Vinoshu looked at Jay silently for a long while, then asked again.
“Are you sure you ate it all?”
“Yes.”
Once more, Jay acted with all his might. It was an ability not expected from the naive-looking Jay.
Jay’s acting wasn’t at a level that could be easily noticed. However, Vinoshu was someone who had grown up and worked in this school. To him, Jay’s actions seemed transparent. It must have been because of the accumulated experience from working at this school for so long.
“Professor Doe.”
“Yes.”
Whether tired from reading the report or tired because of Jay Doe’s actions, Vinoshu lightly massaged his eye area. From his eyelids, the undisguisable traces of time emerged thickly.
He rose from his seat and stood by the window.
“It’s not that there haven’t been people like you.”
“…Pardon?”
“Naive outsiders, I mean.”
The evening glow cast thickly on his face. The dark red light looked like blood, or like old, faded silk. Jay couldn’t let go of his tension at the sharp atmosphere surrounding him and gulped.
“Go ahead and leave.”
“Pardon?”
“Leave. I’ll accept the report.”
Jay thought he would receive reprimand after Vinoshu noticed his lie. However, Vinoshu readily let him go.
Unlike his tension, it ended anticlimactically, so Jay returned to his room with relief. His steps returning were much lighter, having shed his worries.
“Haah, that was hard.”
Jay sprawled face-down on the bed. He hadn’t even changed his clothes. Belly quickly crawled out of his pocket and stuck to Jay’s face with a splat, wagging his tail. For a reptile, it was an affectionate expression close to a dog’s.
At the usual, adorable affection toward me, Jay’s fatigue melted away smoothly.
“Aigoo, did you come like this because hyung seems tired?”
His coaxing tone looked like it was directed at a newborn baby. Belly licked his finger as if answering such a Jay. Jay laughed merrily and enjoyed a happy moment.
I liked all of this, yet felt uncomfortable somewhere. It was a dissatisfaction whose reason I didn’t know.
“I wish I could be this happy every day.”
But regrettably, that feeling didn’t continue until the next day. It was because of what happened during mealtime, which should have been enjoyable.
“Ugh… Ughhh…”
Vittorio’s face turned pale white as he couldn’t even receive his meal tray and stepped backward, then tripped over his own feet and fell. It was a ridiculous sight, but not a single person in the guidance room could laugh.
“……”
Jay couldn’t say anything at all. He couldn’t have imagined that his impulsive and light-hearted goodwill would come back like this. Vittorio trembled as if shaking like an aspen in fear and couldn’t get up from where he was.
On the meal tray he was so terrified and afraid of was placed octopus cooked in a way that revealed its shape completely, unsliced. As if mocking that he ate one whole, there were two octopuses.
Vittorio truly looked like he was going to die. He kept fumbling and scratching down his throat. The appearance of wheezing, unable to breathe properly, looked terribly agonizing. Red lines were drawn one after another from his rough scratching.
Jay urgently stopped that gesture, but Vittorio sharply swatted away that hand.
“P-Pro-fessor…”
His orange eyes burned darkly. Those eyes glowed gloomily with anger at the situation before him and reproach toward Jay. Jay flinched as if burned by that gaze and stepped back.
But the heat that seemed like it would burn forever quickly died down. Sadness filled the empty space and rippled. His eyes swayed with a gloomy blue light.
“I-I-I will… eat…”
“……”
“I’ll… eat it.”
It was the slowest until now, but he spoke without stuttering. His face was firmly shouting rejection.
At that moment, Jay recalled Vinoshu, who had spoken meaningfully toward him. At the same time, he clearly recognized that his actions had caused all of this. Jay’s face became very pale. He hadn’t intended to invite such a situation. He had simply wanted to help Vittorio.
However, no matter how well-intentioned an action may be, actions done without deep thought often bring disaster. Jay didn’t know that fact.
Moreover, this was Connubium, which had been observing students for several years. Even if not Vinoshu, if food that couldn’t be eaten overnight suddenly became edible, they couldn’t help but feel something was strange.
“Huh, ugh… Ughhh.”
Vittorio, letting out sobbing moans, was miserable and desperate. He tried somehow to eat the octopus, but couldn’t even touch it. Because both hands trembled mercilessly as if afflicted with tremors, he couldn’t even lift the utensils. It was a pitiful sight.
In the guidance room, only Jay cared about such a Vittorio. Chung and Ivan didn’t give even an inch of a glance at Vittorio and ate their own portions of food. Colder than the north wind. But sadly, for Vittorio, their indifference was more comfortable than Jay’s attention. In Connubium, attention was like shards of broken glass.
Thus, Vittorio’s meal tray couldn’t be emptied. The octopus on the tray grew coldly cold.
* * *
After mealtime, Jay’s day was very exhausting.
Jay was tormented by the fact that his actions had become a boomerang that flew back and hurt Vittorio. The sight of students smiling like paintings also brought anxiety to him. Because he worried whether other students were also suffering such torment.
Once his thoughts reached that far, the appearance of the children who had seemed obedient and perfect looked different. Since he had originally felt a strange sense of alienation, his worries accelerated.
But what could he do? He was merely an outsider at this school and had no power. Even what he did with good intentions brought bad results.
Jay spent the day crushed by guilt. He suffered from a strong sense of oppression as if a giant was pressing down hard.
Yesterday, Vittorio’s menu only had octopus at breakfast. However, today, as if determined to torment him, octopus came out for lunch and dinner too. Thanks to that, Jay’s sense of oppression only grew worse.
Vittorio couldn’t touch that octopus just like at breakfast. At the end of the day, Jay looked with agonized eyes at his back as he returned to the dormitory with haggard, staggering steps.
“Have a good night, Professor.”
Chung looked at Jay with a transparent gaze devoid of any emotion and greeted him politely. It was an appearance as if Vittorio wasn’t even in his mind. Jay urgently called out to stop Chung.
“Um, Jin.”
“Yes, Professor.”
Even at the sudden call, he gracefully turned his body as if he had expected it and looked at Jay. Each of his actions was antique, and it was beautiful as if a flower was spinning around, naturally drawing people’s gazes.
“Um… Could we talk for a moment?”
“Of course.”
Jay guided Chung to the preparation room. He also didn’t forget to leave the door of the preparation room slightly open rather than closing it all the way. Because he didn’t want to give Chung any potential anxiety. Chung showed no particular reaction to such an action and sat obediently.
“So… The reason I called you like this is…”
Jay swept his face for a moment, not knowing how to bring it up.
In his memory, there was no such experience. He was at a loss as to how to handle the wrong result from pure goodwill. However, he thought he had to make an effort somehow. Because he thought there was responsibility he had to bear. Though Jay had ignorant aspects, he was the sincere type.
Chung patiently waited for Jay, who was fumbling with his mouth for a moment. After a brief silence, Jay carefully opened his mouth.
“Valli… I mean.”
“Yes.”
“Um… About the octopus, does it come out often?”
“Yes.”
Chung answered plainly without losing his smile. Jay was momentarily flustered by the answer without hesitation. Chung seemed not to feel any problem with the situation that occurred today.
Unlike Jay, whose back broke out in goosebumps at that appearance, I thought it was an interesting situation.
“Do you know… why it comes out?”
“……”
Chung looked at Jay without saying anything. His clear red eyes like glass beads seemed to see through Jay. Jay clenched his hands at that gaze that seemed to peel away his skin layer by layer and examine what was underneath.
“I don’t know, Professor. As befits a student of Connubium, one must not know such things.”
“Well…”
“May I go now?”
At Chung’s clear but polite refusal, Jay reluctantly nodded. Chung finished his greeting displaying beautiful etiquette and left the preparation room.
Before he knew it, Belly had stealthily climbed onto Jay’s shoulder and stared intently at the place where Chung had left. Belly’s deep eyes stirred with unknowable intent.
* * *
“I love this kind of suspicious development so much! It’s totally the best!”
Jay, disheartened by his exhausted body and mind, fell asleep and I took over the body. All the scenes I had seen during that time flowed back through my mind like water. My face flushed red, and I couldn’t stop my excitement, stamping my feet.
Beside me, Belly, who had changed into human form at some point, stealthily approached and combed through my hair.
Hair close to dog fur that became unmanageably messy if not combed every day was one of the things he cared about most. It was understandable since he had seen chunks of hair pulled out in clumps because the hair got so tangled up.
“As expected, there has to be something sinister in this kind of boarding school.”
“Is that so?”
“Of course! For example, a demon appearing at a theological school and students being murdered or offered as sacrifices. That’s quite a classic material. Or a murder case at a boarding school in the mountains. The culprit is actually the homeroom teacher with abnormal sexual desires.”
I couldn’t hide my excitement as I talked about the developments of novels I liked.
