TEASER
Volume 4 Chapter 7.2
Seeds of Rekindling Part 2
Lisa trudged along the
street to the academy like a tortoise. She stopped again and again, feeling
guilty as if someone was pulling on her back, and each time she would start
walking again and again to shake off her self-loathing. Eventually, the school
building of the academy drew nearer.
As she entered and
proceeded down the corridor, the eyes of the students who had already arrived
at the school simultaneously turned to her.
"Hey, that
senior......."
A student who saw Lisa
pointed at her with a dubious look on his face.
It had been several
days, and the incident that Ken had caused was already known throughout the
school.
A large-scale
deployment of guards for a major arrest. There was no way it could be kept
hidden, and everything but the most classified information had already been
made public. The fact that a considerable number of people were injured in the
process also became public knowledge.
"Huh? What's
going on? As I recall, didn't she commit an assault? Why is she still in the
academy?"
"Wasn't her
boyfriend the one who committed the crime? Well, maybe she's not completely
unrelated."
"How can she
still come to the academy? Shouldn't she be expelled?"
"No, she should
be banished from the city as a criminal."
Harsh and blunt
gossip. Unwitting malice. Considering that she is allowed to come to the
academy, one should be able to guess that the city's public safety organization
has judged her to be innocent.
However, people judge
others' characters based on vague impressions they have of them.
Lisa was judged to be
as guilty as Ken, simply because she was the closest to the culprit, without
regard to her true circumstances.
It wasn't my fault.
Such words were almost bursting out of her throat, but she bit her lip and
swallowed down the words that kept welling up in her mouth. She knew that even
if she tried to argue, the people around her would not listen to her. She knew
that very well. After all, she herself was one of them before.
Of course, she had
been deceived by Ken's schemes, but she was equally blind to the truth.
Some sort of distorted
perception. But even though she understood her own distortion, she could not
refute it.
Even after entering
her own classroom, the malicious stares from those around her did not abate.
Although, as expected,
they did not say anything as bluntly as the underclassmen, the piercing stares
made Lisa's heart clench even more than the words themselves.
When she raised her
gaze, she saw Irisdina staring at her.
When their gazes met,
she abruptly averted her gaze and headed for her seat. As if to escape the
gazes of those around her, Lisa took her own seat and, turning her head
downward as if to escape, simply waited for the time to pass.
†
*Scritch, scritch*.......
The teacher's voice and the sound of quill pens scraping paper echoed through
the third-grade, second-class classroom.
While taking her
morning classes, Shina's mind was elsewhere.
To his place, which
would be in the hospital room at the Gloaurum Institution.
Unlike the anxious
Irisdina, she kept her composure relatively calm.
This is just a teaser.
The full chapter is currently only available for my Patrons.
This chapter will be available for free on July 22, 2024.
