Episode 16

Flustered, Rose pursed her lips before speaking.

“Are you sure about this? Club activities here are quite important.”

“Yesterday, I talked to some other kids, but being with you is the most fun.”

Briley responded cheerfully.

“Why? That’s interesting…”

Rose had never thought of herself as an interesting person. She might have leaned more towards the boring side.

Even Jasper and now Briley. She wasn’t sure what aspect of herself they were finding interesting.

Briley grinned energetically.

“Just seeing you make me feel good!”

“Is that so?” 

Rose’s expression was a mix of bewilderment and skepticism.

“Hmph. You don’t know, Rose. Small and gentle things are always right!”

Briley grabbed Rose’s cheek, who was standing there, dazed, and playfully pinched it.

“Plus, there’s no one like you who listens to me so seriously. It seems like everyone else has ulterior motives.”

Rose gave a slightly squinted look, but she didn’t push Briley away and just stood there.

“Rose, what time are you coming in today?”

“Ah, I think I’ll be a bit later than yesterday.”

“What? Later than yesterday?! What am I supposed to do alone at night then?”

“Sorry… I have a lot of major assignments.”

Rose rolled her eyes here and there. It was a lie.

Tonight was the first day she was going to have a private lesson with Jasper. They had arranged to meet in the lab at 8 p.m. By that time, the annex would likely be empty.

Briley stared at Rose with sad eyes.

“Well, there’s nothing to do about studying…”

Briley’s eyebrows gradually furrowed. A part of Rose’s heart was pricked by it. Looking at Briley, who seemed like an abandoned puppy, her conscience was pricked.

With her lips pouting, Briley uttered. 

“Ugh. Since I’m so upset, just grant me one favor.”

“What, what is it?”

Briley fetched a headpiece and held it out to Rose. It was shaped like rose petals. It was about the size of two fingers and had small pearls densely embedded.

Briley looked at Rose expectantly, with eyes shining in anticipation.

“How’s this?”

“Umm…”

“Could you wear this just once?”

“Me?”

The pearls emitted a faint shine. While Rose wasn’t well-versed in gemstones, these didn’t seem like cheap synthetic ones.

“If you put it on the side of your head, it’ll look pretty, right?”

“Uh, umm. Won’t it stand out too much?”

“Not at all. It’s not a flashy design, and it’s small.”

“It’s not expensive, is it?”

“Among my decorations, it’s on the very cheap side. Don’t worry.”

Rose couldn’t readily accept the hairpin and pursed her lips.

“You’re not going to wear it? If you don’t like it… Well, can’t be helped. I’ll be fine.”

Briley murmured with a not-so-okay expression. She looked so disappointed that her shoulders drooped, causing Rose to hurriedly speak up.

“Oh, no, it’s not that. I’ll wear it. Yeah, it’s just something like this.”

“Hehe.”

Briley immediately beamed with a bright smile. She was so excited that she even shook her clenched fists in the air.

“As soon as I saw it, I thought it would suit you well, Rose. After all, you’re a rose!”

As Rose looked at Briley, she couldn’t help but chuckle.

“I don’t know why you like decorating yourself so much.”

“Well, blank canvases are always the most beautiful and exciting. And I’m naturally weak for cute things!”

Rose exaggeratedly shook her head.

‘Bry’s a weird one, too.…’

Briley giggled, leaning closer to Rose.

“Rose, other kids here act way too stiff! Ugh. Do Imperial citizens always act like this? Sometimes it’s suffocating because of their pretentiousness. Whenever I say something, they go, ‘Whoa!’ and act surprised. Too… what’s the word? Open? Anyway, that’s how they are.”

Though it might have seemed enjoyable from afar, Briley, in her way, seemed to have had her troubles too. Briley made an irritated expression, and then even mimicked the polite behavior of the other kids.

“It seems like this place has a much more serious atmosphere than the Republic.”

“Oh my. I can’t even say anything. You’re the only one who doesn’t get flustered by me, Rose!”

Briley habitually pulled Rose close and nuzzled her.

While Rose had been flustered too, she swallowed down the words that said, “It’s just on the surface.” Now, being caught up in Briley’s arms was starting to feel somewhat familiar.

“Can I put on the hairpin for you?!”

“Sure.”

In response to Rose’s answer, Briley cheered up and laughed brightly. What was this? Briley Lawrence was a bit strange and funny, but she was someone you couldn’t bring yourself to dislike.

* * *

Rose gently played with the rose-shaped hairpin, feeling the small pearls at her fingertips. She had pinned back the softly curling strands of hair on the right side of her head. Even though it was far from flashy, Rose sometimes felt self-conscious about it.

‘In reality, no one would even see it.’

Rose lowered her hand and tried to focus on the lecture.

The afternoon lectures were already racing towards their end. On Wednesday afternoons, Rose attended the advanced course of “Mana Kinematics.” The professor for this class was Margaret.

During the last vacation, Rose had worked as an assistant under Professor Margaret. Despite being incredibly busy, Rose had developed a greater respect for Professor Margaret. Although she was in her forties, Professor Margaret had never married. When asked about marriage, she would answer that she had married to magic engineering. She loved her field of study and was completely dedicated to her research.

Mana Kinematics was complex and difficult to the point that it made Rose’s head spin, but she tried to maintain her focus by watching Professor Margaret closely.

As the class ended and people began to leave, Professor Margaret spoke up.

“Oh, from the third week, we’ll also be doing experimental sessions alongside our lectures. I found it difficult to manage the lab all by myself, so I hired a teaching assistant. His name is Theo Lixton, and he’s a graduate from here, so some of you might know him.”

The familiar name unexpectedly caught Rose’s attention.

Theo Lixton.

The first person to graduate under the Commoner scholarship system and the founder of the Walking Club.

‘Senior Theo is becoming a teaching assistant?’

Theo was three years older than Rose. After he graduated from the academy, she had never seen him again. As a freshman, Rose had relied quite a bit on Theo, who was also a scholarship student. She had gotten along well with him since he was also a rare magic engineering major. He was a senior she had respected as a human being. Theo’s confident graduation had instilled in her the belief that even a scholarship student could persevere at Berkley Academy.

‘What has he been doing all this time?’

She had heard faint rumors that he got a job at a private research institute.

Rose felt excited at the thought of seeing Theo again. She wanted to ask him about his career and hear various stories about working at a research institute.

With her heart pounding, Rose left the classroom. Briley had been depressed because of the news that Rose would be coming back late, so she had ended up making plans with her family for dinner.

Tonight, Rose went to a restaurant alone and had a light dinner. Since eating alone was part of her routine, she didn’t think much of it. After dinner, she leisurely reviewed her notes from the Mana Kinematics lecture.

Afterward, she returned to the dormitory, emptied her bag, and rested for a while. She lay back on the couch, gazing at the ceiling while lost in thought.

‘It was already eight in the evening.’

Her tutoring session with Jasper was approaching.

‘I couldn’t see him when I was having dinner. Where did he go?’

For two days, Jasper had promptly taken up a spot at the restaurant. But tonight, she couldn’t find him anywhere.

‘He didn’t forget, did he?’

That would be problematic. She had already prepared for the tutoring sessions during the vacation.

With a sigh, Rose got up from the couch after a short rest. She packed her tutoring materials into her bag and left her dormitory room. The tutoring location was the same old laboratory in the observatory where she had met Jasper before.

Although it was usually reserved for postgraduate students, a new rule during the senior year extended the curfew to 10 p.m., which provided ample time. The entrance to the observatory was quiet. She only encountered a security guard by chance, and other than that, there were no students to be seen.

Rose ascended the spiral staircase. When she arrived at the fourth-floor corridor of the observatory, where the abandoned laboratory was located, she suddenly realized something she hadn’t thought of before.

‘It’s… It’s so dark. They turned off the lights.’

The corridor was pitch black. Now that she thought about it, the fourth-floor labs were abandoned, so no one bothered to keep the lights on at night.

Rose shuffled forward, hunching her shoulders and taking cautious steps. Each step seemed to echo loudly through the corridor.

‘I don’t like the dark.’

Squinting her eyes, Rose moved forward slowly. She couldn’t help but think of ghost stories at a time like this.

“During the construction of the observatory, three workers died.”

“They fell from the fourth floor and their heads… you know.”

“At night, a ghost with flowing brain matter roams the corridor.”

Rose scrunched her shoulders even more.

“Ugh…”

A groan escaped her unintentionally.

‘I should have brought a lamp or something. What an idiot…’

Rose had a particular weakness. She wasn’t afraid of thunder, her father’s yelling, or even poverty, but ghosts terrified her. Whether or not ghosts existed had not been proven. That’s why the idea of ghosts was even scarier—something invisible, beyond logic and calculation. If only she could measure them precisely like mana, using formulas to calculate their exact properties.

‘I’m scared, I’m scared… No, I’m not scared… It’s nothing… But I’m scared…’

Half-squinting her eyes, Rose continued to walk cautiously.

Crash!

Suddenly, a loud noise erupted from the end of the corridor.

“Eek!”

Startled, Rose let out a reflexive scream and immediately dropped to the ground. Her heart raced in her chest. She clutched her knees and shivered, her trembling hands turning pale, and a chill ran down her spine.

“What are you doing there?”

At that moment, a familiar voice came from ahead. Rose cautiously lifted her head, peering up with the eyes she had tightly closed.