"Now... How many floors up was he?"
Last night he met Maron Martin again in the small library. Maron had seen the medical books he was reading and asked him why, and Yu had told him a little about his brain problem.
"Maron Martin is a good guy..."
Maron had told him to contact the head physician of the academy.
Yu went up to the fourth floor of the East Tower and entered through a large door. It opened into a corridor and inside there was a similar smell to what Yu called the hospital smell.
"Head physician... Head physician..."
He wandered along the corridor, looking at the names on the doors, but he couldn't see the name of the head physician he was looking for.
"Have I come to the wrong place?"
"Yes."
Yu turned around at the sound. A tall, handsome man with yellow eyes was smiling at him.
"The doctors' offices are here, but mine is one floor up." The man continued to smile as he held out his hand to Yu. "Head physician Noteos."
"Yu Valarfin."
The head physician took him by the shoulders and forced him to walk with him. He looked to be in his thirties, Yu had thought he would meet someone older.
"Mr. Martin sent me," Yu said as Noteos led him into his room. "He asked me to see you about an illness I have."
"Hmm... What kind of disease?"
The head doctor sat in his chair and Yu sat in the chair he pointed to.
"Where I come from, it's called epilepsy. How can I explain..." Yu wanted to explain it in the terms of his world, but he knew the man in front of him would not understand, so he looked for another way to explain it. "Something happens in my brain and I have seizures, my body shakes, I lose consciousness. There is nothing wrong with me except the seizures."
The head doctor nodded and took notes on a piece of paper about what Yu had said.
"Symptoms I've encountered before."
"But..." Yu added. "Lately it's more than that. I've been hearing voices before the seizures, I don't know how to describe it. There's something different about the seizures I've been having since I came to Rolderhelm. My daughter used to help me get through them easily at first with her healing magic, but she's finding it harder and harder to do that, and I've been passing out completely and waking up long after the seizure."
At first, the head doctor listened to him with a smile, but when Yu continued, the smile was quickly wiped off his face. When their eyes met, Yu felt his heart speed up.
"These voices... What are they saying?"
"They always say the same thing; I am sorry."
Once he had heard different word but he can't remember it.
"Let's have a look," Noteos said and stood up and came to Yu.
As Yu watched, Noteos raised his hands and brought them above Yu's head. Yu began to tremble as a green light came out of Noteos' hands.
"Calm down."
Yu felt a stabbing pain in his brain. It was as if he had suddenly bitten into an ice cream and swallowed it, but it was stronger than that. Noteos continued to cast his spell with a serious expression as Yu's body convulsed.
When he finished, he stepped back and looked at Yu's face. He was still sullen. He swallowed and went back to his seat.
"You have Blessings, right?" Noteos asked.
Surprised by the sudden discovery of his secret, Yu mumbled. "Y-yes…" He looked at him worriedly.
"This is not easy to say, but… I'm sorry, young man."
"What happened?"
Noteos lowered his eyes to the floor at first, but when he gathered his courage, he thought it would be better to say eye to eye, so he raised his head and looked directly into Yu's amethyst-colored eyes.
"A disorder whose exact nature my generation has yet to discover... I'm afraid you won't have a long life ahead of you."
Yu's shoulders slumped, his amethyst-colored eyes expressionless except for fear and worry.
"What do you mean?"
"You will live five years at most, probably less. Unfortunately, there is no cure for this disease."
"D-don't joke! This... Millions of people have epilepsy!"
"I'm sorry, but I don't know what the illness you're talking about is. We've had the kind of crisis you describe before and all the cases were the same. I'm sorry. All I can do is give you medication to prevent you from having a seizure, but that won't change the fate that awaits you."
"I... I promised..."
He had promised Yurine. How could he fulfill his promise if he was going to die in a few years?
When Noteos saw Yu's tears, he looked away and said the same word again, "I'm sorry."
After the physician's notes, he left his office, went down a few floors, not knowing where to go, walked thoughtfully and entered a dimly lit corridor where no one could hear him. There was only a wall at the end of the corridor. He banged his fist, then his forehead against it.
Could a nineteen-year-old be told that he'll die before he turned twenty-five? He had clearly been told. It had never been so hard to think about what to do.
"What did I expect to happen after killing so many people?"
All his happiness was taken from him in a few words. His blossoming hopes, his excitement, his promise... Why did the world have to take something back from him for every time he smiled? Why did he have to feel sad after every moment of happiness?
His fingers tingled as the blood trickled down his forehead, down his nose, between his lips and down his chin onto his clothes. Sudden anger drove him to hit something again, to open his palm and arrest the innocent ground.
"Can it be achieved in five years? Five... What's my plan?" Interestingly, he wasn't crying. "Can I survive? If time rewinds, I have five more years. Five years to find a solution. I don't want to die, I want to live."
The tears flowed as he confessed that he wanted to live.
The corridor was dark, lit only by the light from the window at the head of the corridor because no one was using it.
"I should apologize," he thought. "To Sharley's mother. Even if I can't admit my guilt..."
He could have cleared his conscience. What explanation would he give Yurine for the blood? He felt he was being watched. He trembled.
***
Salery was still in his cell. He waited with no idea what would happen to him and his son.
"Why? Why did all this happen to me?"
His life was going great until a year ago. He came from a good family, his wife was still alive and he was proud of his son.
But with the death of his wife, everything had fallen apart. His perfect life had suddenly turned upside down and he entered the worst months of his life.
"Damn... Vermilia... and Bishory... And the Academy... Damn everything..."
Most of all he cursed the world for not giving him what he wanted. Why was it so hard for him to live a happy life for the rest of his life and pass away as a happy old man?
He still felt the pain of torture. And the two punches Yu Valarfin had thrown in his face had hurt his pride far more than the torture.
"Hmm? What are you thinking about?"
The sound of harsh footsteps came from far away from his cell, but he could hear it clearly in his mind. Shadows covered the floor of the corridor where his cell was located and he could see no one around.
"Danger."
That was the first thing he thought when he heard the voice. Danger was etched into every fiber of the man's frighteningly gentle voice.
"Hmm... Salery von Bishory... A jealous man who hits on another man's wife... A bad person... Uh-huh... Uh-huh!"
He was giggling like a child, and his voice was digging fear into the deepest part of Salery's heart.
Finally, the owner of the voice arrived in front of Salery's cell. Fear was the only thing Salery felt.
The owner of the voice was tall. His hair was darker than black and his eyes were yellow as bright as the sun. The male being who owned the voice was undoubtedly handsome, but the fear Salery felt prevented him from sympathizing with him.
The owner of the voice walked through the bars of the cell and stood in front of the crucified Salery. When he first saw him, he had a smile as sharp as a knife, but now it was gone, replaced by a frown.
Fear, fear, fear.
The only thing Salery felt was fear. He couldn't even question why they were here alone, he didn't even know how he had gotten in here.
"You remind me why I don't like people. The other things you do are typical human behavior, but touching my property..."
Salery was so frightened that he couldn't even move his eyelids. The unknown aura he gave off caused him to freeze.
"Do you know how hard it is to raise one of them? Of course you don't... And yet you meddle in things you don't know, human." There was such disgust, such hatred over the word human that Salery had never seen anyone in his life experience an emotion so strongly.
The man put his hand to Salery's cheek. The moment the man's hand touched his cheek, Salery felt a pain throughout his body that was far worse than the torture he had suffered.
If he were being tortured right now he would be crying and screaming, but he could do none of that. What he was experiencing was not torture, it was hell.
He felt his whole body burning and disintegrating at the same time. His internal organs were being ripped out, his bones were breaking, he couldn't breathe. Despite all this, he was still alive.
"There's really no point in torturing you, but I need to show my anger. I'm going to have a little fun with you tonight for stealing a few years from me, even if it's nothing compared to hundreds of years."
There was only one thing Salery could think of.
"The devil..."
The man's yellow eyes turned red, he had heard the word Salery had been running through his mind.
"As much as you."