Chapter 48

Theo eventually persuaded me to go and went to find Grace alone.

An overwhelming impulse to stop him welled up in my chest, but I knew that once Theo made up his mind, trying to talk him out of it would be useless.

Left all by myself, I reluctantly found a spot to sit and guarded the area while catching snowflakes on my skin.

Yet, as time drifted on, my anxiety only grew.

The conversation I’d had with Grace kept drifting back through my mind.

‘Did Theo actually know where Grace was before he went looking for her?’

I had wanted to trust Theo and wait, but my nervous heart wouldn’t let me stay still for even a second.

‘What if Grace tries to kidnap Theo…?’

Tortured by all sorts of wild scenarios and chewing on my lip in panic, I finally sprang to my feet.

‘I’ll just sneak a quick look. It could be a dangerous situation…’

With no real idea where they were, I searched around until I finally spotted the two of them near the path leading up to the back mountain.

I leaned against a tree for a moment, trying to calm my frantically pounding heart.

And just as I took a step closer to Theo, his voice rang out.

“If you really know about the true demon, then you must understand its power, too.”

“So?”

I stopped dead in my tracks, as if caught by some invisible force.

Though Theo’s back was turned to me, I could clearly see Grace’s expression as she faced him.

Her face was drained of color, trembling from head to toe.

Instinctively, I clapped a hand over my mouth and held my breath.

‘That power…’

At that instant, William’s voice flashed through my mind.

“That demon… uses a strange power! That was definitely a demon’s power!”

Was it just a threat to scare Grace?

Or if not that…

“Simply put, if you keep making a fuss, I don’t know what I might end up doing.”

A calm, playful tone.

“So just stay quiet.”

It was Theo’s voice—the one that had often echoed in my ears with a spine-chilling, serene tranquility.

I hadn’t been mistaken about anything. I hadn’t misunderstood.

This was Theo’s hidden side.

Right then, Grace, who had been staring straight at Theo, turned her gaze toward me.

‘Our eyes… met.’

Shock froze me in my tracks.

The look Grace gave me now held a completely different emotion than before.

A vicious gaze, swirling with resentment, jealousy, and hatred, locked onto me for a few agonizing seconds.

I couldn’t move a muscle until that piercing stare finally faded.

As soon as my legs began to work again, I turned and slipped away from them, keeping my footsteps as quiet as possible.

Returning to the spot where I’d originally been waiting, I caught a few falling snowflakes in my palm and thought.

‘It might be alien to me, but for Theo, this could be a matter of life and death. Just like how he deliberately put up a sharp wall to escape the kids who used to torment him, maybe he was trying to look threatening by playing along with Grace’s misconceptions.’

The snow trapped in my hand melted rapidly until it lost all trace of its original shape.

‘Even so, the reason it still bothers me is because of what William tried to tell me before.’

The power wielded by a demon.

It was an unknown phenomenon beyond my understanding.

I knew that meant I couldn’t carelessly make assumptions or jump to conclusions.

‘Let’s just wait for now.’

Worrying about it all by myself wasn’t going to solve anything.

Until I knew the exact truth, I decided to pretend in front of Theo that I had never heard a thing.

Just then, while I was staring blankly at the falling snow, a blurry figure drifted into my field of vision.

Having apparently finished talking with Grace while I stood there lost in thought, Theo was walking slowly toward me.

As I watched him approach, my eyes caught my own footprints left in the snowy path.

“……!”

Dizziness hit me like a wave.

In my panic, I had completely forgotten to consider the footprints I’d left behind along the way.

If Theo had noticed the trail leading all the way from the back mountain, there was no way he wouldn’t realize I had followed him.

‘If that’s the case, Theo might already know that I overheard their conversation.’

As the sound of crunching snow grew closer, my fingertips began to tremble.

“What’s wrong?”

Yet, when he stood right in front of me, Theo spoke with his usual, easygoing demeanor.

The sudden rush of relief unknotted my tightly bound breath, and my tense muscles finally relaxed.

“Just wondering if things went well with Grace.”

“Yeah. She probably won’t show her face around here anymore. I convinced her.”

“Convinced her,” he said. His tone was so nonchalant that it actually caught me off guard.

Reaching out, Theo brushed away the chill on my reddened nose and gently guided me forward.

“At this rate, you’re really going to catch a cold. Let’s get inside.”

“Yeah…”

I followed after Theo, but glanced back over my shoulder one last time.

The two distinct sets of footprints left clearly in the snow seemed to reach out and grab at my ankles.

***

Unable to resolve certain matters on our own, I ultimately decided to seek help from Doctor Hayley.

Contrary to my worries that she would flatly refuse with a look of disgust, she actually seemed hurt, asking if I really thought of her as that kind of person.

At the same time, she expressed genuine shock upon learning that I intended to take the academy entrance exam.

“An academy exam? I figured you wouldn’t just sit around quietly until you turned fourteen, but…”

“Even from your perspective, Teacher, I don’t look like someone meant to stay locked away in a temple, do I?”

“No, I’m just surprised because you’ve chosen such a difficult road.”

The teacher murmured, her eyes scanning the books I had brought with me.

“This isn’t even a textbook meant for academy prep, but rather a sloppy children’s history book that barely skims the surface, coupled with academic texts that have almost no explanations? How on earth do you expect to take the academy exam with things like these…?”

“…….”

Was it really that bad…?

I clamped my mouth shut and watched as Doctor Hayley rubbed her face in exhaustion.

“Do you even understand what these books are trying to say?”

“Um… W-well, sort of? Roughly…?”

Unfortunately, my past-life memories didn’t overlap with the specialized knowledge of this world.

‘How am I supposed to know about sword techniques and alternate-world botany…?’

While having lived a full life beforehand helped with basic comprehension and reading skills, I had no confidence that a little studying would suddenly turn me into a genius scoring top marks with ultimate efficiency.

‘I wanted to be one of those protagonists who becomes ridiculously overpowered thanks to past-life memories, too.’

What good is high comprehension when my baseline knowledge is completely different to begin with?

Besides, I hadn’t even been particularly good at studying in my past life.

Thinking back on my mediocre grades hovering around the middle tier, I sometimes doubted whether my interpretations were even heading in the right direction.

Still, I figured I had at least a shred of hope.

“I-I’m studying with the priest’s help, so it’ll be fine!”

“And? What are absolute beginners supposed to achieve by recklessly diving into academic texts?”

“…….”

The sharp, merciless critique struck a painful blow right to my chest. It felt like my ribs had just cracked.

“We’ve been studying pretty hard on our own, though. At least our foundational knowledge is…”

“Iris.”

The teacher’s pitying voice cut me off.

“Habrona Academy likes to put on airs of prestige and claims to grant anyone the right to sit for the exam regardless of age or background, but once you actually go there, it’s exclusively children from noble households. Do you know what that means?”

“…….”

“It just means anyone is allowed to take the test, but the difficulty level isn’t something commoners without a proper education can easily pass. The academy is just putting on a lofty, hypocritical show under the guise of open opportunity.”

Facing a harsh reality I had never considered before felt like crashing straight into an impassable wall.

‘Am I really just a kid whose head is full of useless memories?’

I had fancied myself quite the mature adult, but looking back, perhaps I had never truly grown past the teenager whose life had ended too soon.

“Even so…”

That didn’t mean I was going to give up on the exam, however.

I couldn’t claim I had an abundance of time, but this wasn’t the end of the road either.

Even if I failed, grasping the actual difficulty of the test would make it a meaningful experience.

“I’m going to try. I can’t just sit around and do nothing.”

Doctor Hayley stared at me for a long moment with a deeply troubled expression.

Then, with a heavy sigh, she spoke.

“You know how soon spring is, right?”

“Yes, I know.”

“There’s a mountain of work to do, so come straight to the infirmary as soon as lunch is over tomorrow.”

“Pardon?”

While I stood there blinking in surprise, Doctor Hayley gathered her things and stood up from her seat.

“Where are you going all of a sudden?”

She didn’t even slow her pace as I spoke.

Reaching the door in a flash, she answered almost as if she were in a trance before disappearing from my sight.

“To buy textbooks.”

What just happened…?

Everything had unfolded so quickly that my brain couldn’t quite process it.

‘She just said she’s going to help me, right?’

My heart gave a sudden, heavy lurch.

A complex mix of shock, excitement, and bewilderment washed over me.

Still sitting at my desk and staring blankly at the doorway, I finally turned my gaze back to Doctor Hayley’s empty seat.

‘Wait… isn’t this technically skipping work?’