Chapter 271
Aldraya accepted the tie, her fingers—which moments earlier had looked clumsy and uncertain—suddenly moving with a mesmerizing fluidity.
Without hesitation, without even glancing downward, she folded, crossed, and pulled.
Her movements were smooth, precise, and full of confidence, as though she had performed the action thousands of times before.
Within seconds, a perfect knot—neater even than most of Theo's own attempts—was neatly formed beneath the collar of her shirt.
The transition from total ineptitude to flawless mastery happened so quickly and so abruptly that the air around them seemed to stop moving.
Theo fell silent, his eyes widening in disbelief at the sudden display of skill.
Confusion and astonishment flooded his thoughts.
How was that possible?
Throughout the process, Aldraya's gaze was directed more often at him than at the hands doing the work.
An unspoken question hung in the air, clearly visible in the bewildered expression on Theo's face.
Responding to that unvoiced amazement, Aldraya merely tilted her head slightly.
Her voice was flat and plain, like someone reporting the weather.
She explained that it was simply one of the advantages of her senses.
A simple statement that, paradoxically, opened a far deeper chasm of understanding.
For Aldraya, "seeing" was not an activity confined to a single focal point.
Her senses captured and recorded everything within her radius of perception holistically and simultaneously.
So while her eyes seemed to be studying Theo's face, her entire sensory and memory system had faithfully recorded every micro-movement, every folding angle, every degree of pressure from Theo's fingers, storing them as a ready-to-execute pattern of instructions.
"Thanks."
After the brief silence filled by the perfection of the knot and restrained astonishment, Aldraya made a small, almost unexpected gesture.
Her head dipped slightly—not in a dramatic motion, but in a subtle nod filled with awareness.
The ruby-red gaze that usually resembled a frozen lake briefly reflected the morning light differently, as if a small ripple of acknowledgment had surfaced.
It was a thank-you.
An expression not spoken aloud, but clearly conveyed through the sincerity of her movement and the sudden softness of the silence.
An acknowledgment that the lesson—despite misunderstandings and a flick to the forehead—had been delivered and received.
Theo could feel it, not as a vibration in the air, but as a delicate shift in the atmosphere around Aldraya's presence, like dew finally melting from the petals of an iron flower.
However, that near-gentle moment of acknowledgment did not last long.
As quickly as it appeared, the nuance vanished, replaced by a sharp, practical awareness.
Aldraya shifted her gaze away from Theo and toward the corridor window, where the morning light had grown brighter, clearly marking the passage of time.
Her face returned to its neutral state, a blank canvas ready to record the next set of real-world data.
She delivered a fact—not as a panicked warning, but as a simple, indisputable situational report.
The information landed in Theo's ears like a pebble dropped onto the surface of a calm lake, sending ripples of disturbance spreading outward.
The message was simple, yet effective.
They had only twenty minutes left before being late.
Twenty minutes.
The number echoed in Theo's head, instantly shattering the remnants of contemplation about superior senses and misplaced focus.
The world, which had narrowed to silk textures, deep gazes, and corridor silence, suddenly expanded again with brutal force.
He was reminded of routines, schedules, and real-world consequences in the form of teacher reprimands, disciplinary notes, and the curious stares of classmates.
All the emotional and philosophical complexity of the morning had to be neatly wrapped and set aside.
"School, friends, lighthearted banter with girls—none of it is unfamiliar.
I once lived within the same pattern in my original world.
Not too withdrawn, yet not overly open either.
That's why talking with Aldraya or Erietta doesn't feel strange."
Time leapt forward, carrying them into the heart of a new routine.
Star Academy.
The midday sunlight illuminated a classroom filled with dark wooden desks and the faint scent of chalk.
There, among students busy with notebooks and quiet murmurs, sat Theo Vkytor—or more precisely, the body he now inhabited, Erusha Birtash.
His position was unremarkable, neither at the front row hungry for attention nor at the very back where isolation reigned.
He sat in the middle, a neutral point that allowed observation without being too deeply dragged into the sometimes-exhausting vortex of social interaction.
Honestly, the entire atmosphere was not unfamiliar to him.
The ritual of going to school, meeting friends, even the dynamics of casual jokes with a few girls outside his close circle—all of it left traces of memory from a life that felt like it belonged to someone else.
In the real world, long before everything was consumed by the warped reality of Flo Viva Mythology, Theo had not been someone lost in the crowd.
He stood on a comfortable middle line, not so immersed in himself as to become fully introverted, yet lacking the drive to be the center of attention like an extrovert.
He was an observer who remained sufficiently involved, a participant who knew when to step forward and when to step back.
That middle position perhaps explained his seemingly natural ability to interact with figures like Aldraya and Erietta.
That closeness, with all its complexity and tension, was not born from sudden fascination or extraordinary courage.
It was a pattern he had lived before.
During his school days in the past, he had also formed close connections with several women.
They were not the most popular girls, surrounded by attention and gossip, but neither were they outcasts.
They occupied the same territory as him—a comfortable space that was neither crowded nor lonely.
From there, he learned the language of quiet body cues, casual conversation, and how to understand another person's personal space.
Yet those experiences also carried a lesson in fragility.
Those relationships eventually reached dead ends or slowly drifted apart.
Sometimes differences in interests became more pronounced.
Other times, life paths diverged after graduation, or simply because teenage relationships were never meant to truly settle.
'More or less, this is how the next episode goes.'
Huuuuuh!
'Ilux's class and Erietta's class are merged for a wilderness survival mission.
What starts as an ordinary competition turns into a hunt when Erietta's half-brother incites other students to eliminate her.
And Ilux appears as the savior—cliché, but it fits the original script.'
The book was finally closed with a soft sound, marking the end of a period of concentration amid the low rumble of a class beginning to disperse.
Theo did not place it on the desk, instead keeping it closed on his lap, as if the book were a shield or an anchor from another realm.
His reading posture earlier—holding the book slightly away from his eyes—was a habit he had retained from his old world, a way to maintain a safe distance from the text and from reality itself.
Now, with an empty gaze piercing through the classroom window toward the vast academy field, his thoughts began to drift far away, constructing and dismantling countless scenarios about the game of life that forced him to become a participant.
Thirty-nine days had passed since the great turning point.
The first arc, ending on the ninth episode filled with tension, concluded in a fragile yet valuable balance.
Aldraya remained standing, not dead as she might have been destined to be in the original narrative.
Ilux, though attacked, also did not suffer crippling injuries.
It was a small victory, a deviation from the script that he had managed to preserve.
To be continued…