It was the passing period before evening classes.
The steps at the entrance to the lecture building. Students were going up and down. Fifteen minutes before the bell. The stairs were at their most crowded at this hour. The section where those going up and those coming down crossed paths was narrow.
Minjun was going up the stairs.
He was sorting through the day in his head. It was an office worker’s instinct. The habit of lining up everything that had happened that day on the subway ride home. Even after coming to this world, it had not disappeared.
Item one. Chloe had grabbed his wrist. It had taken time for her to let go.
Item two. He still had not answered her question asking if she could call him by name.
Item three. Sylvia had looked at his wrist in the hallway. And her steps had paused for a moment.
‘All three items are unresolved.’
He was about halfway up the stairs.
His eyes met someone coming down from the opposite direction.
It was Chloe Armand.
---
Neither of them stopped.
Because stopping would be strange. If two people stopped amid all the students going up and down the stairs, that would stand out even more. Minjun calculated that. Perhaps Chloe had made the same calculation, because she kept walking and moved to the right.
Minjun also moved to the right.
They ended up face-to-face.
‘Ah.’
Chloe moved to the left. Minjun reflexively moved to the left as well. They were face-to-face again.
‘This is that situation where you keep trying to get past a stranger at the entrance of a convenience store.’
From the outside, nothing had happened. Isabel Ester and Chloe Armand’s paths had merely overlapped for a moment on the stairs. Students passing by glanced at them and moved on. Witnesses were forming.
‘Move aside first.’
Minjun took one step to the side.
It was toward the stair railing. Space opened up. Enough width for Chloe to pass.
Chloe passed by.
The distance in that moment was—narrow. The stairs were like that to begin with. Even though he had pressed himself toward the railing, they were close enough to brush past each other. The end of Chloe’s uniform sleeve passed by the side of Minjun’s arm. It did not touch. And yet it felt as if it might. The temperature of the air given by that distance was different.
The end of Chloe’s sleeve brushed past the side of Minjun’s arm.
It did not touch. And yet it felt as if it had. Minjun’s skin could not process whether the cuff had transmitted something through the air or had actually touched him. Chloe’s body heat was felt at the distance right before it would have reached the side of his arm. Because this body was cool, and the air around Chloe was warm, that difference in temperature drew a line between the two of them.
‘Did that touch or not?’
Chloe went down the stairs.
---
Minjun continued up the stairs.
As he went up, he did not look back. Looking back meant he cared. He could not show that he cared.
And yet the moment Chloe’s sleeve had brushed past him remained. That instant when he did not know whether it had touched or not. The afterimage of that warmth still clung to the skin by the side of Minjun’s arm.
‘That didn’t touch. The stairs are narrow, so it just felt that way.’
‘The temperature didn’t change either. It’s evening, so the air is getting colder.’
The second-floor hallway of the lecture building came into view. As he walked, he tried to process the scene on the stairs.
It would not process.
‘Why are the stairs in this world so narrow? This is an architectural design problem.’
---
Class began.
Basic Magic Theory. The professor began drawing the structure of a mana circuit on the blackboard. Minjun opened his notebook. He still did not fully understand the way Isabel’s body handled mana. He could memorize the theory. If there was a logical structure, he could follow it. He would do the same today.
Evening light streamed in through the classroom windows.
That light slanted across the classroom floor. Dust motes floated silently within it. Minjun looked at them for a moment, then turned his gaze back to the blackboard.
The back of his neck prickled.
‘Again.’
He sensed the direction the gaze was coming from. Behind him to the left. In the classroom, behind him to the left. During yesterday’s class, a gaze had come from the same direction. Today, the same gaze was coming from the same seat.
He did not turn around. If he turned around, the other person would withdraw their gaze. Then he would not be able to confirm it. If he could not confirm it, there would be no data. If there was no data, he could not make a judgment.
‘I’ll keep feeling it and wait.’
The professor tapped the blackboard. It was a signal to focus.
---
Class ended.
The students began to stand. Minjun closed his notebook as well. Then he slowly looked behind him to the left.
It was Sylvia Kant.
She was sitting there, organizing her files. She was not looking this way. The motion of putting the files into her bag was precise and concise. That movement was so natural that it instead felt intentional. As if she had been watching, but was pretending she had not. The more perfect the pretense was, the more it became proof that she had been watching.
Sylvia stood. As she picked up her bag, she tucked the files inside. Her wrist emerged from the end of her sleeve. It was slender. As she tucked the files in, the inside of her wrist was exposed for a moment, then covered as her sleeve slid down. Sylvia did not seem conscious of it. She lifted her bag.
She walked out of the classroom.
It was a route that did not pass by where Minjun was.
‘......Did she avoid me on purpose, or not?’
---
Chloe was waiting in the hallway.
The hallway after class had ended. Amid the flow of students leaving, Chloe stood by the wall. She was waiting. Clearly. She stood looking in another direction, but her feet did not move. She stood with the posture of someone who knew exactly who would be passing through this hallway.
Minjun came out of the classroom.
Chloe turned her gaze.
Their eyes met.
Chloe left the wall and walked over. It was the way one joined the direction of another person’s steps. The dormitory was in the same direction.
Naturally, they walked side by side. Neither of them pointed it out.
It was an evening hallway. The angle of the light coming in through the windows was low. Chloe’s profile caught that light. Her blonde hair took on an orange glow. The line of her neck, running from below her ear to her shoulder, was revealed within the light.
Chloe touched the collar of her uniform with her hand. It was evening, after a full day of classes. The inside of her collar must have been warm. She loosened it slightly. It was a natural motion. She was not conscious of Minjun. Because she was not conscious of him, it came out even more naturally.
As the collar lowered, the line of her neck changed.
The area above her collarbone was revealed. The line from her neck to her shoulder. The evening light passed over it. For a moment, the light pooled in the hollow of her collarbone. Each time Chloe walked, light and shadow alternated across it.
Minjun looked ahead.
‘I didn’t look. I’m checking the hallway in front of me.’
---
Chloe spoke.
“On the stairs today.”
“……”
“Our paths overlapped.”
Minjun kept walking.
“So they did.”
“Because it was narrow.”
“Stairs are like that.”
A brief silence came.
Chloe walked one step closer. It was a narrow section of the hallway. There was a natural reason for it. But even after the narrow section ended, the distance did not return to what it had been. Chloe was the one who had not returned.
Beside his shoulder, the end of Chloe’s uniform sleeve was visible.
Her wrist showed beneath the sleeve. It was the hand that had grabbed Minjun’s wrist during magic practice today. Her fingers were long. Her fingertips were neatly gathered. With her steps, that hand swayed faintly back and forth.
During practice today, when that hand had held Minjun’s wrist. Her thumb had been right over the place where his pulse beat. Minjun still remembered that position.
‘I don’t need to remember it.’
Chloe’s steps made her shoulders sway faintly. The shoulder seam of her uniform jacket shifted ever so slightly with each step. The way the bag strap pressed down on one shoulder, making the opposite shoulder rise a little. That rhythm repeated with every step. Her arm continued beneath the shoulder seam, and at the end of the arm, her wrist emerged. That hand swayed back and forth with her steps. The hand that had grabbed Minjun’s wrist today.
Minjun looked straight ahead.
‘It’s a shoulder issue, an angle-of-light issue, and a physical characteristic of walking.’
---
They reached the fork at the dormitory entrance.
Chloe slowed her steps.
It was the pace of someone about to stop. The way someone slowed when they intended to say something.
“Lady Ester.”
“……”
“The question from earlier.”
Minjun stopped without passing the fork.
Chloe looked at Isabel. Evening light was coming in from Chloe’s side. Her short blonde hair glowed quietly within that light. Her green eyes held the light. Her neckline was revealed in the glow. Her collar had come down lower than before. More of her collarbone was exposed. Evening light pooled in the hollow inside her collarbone. Chloe drew in a breath. The front of her jacket pulled ever so slightly. That pull opened the collar a little more in the direction beneath her collarbone.
“May I call you by your name?”
Minjun looked into those eyes.
They were green. Waiting eyes. Not rushing. Eyes that could wait until an answer came. That was why those eyes were frightening. A person who could wait was a person who did not give up.
Minjun did not answer.
But he did not turn away either.
The corners of Chloe’s lips changed ever so slightly. It was too small to call a smile. But something was there. That change came first from her lips, not her eyes.
Then Chloe turned around. As she entered the dormitory, she said,
“Think about it tomorrow, too.”
Her footsteps receded inside.
Minjun was left alone at the fork.
The evening light was staining the outer wall of the dormitory for the last time. The angle at which the light had pooled above her collarbone remained in his eyes. The way the front of Chloe’s jacket had pulled when she drew in a breath. The way that pull had briefly revealed a little more beneath her collarbone.
Minjun lifted his head.
‘Think about it tomorrow, too.’
‘Is this an ultimatum, or not?’