I Start with a Bad Hand!

“Are you really going to send that to the ducal house? Right now? Immediately?”

“Yeah, I’m going to send it.”

“Why all of a sudden?”

A sudden sharp pain made me stop and brace myself against the corridor wall. My habit of reaching for my collarbone found no jewelry there anymore. Damn it. I redirected my hand to the handkerchief-wrapped remnants of Dietrich’s shattered black soul bead. It was now more like sand than a bead. I took a swig of painkillers I got from the infirmary and replied to Agnes.

“There’s no more time.”

“Hey, wipe your nosebleed first. Are you sure this is from fatigue and not from falling down the stairs?”

Agnes rummaged in her pocket and handed me a ragged cloth that looked more like trash than a handkerchief. I refused it and wiped my nosebleed with my sleeve.

“Yes, I’m sure.”

It seemed the protective power of Dietrich’s soul fragment, which I had made into a necklace, was greater than I had anticipated. When Cedric crushed it under his shoe, my nose started bleeding profusely almost immediately. Aiden had been horrified at the blood dripping from my face and had fumbled in his pocket, only to realize he was in his training clothes.

“You really are something.”

Aiden had stripped off his training jacket on the spot. It wasn’t a welcome sight, but at least he had an inner shirt on. The sweaty fabric pressing against my nose was agonizing.

“Stop it. It’s more humiliating to have my nose pressed into your sweaty training clothes.”

“For fuck’s sake, you think I want to do this?”

Aiden grumbled, still holding the back of my head firmly to stop the bleeding. Feeling like I might suffocate, I stomped on his foot with my shoe.

“Ow!”

The first thing I did after freeing myself was run towards Cedric, who was ahead with Roxanne glancing back at me. Cedric’s first reaction to my approach was to shield his ‘sister’ behind him. Understandable. Anyone would react like that if a blood-soaked person was running towards them.

“…Cedric, your birthday is in autumn, right?”

Cedric didn’t answer, but it didn’t matter. This wasn’t a conversation; it was a declaration.

“I wanted to give you an early birthday present. You probably won’t be here during the holidays, so I’ll send it to your estate.”

“…A present?”

It was Roxanne who responded. I was half out of my mind at that point and couldn’t recall her exact expression. The one thing I remembered was her repeatedly muttering something under her breath.

“It would be best if I could give it to you in person, but I probably won’t be at the academy from this autumn.”

“…Why?”

Yes. “Why” was what Roxanne kept muttering. But I couldn’t answer her question. It wasn’t based on any solid evidence but rather an instinctive certainty. When I fell down the stairs, my body was fine, but I felt like it was collapsing the moment Cedric crushed the soul bead. So, I looked away from Roxanne, who was still muttering “why,” and focused on Cedric.

“You can look forward to it.”

Cedric’s lips moved as if to say something, but I didn’t wait and turned away. That’s when Aiden, who had called Irene and Agnes, started insisting I needed to go to the infirmary, and the chaos that followed led to where I was now.

“So, are you going to the dorm now? Do you really need to send it right now?”

Agnes, panting as she tried to keep up with my fast pace, had already overtaken me. I was the one struggling to walk properly, feeling my stamina drain quickly. Realizing how quickly I was running out of energy made me determined to finish what I had to do as soon as possible. In this state, without even a temporary fix, I didn’t know when this borrowed body would give out completely.

Bang!

When I reached the dorm and hurriedly opened my door, the door rattled loudly even though I hadn’t pushed it that hard.

“Why does your door always close with such a bang?”

“Isn’t it because of the wind?”

“There’s no wind if the window is closed.”

Maybe the hinges were loose? Dismissing it, I pulled out a book with a solid cover that looked like a storage box. Unlike my textbooks, this old and ornate book stood out on my shelf. Anyone would be tempted to pick it up at least once.

I had taken this book from a retiring professor’s office, where it was left to be thrown away, to use as a hidden storage compartment. Inside was supposed to be my document—

“It’s gone.”

Agnes, who had sprawled out on my bed in the meantime, responded indifferently.

“What?”

That couldn’t be. I rushed to the bed and lifted the mattress. Thankfully, the books containing Dietrich’s soul fragments were still there. Agnes, now lying with the blanket pulled over her, didn’t even bother looking at me.

“What’s missing?”

“The document.”

Agnes turned her head slowly and, upon meeting my eyes, sprang up from the bed like a spring. Her mouth opened and closed a few times before she managed to speak.

“No way?”

“…”

“The document you’re talking about… it’s not the one I’m thinking of, right?”

Unless someone had stolen it, how could that document, hidden in such a private and secret place, be missing? The only proof that Dietrich’s body was with the Duchess of Elexion.

“What? How could it possibly be gone?”

At that moment, Agnes, who had been standing frozen in the middle of the room, started frantically searching through my room on my behalf. She checked under the bed, behind the desk, everywhere. Even though she knew, just like I did, that the document should have been in its original place, she was desperate.

“Agnes. Stop.”

“Stop? Are you kidding? Look around properly! You might have put it somewhere else.”

“It’s not here. I think someone stole it.”

Agnes stopped rummaging through the bookshelf and slowly turned to look at me. Her face was pale, and she seemed terrified. With trembling lips, she spoke.

“You know I can open your door without a key.”

“Agnes.”

“The only people who know about the secret compartment in that book are you and me.”

“I know. I’m not accusing you.”

I moved my creaking body toward the door. There were unfamiliar scratches around the keyhole. But that alone wasn’t enough. I checked the door hinges, which had been unusually loose and rattly today. It looked like they had been removed and then hastily reattached.

“It was a mistake to think only we could break into someone’s room.”

“What? Wait, what’s going on here?”

Damn it. I raked my hand through my hair in frustration.

“Someone got into my room. Not as smoothly as us, but they did.”

At that moment, Agnes collapsed to the floor.

“So what do we do? If we never find that document…”

Yeah, I’m losing my mind too. But contrary to our fears, I didn’t need to find the document. I didn’t need to suspect someone close to me of stealing it. The document revealed itself. In a ridiculous twist of fate, it appeared in the fireplace of the student council room. In this summer heat, someone had unnecessarily lit the fireplace.

The document emerged from the flames completely intact.

‘Documents notarized by the clergy cannot be burned or torn.’

Whoever had stolen it clearly didn’t know that it had been notarized by the clergy. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have stupidly thrown it into the fireplace.

Thus, it was discovered by everyone present at the final meeting of the semester.