revealing any affiliation was, in itself, a choice. A deliberate choice.
‘She’s the observational type.’
There had been people like this at work too. People who barely spoke in meetings, but later, you realized they remembered every single remark. Quiet, but frightening.
Sylvia Kant.
He remembered the name. Student council armband. In charge of inspections.
---
Sylvia sat down across from him. Naturally. As if she had reserved that seat from the beginning. She placed a book on the table. It was from the history series on the Mage Guild. A different volume from the same series Minjun was holding.
‘Of all things.’
The thought crossed his mind that the coincidence might not be a coincidence.
Sylvia opened her book. And began to read. She didn’t look at Minjun. She didn’t speak to him. She simply sat there and read.
That made it even more uncomfortable.
If she spoke to him, he could respond. But if she did nothing and just sat there, then Minjun would be the one paying attention first. Paying attention first meant losing. It was the same in the workplace.
‘Pretend not to notice.’
Minjun also turned his gaze back to his book.
However, not even two minutes had passed before Sylvia spoke.
“Lady Ester.”
“……Yes.”
“You’re holding your book upside down.”
---
Minjun slowly lowered the book.
He checked. It was upside down.
‘Twelve years of work experience is useless at times like this.’
“It is because this is an old edition.”
“As far as I know, that edition was never published.”
Her golden eyes lifted. She had no expression. But there was something in her gaze. An analytical look. She was watching Minjun’s reaction. His reaction speed, the direction of his gaze, the movement of his hands. A gaze that collected everything as data.
‘That’s an audit team style. The type that uses questions for fact-checking.’
Minjun set the book down on the table.
“You came here because you have something to say, didn’t you.”
“Did you feel that way?”
“You don’t look like the sort of person who would sit here for no reason.”
Sylvia lowered her eyes for a moment. Her golden pupils looked at Minjun’s hands on the table. His fingertips. His wrists. Then up to the ends of his sleeves. And back to his face.
That movement of her gaze was slow. It traveled too slowly over such a short distance.
‘……Is this not observation?’
---
Sylvia opened her mouth.
“I saw Chloe Armand approach you in the corridor.”
“And?”
“I could not determine the contents of your conversation. But I saw your reaction.”
Minjun said nothing.
Sylvia continued.
“You didn’t cut Chloe Armand off.”
“I told her I didn’t remember.”
“You know as well as I do that that was not cutting her off.”
Their eyes met.
Golden pupils stared directly into crimson ones. There was only a table between them. At that distance, Minjun noticed Sylvia’s gaze waver for the first time. Only for an instant. Less than half a second.
He didn’t know what that wavering meant.
Minjun looked straight at her. He maintained his expression. Isabel’s face was optimized for revealing no emotion. And he had twelve years of work experience. If he had any weapons he could use in this situation, they were those two things.
“Is that what you wanted to say?”
“No.”
“Then?”
Sylvia closed her book.
“Isabel von Ester—you have changed this year. I still have not determined what that means.”
---
Silence came.
Afternoon light was slanting in through the window. Dust motes drifted slowly within it. Sunlight, cut apart by the rows of bookshelves, crossed the table. The boundary of the light divided the two of them with precision.
‘So she came to figure it out.’
It took Minjun a moment to process those words. To figure it out. This person was searching for the reason Isabel had changed. And she had said so outright.
Why had she told him?
‘It’s pressure. An implicit pressure saying, I know you’ve changed, so tell me why.’
There had been people at work who used this technique too. It was a method he often saw from the audit team. If you let the other person know, “I already know something,” they will react defensively on their own. And once they react defensively, data appears.
‘I can’t fall for this.’
Minjun looked at Sylvia.
Sylvia was looking at Minjun as well.
He could feel that she was trying to see something within that gaze. Not the surface, but what lay inside. Something beyond his expression. As her golden eyes brightened in the light, the focus within them aimed somewhere deep inside him.
For a moment, Minjun found that gaze uncomfortable.
He tried to analyze why it was uncomfortable, then stopped. If he analyzed it, it would show.
“Is it bad that I changed?”
Minjun asked.
“No.”
“Then that’s enough.”
“It isn’t enough.”
Sylvia planted her elbows on the table and leaned forward slightly. Her uniform jacket pulled taut across her shoulders. The line of her neck was exposed. The curve continuing beneath the collar of her uniform caught the light. But Sylvia did not look as though she cared about any of that. All of her attention was focused on Minjun.
“I need to know the reason.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know either.”
---
That answer was unexpected.
Sylvia seemed to realize that herself. For the first time, something shifted faintly on her expressionless face. Her brows lowered by a hair. As if she were processing what she had just said.
Minjun saw the change.
‘She’s flustered by her own words.’
He had seen situations like this at work. The moment an audit team officer accidentally exposed their own intentions during an interview. When that happened, control of the interview changed hands.
“Why are you trying to find something you don’t know?”
Minjun asked.
His voice was quiet. Isabel’s voice was naturally low and dry. That gave this question a strange weight now.
Sylvia’s golden pupils wavered. More than before. Earlier it had been half a second, but this time it lasted more than a full second. During that time, Sylvia said nothing. Without lowering her gaze or withdrawing it, she simply wavered.
And then her gaze dropped.
To Minjun’s hands.
They were hands resting on the table. Fingers neatly gathered. Slender wrists. The boundary where the edge of his sleeve met his wrist. Sylvia’s gaze stopped at that boundary.
Stopped, and lingered.
One second. Two seconds.
Then, as Sylvia raised her gaze, Minjun noticed that her cheeks had changed. A flush that began beneath her ears was spreading over her cheekbones. A blush. It looked strange, the sharp golden eyes and that blush existing together on the same face.
Sylvia seemed to realize it. And then realized that she had realized it. That chain reaction made her cheeks grow even redder.
Her lips moved as though to speak, then stopped. Half-open. Breath slipped out between them.
---
Minjun looked straight ahead.
‘……I think I just saw something strange.’
Her cheeks had turned red. Minjun did not know exactly whether that was anger, embarrassment, or something else. But his work experience was classifying something. At the very least, he could tell that this was not the reaction of an audit team officer.
‘This is a different kind of reaction.’
‘No. Could it be fatigue? She must have had a lot of classes too. It could be a ventilation issue.’
‘Shouldn’t they open the library windows?’
Sylvia opened her mouth.
“It seems it was rude of me to come here.”
Her voice was different from usual. Just a little. Lower. That made it even stranger.
“If you thought it was rude, you wouldn’t have come in the first place.”
Minjun said.
Sylvia stiffened.
Not because those words were the correct answer. Because they were precisely accurate. The other party had defined why she had come here before she herself had.
“……That’s true.”
Sylvia slowly picked up her book. She was about to stand.
“Will you come again next time?”
Minjun asked.
Sylvia stopped.
Standing there. Holding her book. Her wrist showed beyond the end of her uniform sleeve. The inner side of that wrist, in a position where, at that angle of light, one might be able to see the place where her pulse beat. Sylvia put strength into that wrist. Her fingers gripping the book turned white.
“I don’t know.”
That was her answer. It was not a lie. That made it an even clearer answer.
Sylvia turned around.
Her footsteps began to recede again at even intervals. But before she fully reached the library door, one step slowed for a moment. It was an instant so brief it should have been impossible to notice. But Minjun noticed.
The footsteps passed through the door and disappeared into the corridor.
---
Minjun was alone in the library again.
Dust motes still drifted within the light. The air seemed as though nothing had changed.
Minjun looked at his hands on the table.
The hands Sylvia had looked at. There was nothing special about them. He knew the wrists were slender. Isabel’s body was like that. Sylvia had looked at those hands, her cheeks had reddened, and her lips had opened and closed.
‘How does she see me?’
He began to analyze it, then stopped.
He had the feeling that he should not analyze it. If he did, it would be like admitting something. He could not organize what it was he would be admitting. He simply decided not to analyze it.
Beyond the window, the afternoon light was tilting.
‘Chloe is strange, and Sylvia is strange too.’
‘Am I the strange one?’
‘No, this school is strange.’
He decided to conclude it that way.
And yet the wavering of Sylvia’s golden eyes would not easily disappear from one corner of Minjun’s vision. That moment when her cheeks flushed. The thing he had seen for the first time on that face.
Wind passed outside the window.
Minjun picked up the book. This time, in the right direction.
He could not read it.