My brows drew together.
“What do you mean?”
“You may be able to deceive me, but you cannot deceive the spirits.”
Her opening premise was simple: I had lied to her.
From there, Ellin launched into an elaborate misunderstanding.
“If you truly failed, then why are you still conducting experiments in your office?”
That was a blind spot.
As I silently watched her, Ellin continued speaking as though her wild conjecture had already been confirmed as fact.
“The truth is that you are already one step ahead of everyone else when it comes to the secrets of the Rune Language. Am I right?”
“No.”
“There is no way that is true.”
Ellin shook her head as though my denial were completely absurd.
No, I am serious. It really is not true.
I did not understand it at all. I was still at the stage of wondering, Why does this even work?
And I intended to seal it away permanently.
Once again, I understood absolutely nothing about it.
‘I am telling you that you are wrong, so why are you insisting that you are right……?’
“After becoming a Master, you secretly researched the Rune Language during your period of seclusion, without allowing anyone else to know.”
No, how did you connect those things?
How did you arrive at that conclusion?
I had secluded myself to recover from the psychological trauma of seeing people as chitinous cockroa—
No, insects.
Nothing like that had ever happened!
This was slander against Aiden!
Aiden was not that kind of man.
He was not……
“Yes. Now that I think about it, I am certain. You wield an Aura that governs purity, Professor.”
“Surely you must possess extensive knowledge about runes. Far more than a ‘mere student’ like me.”
That was why you could answer Professor Paulo’s surprise question so easily too. You already had all of that knowledge in your head, so answering must have been simple……
No.
You really needed to value yourself a little more highly.
With self-esteem that low, how did she intend to survive the grim storyline awaiting her?
Naturally, everything she said afterward was baseless as well.
‘Where am I even supposed to begin correcting this misunderstanding?’
Ellin fell silent for a long moment and groaned as though squeezing every last thought from her mind.
Then her eyes slowly opened.
“You are modifying the Rune Language, Professor. If modern humanity cannot use it because our vocal organs have deteriorated, then you are giving it a new form. One that we can actually use!”
“You are saying something dangerous.”
I lowered my voice into an unmistakable warning growl, telling her to stop digging any deeper.
Those really were dangerous words.
If the people conducting human experimentation in pursuit of Ancestral Reversion heard something like that, the situation could become extremely serious.
‘In the worst case, I could even be abducted.’
We needed to reach at least the middle portion of the original story before dealing with them.
They were not opponents the protagonists could handle at their current level.
When I lowered my voice with deliberate pressure, Ellin stopped speaking.
She looked rather startled.
Then her face suddenly went deathly pale, and she sucked in a sharp breath.
She hurriedly looked around the room.
Was someone else listening?
Could there be some sort of listening device hidden nearby?
For the record, there was not.
I had meant that she should not say such things outside this room, not that she needed to start worrying about surveillance devices.
She was simply spiraling deeper into her own delusions.
“I apologize. …But I suppose that means I came somewhat close to the truth. After becoming a Master, you discovered a new path. That path was the Rune Language. Your seclusion was merely a way to deceive everyone watching you.”
Ellin shook her head once before raising it again, her eyes now filled with certainty.
“Even the rumors and suspicions about the ‘downfall of a genius’ were part of your strategy to keep people blinded by envy. So no one would realize you were researching the Rune Language!”
“That is completely wrong.”
“And taking this professorship now was also……”
She was not listening to me at all.
This is driving me insane.
“You needed access to facilities that would allow you to conduct more detailed research while keeping everyone else deceived. I see.”
When I refused to confirm anything, a strange standoff developed.
Ellin seemed to be silently protesting that she had uncovered this much already, so why was I still refusing to admit it?
The truth was that I simply had nothing to say.
Not one thing she had said was correct.
If even one part had been accurate, I could have confirmed or denied it.
But when someone missed the mark this spectacularly, there was nothing to work with.
Correcting a misunderstanding was only possible when the person involved still had enough room in their mind to accept the possibility that they were mistaken.
Ellin had already decided that her conclusion was the correct answer.
Nothing I said would get through to her.
Ellin stood first and bowed her head.
“I do not know exactly what else you are hiding, but clearly you have no intention of telling me. If so, I will simply discover it myself. Thank you for today. I will see you again.”
As though refusing to accept any objection, she thanked me entirely on her own terms and abruptly turned to leave.
Just before crossing the threshold, Ellin paused and glanced back at me.
“Thank you for the canned coffee.”
Then she turned away completely and left.
Aisel, who had prepared the tea exactly as I had requested, could only alternate her gaze between me and Ellin’s departing figure.
‘Haah……’
I could already see the route becoming tangled.
“Professor?”
“Aisel.”
“Yes?”
“Go stand with your forehead against the wall.”
“Whaaaat?!”
She had gone through the trouble of making the tea exactly as instructed, and now she protested as though demanding to know why she deserved that.
‘If you had not given Ellin that clue about the coat being mine……’
This was not unreasonable venting.
…Probably.
I ignored her grumbling beside me and rested my chin atop my interlaced fingers.
I had to untangle this somehow, but I could not even tell how the knot had become twisted in the first place.
“Professor, this is really unfair……”
“Drink your tea. I have something else to think about.”
“Hmph. Do you not think you are treating me a little too harshly?”
Without answering, I leaned back against the chair.
‘I need to investigate Ellin.’
It was now certain that the route had become distorted.
If I wanted to return it to its proper course, I would have to investigate her one way or another.
***
After stepping into the corridor, Ellin frowned without caring about the gazes of the students around her.
Still unsatisfied, she bit down on her lower lip.
Even when she lowered her heavy eyelids in thought, the frown remained on her face.
‘I got so much of it right.’
Yet the professor had simply stared back at her with the same perfectly calm expression as always.
He had not looked like someone whose secret had been exposed.
He had not looked like someone whose shameful weakness had been uncovered.
The fact that he had shown not even the slightest agitation was enough to make her wonder whether she had gone down the wrong path entirely.
‘There is no way.’
Everything fit together too perfectly.
Professor Aiden, once praised as a genius, had secluded himself because of some mysterious mental illness.
He had handed his official duties over to his younger sister.
He had effortlessly answered Professor Paulo’s unexpected question.
All of it pointed toward the Rune Language.
Everything else was merely a means of deception.
A strategy to mislead everyone around him.
Otherwise, there was no explanation for such bizarre behavior.
Once she had settled on that direction, things she had never paid much attention to before began bothering her one after another.
It was a natural progression.
After all, Professor Aiden had deliberately led everyone into believing something as trivial as the ‘downfall of a genius.’
Once she noticed that sense of incongruity, she could trace it backward and find everything else that was strange.
Ellin closed her eyes.
She would fit the pieces together one by one.
‘Professor Aiden could have joined as a Full Professor, yet he insisted on remaining a Part-time Professor. Why?’
Because becoming a Full Professor would bind him to various obligations within the university.
He wanted to use the research facilities while leaving as few traces as possible, so that if circumstances ever turned against him, he could simply take his research and disappear.
And Ellin had discovered it by coincidence.
She nodded to herself with complete conviction.
Yes.
This was now an established fact.
“But he is still hiding something else from me.”
He had tried to cover everything up by showing her some ridiculous imitation of Ignite.
He wanted to convince her at an appropriate point that true runes were impossible and send her away.
“What in the world is it?”
What else was that professor hiding from her?
Unable to contain her frustration, she stamped her feet before making a miserable face.
She looked like a child throwing a tantrum because she had not gotten what she wanted.
At least, that was what her reflection in the elevator of the College of Martial Studies building looked like.
Seeing herself like that only irritated her further, but she forcibly suppressed the feeling.
All of that pent-up irritation eventually converged on one thing.
Ellin chewed on her lip.
“That expressionless face.”
That meant she had not even reached the heart of the matter yet, did it not?
That was why he could afford to act so composed.
Everything she had uncovered so far was merely superficial.
Anyone who connected the existence of runes with Professor Aiden could probably discover this much.
“I will find out. No matter what.”
Determination burned in Ellin’s eyes.
The research office was quiet.
Aisel and I sat inside, sipping our tea.
The atmosphere was somewhat subdued, but not enough to bother me.
I did not particularly care.
“…You are not even going to try to cheer me up?”
Aisel glared at me with a sulky expression.
Apparently, she was waiting to see when I would apologize.
Unfortunately for her, Aiden was the sort of man who simply did not apologize.
He was not called insufferable for nothing.
“…Hmph.”
Only after Aisel had become thoroughly sulky did I take another sip of tea and close my eyes.
Thinking about this by myself was getting me nowhere.
The situation would not have been out of place being called a Gordian Knot.
‘Of all the possible misunderstandings, why did she have to arrive at that one?’
It was frustrating.
“Aisel, what should I do if a girl has misunderstood something?”
“What?”
She initially looked as though she could not understand why I was suddenly asking such an unrelated question.
Then her expression gradually became strangely mischievous.
The corners of her mouth rose, and she even began humming for no apparent reason.
It was extremely unnatural.
One thing was certain, however.
She suddenly seemed excited.
“Hmm, hmm. What kind of misunderstanding did she have?”
“She speaks as though I have done something terrible to her.”
“W-what sort of terrible thing?”
“I merely want to cherish her, but matters refuse to go the way I intend. Somehow, my intentions keep becoming twisted into something strange.”
All I had done was cover Ellin with my coat because she had fallen asleep outside on a cold day.
It had been an act of pure goodwill!
Aisel’s face finally turned so red that she looked as though this were somehow happening to her.
She cleared her throat several times.
“A-ahem. Is the girl… pretty?”
Pretty?
What kind of question was that?
‘Even objectively speaking, Ellin is certainly beautiful.’
Perhaps being half Witch and half Elf made her beauty even more striking.
Her build was only petite for now. Later, her Witch heritage would assert itself more strongly, and she would mature considerably.
Whether now or in the future, the fact that Ellin was beautiful would not change.
The only difference would be whether hers was the youthful beauty of a girl or the mature beauty of an adult.
“She is beautiful. She is already quite beautiful now, and once she matures, she will become even more beautiful.”
“I-is that so?”
Aisel’s entire face turned crimson, and she avoided my gaze.
What is wrong with you now?
“Th-then I will forgive you. Yes, some people are simply bad at expressing their feelings! Yes! There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. Ah! I just remembered something I need to take care of. I will be right back!”
With that, she fled from the room.
As she left, I heard her mutter,
“Saying something like that with a face like yours is cheating!”
I did not understand a single thing.
Where in the context of this conversation had there been room for a remark like that?
The research office became silent after Aisel disappeared.
I stared blankly at the place where she had been sitting, then leaned back against the sofa and let out a long sigh.
“What is wrong with everyone……?”
At some point, without even realizing it—
I had become incapable of understanding how people thought.
…it was unbearably frustrating.