Chapter 31: We met again

After Ren had walked for a little over 30 minutes, he began to notice a change in the people on the street.

Most of them were boys and girls dressed in school uniforms, but occasionally there were adults who seemed to be teaching at some school. It should be winter vacation right now, but many of them must be engaged in supplementary lessons at one of the schools.

(……)

No surprises. I just walk as usual.

I didn’t lose my way to the Imperial Military Academy, my destination, and headed straight for it.

Among the boys and girls passing by, some of them were wearing the uniform of the Imperial Military Academy. Ren kept walking and even had time to think about what he was going to have for dinner tonight.

“Please wait.”

The guard standing at the front gate of the Imperial Academy, which boasts a vast campus, said.

“What can we do for you here at the academy?”

It was a natural question to ask a boy without a uniform.

“I have come to ask for the documents necessary to take the entrance examination.”

“Very well. May I see something to prove your identity?”

“Yes. I have it ready.”

I had two things ready.

One was a guild card. The other was a simple letter that Lessard had given me before my departure.

After confirming this information, the guard said to Ren, “Let me show you around,” and led the way toward somewhere.

The destination was one of the buildings connected to the school building.

It was a magnificent building that couldn’t be compared to the residences of the top nobility.

While looking at the snow-covered school building, which is the pride of the Imperial Academy, Ren stepped into the building he was led to.

This is a guest room-like hall to which visitors to the academy, such as parents and merchants, are mainly ushered. Inside, the walls are painted white, and the floor is covered with a thick crimson carpet. The furnishings are first-rate.

The orange light from the chandelier decorated the warm space.

“Please wait here.”

“Yes. Thank you.”

Ren sat down on the sofa in front of where he was led.

The guard told him that someone would be with him shortly and left.

He waited only a few minutes.

“Thank you for waiting.”

A clerk from the academy stepped beside the sofa and led Ren to a large counter at the back of the hall.

Right next to the counter was a large window with a sense of freedom.

After a quick glance out the window and down the corridor used to move around the school building, another clerk waiting behind the counter called out to him.

“I believe you have the documents related to the entrance examination, right? Which should I prepare, general or special?”

(I’m fine with just the special class, but what am I going to do?)

Lessard prepared a letter guaranteeing Ren’s status, but that wasn’t a letter of introduction for the examination. Naturally, Licia also didn’t have a letter of introduction written by someone of high rank nobility.

……As for what Ren is concerned about, based on those assumptions.

(Not only do I not have a letter of introduction, but a commoner who came in alone suddenly gets a special class.)

I’d like to think it won’t be done, but it would be troublesome if I looked doubtful.

“Can I have both of them?”

“That’s all right. There are many people who say the same thing. Then, I will prepare them immediately.”

Please wait a moment.

Ren waited at the counter.

◇ ◇ ◇ ◇

The Imperial Academy has a magnificent library.

Although it was inferior to the Imperial Library, which had a forbidden library, it boasted one or two of the largest collections in Leomel.

Fiona had just left the library.

She was studying here today.

She was dressed beautifully in her special class uniform and looked like a picture just while walking around.

“……Ah, snow.”

Fiona muttered.

The library is a separate building, connected to the school building by a corridor. She looked out the window of the corridor and thought back to about a year ago when she saw the snow falling.

It was something she had often thought about since winter.

The days she had spent in the Baldor Mountains had been hard and difficult, she remembered.

There was no fun at all. But meeting Ren and receiving the star agate from him on the way home were precious memories.

Fiona’s hand reached for the necklace on her chest.

When she grabbed it tightly, she felt as if her own chest was also being squeezed tightly.

“Ren-kun…”

She wanted to see him.

The desire is growing and will continue to grow.

She didn’t know how many times she tried to send him a letter and stopped because she felt guilty about the trouble she had caused him. But she wanted to thank him, so when Ulysses sent the letter, she asked him to add her own words. Of course, she couldn’t say that she wanted to see him, or that she would love to see him in Eupheim.

Her heart ached already.

Biting her lip tightly, she looked up at the winter sky and gently lowered her eyes. As she does this, the winter time she spent with him comes back to her over and over again behind her eyelids.

But I can’t stay like this forever.

Fiona disciplines her mind and starts to walk back to the girls’ dormitory.

Her steps are heavy, as if they speak for her somber feelings.

But then she stops abruptly.

Turning again to look out the window she had been gazing at earlier, this time she didn’t look up at the sky, but at the same height.

Her attention was drawn to the visitors’ hall at the far end across the large garden.

She thought it was her imagination.

A hallucination she clung to because she was thinking of him. Or an illusion that her mind showed her as if mocking her.

Despite some differences, she should have been disappointed that she had seen wrong.

But then she said, “…… eh?” Her voice drops.

“Ren-kun, is that you?”

She turned her eyes toward the orange light.

No matter how many times she rubbed her eyelids, she couldn’t make Ren’s image disappear.

Fiona ran out without thinking.

Without putting on her coat, she ran through the corridor and moved her feet in a single-minded effort toward the hall away from the house.

When she reached it, she opened the door without even regulating her breathing.

She could have complimented herself on her ability to open it without making a loud noise.

However, Ren was nowhere to be seen.

She looked at the counter where he should have been earlier, and at the seats around her, but he was nowhere to be seen.

“…………”

Fiona walked around the hall for visitors.

The staff of the institute asked her what was wrong, seeing that she was not breathing well and looked somewhat impatient. Fiona smiled and said, “It’s nothing,” and left the hall.

Maybe I was mistaken after all.

Fiona left the place with a disappointed look on her face, and her feet moved toward the outside without returning to the hallway.

She wanted to look up at the snowy sky again. ‘What I saw earlier must have been a hallucination born of a weak heart’, she thought to herself. Even as she mocked herself for this, she wanted to at least see the snow.

She wanted to recall the time she spent in the Baldor Mountains, even if only for a moment, so she walked along, exhaling white breath.

Her feet stopped in the courtyard.

There is one large tree planted here.

Before the year is out, it is decorated with lights from a magic tool, and together with the orange lights coming through the windows of the school building, it creates an eye-catching sight.

Fiona happened to pass by this spot while looking at the snow and looked up at the tree.

There was no one around. To begin with, no one was there because of the winter vacation period and the time of the year.

“I have to do my best.”

Fiona has been making a notable effort since the Baldor Mountains incident.

She had caused Ren a great deal of trouble, and she had worked hard to protect herself in every way she could.

That is why she didn’t go to see Ren herself.

She couldn’t stop thinking of the trouble she caused him in the past.

So she held back and stayed until today. But when she saw Ren, even the strong-willed girl’s heart would be a little shaken.

“—But I really want to see him.”

It couldn’t be helped that she let out her true feelings today.

But, she tries her best to hold them back.

She only let the tears form on her eyelids, but she didn’t let them break down.

At some point, Fiona’s shoulders began to shake.

She had been outside without a coat and was almost sneezing from the cold.

She was confident that she could handle the cold with her ice magic, but being outside for a while without a coat in the middle of winter was too much for her body to bear.

Or maybe it was just the vacillation in her mind.

I really have to go home now.

She unconsciously hugged her shoulder and was about to leave the tree in front of her when —-

Suddenly, warmth came to her shoulder.

The entire arm that was holding her shoulder was wrapped by a coat that didn’t belong to her.

“Eh?”

A puzzled Fiona turned around and there he was.

She had thought he was a phantom, but there he stands, smiling the same kind smile he had before.

“You’ll catch a cold. Fiona-sama.”

“Re– Ren, are you….?”

“Yes, I am. It’s been a long time. It’s me —- Ren Ashton.”

If even this is a hallucination, maybe she will never recover. She might have done something to see Ren this time, even if she had to ask for help.

But it was unmistakably real.

The warmth of his coat that he put on her and his voice. It was neither an illusion nor a dream, but he was right beside her.

Fiona’s hands which had been grabbing her shoulders dropped a little and grabbed the front hem of Ren’s coat.

“—- I’m really, really happy to see you again.”

Fiona, smiling prettily in front of Ren, even has a gleam that she has never shown to anyone else, and is filled with breathtaking beauty.

Tears, which had been on the verge of breaking on her eyelids, streamed down her cheeks. She wiped her cheeks with a mixture of many emotions.

Previous chapter | TOC | Next chapter