The Magic Theory Fundamentals lecture room was at the northern end of the third floor of the lecture building.
It was on the side without windows. Instead of evening sunlight coming in, it was the side where the magic circle projection device was clearly visible. Minjun paused for a moment before opening the door.
‘I haven’t figured out who’s taking this class.’
It was a blank entry on the organization chart. In twelve years of office life, three days had always been enough to grasp a department’s seating and reporting structure, but this academy’s information structure was more opaque than he had expected.
He opened the door.
There were already nearly twenty people seated inside the lecture room. The moment Minjun entered, two or three of them lifted their heads, then lowered them again. They were faces that belonged to the Ester sphere of influence. Minjun did not nod. Isabel von Ester was not that kind of character. He simply passed by.
He chose the seat at the far right end of the second row. By the wall. Close to the exit.
He sat down. Took out his notebook. Set his pen on top of it.
---
The rear door opened.
It was Chloe Armand.
Minjun fixed the tip of his pen over the notebook.
Chloe took a seat at the back of the lecture room. Not by the window, nor in the center, but in the very last row by the right wall. A diagonal distance from Minjun. As she found her seat, she adjusted her uniform jacket once. It was evening, after a full day of classes. The front of her jacket was in a subtly different state from how it had been during the daytime class. The slight disarray left by going up and down stairs and walking through corridors remained in the line of her jacket.
Chloe sat down.
As she lowered her bag while sitting, her shoulders leaned forward. With that tilt, the jacket was briefly pulled away from her body. The front shifted, then returned. Chloe, unaware of it, was organizing her bag. As she took out her notebook, her wrist emerged from the end of her sleeve. It was slender. When she set the notebook down on the desk, her wrist rested there for a moment before her hand lifted again.
There was an angle at which the classroom lights shone on Chloe. Since there were no windows on this side, the indoor lighting was everything. That light fell over the line of Chloe’s neck. It was evening after a day of classes, so her collar had loosened slightly compared to the daytime. The line of her neck was exposed a little longer above the collar. That line leading down to her collarbone. As Chloe opened her notebook, she lowered her head slightly. At that angle, light gathered in the hollow above her collarbone. Chloe turned a page and drew in a breath. The front of her jacket shifted minutely along with that inhale. Only for a moment. It returned as she exhaled. Chloe began writing the date in her notebook. She was focused only on that.
Minjun looked straight ahead.
‘This is entirely a lighting issue. Because it’s a windowless lecture room, the distribution of light isn’t uniform.’
‘So we were in the same class.’
Thinking about it, it was only natural. It was a required course for first-years. Minjun had only now realized that fact. One more item added to the blank entries on the organization chart.
---
The front door opened again.
It was not the professor.
The person who entered was a student.
The moment Minjun saw him, his fingertips stopped.
His hair was not silver. It was blond. The neatly arranged hairstyle of a noble male student. There was an academy badge on his uniform—and beside that badge, one more small crest.
Lucian von Reisen.
The crown prince.
‘Did the crown prince take this class in the original story?’
He had no memory of it. In the original story, Lucian was someone who had a connection with Chloe. Beyond that, the details had not appeared in the portion Minjun had read. He had not expected his failure to read the original work to the end to return as such a concrete problem.
Lucian swept his gaze over the lecture room. His eyes paused in the direction of the students within the Ester sphere of influence—then passed over Minjun.
No.
They did not pass over.
They stopped.
Minjun did not avert his gaze. There was no way Isabel von Ester would be the kind of character to lower her head first under the crown prince’s gaze. He simply—looked back. Evenly.
Lucian was the first to look away.
He sat down in the center of the lecture room, in the third row.
---
The professor entered. The lecture began.
As Minjun took notes, he simultaneously organized the interior of the lecture room in his head. It was a habit from work: whenever he sat in a meeting room, he first checked the location of the exits and the positions of the people with speaking authority. Now, there was one more variable added to those two. Chloe’s position.
Back left. Diagonal direction. She was not within his field of vision. But the fact that he could not see her unless he turned his head completely made him even more aware of that direction.
The back of his neck prickled.
He could not tell whether it was coming from Chloe’s side or Lucian’s side.
‘Both, probably.’
The professor drew a diagram of a magic circle on the blackboard.
“In the case of basic attribute magic circles, there are three activation conditions. First, the caster’s mana concentration must exceed the threshold. Second, each node of the magic circle must be completely connected. Third—”
“May I ask a question?”
It was Lucian.
“There is a theory that the third condition is the ‘clarity of the caster’s intent.’ It is a point where the Guild’s theory and the Academy’s theory differ—which side will this lecture be based on?”
The professor’s expression stiffened.
Minjun did not stop his pen and continued writing. Not the lecture content, but what was happening in the classroom right now.
The Guild’s theory versus the Academy’s theory. This was not an academic debate. The Academy was an institution directly under the royal family. The Guild was an independent organization. Which theory one adopted was a question of whose authority one acknowledged. The fact that the crown prince had thrown this question at the professor on the first day of class meant—there was intent behind it.
‘In twelve years, I saw more than enough meetings where the first speaker seized control of the agenda.’
The professor answered. Cautiously. In the direction of introducing both theories. In a way that did not declare either side wrong.
Lucian nodded. His expression did not look satisfied, nor did it look dissatisfied. That expression was far more trained than Minjun’s. It resembled the expression a department head used in meetings. An expression from which nothing could be read, while reading everything. The fact that such people existed in this world too produced a kind of stress that was better than overtime and better than execution.
---
Class ended.
The students stood up. Minjun closed his notebook as well.
Then he glanced toward the back.
Chloe was putting her notebook into her bag. Her head was lowered. At that angle, the ends of her short blond hair flowed from below her ear toward the line of her neck. The line from behind her ear to her shoulder was revealed. That line that continued from her neck into the inside of her collar. There were things visible only when her head was lowered. Her collarbone. As the collar fell away from her neck, the upper part of her collarbone was exposed. At the lowered angle, that hollow seemed deeper. As the hand closing her bag rose, her head rose with it. The collar returned. Her collarbone was hidden.
Chloe picked up her bag and stood.
She did not look this way. Without looking, she walked toward the door. With those steps, her shoulders swayed naturally. The bag strap pressed down on one shoulder. The opposite shoulder rose slightly in response to that weight. The line beneath the shoulder seam followed the movement.
Near the classroom door, Chloe stopped for a moment.
She was about to grasp the doorknob. At that instant, her head turned slightly in this direction. It lasted less than a second. In the motion of turning her head, the line of her neck below her ear was revealed. As her hair shifted that way, the back line of the opposite side of her neck appeared briefly. Whether Chloe had looked this way or not could not be confirmed. Before their gazes could meet, she opened the door and left.
The door closed.
Minjun heard the sound of it closing.
Minjun put his pen into his bag.
‘I didn’t answer her question about whether she could call me by name.’
‘Chloe will wait tomorrow too.’
For some reason, that prediction made him uncomfortable. The fact that it made him uncomfortable was, in itself, uncomfortable.
At the very front of the lecture room, Lucian was standing. His eyes met Minjun’s. Lucian spoke first.
“Lady Ester.”
His voice was low. Quiet. And yet it cut through the noise inside the lecture room.
“May we have a conversation sometime?”
Minjun heard those words.
There were still a few students left inside the lecture room. Those students were watching this situation now. Each of them, in their own way, would be calculating what it meant for the crown prince to speak directly to Isabel von Ester. More witnesses were being created. Witnesses had been created all day long.
‘Is this the original plot, or a variable I created?’
He could not know.
Minjun looked at Lucian. Lucian’s eyes were waiting. Eyes that did not rush. Eyes that said he could wait until an answer came. They were similar in kind to the eyes Chloe had shown earlier when asking the question about calling him by name. People who could wait were people who did not give up.
‘Why is everyone looking at me with an expression that says they can wait?’
“……If our schedules align.”
That was all he said.
The corners of Lucian’s mouth changed minutely. It was too small to call a smile. But something was there. He lowered his head once and left the lecture room.
---
Left alone in the corridor, Minjun walked toward the window.
Evening light was coming in through the corridor window. Far off in the direction of the dormitory, he could see Chloe’s back as she walked away. Her posture was tilted subtly as the bag strap pressed down on one shoulder. Her blond hair swayed lightly over her shoulders with each step. Evening light had settled over it. The color of her hair changed as it took on an orange hue.
Chloe turned the corner and disappeared.
Minjun withdrew his gaze from the window.
‘Chloe asked if she could call me by name.’
‘Lucian asked to have a conversation.’
‘Sylvia asked what I would do if Miss Armand spoke to me again.’
All three had happened in a single day. Today had been too long. Even compared to the tightest business trip schedule in his twelve years of office life, this density was of a different kind.
‘This is harder than overtime.’
Footsteps sounded from the end of the corridor.
They came at regular intervals. Steps without hesitation. Minjun felt as though he knew where those footsteps would stop.
He decided not to look back.
But the footsteps did not pass by. They stopped in front of the window where Minjun stood.
It was Sylvia Kant.