LDTOTSDML Chapter 9

"You're pretty famous these days, huh?"

"…"

"Heard you got confessed to. Guess even someone like you can get a confession from a guy, huh? How'd you manage to trick him?"

"…"

"Hey. You ignoring me right now?"

Just as she'd been thinking that Del somehow seemed to resemble someone from her memory—

"Arphina Tonide!"

At the sound of that vile voice spitting out her name, Arphina flinched.

Only then did she finally come back to herself, and her expression hardened at once.

Ah. Of all people.

"What's with that face?"

Running into this person, here of all places.

"Not happy to see me? Because I'm genuinely happy to see you."

"…"

"Haven't seen you in ages and you can't even say hello? You've really changed, huh? Hm?"

Dark blue hair. Ash-gray eyes.

Colors that turned her stomach just to look at.

Face rigid, Arphina forced down the disgust surging up inside her. She didn't want to show her ugliest side in a hallway full of students passing by.

Especially not in front of this person, of all people.

Hold on.

She had to hold on.

Arphina pressed a hand against her stomach, which had started to throb.

"Wait, do you two know each other?"

A student standing nearby cut in. He didn't look like a particularly pleasant person either—he had the look of someone who'd just spotted an amusing bit of entertainment and was already working out how to make the most of it.

"Ah, well."

The other one spoke up loudly, as if he'd been waiting for exactly that question.

"She confessed to me when we were kids, said she liked me."

"Ooh."

"That's probably why, right? Too embarrassed to talk. Hey, you know I'm talking to you, right? When someone calls your name, you're supposed to—"

"…Vesper."

Arphina bit down on the inside of her cheek and forced out the awful name.

"Vesper Tillio."

"So you did remember. Then why the slow response?"

The boy called Vesper smirked and gave her a once-over.

"Hm, you've really changed, haven't you?"

In a lot of ways, he added, an extremely unpleasant grin spreading across his face.

The blatant sliminess in it made the nausea rising in Arphina almost unbearable.

A nightmare come to life.

Waves of disgust crashing over her.

The whispers of onlookers.

"…"

She wished she'd brought her monkey wrench.

Of all times to be empty-handed.

Steadying her breathing, Arphina slowly turned her body.

"…You haven't changed a bit."

"What?"

"Still just as awful, and still just as inconsiderate of other people."

At the quiet reprimand, Vesper's face twisted into something ugly.

Even having landed a solid hit, Arphina's hands kept twitching, restless, unable to settle.

Not because the nightmare standing in front of her was frightening—but because she had no weapon in hand to knock that nightmare down, and that absence made her uneasy.

Despite the anxious twitch of her hands, her mouth kept firing off sharp words.

"You deceived a girl like me, didn't you. Do you not remember laughing at me and dismissing me, in front of my friends, when I confessed I liked you?"

Wow.

Awful.

The looks turned on Vesper openly shifted at Arphina's words. The murmuring around them grew louder too.

Someone in the crowd said something about needing to go fetch a professor.

Sure enough, the sound of fast footsteps approaching from somewhere could already be heard.

"If you were going to do something like that, at the very least, you shouldn't be so proudly announcing my mistake of liking you in front of everyone. And you definitely shouldn't be acting familiar with me on top of it."

That should be enough, shouldn't it?

Just as Arphina, judging she'd handled it calmly enough, was about to turn away—

"Wow."

Vesper, who'd been standing there blankly, muttered in a voice thick with malice.

"Look at the defect's mouth run—real mouthy for a piece of trash."

"…"

At the degrading remark, Arphina's body froze solid, as if the words had physically locked her in place.

Noticing Arphina's reaction to what he'd said, Vesper let out a sneer and kept going with the awful things he was saying.

"Hey, I know all about you being a defect! Acting like you don't know your place!"

"Hey! Who'd like a defect like you! I was just being nice because I felt sorry for you!"

The horrible nightmare surfaced all at once. Arphina bit down desperately on the inside of her cheek, clinging to whatever reason she had left.

She must not cry.

If she cried here, it would be like losing to the nightmare.

'Not again, like back then—'

"A defect?"

"You don't know? Should I explain it to you?"

Vesper explained to the friend beside him in a helpful tone. But his cruel gaze stayed fixed on Arphina the whole time.

"She comes from a family of mages, but even so—"

Just as Arphina, unwilling to hear any more, was about to squeeze her eyes shut—

"Senior Arphina!"

Brilliant gold light unfurled in front of her.

Del, gasping for breath, met Arphina's wide, startled eyes and broke into a bright grin the instant their gazes locked. His lazily upturned eyes curved into crescents, and shadow pooled faintly in his blue irises.

"Hello!"

"…"

"How, huh, have you been? I was, over there, passing by, and I saw you, senior, so—I know it's against the rules, but I ran anyway."

Even winded and gasping, Del smiled brightly and greeted her in a cheerful voice, as if nothing at all were wrong.

"…"

Startled, Arphina couldn't even answer. She just blinked her wide eyes slowly.

If light were ever to take human form, it would probably look exactly like that.

Arphina slowly closed her eyes and opened them again. Without meaning to, the moisture that had gathered at the corners of her eyes spilled over, rolling down in small drops.

"…Good morning, senior."

Del gave her one more warm smile. Then, naturally, he stepped in front of her, as if shielding her from view.

"And good morning to you seniors over there too."

The eyes that had shone so gently for Arphina sank cold, flickering with a dark, ominous light.

"Huh?"

Del noticed Vesper and his friend flinch and recognized them.

"You two were there that day, weren't you? The ones who came to gawk after I got rejected, and then ran off with your tails between your legs the moment my lord scared you off!"

"Pfft!"

"Ha-ha—!"

Laughter broke out here and there at Del's innocent little jab.

"So what are you doing here, though?"

Del tilted his head.

"I don't really know the full story, but from the looks of it, something pretty un-gentlemanly seems to have happened here?"

"Stay out of other people's business and get lost."

Belatedly realizing he'd been mocked, Vesper ground his teeth.

"This has nothing to do with you."

If it were up to his temper, he'd have thrown a punch at Del right then and there, humiliating him in front of everyone. Vesper could do it. He was a noble, and Del was a commoner.

Discrimination by status was strictly forbidden at the Academy, but his family's power could still smooth over quite a lot.

But behind Del stood the young lord.

'A commoner, and yet—!'

What kind of trick had let him get the strongest, most vicious house in the empire backing him up like this?

Just look at him now, hiding Arphina behind him like he had every right to. There wasn't a single thing about this guy he liked.

"How does it have nothing to do with me?"

Del declared, quite confidently, that he was involved too.

Then he turned to Arphina, still standing behind him, and asked.

"Senior. That idiot—no, I mean, that thing I want to kill, um…"

Del kept switching titles, unable to settle on one. He looked genuinely upset and wronged.

"Anyway—did you confess to that senior that you liked him?"

"That was when I was a kid."

Arphina said, sounding almost like she was making an excuse.

"How old were you?"

"Eight."

"Then there's nothing to be done about it."

Right, that makes sense.

Hearing her answer, Del let out a relieved sigh and looked at Arphina with an unexpectedly pitying gaze.

"Senior. That was a mistake."

"Yes, that was a mistake."

"Right. But do you know why it was a mistake?"

"Getting fooled and made fun of by an idiot like that?"

"…Hm."

Del glanced back at Vesper standing behind him.

'Huh?'

For a moment, Arphina caught Del's eyes turning black.

"Senior. Look at my face."

Del leaned his face in abruptly. Startled all over again by the sudden, unannounced onslaught of good looks, Arphina's heart pounded hard.

"How is it?"

'Did I see that wrong?'

Arphina blinked again to bring things back into focus. Del's black eyes had gone back to blue.

"My face. Objectively speaking, how is it?"

"Uh, uh—"

Caught off guard mid-thought, Arphina answered without thinking.

"It's handsome."

"More handsome than those seniors over there?"

"Yes."

That was an indisputable truth, so Arphina answered with more conviction in her voice than before.

A satisfied expression spread across Del's flushed face.

"See! That's exactly why it was a mistake."

Del pointed to his own praised face.

"If you'd seen my face first."

Then he pointed across at Vesper's face.

"How could you have thought to confess to that face there. Your mistake, senior, was not seeing me first."

Puhahaha!

Someone in the hallway finally couldn't hold it in and burst out laughing. Taking that as a cue, everyone else joined in.

"…!"

Vesper's face flushed a deep, furious red, his whole body trembling as though he might explode any second.

Whatever. Del's infuriating deductions carried right on.

"By any chance, senior, did you fall for that senior's face?"

"He was kind to me…"

"Weren't you looking at his face?"

"…Was I not?"

Arphina finally realized it that very day. If she'd examined Vesper's appearance carefully back then, she never would have confessed to liking someone like him in the first place.

"You should really look at faces more carefully going forward."

Del offered this advice with a grave expression.

"My mother always says the face is what matters most. For reference, I take more after my father—"

He went on to helpfully promote himself in exhaustive detail, explaining that as he got a little older, his face would only get prettier, and he'd grow taller too, with muscles filling in dense and solid.

"…Those bastards!"

Openly mocked to his face, Vesper shouted, his voice thick with fury.