I waited patiently, my expression unreadable.
"Okay," she whispered, her voice barely carrying through the shaded corridor.
"Great." I meant it, too — mostly out of relief that I wouldn’t have to go begging anyone else across campus for the privilege of not dying.
"Great." I stood up, extending a hand down toward her. "Rex Knox, by the way."
She hesitated for a split second before placing her soft, smooth, cold hand in mine. I pulled her up to her feet.
"Aveline Arden," she introduced herself, dusting off her uniform skirt with her free hand. She paused, looking up at my face. "Wait... Rex Knox...? Aren’t you the manaless guy who somehow got placed directly into A-Class?"
Yep, accidentally... sigh.
"I am," I replied smoothly.
I stepped closer, and without really thinking about it, reached out and brushed a loose strand of hair back from her face, my palm settling against her cheek.
She flinched slightly at the sudden physical contact, but instead of pulling away, she slowly, hesitantly leaned her face right into my palm, her eyelids fluttering. "But... you just used raw Body Enhancement magic back there to launch Duke into the brick wall." She said quietly.
"Yeah, I did." I tilted her head slightly to inspect the reddish-purple bruise forming along her jawline, softly tracing the swollen skin with my thumb. "Damn, those girls really beat you up pretty bad."
Aveline gave a small, deeply embarrassed smile, her eyes shifting away from mine. "Yeah... it hurts."
I kept my palm there, thumb brushing lightly over her reddened, lil bit purplish cheek. Removing her round glasses with my left hand, I set them carefully atop her textbook. (She’s holding the textbook)
"Shit," I muttered, cupping her face properly with both hands to get a better angle. "Isn’t this gonna swell up?"
She gave a tiny, obedient nod. "Probably..."
A few quiet seconds ticked past in the dim alley. The wind whistled softly through the gap between the academy buildings, carrying the faint scent of ozone and summer grass.
"Um... Rex?" she squeaked softly.
"Hm?"
"Why do you keep touching my face?"
I froze instantly, my thumbs resting right against her cheekbones.
"Oh."
"Yes."
She glanced away, cheeks going faintly pinker than the bruising already had them. "If you keep doing that, people are going to think I’m your girlfriend."
I immediately yanked both hands back. "Oh. My bad. Old habits leaking out." And stared at my open palms in utter disbelief. "Sorry bout that."
She didn’t say anything right away. I started lowering my hand the rest of the way, ready to give her actual personal space for once, when her fingers suddenly closed around my wrist.
I looked at her.
She hesitated for a quick second, her lower lip trembling slightly, before she gently lifted my palm and guided it right back against her flushed cheek.
"...It’s okay," she whispered, staring straight at my chest uniform. "You... you can keep doing it."
Wow... ಠ_ಠ...
"Oh. Well, come here real quick then, let me examine the rest of your face properly."
Lowering my hand, I grabbed her by the forearm, led her out of the shadows of the alley, picked up my academy coat from the top of the wooden crate, and dragged her along down the stone pathway toward the main courtyard garden.
Locating a quiet, sunlit bench beneath a massive oak tree, (the bench I’d been sitting at not twenty minutes earlier) I sat down, patted my lap, and pulled her down to sit directly on my legs. "Now, close your eyes."
Aveline let out a soft squeak of absolute shock, her entire body going stiff as a board, but she gave an obedient nod and closed her eyes tight.
Sitting there beneath the rustling leaves, I began softly tracing her cheeks and temple, applying gentle pressure to check for underlying fractures.
After several minutes, I began noticing lower-class students strolling past our bench.
Every single one of them stopped, stared, and blinked in utter disbelief.
Some looked utterly disgusted, some glared with pure jealousy, and others gave us deadly looks that suggested they were silently praying for our immediate breakup.
Though, we aren’t even dating. Genuinely. Lmfao.
Completely ignoring their glares, my fingers brushed her jaw.
"By the way... don’t you have classes right now?" Aveline asked softly, her eyes still closed as she relaxed into my chest.
"I’ll skip it," I said plainly. "Apparently it’s not even punishable for A-Class students."
"How do you even know that?"
"Learned it the hard way earlier today," I let out a low sigh, lowering my hands to rest casually on her lap. "What about you? Don’t you have a class to attend?"
She shook her head against my shoulder. "I don’t really care about classes right now... honestly, it feels really calming to just stay here with you."
Woah... woah! Rahhh I could backflip right now?...! Yes! What absolute godly luck! This quest is going to be an absolute easy shit!
"Then, can you stay with me for the next several hours?" I asked, keeping my voice completely casual.
"I already said ’okay’," she said, cracking one eye open to give me a small, dry look. "I’m not going to take it back."
"Nice! Well, do you want to explore the rest of the campus? Eat, play around, do whatever?"
She nodded.
Satisfied, I stood up from the bench in one smooth movement, picking her up in a comfortable princess-carry.
Aveline squeaked again, reflexively wrapping both of her arms tight around my neck as I carried her down the central pathway.
***
We spent the next several hours wandering through the sprawling, magnificent grounds of [Vahard Magic Academy.]
I showed Aveline the high-tier cathedral classrooms and spectator stands I had stumbled across earlier that morning, though she ended up taking the lead and guiding me through several hidden dozen of places I’d completely missed, including a hidden courtyard tucked behind the alchemy building where someone had planted an entire garden of luminous flowers that only opened up under moonlight, currently sitting closed and unremarkable in the daylight but apparently gorgeous after dark, according to her.
At one point, we stopped by one of the outer combat grounds to watch a pair of upperclassmen duel.
They were tossing high-density flame lances and earth spikes at each other with enough explosive force to make me seriously question standing within a 50feet radius of any official academy battleground.
Aveline narrated the whole thing beside me, casually pointing out details in their form I never would’ve caught on my own— the way one of them was overcharging her spell construct just slightly to compensate for a weak wrist rotation, the exact moment the other one’s footwork gave away which direction he was about to dodge.
She clearly knew a lot about magic. Which was fair... of course, she was B-Class.
Though something about the whole thing nagged at me a little.
One time when we passed an automated testing range— she had casually tapped a reinforcement rune on a heavy combat dummy, resulting in a localized arc-detonation that reduced the target straight to fine gray dust.
What was most surprising, however, was just how naturally she opened up as the time passed. Her initial timidness faded into a bright, soft manner of talking that made wandering the campus surprisingly effortless.
Eventually, our wandering brought us back toward the main dining cafeteria as the afternoon sun began to dip behind the towers.
I stepped up to the glowing menu projection, checked my quest timer— which read [05:00:32] remaining —and then looked down at the prices.
A-RANK KOMODO TAIL STIRRED FRIED EGG FRIED RICE: 500 CREDITS.
I pulled out my student card, stared at my remaining balance— which had dropped to 20 credits after I accidentally bought a one-day arena pass earlier —and slowly stepped away from the counter in absolute, soul-crushing silence.
Aveline noticed immediately. "What’s wrong?"
"Nothing."
She glanced at the menu, then at me to stare directly into my soul. "You can’t afford it, can you?"
I sighed. Looked into her eyes... and muttered nonchalantly. "I’m broke."
Aveline burst into a soft giggle. Before I could even formulate a proper complaint about the academy’s criminal food pricing, she stepped up to the automated counter and tapped her personal probably high-grade crest card against the scanner twice.
My jaw nearly fell when I saw the order confirmation: two full platters of the Komodo Tail stir-fry, totaling a casual 1,000 credits.
"Hey. Dude. That’s insane." I could literally just cook this myself back at the dorm for a fraction of the cost ༎ຶ‿༎ຶ
But before I could argue further, she raised one finger and pressed it lightly against my lips.
"Shh. I’ve got it."
"You’re fucking rich, aren’t you?" I scoffed through her finger.
She giggled again, leaning back. "Maybe."
I scoffed, but took the food anyway, because refusing free komodo tail on principle felt like a genuinely stupid hill to die on.
I let out a quiet sigh, but surrendered to the reality of free high-tier food and took the tray.
We sat down at a quiet corner table by the glass walls overlooking the central gardens. The food was... just good— tender meat, seasoned rice, and spices.
Yea, just good, I could make one even better than this. Hundreds times better.
Anyways, Somehow, the hours just kept slipping by after that.
After finishing the meal, we strolled through the academy’s massive botanical greenhouses, watched another low-tier sparring match in the secondary courtyard, visited the ancient six-story library wing, and ended up having an intensely heated debate on the stone steps outside about which summoned beast species looked the absolute dumbest.
Aveline won the argument by a landslide after describing a three-headed swamp toad in vivid detail.
She even told me an unhinged story about her family’s pet hound back at her estate— apparently, the dog had escaped through the garden fence one morning, vanished for three entire weeks, and eventually returned leading an actual organized army of 81 puppies from the neighboring duchy.
Deja Vu... weird...
Anyways, I had absolutely no idea how that story was relevant to magical theory, but I found myself listening to every word anyway.
Somewhere in the middle of all that, I stopped checking the timer entirely.