Chapter 8

Did things really have to happen like this to embarrass someone? Tislin buried her face deep to hide her burning cheeks as she replied.

“It’s not about you.”

“Right, if not me, then with who.”

“…I didn’t say I was. No, forget it.”

Although Damien narrowed his eyes, he didn’t pry any further. It was a relief for Tislin, though it made her wonder if he had even been genuinely curious in the first place.

“Returning them?”

“Yeah.”

In just a few steps, Damien placed the books on the return counter at the far end of the hallway and came right back.

It was impossible to miss the subtle gazes clinging to his straight back. Students from Liberal Arts, Magic, Fine Arts—good grief, even Medicine. What business did those guys even have here?

Liking someone who stood out had an unexpected advantage: since everyone viewed him similarly, it didn’t draw much individual attention.

Though engaging oneself to such a person turned that very advantage entirely into a disadvantage.

Tislin subtly hid herself in a corner. Even so, Damien easily found Tislin tucked away in her spot. The gazes she had barely managed to avoid followed him right back, like iron filings pulled to a magnet.

Fortunately, perhaps because everyone was busy with assignments, they quickly turned their attention back to their own work. Still, it would be impossible to stop the chatter from sprouting up here and there.

‘Is it at least a relief that I can use the assignment as an excuse?’

Then again, it wasn’t as if she was going to go around making excuses to those pouring gazes anyway, so for now, having an excuse or not changed nothing.

Unable to stay in the library any longer, she walked straight outside.

Damien followed two or three steps behind her. Every nerve along her back felt pricklingly alert.

Was she walking properly? She wasn’t waddling, was she? The hands clutching her skirt grew damp. The heavy sound of military boots following behind echoed at a pace similar to her heartbeat.

Arriving at a secluded, shady spot, Tislin turned around.

The afternoon sunlight was dazzlingly bright. Damien stood about two steps away from Tislin with his back to the sun.

That had been the exact distance Arkin Rudera kept when talking to Tislin as well. Yet even at the same distance, with Damien standing in that spot, it felt as though they were making eye contact right in front of each other’s noses, suffocating her.

“What brought you to the library?”

When she asked while avoiding his gaze, Damien let out a short laugh.

“Why. I can come too.”

“I know students from the Department of Knighthood rarely come.”

“…I come occasionally.”

Damien fell silent after offering that reply like an excuse. It seemed he didn’t want to talk any further about the topic.

Come to think of it, she had occasionally seen Damien reading books at the Grand Duke’s residence in Luxen too. Though usually, the moment Tislin spotted him, Adelinde would pounce on Damien and drag him away, separating him from the book the instant she saw him.

“Tis, are you working on an assignment?”

“Yeah, I am.”

A brief silence followed. This kind of silence usually meant Damien was waiting for her next words. Tislin needlessly tapped the floor tiles with the tip of her shoe as she continued.

“Do you know we ended up as partners for the assignment?”

“I heard from Arkin.”

“We have to do it. …Um, are you busy?”

“Even if I’m busy, we have to do it.”

Damien spoke in a rather nonchalant tone instead. Tislin let out a sigh.

‘I’m the only one fretting over this situation.’

At that thought, her voice naturally turned sharp.

“If you’re busy, it’s fine. If it’s knight duty, you must be moving around all over the place. You hardly even come to school.”

Damien looked down quietly at the top of Tislin’s head, then leaned down to match her eye level. He was doing this fully knowing she couldn’t avoid it. She felt a heat rising stealthily from beneath her eyes.

Arkin had said there was no one in Luxen who didn’t know Tislin’s feelings—because of this face that couldn’t hide her inner thoughts to save her life. So Damien must have known as well.

The moment a surge of shame made her try to pull her body back, a large hand caught her shoulder.

“Don’t dodge like that.”

It was a low, soothing voice. Her heart thudded violently.

“I know you’re uncomfortable, Tis, but we aren’t at a stage where we can’t even do a single assignment together.”

Because Damien looked a little hurt as he said that, Tislin unconsciously shifted her words.

“…It’s a lot more work than you think.”

“Then all the more reason you shouldn’t do it alone. If you have time, do you want to do it now?”

Startled, Tislin shook her head vigorously.

“No! Tomorrow. No, the day after tomorrow!”

“Sure then.”

She regretted it the moment she turned back, but it was already too late. Walking back to the dormitory in a daze, Tislin collapsed onto her seat and tore at her hair.

‘Come to think of it, I forgot to ask him why on earth he got engaged to me.’

She had been completely roped in!

Since things had turned out this way, there was no helping it. Finish the assignment as quickly as possible, and settle the engagement talk on the same day.

‘I have to ask him everything—why he went out of his way to get engaged to me, and what it’ll take for him to break it off.’

Just like an engagement, breaking one off couldn’t be done unilaterally, making Damien’s consent indispensable.

So it was either persuade Damien to break off the engagement, or corner him until he had no choice but to break it off. She hoped to resolve it through the former if possible.

As the first step of that plan, Tislin decided to bribe Clayton Hyer, Professor Keron’s teaching assistant.

Right after parting with Damien, Tislin went straight out to the shopping district and brought back a tray of the most popular chocolates among the Royal Academy students. Suffice it to say she stood in line for quite a long time.

‘He’s plenty rich, yet he takes bribes…’

For the second son of the Hyer family—one of the top three wealthiest families in Viera—to fall for a single box of chocolates. What would the Marquis of Hyer think if he saw his son like this?

“I thought about setting the framework like this for now. Of course, we’ll handle the fine details ourselves, but what do you think?”

Having tasted the limited-edition chocolate filled with cinnamon paste, Clayton Hyer scanned the outline of the assignment Tislin had written down with a crooked expression. As she had said, there were no fine details. It was merely a summary of the direction and topics to discuss:

An extreme centralized political system, a family-centric culture, a developed economy alongside luxurious arts and culture, a history of subjugating neighboring nations based on early military development, and a very brief description of the progress of the wars of conquest over the past 100 years.

“Would this fit Professor Keron’s evaluation standards?”

“As long as you hit the page count properly, it should be fine.”

It was an insincere remark, but that was enough.

Professor Keron hadn’t given any clues as to what content should go into the assignment. However, he was bound to have content he inwardly desired—a kind of grading rubric, so to speak.

And no matter how passionate a professor was, he couldn’t possibly grade all those assignments himself, meaning more than half of the papers would be graded by the teaching assistant.

Therefore, Clayton Hyer, as Professor Keron’s teaching assistant, was bound to know Professor Keron’s evaluation criteria to some extent.

While Clayton Hyer wasn’t the type to blab about the professor’s grading criteria all over the place, he wasn’t so stubborn as to leave an assignment going in the wrong direction unattended after accepting a courtesy like this.

‘Besides, he’s already secured 1st place for himself.’

No matter how cold and unfeeling bureaucratic nobles were, someone who practically had Professor Keron’s letter of recommendation in the bag wouldn’t accept a bribe and lie about it. If he were going to do that, he would have rejected the bribe in the first place.

“Why work this hard on it anyway? Just do a decent job.”

If it were an assignment done alone, she would have. Doing a decent, diligent job while looking up various sources faithfully—not coming to find a teaching assistant, handing over a bribe, and probing for grading criteria like this.

“Did you say the person doing the project with you is Sir Xsanov? That guy actually went to Parpanan, so he must know it inside out. Are you feeling pressured?”

“Something like that, yeah.”

Though her reasons differed from what Clayton Hyer was thinking.

…or so she thought, until the very next moment.

“Do you like him too?”

“What?”

Tislin’s shoulders twitched upward like a child hit by a spark. Catching a big fish with a offhand remark, Clayton Hyer’s eyes widened in surprise.

“Really?”

“No, just… I mean, doesn’t everyone like him?”

“Well, I’m sure there are people who don’t. Yeah, okay.”

What do you mean, ‘okay’!

Yet with the heat burning beneath her eyes, she could guess what Clayton had seen without even looking in a mirror.

“I didn’t know you liked him that enthusiastically. Well, my younger sister is like that too.”

Ah, he meant admiration. Tislin relaxed her shoulders in relief. She knew there were plenty of boys and girls like that even in the Viera high society, who had never once seen Damien Xsanov’s face. To say nothing of the Royal Academy, where one could occasionally see his face just walking by.

War heroes were always like that. All the more so for a young and handsome war hero.

In the first place, there was no way Clayton Hyer knew about the connection between Damien and Tislin, so why on earth had she jumped to conclusions on her own? Tislin let out a dry laugh and retrieved her assignment draft.

“If there’s nothing more to add, then I’m set.”

“Yeah.”

Lifting the box of chocolates, Clayton Hyer paused briefly before speaking:

“By any chance, are you doing the project in the Department of Knighthood?”

“Yeah, why?”

“It’s nothing much, but they say there’s a ghost there.”

Words she never expected to hear from Clayton Hyer caused her mouth to gape open. Wasn’t this the guy who used to frown like he was the only adult around whenever the kids spread all sorts of rumors?

Yet Clayton Hyer’s face as he brought it up looked fairly serious.

“Did you eat something wrong? There was nothing put in those.”

“I’m just telling you. I just happened to hear the Knighthood professors talking with Professor Keron.”

Seeing as even professors were talking about it, the ghost commotion seemed to be fairly serious.

Should I ask Damien? The thought crossed her mind, but Tislin soon shook her head. She wasn’t going there to engage in such trivial chatter, was she?

‘If I’m really curious later, I can just call Arkin Rudera and pry it out of him.’

Not that she was even that curious anyway.

…If it’s a ghost appearing in the Department of Knighthood, is it the ghost of a knight who died during the war?