Chapter 377
The simple bracelet caught Ilux's attention, prompting him to ask where Erietta had gotten it.
Honestly and without much thought, Erietta replied that she had owned it since childhood, and that she had worn it long before she was adopted by the Bathee family.
That answer indirectly revealed her status as an orphan.
And in that very second, a change occurred.
Ilux's warm hand suddenly let go of hers.
The release was not merely a physical motion, but a sudden and meaningful severance.
Of course, the moment did not end there.
A rather heated conversation followed between them.
Ilux, now having obtained an important clue, pressed further with additional questions.
He asked which orphanage had once been Erietta's home.
And eventually, perhaps reluctantly or innocently, Erietta answered.
The name of the orphanage was revealed—and it turned out to be the very same orphanage Ilux had lived in before entering this academy.
That admission was like a key unlocking Ilux's chest of painful memories.
Long-suppressed emotions overflowed.
With a tone filled with hurt and restrained anger, Ilux labeled Erietta's childhood self as a shameless girl.
The label was a closing statement, a reflection of all the torment and cruelty he had endured.
And yes, it meant that at that very moment, the truth was finally unveiled for Ilux.
He now knew, with painful certainty, that Erietta Bathee—the disgraced daughter of a family who had recently grown close to him—was the same girl from that orphanage.
The girl who had relentlessly bullied him, mocked his limitations, pushed him into the pool, and stranded him atop a tree.
'Everything has already gone too far. My sincere apology would probably only sound like a lie to him.'
Naturally, in that bitter moment of truth, all the suppressed emotions within Ilux erupted into a sharp and piercing verbal outburst.
He shouted at Erietta, his voice perhaps echoing through the quiet academy corridor—or wherever they were at the time.
His words were cutting and final, both a command and a vow to sever their connection.
In a tone that left no room for compromise, he told her it would be best if she no longer stayed close to him.
The distance he demanded was not merely physical, but emotional and social—a total severance of whatever fragile bond they had begun to build.
Yet Erietta's reaction at that moment was neither defensive nor self-justifying.
Her face may have appeared pitiful, marked by shock and a newly born, genuine regret.
Her expression reflected true ignorance.
All this time, behind her childhood mischief, Erietta had never truly realized the deep impact of her actions on Ilux.
To her, it had perhaps only been a joke, a way to dispel boredom, without understanding the pain and trauma she had inflicted.
When Ilux's shout struck her, what surfaced within Erietta was a sincere desire to apologize.
She wanted to beg for forgiveness—not with excuses, but with the admission that she had not known, that she had never intended to hurt him so deeply, that she had been naive in her cruelty.
'The change that happened afterward… was it related to Theo? To my teacher?'
Still seated in the chair deliberately left empty in the middle of the cabin, isolated by the guards' policy forbidding her from speaking to anyone, Erietta felt her loneliness deepen.
Her hand reached for a small snack from the plate before her, and she began chewing slowly, barely tasting it.
Her restless thoughts searched for another thread to analyze, to fill the enforced silence.
Amid the quiet chewing, a murmur arose in her mind, shifting her focus from her past with Ilux to a newer mystery—someone connected to her teacher.
She questioned a change she had observed in Aldraya.
That change had occurred after a major incident: the bombing carried out by Aldraya against the Star Academy library.
The incident had nearly resulted in Aldraya's expulsion—a logical consequence for such an extreme act.
Yet the final decision did not expel her.
The Head of Star Academy personally intervened, requesting that Aldraya be allowed to remain.
Such an unusual decision naturally left many questions.
Now, in her solitude, Erietta connected that point to another she knew.
Her question was whether the drastic transformation in Aldraya—from someone who bombed a library to someone allowed to stay at the academy—was related to her teacher, Theo Vkytor.
Theo was a powerful and mysterious variable in Erietta's life, someone who seemed capable of influencing and altering circumstances.
Was it Theo who intervened?
Was the Headmaster's decision the result of Theo's involvement or pressure?
Or perhaps Aldraya and Theo shared a deeper connection than what appeared on the surface, and the library incident had been part of something greater—something that also involved that depraved samurai teacher?
'Was Theo the one who calmed her down? Or instead… was Aldraya the one who discovered something within Theo?'
Erietta fell silent for several long minutes.
She stopped chewing, the half-eaten snack forgotten in her hand.
Her mind worked intensely, attempting to connect causality between two seemingly separate facts.
On one side stood her teacher Theo Vkytor's remarkable mastery in teaching the Gloom Realm.
His fluency in guiding her into that dark power felt natural, as though he himself were a master of that realm.
On the other side were the rumors and facts about the academy's prima donna, Aldraya Kansh Que, who in her rampage was said to have devastated nearly half of Star Academy.
Even more astonishing was the reality that almost no one had dared to confront or stop her at that time—a collective fear unusual for both students and faculty alike.
Erietta's silence became a process of connecting the dots.
She replayed her memories of lessons with Theo—every piece of advice, every demonstration of power, the aura of authority he radiated.
Then she compared it with the image of Aldraya—the silver-haired girl with a flat gaze and overwhelming destructive power who had somehow escaped severe punishment.
There was a pattern of abnormality there, a level of strength and immunity that felt unusual.
After thinking it through more calmly and deeply, an intuitive feeling arose within Erietta.
She felt—not merely knew, but felt—the presence of a closeness between the former vagabond Aldraya and her teacher, Theo.
That closeness was not simply an ordinary teacher-student relationship like the one she experienced.
It was a deeper bond, perhaps older, and filled with secrets.
Erietta herself did not fully understand why that closeness existed.
'A sensation that only emerges when a woman feels threatened by another woman near her partner.'
It was not without reason that Erietta believed there was a special closeness between Theo and Aldraya.
Her memory drifted to a specific incident a few days after the shocking library bombing.
At that time, Erietta had a scheduled training and swordsmanship sparring session with Theo, her teacher.
In the midst of that focused session—or perhaps just before it began—an unexpected presence altered the atmosphere.
To be continued…