Chapter 49

‘I can get tutoring again.’

Having gone to ask about a part I didn’t understand and finding myself unexpectedly with a new tutor, I was still unable to return to reality as I walked along in a daze.

‘Anyway, the things Frey taught me… they must be useful, right?’

As I chewed over Doctor Hayley’s words, a small amount of doubt began to sprout.

Even if it made me ungrateful, I couldn’t help it. Looking back, even Frey had said he had never studied for the academy.

‘Still, I learned a lot of basic knowledge thanks to him, so.’

Just then, a ball rolling from somewhere slowly brushed against my foot.

“Give us the ball!”

It seemed the boys were playing with a ball.

I bent down and stood back up to pick up the ball and toss it back.

“William?”

The ball tumbled from my hand back down to the floor.

Then, I heard the shouting of the children urging me on.

“Iris, you said you’d give us the ball?”

Coming to my senses, I picked up the ball myself and walked over to William.

And instead of William, I handed the ball to his friend.

‘He said he definitely saw it. That strange power.’

William looked flustered as I suddenly approached right in front of his nose.

“W-Why are you like this?”

I smiled faintly at William and said,

“Would you like to talk with me for a moment?”

“……?”

I dragged William, who was looking at me with a bewildered face, toward the back of the dormitory courtyard.

Although I had put it off the other day, there was something I desperately needed to ask William.

However, it would be troublesome if Theo found out, so I hadn’t been able to bring it up yet.

The timing was right. Theo was in the lounge, and since he thought I was with Doctor Hayley, it was a good opportunity.

“Iris, dragging me to a place like this with such a strange look in your eye all of a sudden… Don’t tell me you have something to say to me….”

“That’s right. I have something to say, so.”

At that, William’s face flushed bright red.

William cleared his throat for no reason and squirmed his body.

With one hand resting on the wall and the other on his hip, William nodded with a resolute expression.

“Alright. I’m ready to listen.”

“I don’t know what kind of thoughts you’re having, but whatever you’re imagining, that’s not it.”

“Huh?”

“You know what you said last time. That Theo used a strange power.”

After rummaging through his memories for a moment, William nodded vigorously.

“That’s right! I definitely saw it. If you had seen that bastard back then too, Iris, you would never have become friends with him.”

William’s face as he said that was drained of color.

Seeing William like this made me realize once again that I needed to figure out where William’s seemingly unbreakable conviction stemmed from.

“I called you out because I wanted to hear that story.”

William welcomed my words, looking extremely pleased.

“Yes! Finally, you’re going to find out too. After all this time of listening to me—”

“William. Could you just tell me quickly?”

I didn’t want to listen to any more annoying filler. I wanted to avoid a repeat of last time where someone else cut in and ruined the chance.

“Alright, why are you getting mad?”

William started speaking hesitantly, his spirits slightly dampened.

***

That day was the first time William had ever seen Theo.

It was back when he was much younger, at six years old.

Needing to use the restroom in the middle of a sleeping dawn, William lifted his small body and began walking down the corridor.

Creaking sounds from the floorboards leaked out beneath his feet, and the only light he could rely on came from the moonlight pouring past the windows.

William walked forward stealthily, not even daring to breathe loudly.

‘It feels like a ghost is going to pop out…’

His already impatient heart, coupled with fear, made William terrified.

Yet the pitch-black darkness right in front of him kept making his small feet hesitate.

Amidst that, a child who looked to be around his own age caught William’s eye.

It seemed the child was standing by the window, looking up at the night sky.

Not knowing who it was, a sudden sense of welcome urged William to walk briskly toward the child.

“What are you doing? Aren’t you scared?”

“…….”

Yet the child remained entirely unfazed by William’s question, staring upward.

Finding it strange, William shook the child’s shoulder with his hand, which was obscured by the darkness.

‘Is he sleeping standing up?’

It was right when William tilted his head in confusion. The child’s head, which had ignored William the whole time, finally turned toward him.

And upon meeting those eyes, William shrank back in horror and collapsed to the floor.

“R-Red…! It’s a monster!”

Blood-red pupils. That description was frequently used to scare children around William’s age.

It went along the lines of how a demon with red eyes and black hair would come snatch you away at night if you didn’t wake up early.

Because children born with those characteristics simply didn’t exist.

The child with red eyes took a step closer to William, who had collapsed.

Under the moonlight, his hair was pitch black, as if absorbing light, and beneath it, eerie red eyes looked down at William.

Gripped by terror, William burst into tears. With his mouth, he endlessly uttered words meant to chase away the demon while thrashing his legs wildly.

“Get away! Monster! Demon! Go straight to hell! Why are you here?!”

Yet there was no reaction in return. Only William’s voice echoed through the hallway; no other sound could be heard.

William, who had his eyes squeezed tightly shut, opened them slightly when there was no movement at all.

Hoping in his heart that the demon had disappeared.

“Aack!”

However, the terror had not vanished. If anything, it wrapped around him as if to devour him.

Seeing the dark red flames enveloping the child’s surroundings, William lost his mind in a panic and passed out.

At the very last moment, William closed his eyes as he felt those flames tightening around his neck.

“William, William!”

William thought he had died, but he opened his eyes surrounded by the other kids and the orphanage director, having wet his pants.

That childhood memory embedded itself strongly in William’s mind and never left.

It took him several years to overcome that incident, and until then, he would tremble every night and repeatedly wet his bed.

And years later, when William spotted Theo inside the orphanage, he made a fuss, claiming that the demon from back then had sought him out again.

However, the orphanage director explained that the child was simply a boy named Theo living together inside the orphanage.

William did not believe the director’s words.

He was undoubtedly a demon.

As the fear repeated, that emotion gradually transformed into anger, and William grew to resent Theo, hoping he would reveal his true nature in front of other people.

However, bringing up what he had experienced directly to other children was rare.

It was due to a boy’s pride—he didn’t want to widely publicize the humiliating fact that he had wet his pants and fainted on that day, and that he had suffered from that trauma for years.

Instead, he shared the truth only with friends who, like him, thought of Theo as a demon.

Hearing William’s words, the other kids all became convinced that Theo was a demon.

Thus began William and his friends’ relentless bullying.

***

“You know it now too, right, Iris? You musn’t trust that bastard. You might get hurt as well.”

“…….”

William was trembling all over before he knew it. Eyes mixed with the terror he had felt back then and present-day hatred were piercing straight through me.

William didn’t seem to be lying.

Rather, as he recounted his own experience to me, his attitude completely shifted as if he had returned to that exact moment.

Gone was his usual over-confident demeanor, replaced by a terrified six-year-old child standing before me.

Unable to say anything to William, I bit my lip.

It wasn’t a story I could carelessly dismiss as a young child’s imagination.

Because the situation back then must have felt so vivid that he still remembered it, and if he had suffered from that trauma for a prolonged period, it definitely couldn’t have been just a dream.

“Thanks for telling me.”

I patted William’s shoulder and stepped away.

I didn’t want to ask questions tinged with doubt to a child still trapped in that day—such as whether he was certain the child he saw was really Theo.

‘Something like that actually happened…?’

William’s actions shouldn’t have been condoned. But if this story was true, the cause behind those actions was understandable.

The demonic power Theo had mentioned, and the bizarre event William had experienced.

A chilly wind was blowing through my chaotic heart.

Returning to the lounge, I told Theo about what had happened with Doctor Hayley and conveyed that I would be receiving the teacher’s help starting tomorrow.

Normally, it would have been news worth talking about with great joy, but my conversation with William kept surfacing and weighing down my mind.

Perhaps sensing my somehow changed attitude, Theo kept watching me closely, but he didn’t bother asking what had happened to me.

Why didn’t Theo ask me anything at all?

I knew very well that I shouldn’t be like this—I, of all people, should be the one trusting Theo the most. But once I started becoming conscious of it, even Theo’s trivial actions were now giving me a sense of unease.

‘A murderer persecuted as a demon…’

As I pondered deeply, I suddenly realized that all I knew was that single situation.

‘When it all comes down to it, was the protagonist really a demon, or were they not?’