Chapter 10. Hylli's Change
A few weeks after the school end party came vacation.
Even though vacation officially started, the magic and swordsmanship class students couldn't return home right away. There had been changes in the schedule because of a series of natural disasters and academy events that pulled our subjugations until now.
And thus, we had to stay at the academy and do a few more subjugations before we could head back home. A lot of students argued and raged against the whole thing, but the academy was strict and refused to back down.
"What are you doing, standing there like that? Let's hurry and go home."
Hylli seemed to bemoan the fact that we couldn't go home. He just stood there in the middle of subjugation, blankly staring at nothing.
A monster attacked him from behind but Hylli didn't seem to realize it. I blocked the attack and killed the monster instead. Once I killed the monster, the monster core revealed itself. I picked up the blue core and tapped Hylli once on his back. He barely responded.
"Ah, uh….. Yeah. Let's,."
Hylli responded with a bit of reluctance. Cory asked Hylli if he was okay and tilted his head in question. Hylli laughed hollowly.
Hylli, Cory, and Swanhaden seemed like they didn't want to go home. They barely did anything to collect monster cores. When I ran around to collect as much as I could and nagged them about it, they slightly sped up and worked on it.
The subjugation was, once again, a pretty easy one. I collected as many cores as I needed. Now that I knew the technique behind it, it was easy to fill the quota.
I held a bunch of monster cores in my arms and headed to the box to turn it in. The older man in charge of the box was moving the cores into a different container.
"Should I put these cores in the container over there?"
The man nodded and asked for some help. I moved the cores from one box to the other and suddenly became curious about something.
"What are these cores being collected for? I've heard that the core is where the monster's power comes from. You can't even process it to make it usable...."
"Wow, little miss, you're pretty smart ain't you? It's great that you're curious and all but don't ask me. My job's just putting these blue stones into this box over here."
"Then where are these cores being sent to?"
"Don't worry about that either. When I put it in the box it just disappears on its own and comes back empty."
It seemed that there was teleportation magic on the box. I wanted to check right away but I felt like I'd get in trouble if I did that in front of the man, so I waited until he was gone. When I saw that nobody was around me, I stretched my arm into the box to check the magic circle hidden in the box.
Seeing it was round, the transportation magic was a normal type, and the destination.....
"The top of Augran mountain..."
Just as I muttered to myself, the filled box full of cores became fainter, and soon came back completely empty.
"That's suspicious..."
I frowned as I rubbed my chin with my hand.
"The monsters are getting more and more aggressive by the day. Why are they making us collect cores? And why are they being sent to the top of the mountain?'
I tried my best to figure out a reason behind this. And the only solution I came up with.
"If I report littering on the mountain, will they give me money?"
Now, it was a done deal that I hung out with Cory and Hylli during vacation.
When I thought of vacation, most of it was spent with them. We met together to work on homework, went to the festivals together, and trained with each other to make sure we didn't get rusty.
Oh, of course, I only trained with Hylli. Cory mediated those duels. Of course, there were times that Swanhaden joined us to play around, but it wasn't too often. Swan was apparently very busy during vacation.
Even if we were done with our junior years, I thought it was obvious that we would all play together, just like normal. Cory had asked, "Where should we go this time?", too. Hylli had smiled and said that we should go to a creek or a lake this time. That we should go ice fishing or whatever.
Everything was definitely the same as always at the end of school and when we promised to hang out and play during vacation.
[Hylli said that something came up and that he can't make it.]
Cory told me through a message that something had come up for our normal vacation schedules. As soon as Cory told me that Hylli couldn't make it, I got a separate message from Hylli. I was curious about what had happened, but Hylli didn't seem to want to tell me so I didn't pry.
In the end, I ended up meeting with Cory and going to the library to finish our vacation homework. We did feel Hylli's absence, but we did have a blast playing together. We ate a lot of goo food, won prizes at the street vendors, and had a lot of fun.
I felt bad about playing with Cory without Hylli and contacted him about when we could meet. We could work around Hylli's schedule to play together.
But Hylli's response was negative.
[Sorry. I don't think we can meet.]
I just told him that I understood and that even though I didn't know what was going on, that I wished him the best. I didn't get a reply.
I couldn't meet Hylli throughout our vacation. I met with Yves, I met with Hestia, and I had even met with Swan, but I didn't see Hylli. When I asked Cory about Hylli, he said he didn't know either.
At this point, I was getting very worried for Hylli. If it was something like me in the height of puberty refusing to meet others, that was fine. But if something had happened and that was why…
I pulled up my blanket and fell deep into thought before falling asleep.
I couldn't help but remember the original plot of the novel. The original novel barely talked about our junior years. It focused mostly on our senior years.
The Hylli that I had met was kind and childish and cute and was, at the core, very relatable. But the Hylli in the novel was cold, and, even though he wasn't as bad as Yves, didn't trust others and had a twisted personality. An extremely twisted one.
All of the main characters excluding Cory had obsessive tendencies, and even if they loved Hestia, they never listened to her. They ignored everything she said not to do and did whatever they wanted. Oh. Was it basically the same for Yves, Cory, and Swan?
Anyway, I was shocked at first because all of the main characters were absolute pieces of trash in the novel but super kind and caring in real life.
The original novel was written from the point of view of Hestia, so it didn't go into too much detail about the characters' individual pasts. Most of the details were external, so I couldn't really remember the internal thoughts of the characters. I could mostly just remember things about the plot.
Honestly, the only reason I remembered this much was because of my occasional dreams. I had dreams about the past here and there, and I could see myself reading the novel a few times. I could read the novel in my dreams so I knew bits and pieces of the original text.
I stared at my white ceiling and dragged my blanket right up to my chin. The room was silent, so the only thing that I heard was the rustle of my blanket. I wiggled my feet because they were cold.
"If the novel starts at the start of senior year…"
Then did that mean that everyone could still change into the people I knew from the novel? It couldn't be a coincidence that I kept dreaming of the past and that this world was a romance novel that I had read in that past.
I felt chills going down my spine. I didn't want Hylli to change like the Hylli in the novel. Change was inevitable, but people usually didn't change out of nowhere. I just had a bad feeling that it was a tragedy that changed him like that. There was no other reason for a positive, happy person to suddenly turn so negative.
I fidgeted in the bed a few more times before I heard a quiet knocking sound coming from my window.
I heard a small clatter, as if something was hitting my window. I sat up on my bed.
As soon as I opened the window, I saw Hylli, who had been radio silent until now. Hylli was sitting on the tree across my window. The shadows of the night shrouded half of his face while the moonlight illuminated him from above. His black hair gently reflected the moon's light. His red eyes almost seemed neon under the dark.
When I opened the window, he dropped the small piece of tree bark in his hand. It seemed that he had knocked on my window using that. He stared at me from his seat and waved his hand.
I peered at Hylli's face. Hylli had changed in the while that I didn't see him. He looked calmer than before, but he looked just as exhausted.
I stretched my hand towards the window and rolled it open to the left. A cool breeze entered my room and my hair was swept backwards.
"…..it's been a while."
Hylli's smile was tired as he nodded at my greeting.
"You came because you needed me for something, right?"
".....yeah."
I didn't think that Hylli, who hadn't reached out at all before and had stopped all contact, would come to me for no reason at all.
"You said that you could read logs of magical devices, right? I have something that I want you to look into."
"....."
"I'll pay you a hefty reward."
I could see that Hylli was putting in a lot of effort to treat me like he usually did. He was forcing his mouth to smile, but the light behind his eyes were empty. It didn't feel like Hylli at all.
When I nodded at Hylli's request, he handed me a single document.
"I'm sorry for suddenly appearing and giving you something to work with. Can you get this done by the day after tomorrow?"
I skimmed through the document he handed me and nodded. It wasn't too much to look at.
"You can come tomorrow."
Hylli nodded at my words and told me that he would come tomorrow.
"I'll pay you as much as you need. Is there an amount you want?"
Hylli looked hunted, as if he was struggling under the weight of everything. I felt strange. Had he ever been like this before?
"….stop acting so serious and give me some royal desserts when you come tomorrow. A ton of them."
Hylli smiled as he nodded. He looked overwhelmed even as he smiled. I couldn't get myself to ask what was going on.
I didn't know what had happened, but I decided I would ask when things simmered down a little. Was he taking heir classes as he became a senior? Was it overwhelming?
Honestly, Hylli was a hardworking, diligent person ever since he was little, so he wouldn't suddenly look like this because he was struggling with heir classes. The Hylli I had seen after a while looked exhausted, but he looked sad and worn down more than anything.
Hylli disappeared without even a goodbye. He looked completely out of it. I began to feel uncomfortable after seeing Hylli, who I hadn't seen at all during vacation, come back looking worn like that. I tried to sleep but I couldn't and just decided to work on what Hylli had requested.
What Hylli had requested from me was to look at a specific time of activity for a specific worker in the palace. I wanted to know why he was having such a hard time, but I couldn't figure anything out from the job he gave me. I couldn't find anything except what time this person went to the gardens and when they ate their meals. I just continued to work on Hylli's requests until I felt drowsy enough to sleep.