Lowell cut across the academy campus, breathing hard.
Behind him, the commotion that had just taken place in the corridor was spreading like a wave.
But Lowell had no interest in such humiliating rumors.
The only thing filling his mind right now was Celestia’s whereabouts.
Lowell pressed a hand to his throbbing temple, stopped walking, and took a deep breath.
Celestia was the final boss of Act 1 of this game, Magica Academy Legacy.
Her getting caught up in Lumina’s provocation and turning dark earlier than in the original story, or taking some sudden action, was not a scenario Lowell wanted.
He was not looking for her now because of some tender bond.
Since they had already become tied together by a connection that could not be severed, he had to keep her close for the time being, check on her mental state, and observe her.
Rather than agonizing over and learning why Celestia had approached him, and how their relationship had continued to persist, what mattered more was how she, a main character in this game, would change from here on.
Given Celestia’s personality, she would never go somewhere within sight of others.
Lowell fell into thought for a moment, then changed direction.
He struck the splendid garden she usually liked to visit and the orderly library from his list of candidates.
What she needed right now was likely an enclosed space where she could sort through her confusion without anyone disturbing her.
Lowell’s feet stopped at the very edge of the campus, before the Bartholomew Practice Hall, where a silence so still it seemed abandoned lingered in the air.
Naturally, this place was under Professor Clayton’s jurisdiction, so anyone outside the Department of Elemental Studies was not supposed to enter in the first place.
In other words, the only people allowed to enter this practice hall right now were Lowell, Professor Clayton, and Celestia.
The heavy iron door of the practice hall, unlike usual, was open by the slightest crack, and through that gap, a chill yet sharp violet mana was seeping out.
Lowell had neither the ability to detect mana precisely nor the talent to perceive manifested mana with his eyes.
The fact that even he could see the cold violet particles drifting through the air proved only one thing.
Celestia’s mana had already surpassed the critical point she could control and was swallowing the entire practice hall.
It was the same oppressive pressure as the descent of Celestia, the final boss who had crowned the end of Act 1, whom he had faced countless times while playing this game.
Lowell gulped and wiped the sweat from his palms.
He had done it hundreds of times already, yet the terror of the final stage before Act 1’s last battle, which he had barely managed to clear every time, instinctively ran down his spine.
Even when he had been playing not as the current Lowell but as the protagonist, lacking nothing in every respect, Celestia had been an enemy far too powerful for that point in the story.
He forced his tension-stiffened legs to move, opened the heavy iron door, and stepped inside.
The air inside the practice hall was cold, as though frozen solid.
The violet mana, mixed with the acrid scent of metal, scraped sharply across Lowell’s skin.
And at the center of that silence, Celestia was sitting on the very sofa where Lumina had languidly reclined the previous night.
Lowell held his breath and stared at her back.
Her sunken shoulders were trembling faintly.
‘So it’s finally come.’
He steeled himself.
If she was completely consumed by anger and despair, wearing a hardened expression, or if she glared at him with eyes full of hatred like in the original final battle, then frankly, no matter what he did, there was no way to survive at this point in time.
Drawing the worst-case scenario in his mind, Lowell slowly approached until he stood in front of her.
But the face of Celestia that he met head-on shattered every one of Lowell’s expectations.
“......”
There was no frost-edged boss of hatred there.
Instead, there was only a single girl, struggling to hold back the tears brimming in her eyes, on the verge of breaking down as she choked back sobs.
The tip of her nose, flushed red, and her thinly trembling lips showed how desperately she was trying to hold back the flood of emotion.
Lowell froze, genuinely flustered.
Though Lowell had nearly every interaction with Celestia from the game stored in his head, there had never been a crying Celestia anywhere.
To begin with, Celestia in the original work was not a character who showed much emotion.
He stood awkwardly for a long while, then let out a small sigh and quietly sat down beside her.
Lowell fully took in the faint trembling coming from the seat next to him.
The springs of the sofa had sunk under the weight of the two of them, and through the narrow gap between them came Celestia’s uneven breathing.
When Lowell sat beside her, she flinched in surprise, but soon lowered her head and did not reject his warmth.
No, rather, the surging violet mana scattered a little more docilely around Lowell, giving off even a strange sense of relief, as though it had been waiting for him to come.
Lowell stared into the air before him as if gazing at the aftermath of a storm, then spoke in a low voice.
“You must have been hurt.”
His voice was calm, no different from usual.
Celestia buried her head even deeper to hide a single tear that fell from her eyes, then answered in a small voice.
“...Yeah. A lot.”
Lowell remained silent for a moment at her answer.
She was an opponent he had fought hundreds of battles against in the game, but this was a fragile voice he had never heard even once.
He shoved a hand into his pocket and added,
“I told Lumina Felicium to apologize to you properly. She isn’t interested in me. She’s only coveting that elemental compound we made together. That’s why she came here last night, too, and what she said to you was probably close to a deliberate provocation. So don’t take it too deeply to heart.”
At Lumina’s name, Celestia’s eyes wavered.
She wiped the corners of her eyes with the edge of her sleeve and cautiously looked back at Lowell.
Lowell’s explanation was rational, and thanks to that, the turbulent mana seemed to gradually calm as well.
But in her chest, there was still a large, unresolved lump remaining.
“Okay. If you say so, then I suppose that’s true...”
Celestia moved her lips as if choosing her words for a moment.
Then, staring intently at Lowell’s face, she drew out again the sharp dagger Lumina had thrown at her.
This time, as if she wanted to confirm it directly through Lowell’s own mouth.
“But Lowell. There’s something more important than an apology.”
Her violet eyes clung to Lowell’s gaze.
In those eyes, still marked by the traces of tears from moments ago, desperation and fear crossed over each other.
“When that new student asked earlier, I answered that we were friends. But she laughed at me. She said we were nothing to each other.”
Celestia gripped Lowell’s sleeve very lightly, precariously, as if she might let go at any moment.
“In your opinion, are we really nothing to each other? What exactly are we?”
Lowell did not avoid Celestia’s violet eyes as they stared intently at him.
Bewilderment pricked at one corner of his chest, but for the moment, he did not let himself be greatly shaken.
Lowell did not answer for a while and kept silent.
The violet mana drifting through the practice room rippled, as if reacting to his silence.
A heavy stillness wrapped around the sofa.
Lowell decided to face head-on this situation that had never once appeared in the game’s dialogue window.
“Celestia.”
When he called her name softly, Celestia’s shoulders flinched visibly.
Lowell looked straight into her violet eyes and continued.
“I want to speak honestly from now on. Can you listen?”
At those words, Celestia visibly shrank back, as if seized by the fear that words of rejection might follow.
Her fingers tightened around Lowell’s sleeve.
Her expression was full of fear, but she did not run away.
“...Yeah.”
A faint reply came back.
Lowell swallowed a sigh and organized his thoughts.
The Celestia from Magica Academy Legacy that he remembered was a character who only appeared half a year from now, after the end of summer vacation.
The Celestia of that time was far colder than she was now, cynical toward everything in the world, and possessed of a pessimistic air.
According to the original story’s progression, the two of them should have begun as enemies in fierce opposition, then gone through various events, come to understand each other’s wounds, and become fated companions who promised to move forward together.
But that promise was not kept.
Having turned dark for some reason, she became the final boss of Act 1, and the protagonist, Lowell, was destined to meet a tragic ending by personally cutting her down with his own hands.
Lowell briefly closed his eyes.
In his mind, the hundreds of failures he had experienced while playing this game flashed past like a revolving lantern.
He could no longer count how many times he had repeated retries in an attempt to save her somehow.
He had committed all sorts of bizarre acts to find systemic loopholes in the game, and he had tried various approaches by aiming for gaps in the fixed script.
But the result had always been cruel.
As if Celestia’s tragic death were the one and only canon determined by the game company, not a single exception had been allowed.
In no route was she ever saved.
It was like a curse carved in by the developers.
But now, Lowell felt the warmth of Celestia, trembling as she clutched his sleeve.
Tears the original Celestia would never have shown, a meeting that had happened far earlier than the fixed point, and even the sudden variables called Chloe and Lumina.
The original story he knew had long since become useless.
The trajectory of tragedy set by the system had already twisted, and the girl before his eyes was longing for an answer not as a final boss, but as a single human being.
Lowell exhaled at length, turned his head, and looked at Celestia directly.
It was Lowell’s own true feelings, which he had never once spoken until now, and which could never have existed inside the dialogue boxes of the game.
“The truth is, I barely remember anything from my first year.”
At Lowell’s calm confession, Celestia’s shoulders gave a small tremble.
She seemed about to say something, but Lowell did not stop.
“The first point of contact with you that I remember is the day we ran into each other in the corridor after my private meeting with Professor Calvi. So, to be honest, I have no idea why you approach me, or why you think of me as so precious.”
Lowell briefly looked down at his shabby body and rough hands.
It was his own appearance, which Lumina had openly mocked as disgusting, and which he himself knew well.
“I know I’m fat and ugly, too. So from a common-sense point of view, it’s hard to understand why a pretty girl like you would reach out to me first.”
In that instant, Celestia’s pale cheeks flushed as red as a carrot.
Flustered by Lowell’s unexpected bluntness and his compliment that she was pretty, she moved her lips and made a strange sound.
“Uh... u-umm, th-that’s...”
Watching her lower her head with her face red enough to burst at any moment, Lowell continued with a faint smile.
“But even though I had no idea why you approached me or why you treasured me, the reason I never asked was because the kindness you showed me was so warm. I don’t know what reason you had, but you were genuinely good to me, and I was really grateful for that.”
The cold violet mana that had filled the practice hall subsided as if melting under Lowell’s gentle voice.
Lowell looked straight into Celestia’s eyes and put the final period on his words.
“I’m sorry I can only say it like this because I’m not good with words. But Celestia, thank you so much for being kind to me. I mean it.”
Celestia stared at Lowell with a dazed expression.
It seemed she had finally realized just how great a question, and just how great a gratitude, the kindness she had shown him had been to Lowell, as well as how he thought of her.
The sharp dagger of Lumina’s words—“you’re nothing to each other”—vanished without a trace before Lowell’s clumsy but sincere answer.
Celestia covered her reddened face with both hands and bowed her head deeply, but around her lips, instead of the tearfulness from moments ago, a small, warm smile was spreading.