Chapter 66 – Responsibilities and Oaths
“Hey, what the hell did you do to that child?”
Diaren’s words became sharp like wedges and lodged in Ian’s chest.
What did he do Isn’t it the tone of her questioning if she did something bad to Eve?
A fire welled up inside him, but it was true that there was nothing to refute.
Realizing the truth about the drug, Ian’s head was filled with scenes from the past that he had done and were tormenting him.
Especially that day.
Eve was weird.
The day she brought her out of trouble with her three professors.
Right after she called Eve by name after receiving permission from her coercion close to blackmail, saying that she was not special.
Eve’s reaction was obviously strange.
Like a machine that turns off the light in the pupil, as if some switch was pressed, or like a child who simply obeys, yes. Yes. Yes. The way she nodded her head without questioning the reason,
She didn’t leave Ian’s mind.
Ian doesn’t know why Eve acted like that.
But at this moment, a certain intuition came to him.
She would blindly follow the promise she made that day to herself, which might be an order, ahead of anything else.
What did you say at that time
Okay.
Drugs, never as much as drugs, she said.
When Ian’s face turned white, Diaren spoke.
“Looks like you’re picking something up.”
“…”
A terrible sense of guilt ran up Ian’s spine,
It spread all over the body in time with the fast beating heartbeat.
What have you done?
Even though you do not know it that well.
She said it was because she thought of her Eve, but if she truly cared for her, shouldn’t she have listened to her circumstances first?
Obsessed with her word, her medicine, and her Eve’s actions, she decided that it was bad, and drove her to her limbs.
It’s different from holding on to the hair of a person trying to rise to the surface because of lack of breath and continuing to plunge into the water.
Ian encourages himself that, more than anything else, he likes her Eve and wants to make her happy, so it’s something she can’t help.
Every time she brought up the topic of medicine, she deliberately ignored Eve’s pitiful and delicate face, which she had shown several times, and wanted to curse herself before.
Whether he did it or not, Diaren looked at Eve.
Like a doctor examining her pulse, I looked at the progress of the mana flowing through her veins to determine her condition.
“Furthermore. It seems a bit late.”
“It’s late…”
“I missed the time. Her life is somehow attached, but it is questionable whether she will be able to function normally as before.”
What about Ian? Do,
As if not understanding her context, she moaned as if she did not want to understand.
“As long as it is a normal activity.”
“Well. In the worst case, not only your body but also your emotions may suffer.”
“You mean emotions?”
“The most fundamental thing for life to be reborn as life is the existence of emotions and their expression.”
“…”
“Just as there is no return to normal when blood is blown into tissues that have died due to lack of blood, the same goes for emotional deficits. What. I’ll have to watch the progress for now…”
Ian now felt that all of that was his responsibility.
Rohan, who silently watched his thick and large hands and feet tremble as if struck by an earthquake, finally couldn’t hold back his anger and fired a word.
“Abominable bastard. What did you do well… !”
Rohan’s wrath had reached its peak now, or in fact, since Rohan appeared with his sword.
He couldn’t leave the thought that if he didn’t punch even one punch at that proud face, he wouldn’t be able to solve it forever, so Rohan did.
It was a punch that Ian could avoid enough, but
No, there is no way to avoid it.
So it shouldn’t have been.
Ian staggered at the fist that went straight in with a purring sound.
The crushed lips and the inside of them showed drops of blood along with pain, but the self-reproach was more painful to Ian than anything else.
Ian lowered his head.
Rohan sighed, and Diaren gazed at him with cold eyes.
Ian had no choice but to endure it.
And that was when
As the light faded from his green irises,
Breaking the atmosphere that was about to explode at any moment, two new people appeared.
Those who had not been able to participate in the conversation so far because they were dealing with the professors and the figures of the academy who had flocked to the spirit king’s summons.
Carmen and Natalie.
They were professors who dealt with alchemy and swordsmanship at each academy.
Natalie, a woman with her gray hair pulled short over her shoulders, snarled at Rohan and Dia Ren as soon as she appeared.
“Let’s see, you say funny things. You guys.”
“Natalie. It’s not something you’re going to intervene in.”
“Why not? It’s a situation where the academy professor is persecuting one academy student by two.”
“Persecution?”
“Then, shall we call it a transfer of responsibility?”
“Are you aware of the situation? Natalie?”
“I just want you to know that girl is going wrong because of Ian. What more do you need?”
“…”
She, Natalie, was Ian’s exclusive professor.
After the day Ian decided in his heart to catch up with the professors at the academy, he went to see Natalie.
Although she is a bit of a bad-tempered woman, her swordsmanship skills are really good, and she also likes Ian’s talent.
But Natalie wasn’t threatening the rest of the professors because she felt sorry for Ian, her pupil, not being able to say anything.
It was just her personality.
Positive, cheerful, and more objective than anyone else when it comes to judging right from wrong, she also had the attitude of a high-ranking man who couldn’t stand her injustice.
To her, this situation was quite unpleasant.
“What did you guys do while that girl collapsed like that?”
“Natalie!”
“It’s obvious what you guys are doing. Rohan. Do you think that girl is the sister you have been talking about so much? She was always asking for atonement, but she wouldn’t have thought to go find her first, and didn’t she just be carefree, thinking that you, Dia Ren, would come by any means if needed?”
“As I said, it was an unexpected situation.”
“So, in the end, it means that you are frying one of the academy students by saying that it was unexpected. You guys are not manly.”
“…”
“The situation is irreversible, and we need someone to take responsibility. Can you still say that she is a professor at the academy? You should be able not to intervene even if it’s funny that you’re persecuting a kid who’s just turned 20 with your faults.”
“Natalie… !”
“Do you have any excuses for putting off the situation to this point because you have no face or trouble? If not, at least don’t put the blame on this kid!”
It’s true that Natalie’s words, like a bombardment, are irrefutable by the rest of the professors.
This time, Rohan and Diaren bowed their heads.
Ian was dumbfounded, she said, still unable to shake off the guilt she felt like a giant stone.
“… Professor. That, you don’t have to listen to me…”
“Shut up! Because you will be scolded hard too. You made a girl you like like that and then you have a hole in your mouth.”
“Ugh.”
“These gloomy bastards. How come you were born as a man and do more girly things than me, a girl? Isn’t what we need right now not a matter of responsibility, but a resolution of the situation? Please figure out what to do. Roll those handsome heads!”
At the end of Natalie’s tirade,
The atmosphere that was narrowing towards Ian was shattered.
And the silence that followed.
She’s right a hundred times.
Of course, the decisive reason for Eve’s collapse was Ian, but
If only one person here had moved in the right direction for Eve, this division would never have appeared.
There was no one in this room who did not understand what Natalie was saying.
After thinking about their own mistakes and regretting them, they all eventually came to the same conclusion and blamed themselves before pointing the arrow of responsibility at others.
Ian’s case was especially severe.
If left as it is, even with a shovel, it would be buried deep in the ground.
Natalie didn’t like that either, so she acted right away.
In an instant, he grabbed Ian by the collar and started shaking it.
No matter how much Natalie has her well-trained body, she is only a woman. Compared to her Ian, she ignores the difference in height and weight.
Her Ian was helplessly shaken by her touch.
“Open your eyes and decide what to do. From what I’ve heard, it sounds like you’re not feeling well. You just have to take medicine and exercise to make it healthy.”
“It’s not that easy…”
“Easy or hard, do it! It’s not that they’re stupid because they think it’s not possible. Are you going to become the same human being as those professors?”
“…”
“If you feel like that girl has become that way because of your actions, take responsibility for it in time to blame yourself. Not that they do it one-sidedly, but from your heart.”
“No. Professor.”
“What?”
Natalie opened her eyes wide, wondering if this goddamn bastard couldn’t hear me, but she let go of her hard look at Ian’s determined face.
Said Ian.
“I wouldn’t consider it a responsibility.”
“… Okay? Why?”
“Because I like it.”
As the professor said, the waking Eve faces the worst ending,
Even if her body is disfigured and her mind becomes incapable of feeling,
Ian would not consider being by her side a responsibility.
Like I said, because I like it.
It’s okay if her feelings aren’t reciprocated in her entire life.
Because she wasn’t expecting anything in return in the first place.
Some people have the mindset of a young man who has just experienced his first love.
You might even snort at it, dismissing it as just childish behavior.
Meeting in less than two months, no fateful event happened,
If time passes like this, her feelings for her will be diluted, and she will completely forget about her current resolutions and leave in search of a new person.
But Ian, like her Ian, was sure that such a day would never come.
Today’s oath made on iron blood would make him that way.
