It seemed like I had fallen asleep while I had been looking through the memories of my past life.
When I woke up, I was drenched in sweat. I woke up with a frown on my face–my mood wasn't too great, either.
I had used the magic on the bench as soon as swordsmanship class had ended, so I had fallen asleep on the bench, too.
When I sighed as I stared at the sky, a strangely cool breeze was blowing towards me so I turned my head. It was definitely an artificial breeze, so I was surprised.
"Are you feeling hot? Why are you sleeping in a place like this?"
I had been wondering about the breeze, but it had been Hylli using his class folder as a fan. I was soaked, but thanks to Hylli's fanning skills, I was cooling down quickly.
Hylli seemed to have just finished his morning classes. He was still holding his school bag.
Hylli's eyes met my barely waking ones. His eyes grew round before he smiled brightly, teeth shining. It was a childlike, playful smile.
"You should stop sleeping and slowly head over to afternoon class, right? Wow, you're so relaxed."
He was still fanning the wind towards me, but the wind also pushed his bangs back.
When I just blankly stared at Hylli, Hylli told me to wake up as he fanned harder. He seemed to be concentrating–he bit his lip slightly as he fanned as hard as he could. I just kept staring.
Thanks to the excessively strong wind of his, my bangs and side hair all became a mess and covered my face. Hylli seemed to find my state funny as he snickered as he stared at my face.
"Hiyah, yap."
Hylli changed the angle and direction of the wind back and forth as he continued fanning the wind towards me. He helped remove the hair stuck on my face with his hand before making a mess of it again.
His fanning was so excessive that the contents of his folder tried to slip out–but whenever it almost did, Hylli narrowed his eyes as he slipped the papers back.
"!"
Hylli, who had been playfully fanning the wind towards sweaty old me, suddenly looked surprised.
"Why....."
Hylli stopped. He helped clear my face of any hair as his eyes grew even rounder.
"Why are you crying."
At his words, I realized that tears had been streaming down my face from some point onwards.
I didn't realize it, but I had been crying.
"What's wrong."
Hylli took a seat next to me and placed his backpack, which had been jammed between his arm and his torso, beside him. He grabbed my face with his hands. He had a serious expression on his face.
I couldn't help but feel taken aback at Hylli's question about what was wrong. I was the one that wanted to know what was wrong.
The tears had begun falling as soon as I woke up. It didn't want to stop for a long time.
All of that was in the past. I felt ashamed that I was crying over something so trivial. I grit my teeth to try and stop crying, but the tears just kept coming.
I grabbed my hair and pulled it towards my eyes to hide my face. Thankfully I wasn't making any sounds. The tears kept falling so I was sniffling, but I wasn't sobbing or being noisy.
I didn't know why my emotions had suddenly hit me like a truck like this. The one that had suffered was my past self, but the one that was crying and feeling miserable was my present self.
Hylli was surprisingly quiet as he sat next to me. Once I had burst into proper tears, he didn't ask questions like "What's wrong?" or "Are you okay?" or "Don't cry." Instead, he just quietly sat next to me and tried not to look at me as I cried.
My sniffles soon quieted down, and I became incredibly embarrassed. I carefully removed my hands that had covered my face and the hair that had gotten stuck on my face before speaking out loud.
"I got dust in my eyes because of your fanning."
I rubbed my eyes as I pretended to rub the dust out, wiping off the tears. Hylli unabashedly replied to my lie.
"Oh, was the wind too rough?"
"A lot. My tears were literally flowing horizontally."
"Do you want me to blow the dust out of your eyes? It looks like there's some still there."
When I rushed to wipe away my tears, Hylli held up his classwork file and added some of his energy into it. How hard was he planning on fanning his folder now?
"If you go any harder, my eyeballs are probably going to pop out."
"But the dust."
"Hey."
"Sorry."
Hylli put his classroom folder back in and, thankfully, stopped.
After he had stopped fanning, Hylli placed his elbows on his legs and leaned forwards. He turned his head to look at me. His body weight was shifted forward, so his black hair shifted slightly.
Hylli, who had raised one hand to fix his bangs as he looked at me, soon roughly tousled his hair. He seemed to let out a groan somewhere, too.
"Shuraina West."
"Yes."
"Do you remember?"
I tilted my head slightly at his question.
Hylli scratched his cheek. Seeing as he was currently playing with the ends of his bangs, he looked like he was embarrassed.
"You know how I was showing off and got my ass handed to you and how I said something really embarrassing and you caught all of it?"
"I remember."
"And on the other hand, I listened to you sing off-key when you sang and I saw you sprain your ankle because you went raging mad about wanting to grow taller."
I nodded as he recounted both his and my shame, one by one. Yeah, of course I remember it all.
"Do you remember how I bawled my eyes out in front of you?"
He was talking about when Caradil was sick. He was saying it as if it was an easy topic, but it was serious so I nodded, slightly solemn.
Once I nodded, Hylli placed his hand on my head and stared forward.
"Crying in front of the other person is just another 'embarrassing thing' that we've shown each other."
"..."
"Both of us are ugly criers, so just cry as much as you want."
And with that, Hylli took out milk that had been a part of our lunch and handed it to me.
For the royal prince to carry around milk in his bag.... How frugal.
I suddenly remembered that I had handed him a bottle of water when he had been crying that one time.
"I'm not going to ask any questions. I'll just watch."
Hylli had a playful grin on his face. I grinned back, even if it was more of a grimace.
I couldn't help but burst into laughter at his annoying but sincere words.
"I told you it was the dust."
Hylli laughed slightly at my excuse and pat my back lightly.
I could see the face of someone else within his smiling face. My senses became overwhelmed with nostalgia, and tears soon began flowing from my eyes again.
He seemed unsure of what to do as I began crying harder, still quiet.
He hesitated for a moment before hugging me carefully with gentle hands. He shifted awkwardly as he hunched down towards me and made sure that he wasn't too close to me. His hand was warm as it rested on my back.
I stopped crying briefly because it was just so awkward to be in this position with Hylli, but I soon buried my face into his shoulder and thought of my younger siblings.
After that, Hylli and I swapped menial, everyday stories with each other. We were trying to lighten the mood. We talked about the dwarf-made sword story from earlier, and even about the elf-made swords that were almost completely wiped out.
We shared other stories before we landed on the Augran mountain subjugation stories. Hylli was talking about this one stupid student from the green class when Hylli looked surprised as he changed the subject.
"While we're talking about the Augran mountain, I completely forgot."
Hylli said as he put his hand in his bag and fished for something. He took out his thick magic textbook and combed through the pages from the first page and quickly took out a note that was stuck in between the pages.
I thought it was a note, but when unfolded I realized it was a ripped page from a book. Hylli neatly unfolded the ripped page and handed it to me.
"I found this in the mountain before, when you were sick. It looks like some kind of pictograph, but I can't read it at all. If it's a magical language, then I felt like you would know it. So here it is."
I received the page from Hylli and frowned. This note was what? A magical language? Those didn't really exist, from what I understood.
I scowled as I stared at the page. It wasn't a magic-related language, but it was extremely familiar. I still couldn't read it though. I was just about to complain and ask how I would know a language that he didn't know, but the letters felt so familiar that it was weird.
I thought, "No way," and flipped the page upside down. When I tried to reread it, I could completely understand it now.
"…..!"
[Hestia went up the mountain. She tried not to look back. She didn't have to look to know that everything was engulfed in a sea of flames. Every single step weighed heavily over her, but she still had to go forward.
The black shadows of the monsters covered the blood-red color of the sky.
Just like the red in the sky, everything had become covered in red on ground. The academy, the royal palace, the capital, all of it. By blood, by flame, by chaos. It was absolute pandemonium.
The monsters cheered in joy at his return. Hestia wanted to stop her ascent towards him right this moment, but she grit her teeth.
"I'm sick of everything! How could those selfish humans…. I'm going to run away! I'm going to survive!"
Hestia went up the Augran Mountain and hoped all of them had perished. Then maybe the situation would improve, she thought.
Right where she was, near the tip of the mountain, allowed her to see the sights of the capital in a single glance. She could even see the DuBois family estate from far away.
The large but fashionable estate had unfinished permanent magic circles here and there. All of them began making strange noises.
The broken magic circles drawn here and there in the estate began to shine. Incredibly brightly.]
I was probably the only person in the entire empire who would be able to read this piece of ripped paper. It was written in Korean.
"Why is this....."
This was the last page of the novel 'Hestia and the Bastards'–the one I'd read in my last life. Why was this here?
When Hylli asked if I could read the contents of the page, I shook my head. If I told him I could read it then he was going to ask, and I didn't really want to go into details about the contents of the page.
"I knew the novel was a tragedy but….."
I read through the last page that I'd taken from Hylli once again. It had been so blurry in my memories that I couldn't really remember it, but I could remember it perfectly now.
"The reason why nobody was paired up with Hestia at the end of the novel was….."
I had thought that it was because Hestia just couldn't pick, but the real reason was….
All of them had perished.
Reading through what the novel said, everything had been engulfed in flames, and Hestia cursed everything that had happened and was climbing up somewhere. Was it the Augran mountain? I had barely skimmed through the novel as I read it, so I had just thought that those terrifying descriptors were just there for emphasis.
When I had read 'Hestia and the Bastards' back then, I had just thought that it was just another romance novel and had laughed off the story. I folded the paper that Hylli had given me two or three times. I couldn't help but sigh.
"….Do I have to check?"
I muttered quietly in disbelief.
Currently, almost nothing was going the way the original novel had went. That meant that the present wasn't flowing the way the novel had been.
But the ending of the novel had been like that–I couldn't just not worry about it.
"I really didn't want to see when I died."