Chapter 12. Swanhaden's Pink Book
Swanhaden carried around a strange pink book these days.
Before, he carried around self-help books focusing on personality improvement like 'The Ethics of Man' or 'How to Be Called a Good Person', but he was reading a weird pink book these days. I was curious about the title, but Swan piled on stickers where the title would go so I couldn't tell. I thought I had seen it before, but I couldn't remember it completely.
Swan came over to me often holding that pink book.
He always had that pink book of his in one hand with an uncomfortable-looking expression. After seeing Swan aggressively slam his hand on the wall at Hylli, I had unknowingly gotten scared of him. I couldn't help but get nervous when he approached me. Thankfully, Swan hadn't tried that wall slam on me. Oh, he tried something similar, but he muttered something about how he couldn't do such a thing to me and left.
After that, instead of hitting the wall, he smiled at me as he crushed an apple with his fist, held up someone passing by with one arm, and ended up showing off his strength whenever he saw me. Then, he sighed as if he was embarrassed by the whole thing and disappeared.
It wasn't an immediate threat towards me, but it felt…passively threatening. I wondered if I did something for him to get angry at me, but he never spoke of such a thing.
During break, I was sitting in class staring blankly at the chalkboard when a classmate tapped me and called for me.
"Shushu, Swanhaden is waiting outside. Go over there."
I wondered what it was this time as I stood up. When I walked out the classroom, Swanhaden was standing right there. His glaringly attractive features shone in my eyes.
When I walked outside, Swanhaden walked towards me, eyes locked on the book. He seemed embarrassed about the situation for a moment as he rubbed the back of his neck. He began speaking.
"Hi. Baby bird."
"What?"
He buried his face further into the book as he peered at the pages, then looked at me before speaking once more.
"Your eyes shine so brightly that the stars in the sky look dim in comparison."
Swanhaden's face began to crumble. So did mine.
What was he trying to say? I began thinking as I looked at Swan. He looked like he was forcing these words out of his mouth. He was speaking to me, but he sounded like he was reading a textbook with zero interest. I was confused if he was reading out loud or speaking to me.
Swan tousled his hair in annoyance as he continued to speak.
"Your clear, my name, see with your voic…..uh."
"….what are you doing?"
"Damn it, I messed up the phrase."
Swanhaden scowled as he clenched his hand into a fist. Then, he sighed again. I watched at Swan went through the stages of grief as I became more and more curious.
"What are you reading? What about a clear voice?"
At my question, Swanhaden's face stiffened as he avoided my gaze. He quickly shut his book.
"…..It's Hylli's journal."
"…..?"
"Never mind. Good luck in class."
Should I kill the author. Swanhaden quietly muttered to himself as he speed walked back to his classroom. I waved goodbye at Swanhaden's back.
Swanhaden walked quickly for a few moments. He saw that I was waving at him from the corner of his eye, so he turned around and waved back at me. Swanhaden's face was scrunched up into a frown as he seemed to be struggling with something.
Starting with weird statements like earlier, Swanhaden's strange behavior continued.
Cory and I bought a few materials to increase the scope of the Augran mountain model in our club room. We were on our way back to our club room when it happened.
We had a ton of stuff, but Cory floated everything around us so we were comfortably walking as we headed back to our club.
Cory and I were discussing the weird discoveries we had made as we observed our mountain replica model.
"Everything is basically the same as the mountain, but there's something strange about how the monsters act in that specific area of the mountain. We'd never captured such movements in the model that we have before."
"Oh, that part worried me too."
"Do you want to go and check sometime? It might be dangerous, so we can gather information while we're flying over the area."
I nodded at Cory's words and recommended that we do that the next time we went for monster subjugation.
As we were now seniors, we were capturing upper intermediate monsters on the upper part of the mountain.
Upper intermediate level monsters weren't as easy to defeat as the mid-level or low-level monsters that we subjugated during junior classes. We needed at least a group of ten people to subjugate them.
Unlike junior subjugations, a lot of senior students returned with injuries.
If students were warned and prepared in case of injuries, seniors were considered grown enough to get used to actual subjugation situations.
I had no worries about subjugation. We had Hylli, who could smash down high-level monsters, and we also had Cory, who could throw attack spells left and right. Moreover, we now had Swan in our group too.
There was a specific amount of monsters that each team was supposed to subjugate, but if we filled that quota quickly enough, we we could go to the suspicious part of the mountain and back.
If you were wondering why we focused so much on monsters when our club was mainly about magic circles, it was because it was necessary for us to manipulate magic circles when taking care of the monsters and the model itself. A lot of people asked us if our club was a monster research club, but that wasn't it.
We also created a lot of magic items using modified circles for our club submissions as well. But the Augran mountain model was great for subjugation and other school activities, so it was what the club sponsors were most interested in and why we put in more time and effort into the model.
Cory and I were chatting as we walked when a familiar silvery white head of hair caught our eye.
The person approaching us was none other than Swanhaden.
Swanhaden stood in front of Cory and I–no, actually. Swanhaden stood directly in front of me and stared. He seemed like he had something to say as he hesitated.
Swanhaden seemed like he wanted to talk about something, so I stopped and waited for him. Swanhaden took out a familiar pink book before reading it and beginning to speak.
"….you must be really tired these days."
"...?"
Swanhaden suddenly said something that sounded more like a question. I was just about to shake my head no when he continued speaking.
"You're busy making a mess of my thoughts."
"....?"
Swanhaden said, voice monotone. He frowned as he muttered, "Damn it, I don't get it." to himself. I didn't know what my face looked like right now, but it probably didn't look too pleasant.
Swan couldn't seem to face me as he tousled his hair and spoke up again.
"I feel like blinking is such a waste of time."
"….."
Swan's face was fierce. He seemed moments away from threatening me.
"It means I can't see you while….."
"Swan, that's enough. I'm getting embarrassed for you."
Cory spoke up when he couldn't bear it. Swanhaden, who looked miserable as he said the words himself, looked up. He looked stubborn.
"This isn't it, right?"
"Look at Shushu's expression."
Even as he was told to look at my face, Swanhaden didn't look.
"…..I'm too scared to look."
Swanhaden quietly muttered as he looked towards Cory.
Then, he glanced towards me. Swanhaden looked surprised.
"Her face is red?"
"It's because she's angry."
Cory responded.
"Che. It was good while it lasted."
Swanhaden turned away as he pouted.
I was just in a state of shock as I listened to their conversation.
It was truly difficult to hear. Swanhaden's strange comments that seemingly came out of nowhere made chills go down my arms. Moreover, his comments were towards me. I was absolutely miserable.
It was more difficult to hear than what Hylli said about Swanhaden in junior year. Swanhaden seemed to be bullying me with some seriously imaginative methods. As expected of Swanhaden. I'd never thought about this type of bullying before.
Seemingly miserable, Swanhaden rubbed the back of his neck until his finger got caught on his bandages.
Swan stood there, awkward, before taking out a ton of candy and chocolates from Cory's pocket and handing them to me. When my hands were filled with Cory's snacks, Cory nodded and told me I could eat it. What, what was going on.
I stared at Swan's retreating figure and asked Cory.
"Is there a problem with Swanhaden these days?"
"Swan? Oh."
When I began to talk about Swanhaden, Cory briefly tilted his head before he began to stifle his smile.
"He has a huge problem."
I didn't understand Cory's response.
As seniors, we received new clothes for our subjugations. Seeing as our academy's color was wine, our senior subjugation clothes were also wine-colored. This outfit was a deeper wine color, and there were two gold lines on the hem of our outfits.
Recently, I had gotten hit by a monster's attack during subjugation and a part of my outfit ripped. The school repaired or replaced all clothes that were damaged during subjugation, so I gladly shoved my clothes at the academy for repairs.
I hugged my new clothes and was about to the girls' dorm.
There was a small pond on the way to the dorm. The scenery was beautiful, so I had a habit of looking at the pond when I was heading back.
When I glanced at the pond, I saw Swanhaden's familiar silver hair.
Swanhaden was ripping pages from the pink book he carried every day into small paper cranes. Then, he was putting each of those cranes on the pond and watching them float.
After he finished ripping all of the pages of his book, Swanhaden quietly muttered to himself as he continued folding more cranes.
"Why is this so difficult..."
I could hear the turmoil in his voice.
I walked towards Swanhaden and sat next to him.
"..."
Swan's hands stopped folding cranes. He looked at me with a surprised expression on his face.
He placed one of his paper cranes on my head.
"You didn't need to grow up to be so pretty."
Swanhaden quietly talked to himself, lamenting.
I collected all of the paper cranes floating in the pond back onto land and banished them with magic. Then, I sat back down next to Swan, who looked incredibly worried about something.
Not long after, Swan struck up a conversation with me.
"Shushu."
"What."
"I'm currently in the community service and consultation club."
"....?"
T/N: swan i'm begging you please