Cyril continued to stare at me as I was basically self-destructing all on my own. He didn’t talk until I’d exhausted myself to the point where I knew I wouldn’t be able to manage any other words out of my throat.
“Is that what you want, Feil? Really?” he said, his eyes and tone indicating as though he’d seen through everything.
He was probably trying to be kind. He pointedly turned his eyes down and away from my face, looking at the boring carpet on the floor as he said matter-of-factly:
“I wouldn’t mind. If you need it, I’d be willing to let you borrow all the Ojlock family assets I’d inherit—all three hundred billion gants.”
Three hundred billion.
“Because I believe you’d never betray me,” he said. “We haven’t even known each other a whole year, but…you’ve done enough for me that I really feel that way about you.”
What the hell? What was this baloney coming out of his mouth?
I’d forced Cyril and Myfila to humor all my whims. I’d made them go along with my ridiculous schemes during ranking matches and even monopolized every single free weekend and day off they had to work on Pandora. And if I hadn’t been in a group with them studying together, I never would’ve gotten passing grades on assignments received after daily lectures.
“I’ll do anything I can for you, too,” Cyril was saying. “You can have the nine hundred thousand. And if you’re really insistent on it, you can even pay interest on it… Everyone takes on debt anyway. Even the temple will take on debt to reconstruct their sanctuaries.”
Our ragtag team had formed all because Myfila had talked to us at the welcome party right after the entrance ceremony. And the reason why we’d been able to successfully stick together was probably because of Cyril’s perseverance.
“When it comes down to it…I think it’s all about whether you can allow yourself to do it, Feil.”
Then Cyril looked at me with eyes that didn’t seem like they could have possibly belonged to a sixteen-year-old.
“It’s not as though I could actually undo your absurd way of doing things.”
I forced myself to stay and not run from the place as I faced not Cyril in front of me—but myself.
…My dad……
After my mom, the conjurer and main breadwinner of the household, had passed away, and we ended up poor from all the spellbooks we’d bought for my education, he kept minding the fields, getting mud on himself without a single complaint.
And I loved the way he was oddly overzealous.
In the middle of the night, I loved watching him from behind as he balanced the household account book all on his own at the table.
“Today, someone from the temple had some kind words to say about ya, Feil. Said yer the biggest genius this village’s ever seen. Also reminded yer old man not ta slow ya down.”
“We’ll take charity in this house over my dead body. That happens, an’ it’ll spread all over the village right quick. Ya know what’s also important if ya wanta get into a summoner’s school? Household environment, that’s what. We may be poor, but we sure as hell don’t have any debt to our name.”
“You wanna work? Ya nitwit. Ya pa’ll get the money together, so you focus on your schoolin’. You remember what yer ma used to say. The fact ya got talent to become a summoner is amazin’.”
“Don’t worry about school tuition. It’ll be fine. Your pa’s been gatherin’ up the capital. It’ll be the next crop, that’ll be it for sure—”
Whenever I resented not having money or thought about finances, I always remembered him.
“………I don’t think I can change at this point…”
Cyril let out a deep, exasperated sigh. “Then I can’t lend the money to you. I don’t want you to hate me over something like this.”
His tone was even, but his normally composed and beautiful forehead was not.
And of course it wasn’t. I’d barged in here while he’d been asleep, and right when he thought something terrible had happened, I’d forced him to humor me about some half-baked decision I wasn’t even sure about. Even I was fed up with myself.
“If you need the Torrenoxion for the summons festival, then you should just buy it as fast as you can. You keep complaining about being poor, but it’s not as though you don’t have any money at all.”
Cyril pointed at my chest.
“You told me at some point that your dad left you the money to pay for school, but you couldn’t bring yourself to use it and worked until you saved up three million. And that was why you didn’t start at the Academy when you were sixteen.”
“It wasn’t just money I saved up…”
“I know. You said you sold off all the furniture in your home, right? Even your mom’s favorite desk and bookshelf, and you and your dad’s beds. All of it.”
“…”
“So, Feil, I know it may be none of my business, but that pouch you keep around your neck—is that the money your dad left you?”
He’d hit the mark. The pouch around my neck contained the two gold coins and ten silvers that made up my inheritance.
I knew that Cyril wouldn’t steal it, but I automatically put up my guard. As though I was protecting it, I drew my left leg back like I was getting in a stance to fight. I felt for the pouch over my robes to make sure it was still there.
“This is— This money isn’t for spending…”
“Then our only option is to do the summons festival without Pandora. Well, I’m sure we can manage without him.”
“We’d never win against Sasha’s archangel without him. Just think of how she brushed aside every tactic we threw at her last time and the state she left us in.”
“Then would you actually borrow money from me?”
“Well…I…”
“There’s also Myfila’s tonic. If you use five or six of them, you might be able to use Thunderbolt to move Pandora for tens of seconds, at least.”
“Don’t mess around. I’d die like anybody else doing that. I’m not just screwin’ around here—”
I wasn’t allowed to say anything more.
Cyril grabbed my face fast as a beast and pushed me straight back into a bookshelf. “Gah?!” I cried out.
“Screwing around?! You think this is screwing around?!”
He started yelling like he’d forgotten it was the middle of the night.
The impact was enough to send spellbooks and novels scattering down to the ground.