Catherine Harper, the headmistress of Trinity Academy, sat motionless behind her desk.
The faint hum of her lamp was the only sound in her office. Papers lay untouched before her, her pen hovering midair. She couldn't focus — not after that conversation.
What a peculiar turn of events.
When she had sent the letter summoning Bell Agnus, what she had expected was confrontation, threats, maybe even violence. She'd predicted the same arrogance that defined the Agnus bloodline, perhaps even satisfaction in his crimes and the fact that he got away with it scot-free.
If he'd shown the slightest lack of remorse, she was ready to end him on the spot. Or at the very least, cripple him.
But nothing had gone the way she imagined.
Though his expression had remained eerily calm, his words, the conviction behind them were undeniable. He spoke of his death with a sincerity that unsettled her, promising to end his own life once his "purpose" was fulfilled.
There was no hesitation in his tone. It was not the kind of performance one could fake. He truly meant it.
And then there was that claim.
The world needs him.
Her brow furrowed. Why?
What could make someone like him, someone so broken, so despised, a beast, a being worth less than a human, believe that the world needed him?
"Hmm…" she murmured, tapping her finger on the desk before sending out an order. "To all staff and faculty, increase your observation of Bell Agnus. Report any irregularities to me directly. Actually, report everything to me. Don't let anything pass by you. Not even what colored sock he's wearing."
Most would assume her order to monitor Bell was related to the incident, which wasn't entirely untrue. But Catherine's curiosity had been piqued far beyond disciplinary matters, and she was curious about that claim of his.
Something about him didn't add up.
According to the records and his grades in his combat-related classes from the previous school year, Bell was supposed to be far along the Solmire skill tree.
Yet when she'd sensed his star energy, it felt raw, and the amount that was circulating his body was almost like he was just beginning his journey.
That shouldn't have been possible based on the reports.
'There's more to this boy,' she thought.
She was determined to find out.
* * *
Bell wasn't sure if his words had truly reached the headmistress, but when she dismissed him instead of killing him, he took it as enough.
"Head to class," she'd said, voice firm but no longer venomous.
He wondered as he left if this conversation had also happened in the background of the original story.
And if it did, how did the original Bell react?
He wasn't killed, as it was implied in the novel that he was still out and about in the academy. The protagonist had almost gone to beat him up once, but Diana had stopped him.
But if that's the case, then how did he survive?
The headmistress was dead set on killing him.
The original Bell, the one who actually committed the crime, wouldn't have had the same conversation Bell just had with the headmistress.
Unlike Bell, who survived by vowing to fulfill a purpose in this world and then offing himself, what did Bell say in the original that saved his neck?
Sadly, this was an answer he'd never be able to get.
By now, the halls were nearly empty. Classes had already begun, and only a few stragglers hurried past, most of them arriving at the academy late due to oversleeping.
Bell moved in silence, his footsteps echoing faintly against the polished floors. But even as he walked, he had a gut feeling that someone was standing next to him.
"Why aren't you in class, Maya?" he asked without turning his head.
No response.
Was he wrong?
He didn't actually have a way to detect Maya when she's invisible, so this was nothing more than his gut talking to him.
Trying again just to make sure, he asked, "Did you hear everything?"
"How did you know I was here?" a baffled Maya muttered as she materialized to his left. Nodding her head, she answered, "I did."
Bell glanced at her briefly. "And how do you feel about me now? Do you regret pledging loyalty to me?"
Maya didn't answer immediately. When Bell had split off from her and Sarakit earlier, she knew he wasn't heading toward his classroom because she had memorized his class schedule.
Suspicious, she excused herself and followed him after turning invisible.
That encounter between him and Diana, she couldn't even predict how it would've gone? Was he going to apologize? She knew by now that he felt terrible for what had happened. Was she going to attack him? Was she going to cry?
What she didn't expect to happen, however, was that she would freeze up and he would walk past her, ignoring her as if she didn't exist.
Maya was confused.
Clearly, Bell cared about what occurred, yet he ignored her. Why would he do that?
And now, after listening to everything that followed in the headmistress's office, she finally understood.
"You don't want Diana to forgive you," Maya said softly, answering her own question instead of the one Bell had asked.
Bell's eyes flickered just a little bit. He said nothing.
He kept walking, his silence more telling than any confession.
Maya stayed where she was, watching him until he disappeared around the corner.
Conflicted, she was even more conflicted now.
She'd thought she understood him a little more now as they had been around each other for the past weeks. The man who had shown kindness to her despite his lack of kind expressions. The man who planned on giving free prosthetics to all the kids affected by Dr. Debronx. The man who was sending her around the city to put away criminals and their organizations.
He was the same man who had rescued those imprisoned in the basement of the Droselmire mansion, who risked himself for people he barely knew.
He was her benefactor.
And yet that same man had committed an unforgivable act. But he felt terrible about it. Yet, he doesn't want to be forgiven.
The contradiction tore at her. Who exactly was Bell Agnus? Why did it feel like two souls were living inside one body?
"A beast…" she whispered, recalling the headmistress's words.
A lot was going on in her mind, but for the moment, she had to put them to the side as she needed to rush to her class.
Meanwhile.
"Welcome back to Trinity Academy, everyone. I hope you all had a pleasant summer break," the teacher greeted warmly, scribbling his name on the blackboard.
Mr. Black.
He turned to face the students with a friendly smile, one that faltered for the briefest second when his eyes met Bell's. No one else noticed the twitch of disgust that crossed his face. Bell did.
Mr. Black was absolutely disgusted by the fact that he had to teach this student.
If not for the enforced silence surrounding the incident, Mr. Black would've exposed him immediately. Every instinct screamed to protect his students, to warn them.
What if that disgusting, vile human decides to do it again? What if another girl fell victim?
But he couldn't. He had to hold himself back. Compose his mind and pretend that everything was fine.
It wasn't just the agreement. The Duke's reach was far, and Mr. Black had a family to protect. There was no telling what would happen to his wife and kids if he offended House Agnus.
So he smiled. Pretended. And taught.
Bell didn't mind the occasional glare from across the room. He didn't think it was unfair. Whether or not he carried the original Bell's sins, they were still his to bear. He didn't want to be forgiven, and he didn't want to be understood.
The first class of the semester was simple: introductions, icebreakers, and a review of the syllabus. Routine. If it were a few months ago when he first arrived in this world, a lot of the terms would've confused him, but after ample research, he understood everything that was being discussed.
When the bell rang, students immediately clustered together in chatter.
A few approached Bell; some faces, based on how they were talking, were familiar faces for the original Bell. He couldn't exactly confirm it due to a lack of memories, so he treated them all the same. Strangers.
Others were eager opportunists hoping to leave a good impression on him so that they could attach themselves to the Agnus name, hope to dig up some gold, or were just infatuated by the looks gifted to him by his mother.
He gave short, empty answers, offering nothing of substance before leaving the room.
Their fake smiles and attempts to butter him up didn't bother him. Although he didn't crave any of this attention, he didn't feel tired as he had already mentally prepared himself for this. An Agnus was both feared and admired, and people were bound to be drawn to that power for all the wrong reasons.
Based on what he knew about the original Bell's behavior, that other Bell would've entertained them because his positivity would've led him to believe that even false affection could eventually become genuine.
But he wasn't the old Bell.
He met insincerity with insincerity.
As he walked to his next class, he listened carefully to the idle chatter in the halls, keeping his ears wide open in search of the name of a certain person.
Dozens of voices overlapped, gossiping about everything from summer romances to failed exams, but not a single word about the one thing he was searching for.
The further he walked, the more confused he became.
'Strange,' he thought. 'Where's the talk about the transfer student?'
In the novel, it had been the event of the day, the moment that set everything in motion.
Students from every year would gather at the window of his classrooms just to glimpse the newcomer.
At Trinity Academy, transfer students were almost unheard of. Enrollment began at fourteen or fifteen, where you started as a first-year student until you graduated at around eighteen or nineteen in your fourth year.
When you join the academy, you're committed to the academy and leaving it midway through on your own volition not only requires a hefty payment, but it would also ruin your reputation in the entire country of Valdonia.
Forget getting accepted into another school. It'd be hard to even find a minimum wage job.
It was a terrible stigma to carry around.
That also meant, however, that you could only join at the very start of the race and weren't allowed to enter in the middle of it.
Yet, sometimes, in very very rare occasions, the academy would allow a transfer student if their talents were absolutely something that they could not miss out on.
For example, the protagonist.
Arthurr Dragonpen.
Yet, why was no one talking about him?
'Did the novel make it a bigger deal than it is? Does no one actually care that much in reality?'
Or perhaps he was simply unlucky; maybe the people who knew about the transfer student just hadn't crossed his path yet.
Another class passed.
Still no mention of the protagonist.
Another class.
Nothing. No "Arthurr" was uttered.
By the time lunch arrived, his confusion had turned to unease.
The cafeteria's menu offered plenty of choices. There was a daily free option — not bad, just plain — and then the paid meals, which ranged from reasonably priced to absurdly expensive. Only the richest nobles ever bought those, wasting gold on luxury for the sake of appearance.
Bell was one of the ones who bought them.
Not because he wanted to flaunt his wealth or status, but because when the lunch lady asked for his order, he just pointed randomly at the board, lost in thought. His mind was elsewhere.
He cut into the steak before him, tender, perfectly cooked, and took a slow bite as his thoughts spiraled. It was good, but it wasn't as good as the one his mother, Tiara, made for the family a few weeks ago.
Bell wondered, 'Did my arrival in this world change the timeline?'
By this point, he had expected small ripples, of course. The butterfly effect had already begun the moment he woke up in that unfamiliar bedroom.
He'd accepted that most of what he remembered from the novel might no longer be reliable, and he was prepared to move as if he had never read the novel. Although he kept it all in the back of his mind, just in case they still occurred.
But Arthurr's arrival at the academy shouldn't have changed. Nothing he'd done so far should have interfered with that.
Arthurr's story was separate from his, and all the paths that diverged from the two of them, none of them intersected yet.
After all, the boy was discovered in a sealed dimension the headmistress had been exploring, a strange, unstable space detached from the world of Nara, which was why she was unable to oversee how the incident between Bell and Diana was dealt with.
All the actions that Bell had done since his arrival, none of them mattered to the headmistress and Arthurr as they had been in the dimension the entire time.
She had found him there and discovered he was originally from their world.
When he was barely ten years old, he suddenly found himself in a new dimension and had been surviving on raw instinct. He'd lived alone for years, hunting and fighting for food, sustained only by his will.
Impressed by his tenacity and talents that she's never seen before, once she brought the two of them out of the dimension after completing the task she had entered the dimension for in the first place, she granted him special admission to her academy.
That was how the legend of Arthurr Dragonpen was supposed to begin.
So where was he?
Bell frowned slightly, the metal of his fork clinking against the plate. Today should have marked Arthurr's debut, the moment history began to shift.
Instead, there was silence.
No whispers, no rumors, not even a mention of a transfer.
'Either his arrival was delayed or completely canceled because of me,' Bell thought, 'or… he doesn't exist. He never existed in the first place.'
He took another bite of his steak, chewing slowly.
He began to think about why he was brought to this world.
With the protagonist around, why was there a need for him?
He's thought about this for a long time.
In the novel, Arthurr had always handled everything perfectly. Every crisis, every trial. Even when he stood on the brink of death, some miracle power-up would appear out of nowhere. Readers like Bell used to complain about how cliché it was, how unfairly convenient his victories seemed.
But if Arthurr never existed, if the novel was merely an idealized version of this world's history, a story shaped by the author's desires rather than reality, then the truth became painfully simple.
'Then the world needs me to save it from destruction,' he thought. 'I have to take the protagonist's place.'
He took another bite. The flavor didn't change of the steak remained the same yet it tasted better.
The unconfirmed revelation in his mind — what should've been a weight on his shoulder, should have felt crushing, a burden heavier than the planet itself — felt light.
If anything, he felt lighter than ever.
He wasn't sure if his theory was right. Maybe it was only wishful thinking, a way to make sense of his existence here. But even that uncertainty didn't bother him.
If this was his purpose, then he finally had direction.
And with that clarity, there was no longer any room for hesitation — not that he'd ever been one to hesitate in the first place.