"Huh?"
Vale blankly stared at the figures before him, his expression a mask of genuine, jarring confusion. He racked his brain, searching every memory since the dust had settled from the duel. He hadn’t done anything wrong. He had kept his head down. "What scandal are you talking about? What scandal are they even talking about?"
"Seems like you don’t know," the Student Council President said, her voice dripping with a chilly, detached indifference.
Without breaking eye contact, she slid open her desk drawer, pulled out a fresh, crisply folded broadsheet, and flipped it onto the mahogany table between them. "Look at the newspaper circulating within the academy," she commanded coolly, casually inspecting her nails, tracing the edge of one with a practiced, dismissive scratch.
Vale leaned in closer, lowering his gaze to meet the ink-black headlines glaring up at him. As his eyes tracked the words, the blood drained from his face, leaving him paler by the second.
"THE DISOWNED SON OF RODERICK SUSPECTED OF HARMING AND TAINTING ELDEST DAUGHTER OF RANGDALL FAMILY"
"What...?" The word caught in his throat. His own name was flashing across the front page of the academy’s most influential paper like a death sentence. "Is this some joke? A prank?"
His gaze locked onto the tiny Student Council President, then flicked to the other elite members flanking her like silent gargoyles.
"Hey. Tell me."
Watching his face twist in horror, the President found herself at a crossroads. Was he acting, or was he actually innocent? The ambiguity only irritated her further. She didn’t have the patience for theatricality.
"Oh, do you think we dragged you here this early in the morning just to play a prank on you?" Her voice sharpened, cutting through the room’s tense silence. "We don’t have time for this. Unlike you, we are busy, and this matter is incredibly important."
Vale’s eyes darted back and forth between her piercing glare and the damning ink on the page. His finger trembled as he pointed at the headline, but when he spoke, he forced his voice to remain firm, anchored by the sheer absurdity of the accusation.
"But this is complete fake news! Whatever happened to her has absolutely nothing to do with me!" Driven by a sudden spike of adrenaline, he spun on his heel, intending to rush out of the room and find the truth himself.
"Irvene has stated she saw your face when you tried to defile her," the President stated flatly.
Vale’s boots froze against the floorboards. The momentum vanished from his body as if he had run into an invisible wall. ’What? Did I mishear something?’
"WHAT?!" he whirled back around, his voice cracking with disbelief.
The President exhaled a long, deep sigh. She slid off the edge of the desk, her boots clicking sharply against the floor, and brought her hands together in a slow, mocking clap. The sound made Vale’s stomach twist into an uneasy knot.
"Looks like you still don’t understand what position you are really in, Vale," she murmured, her voice narrowing, laced with an unmistakable disdain.
"Ah." A cold realization washed over him, settling heavy in his chest. I messed up,
If the victim herself had named him, it didn’t matter how much he denied it. No logic or proof would save him now. They hadn’t dragged him here to investigate; they were interrogating a man they had already convicted in their minds. The decision had been made before he even stepped through the door.
Realizing the futility of pleading, the panic left him, replaced by a cynical, bitter calm. Vale scoffed softly, crossed his arms, and leaned back against the heavy wooden chair with a deliberate, careless attitude.
"Well. Now I understand my position."
Helen’s POV
Across the campus, the morning had started entirely differently for Helen.
Ever since she had stepped across that subtle, unspoken boundary between herself and Vale, her usual blank, detached mood had completely vaporized. In its place was a rare, bubbling cheerfulness that she couldn’t quite shake.
"Finally, he looked at me," she whispered to herself.
Her morning routine, which usually took a meager three minutes of indifferent grooming, had stretched to a full ten minutes. She leaned in close to her vanity mirror, tilting her head from side to side, smoothing a stray strand of hair.
"Do I look good?" she murmured to her reflection, a soft smile tugging at her lips.
A sharp knock rattled her door. "Helen, it’s time for class!" one of her friends called out from the hallway.
"I’m coming," Helen responded, her voice unusually light.
She gathered her things and stepped out, floating on a cloud of quiet contentment. But the moment she entered the main academy building, the atmosphere shifted. The usual hum of morning chatter and laughter echoed through the grand hallways, but today, it felt sharper. More manic.
Normally, Helen wouldn’t have bothered to filter the background noise of the student body. They were irrelevant. But then, a specific name drifted through the ambient noise, catching her attention like a strike of lightning.
"...did you hear someone tried to kidnap Irvene?"
"Someone?" a male student scoffed loudly, leaning against a locker. "The news says it was Vale. He tried to kidnap and defile her."
The words hit Helen like a physical blow. The cheerful, warm light that had painted her morning vanished in an instant, replaced by a cold, violent vacuum. Her face twisted, the soft features hardening into an expression of pure, unadulterated rage.
Before the students could even register a shadow falling over them, Helen closed the distance. Her hand shot out, her fingers locking onto the speaker’s shoulder with a grip like a steel vise, digging deep into the fabric of his uniform.
"Tell me," she commanded. The voice didn’t sound like her usual quiet self—it was low, trembling with a dangerous, dark resonance. "Tell me more about it. Right now."