I Start with a Bad Hand!

“Who lit the fireplace in the middle of summer? It’s already hot enough.”

“Maybe they thought it would rain soon and wanted to get rid of the humidity.”

“Oh, Roxanne? You’re here early.”

What they noticed first was the awkwardly positioned figure of Roxanne, the princess of Elexion. Instead of greeting them cheerfully, she gave a hesitant smile with her hands hidden behind her. 

Next to her stood the Crown Prince of the Empire, his face a mix of anger and sadness. The students entering the student council room exchanged glances, as if acknowledging that perhaps the rumors weren’t entirely baseless.

While other academy students gossiped about the strained relationship between the two, the student council members never believed it. After all, why would Roxanne regularly visit the student council room to see her fiancé, who had already graduated, if it wasn’t out of love?

In the midst of the awkward atmosphere, someone managed to change the topic.

“I don’t see Senior Irene anywhere.”

“Yeah, it’s unusual for her to be late.”

“She had to stop by the infirmary because something came up with a friend.”

Aiden entered as he said this. Naturally, Roxanne’s gaze shifted to him. He had changed out of his sweaty training clothes into his uniform, but there were still traces of blood on his wrist. The room filled with laughter at the idea that Irene even had friends, with Aiden scolding them to stop making such comments. Roxanne’s expression darkened even more.

“So, the first item on the agenda…”

With the chairperson absent, the meeting began, but the Crown Prince didn’t leave. Throughout the smoothly running meeting, there were frequent exchanged glances. The unease was palpable, as everyone knew that if Irene were present, she wouldn’t tolerate an outsider like the Crown Prince sitting in on their meeting.

‘Why didn’t anyone stop an outsider from attending the student council meeting?’

The intense eyes and cold demeanor of the Crown Prince were unnerving, but no one could muster the courage to oppose him. Only Irene would have had the nerve to do so.

“What’s that?”

The precarious atmosphere of the meeting came to a halt with someone’s exclamation.

“What’s that?”

“Where?”

“Over there, by the fireplace. Is that… a white paper?”

“What? A piece of paper? It’s probably just ashes.”

“No, look closely. It is paper.”

Amidst the rising voices, everyone’s attention turned to the fireplace. As one student got up to retrieve the piece of paper that floated lightly, untouched by the flames, Roxanne noticeably flinched.

“Hey, be careful!”

“It’s strangely not that hot. What does it say? ‘As a servant of Palkia, it is confirmed that the body’s owner was present at the time the counterpart was recorded. The body’s owner is… Dietrich Degoph. The counterpart is Rosamund….'”

The student’s gaze, who was quickly reading through the letter, shifted to Roxanne.

“Elexion’s testament.”

The one who suddenly stood up and snatched the letter was the Crown Prince. “Damn, notarized by the clergy,” he muttered with a curse. The room fell silent as the Crown Prince roughly opened the door and stormed out, followed closely by his fiancée, Roxanne.

‘What’s going on?’

It was a day where glances spoke louder than words.

***

Outside, an early summer rain was falling softly. The heat from the afternoon had lingered around the dormitory, but the rain had brought a subtle chill near the window. Icarus, noticing my slight shiver under my summer uniform, draped his jacket over my shoulders.

“There weren’t as many family members as I thought. Most had children later in life.”

“The Lord Ferris family has always been like that. They’re late and few in having children.”

I looked at the genealogical chart of the Lord Ferris family, where each individual was marked with various symbols. An X for those definitively executed by the Empire, a triangle for those who committed suicide or were presumed to have done so, and circles for those who died of natural causes or illness.

“It’s true the Lord Ferris family was wiped out, but not all were executed. There were more suicides.”

“And there were some forces at the count’s house where your mother stayed. Those who died in the conflict are marked with a triangle along with those who committed suicide.” Ink spread in a circle under Icarus’s pen as he tapped it on the chart.

Then, amidst the ink-stained names, I noticed some without any markings.

“What about these people with no markings?”

“Oh, those are the ones whose whereabouts are unknown or whose bodies were never found.”

Despite the gruesome content, Icarus’s casual tone sent a chill down my spine. I pushed the feeling down and asked, “Unknown whereabouts? Why?”

“There are stories of them leaving for a monastery in their youth or rumors of going abroad for business. But nothing concrete. When the Lord Ferris family fell, related records were also destroyed, leaving little information.”

“Abroad? Where abroad?”

Icarus thought for a moment, scratching his chin. “At that time… Sereti.”

“Sereti?”

“Yes, due to border issues, travel was restricted to Sereti. So if they left for business or religious reasons, it would be to Sereti.”

The trouble was caused by Lord Philip Ferris, the younger uncle of the head of the Lord Ferris family. Unlike other family members, even his birth year was unclear.

‘But considering the ages of his siblings…’

He would be roughly 70 or 80 years old. I gnawed on my pen, scanning down the family tree to the head’s children. One entry caught my eye. Unlike the other markings that filled the space over the names, a small triangle was drawn over the name of the head’s only child. Based on the years, the child had been five years old at the time of death.

Regardless of the circumstances or the family, five years old was too young to die. Feeling a knot in my stomach, I asked Icarus, “Why is this mark so small? Did they… not find the body?”

“Ah… They found the body, but… hold on… Ah, yes,” Icarus replied, flipping through some documents and frowning. “They found the body, but it didn’t match the typical characteristics. The body was taller than expected, and more notably, the hair found wasn’t completely burned and was red. No one in the Lord Ferris family had red hair.”

The unease grew as our conversation stalled, but we shared a silent understanding. Perhaps the family had gone to great lengths to save their last heir.

“But the age doesn’t fit. If they were five back then, they’d be in their twenties now, not a teenager.”

So, it wasn’t Hayden? The flow of my thoughts was disrupted as I chewed on my pen. I glanced at Icarus, who was searching through various documents in front of me. His broad shoulders, making the small dining table seem even smaller, reminded me of his impressive build that had already filled a doorway last year.

“Ugh! Ugh!”

My attention was drawn to the noise outside the window. In the pouring rain, a group of people were training, making primal sounds. Among them was Aiden. The shadow of his beard, which always seemed to appear when I encountered him in the late afternoon, made him look older than he was.

‘You can’t really tell people’s ages here…’

I realized that the students at this academy developed differently from the adolescents I knew. Their physical growth appeared earlier than I expected. And considering how Hayden seemed more polished and tidy compared to some of the other boys, it was possible he could blend in easily.

But this realization brought another discomfort.

‘So, if he’s already well into adulthood, coming to this academy and mingling with much younger students…’

Just thinking about it made my face contort in disgust. Hayden had made advances on more than one student I knew of. Icarus, noticing my expression, asked, “Are you feeling okay?”

Maybe. The sudden surge of anger made the back of my head throb painfully.

‘I sincerely hope he’s dead…’

According to the conservative perspective of Irene, the number of students involved with Hayden over the past two years exceeded five fingers. Even from what I saw in passing, it must have been two or three people…. At that point, I almost wished that all my assumptions and predictions so far had been completely wrong hypotheses. It would have been better if everything I had uncovered and anticipated turned out to be false. At least then there wouldn’t be any victims exploited by a depraved adult. 

‘If this bastard was going to act like this, why did he even enroll at the academy? He could’ve just been promiscuous outside of school.’

But for now, even this much was a significant gain. As I leisurely stretched, Icarus carefully asked me,

“About the documents you lost. Is that okay?”

At those words, I slowly lowered my outstretched hand. Those documents. The ones someone had taken from me. I had anticipated that something like this would happen eventually, but I didn’t expect it to happen this quickly. With a somewhat resigned feeling, I opened my mouth to explain to him what had happened so far.

But there was one thing I hadn’t anticipated.

“Ah… it’s okay. Because,” 

Knock knock.

Then someone knocked on my door. Naturally, Icarus and I turned our gazes toward the door. Who could it be? There’s no one who would visit at this hour.

“Not Curly, is it?”

“She doesn’t knock, just comes right in.”

“Horatius? His sister?”

“No. The senior said she had a late meeting this afternoon…”

As I said that, I subtly gestured with my head towards the bathroom for him. He slightly frowned and mouthed, ‘Again?’ Well, of course…

“What if the crown prince himself sees you coming and going from someone else’s dorm like this?”

I grumbled as I half-shoved his back to get him partially into the bathroom. Just as another hesitant knock came,

“One moment, please!”

Leaving the mumbling voice behind, when I opened the door, I stumbled back, not expecting the visitor standing there. The first thing that came into view were those seemingly empty eyes. Despite being filled with shimmering moisture, it was as if the mud at the bottom was visible.

I had thought things were proceeding as I had anticipated, but there was one fact I had overlooked.  

“There’s a lot to say, but… I feel I should start with this.”

That she, Roxanne, could make a different choice.

“The one who stole it from your room was me.”  

And at that moment, it marked the beginning of the end of my academy life.