The next day, Hylli brought over a mountain of royal desserts just as promised.
"Wow….. How exciting."
"I'm glad you like it."
Hylli looked more exhausted than yesterday. I handed the documents I had written after I dug through the requested pieces over to him. Hylli received the papers with a frantic gesture. The pages rustled quickly as he looked through them. His red eyes skimmed the papers from the top left to the bottom right. The expression on his face grew stiffer as he read on.
I took out some pudding that Hylli had brought and began to eat it. The royal palace truly had some amazing dessert. The pudding literally melted in my mouth the moment I ate it. I was so touched by the taste of the pudding that I wanted to give some to Hylli. It was important to increase your sugar intake when you needed energy, after all.
So I was just about to hand some pudding over to Hylli, until...
"Hylli.....?"
"...…"
Hylli buried his face in the documents I handed him as he sobbed.
His hands shook as he held onto the documents, and his tears dripped down onto the documents on the table. His hunched shoulders shook ever so often as his breaths caught. He rubbed his face in his hands before raising his arms to rub his eyes dry.
"Euh, eugh. Heuk.... Damn it. Ha."
Hylli pressed his hands into his eyes to stop his tears. I could see his eyes peeking between his fingers. They were full of murderous intent, something that I had never seen from his playful, kind self before. The sad light in his eyes seemed to flow down with his tears.
I couldn't ask if he was okay when he was so obviously not.
When I tried to go towards him, Hylli held up his hands to stop me.
"I'm sorry. I haven't seen you in a while and this is what I show you."
I could see his face once he lowered his hands. His eyes were rimmed red from his earlier tears. He wiped the tears that were still dripping down his red eyes as he forced himself to smile. His face looked like his usual, playful self, but it looked incredibly forced.
"I'll see you at school, Shushu."
Hylli finally stopped crying. I handed him a few tissues as he got ready to leave, and pat his back a few times. Thankfully, Hylli left looking a bit better than earlier.
His goodbye meant that he would be busy until the beginning of school. And just like he said, I didn't see Hylli until the beginning of school. I tried contacting Cory. Cory said that he hadn't seen Hylli even once during vacation. When I asked Yves about it, he said that there was a slight shift in the air in the royal palace, but he didn't know too much about it either.
And, just like that, school began and we became seniors.
Except for the fact that we had a new swordsmanship teacher coming in this semester, there wasn't too much of a change.
Our dorms were the same even after we became seniors. When I collected all of my belongings and headed to my room, I saw Hazel. She had a new hairstyle now. Hazel always had long, curly hair, but her hair was now cut short into a bob.
Moreover, her hair was cut with such precision that it looked like her hair was sliced clean into a bob. Short hair, especially bobs, were incredibly popular amongst young women these days.
It was a light hairstyle that was perfect for active lifestyles, so a lot of women decided to cut their hair clean off. Apparently, Hazel was the one who started the trend. Hazel was so pretty that she seemed to pull off whatever hairstyle she wanted with incredible ease.
When I was young, I cut my hair short once to focus completely on the sword, but back then people talked about it as if it was something to be ashamed about. But now, short cuts were another trend.
The only difference that I felt as a senior was that I had grown taller, just a bit. To measure it with the measurements of my past life, I grew 0.2 centimeters taller.
…to put it in another way, it meant that I didn't grow at all. I had only grown 0.2 centimeters in the past three years. Hazel looked at my miserable state and told me that I grew prettier. She avoided my gaze the entire time she spoke. That was too much.
As we became seniors, the other students slowly began maturing as well. It wasn't that everyone's childlike appearances from junior year was completely gone, but they had changed a lot.
Hestia had matured enough to look like a grown woman, and Cory, Hylli, and Swan were all on the way to adulthood. I did have a soft spot for cute things, so I felt slightly disappointed to see them grow up like this. Now, all of them had their own charms instead of just being cute.
Well, except for me. My height didn't change, and my appearance didn't seem to change either. My curly orange hair just grew longer and longer. The curls actually got curlier, honestly.
Everything was changing, but their cores didn't. I was kind of grateful for that.
Hylli, who I had met after a long time, seemed to be the same as well.
"Shuraina, I think you grew taller!"
"It's an optical illusion. I got fatter."
"Is that so? I don't know about fat. If you grew fatter, then that's reason to celebrate. Eat more. You look healthier. If you grow so fat that you can't walk, I'll roll you around."
When he mimed rolling around a huge snowball, I grimaced and threw the candy wrapper in my hand at him. Even when it blew onto my face because of the wind.
Hylli had erased his sad, chased looking self away and looked like he was back to normal. But he wasn't completely back to normal. Even though he smiled and joked and played around, he spoke less and, although I couldn't pinpoint it exactly, had changed. When I asked Hylli if he was okay, he responded that he was with a smile.
Even when we became seniors, Hylli and I trained against each other during afternoon classes.
Just like always, we trained from the end of our afternoon classes and until the smell of dinner wafted towards us. We ran towards the cafeteria and joked around and played together. And even then, I couldn't help but feel discomforted by Hylli.
I couldn't help but bump into Hylli when afternoon classes began. I was observing Hylli closely these days. Although I didn't chase him around and make him uncomfortable, it was true that I was being more observant than before.
Hylli didn't seem to change much externally after vacation. Just today morning, he was complaining about how magical theory was so difficult in the hallway, and he had nodded in greeting when I waved at him. He even occasionally took out my embarrassing past pictures and teased me about it. It was just like usual.
But these days, Hylli went to the palace immediately after school instead of heading to the dorms. Augran Academy was sponsored by the palace and it was pretty close to the palace, but still.
I asked Cory about Hylli. They were roommates, after all.
"Hylli doesn't come to the dorms these days."
"Really?"
"Yeah. It looks like he heads to the palace immediately after classes. He doesn't come back. I'm using our room like it's just mine now."
Cory pushed his glasses up on his nose as he frowned worriedly.
"When we're together, he acts super happy and bright but when he's alone, he looks really exhausted. Like he's empty."
"...…"
I couldn't get myself to eat after listening to Cory speak about Hylli. I skipped lunch and headed over to the training hall earlier than usual. Maybe I would just move a little and empty my head.
I thought there wouldn't be anybody because of how early I got here, but someone was already here.
I saw a head of bright silver hair. The person in the training hall had an annoyed expression as they wrapped bandages around their arm with familiarity. I wondered who it was. It was Swan.
Today, Swan was wearing short sleeves instead of his regular long-sleeved shirt. He wrapped the bandaged around his exposed arms and neck with ease to cover his scars.
Swanhaden seemed to notice my arrival. He raised his head to stare right at me. Swan glanced towards me, nodded, then continued to wrap the bandages around himself.
I headed towards Swan and sat slightly away from him. Swanhaden was also familiar with Hylli, so I wanted to ask if he knew anything about what was happening recently. But it felt like I was going around and asking too many people about it, so I pondered if I should ask or not for a while.
As I was wondering if I should ask or not, Swan took out a small blade and cut the roll of bandages off to clean it. And, after cutting some adhesive tape-looking paper, he secured the bandages around himself.
I just stared at him wrapping his bandages without a word.
"You missed that part."
"..."
When I pointed my finger to point at the part that was loose, Swanhaden nodded. He unwrapped, then rewrapped the part tightly.
Swan and I sat at the corner of the training hall. When we just continued to sit there without a word, another person entered the training hall. Someone with dark hair and dark eyes entered. The person who had entered was none other than Hylli.
Hylli didn't seem to notice Swan and I sitting in the corner, but he had on an expression that he never showed me or others.
I could feel the angry, murderous aura coming from Hylli from afar. That was enough explanation. Hylli's face had on that murderous expression that I had seen once before. I couldn't help but remember his face as he cried into the documents before. Right then and right now, Hylli's eyes shone with a cold, angry light that felt like he was going to rip someone into two.
Bang!
Hylli slammed down his blade onto the practice wooden doll like he was putting all of his anger into it. Hylli, who was near the level of a swordmaster, slammed his sword with such intent that a loud bang rang throughout and the doll shattered. Even the floor dipped from the sheer weight of it.
He stared at the broken doll with empty eyes before kicking down at it.
I had never seen Hylli look so aggressive from the moment I knew him. When he was angry, he made it known on his face and told everyone how angry he was. But now, Hylli seemed truly angry. It wasn't just a simple hurt, but something that was accompanied by deep hurt and rage.
"Wow, so he finally exploded, huh? And he was putting up so well with it too."
Swanhaden had a mocking smile on his face as he watched the whole thing.
It sounded like Swanhaden knew something about what Hylli was going through.