**Chapter 4B: Measured Steps**
One afternoon, after a particularly grueling lecture on elemental convergence, Professor Thorne found himself carrying a stack of heavy grimoires and mana crystals to the supply room on the fourth floor. Rin happened to be passing by, heading toward the training yard.
“Miss Rin,” he called, shifting the precarious pile. “Would you mind assisting me? These are heavier than they look.” He is having a hard time caring the stack thus even recalling Rin's identity dared to ask her.
Rin paused, then nodded once. She took half the stack without hesitation, balancing the books and crystals with the ease of someone used to carrying burdens.
They walked in silence for a moment, the corridor quiet save for the distant hum of students practicing in the courtyard below.
Professor Thorne glanced at her sideways. “You’ve been doing well in class. Better than most, actually. Your control over ice constructs is impressive for a first-year.”
Rin said nothing.
He pressed on, curiosity overriding caution. “You don’t speak much about yourself. Most students can’t wait to tell their lineage, their ambitions.”
Rin’s gaze flicked to him, cool and assessing. “I’m not most students.”
He chuckled despite himself. “Clearly. But you’re a Frost. The blood test confirmed it. The headmistress herself said so.”
They reached the supply room. Rin set her stack down carefully on the long table and straightened. “Whatever you heard from your superior should be true.”
Professor Thorne hesitated. He lowered his voice, glancing up and down the empty corridor. “Are you not going to take the family name? Officially, I mean.”
Rin met his eyes directly. “It’s fine. I’m just a bit curious, so I came. I will eventually leave.”
He blinked. “Leave? Why?”
“I don’t want to get dragged into big problems.”
“Problems…” He echoed the word, turning it over in his mind. The Frost family was powerful, influential, and—rumors whispered—rife with internal tensions. A returned changeling could easily become a pawn in noble games.
Rin tilted her head slightly. “Teacher, we should really finish up.”
“Ah—yes.” He hurried to place the remaining books on the shelves, mind racing. She was different from every noble student he had ever taught. No entitlement. No pretense. Just quiet competence and an almost unsettling self-awareness.
As they finished, he spoke again, softer. “The guild found you, didn’t they?”
“Yes.”
“How did it happen?”
Rin considered him for a long moment. Something in his tone—genuine curiosity rather than prying—seemed to loosen her guard, if only slightly.
“I was raised in an orphanage on the borderlands. When I was old enough, I started working for the Adventurers’ Guild—odd jobs at first, then hunts. They noticed my magic was stronger than most, even if it didn’t show up clearly on standard detectors. One of the guild masters recommended me for the Academy. Said I could improve here.”
Professor Thorne nodded slowly. “So it was the guild that brought you back into the Frost fold.”
“In a manner of speaking.”
He studied her. He could tell that she did not fit the Frost family. “You could have stayed with them. Lived as an adventurer. Why come here at all?”
Rin’s expression remained unreadable. “Curiosity. And the chance to learn things I can’t learn anywhere else.”
She turned toward the door. “Thank you for the conversation, Professor. I should go.”
He watched her leave, the door closing softly behind her.
Alone in the supply room, he exhaled. Rin—if that was even the name she would keep—was no ordinary noble daughter. She carried herself like someone who had already survived worse than Academy politics.
And yet she stayed.
For now.
Professor Thorne shook his head and locked the door behind him. Whatever the headmistress meant by “handle normally,” he was beginning to understand: treat her like any other student. No more, no less.
It was not his business either.