Chapter 18: An Empty Space at the Table
WITH winter break over, Mia and the others returned to their ordinary routine.
The trip to Grantz had proved extremely fruitful, but morale was low. Not only because they hadn’t made any progress towards an actual cure for the disease, but also because Felix leaving the team had been a huge loss.
An empty seat sat at their usual table in the library’s lounge. It was a table for four, but Felix was absent.
Just as he’d said he would, he had parted with the team and started hanging out with Angelica and her group.
Mathias had said that Felix must have lost his mind, and Mia felt that there had to be some kind of underlying reason behind his decision. Or, so she hoped.
And so she’d been waiting for him to come back. Expecting it, almost. But the new school term began, and even now, five days in, Felix still hadn’t shown his face to any of them.
Mia had gathered her courage and convinced the others to go to the law classroom with her to talk to Felix. Only…
Only Felix refused to come out of the classroom when he heard they were outside. In the end, they had to go in after him. When they asked him to explain himself, Felix looked apologetic as he sat surrounded by Angelica and the other law students.
“I apologize for the abruptness, of course. I just figured I’m not really needed on the team.”
Who would accept such a flimsy excuse at this stage? He was clearly lying.
“That’s nonsense. We need you, Felix. We can’t do this without you.”
His excuses weren’t accepted. But Felix merely shook his head, shooting a glance at Henrik.
“You’ll be fine. You’ve got Henrik, after all.”
Mia frowned. Felix’s words seemed very pointed.
Wait, is this because of…
Mia never responded to the letter after the frog festival. Instead, she’d spent more and more time with Henrik. Did this mean Felix had assumed she’d picked Henrik?
“I haven’t chosen anyone, though!”
Mia blushed deep red, flustered and desperate to explain things. But Felix’s response never changed.
“Okay. Whatever. I’m still tired, though. Your objective is too difficult. I have my own studies to focus on too, you know.”
He smiled. It was artificial.
Then Angelica flashed Mia a sharklike grin as if to say: “Well, that’s that!”
Angelica grabbed hold of Felix’s arm with a triumphant smile and hugged it to her bosom possessively. Mia stumbled out of the law classroom, thinking only of escaping the awful scene.
A few days had passed since that unpleasant altercation, and Mia had managed to calm down. But whenever she thought back on it, she couldn’t help sighing deeply to herself.
She still couldn’t believe it.
But Mia had no right to challenge Felix’s personal choice.
“…I’m tired.”
Despite her very good reasoning, Mia hadn’t been able to earnestly consider Felix’s feelings. What right did she have to go questioning his right to a change of heart now?
If Felix had more important things to do than try to save Mia’s mother, then she didn’t need him as a friend, much less as anything else. Besides, Angelica and Felix made more sense as a couple.
He’s a prince, after all. A prince belongs with a princess, not a pauper.
She thought back to when she saw them together in Grantz. Angelica had looked just like a princess in her splendid gown as she snuggled up to Felix in his fancy evening coat.
Angelica was a good match for Felix. A far better match than Mia.
She knew that. Logically, she knew that. Only…
Only…I’m still sad about it.
Last winter, Mia could never have imagined how hard it would be to live without Felix by her side. To live without his warmth.
“Mia, are you even listening?”
“What? Oh, sorry.”
Henrik sighed but didn’t give her a hard time about zoning out. The melancholy expression Mia wore told him how much she was hurting without Felix.
Mathias was being his usual silent self as well. He was staring out the window, absentmindedly stroking his rabbit. Winter break had come and gone, and they still hadn’t found its owner.
The rabbit had really taken to Mathias, so much so that you could be fooled for thinking it had always been his pet.
“We need to submit an Individual Experiment Application, but because we’re using animal trials, we need to pass an ethics committee screening first. We need to draw up the application papers, but Bralle is head of the ethics committee.”
Henrik’s dour explanation only brought down the mood further.
Mia and her team had spent the remaining days of winter break working on medicine synthesis. With Rudolf and Mary’s help, they’d managed to compose several different medicines, but now they had to test what they’d made for safety.
In the Isea Kingdom, it was a legal requirement to conduct animal trials before human trials.
They needed to draw up application papers for that, but that was a big step. A big step that was hard to take.
“We absolutely need to test on humans at some point. And if something bad happens at that stage, we don’t want that on our conscience, right? So the animal trials are a necessity.”
Safety checks. But Rudolf had already checked their drugs for potential toxicity, and they were clean.
Nobody was going to die from taking their drug. Mia was quite sure of that. But it wasn’t drug toxicity Mia was worried about.
“I know. I know that in order to test the efficacy of our drug, we need to infect an animal with Demon Claw. But inflicting that terrible disease on an innocent creature…it’s like poisoning it with our own hands.”
Mia hated it. The thought of taking lives to save her mom’s. The implications chilled her. She just wasn’t sure it was the right thing to do.
“The biggest problem of all is, how are we supposed to infect an animal with Demon Claw in the first place?”
Henrik was frowning. Yes, they had to solve that issue. But Mia needed to come to terms with the ethics of the situation first. If they couldn’t get past that, they wouldn’t get anywhere. They’d just end up grinding to a halt.
Wasn’t there some other way? A way around this seemingly insurmountable hurdle instead of over it?
“Henrik…what do you really think about animal trials?”
“…It makes me sick to my stomach to think about.”
Henrik met Mia’s gaze head-on.
“We take the lives of others to survive. We’re a selfish, self-serving race.”
Henrik’s gaze was unwavering as he spoke.
His moral stance was clear. And yet, he was able to push through it. But Mia couldn’t push through. She knew this was the only way they would be able to make their drug.
We can’t get around this. Someone needs to make a treatment for this darn disease already.
And that person was Mia, wasn’t it? So if she wanted this, she needed to take responsibility. She needed to steel herself for the reality of what needed to be done.
But she was afraid.
What would Felix think?
Just pondering that question made her chest ache. Felix was gone. He had gone back to living his own life on his own terms.
That was for the best, though. Probably.
“All right. Okay. I’ll write the application.”
The words left a bitter taste in her mouth. But Mia had made up her mind.
She smiled at the other boys but couldn’t help following up with a sigh. Mathias heaved a huge sigh, too.
Mia glanced at him. He looked so lost and despondent. As if he wasn’t sure if he should still be here. His role was to protect Felix, to be his bodyguard.
Bodyguard…the prince’s bodyguard. But how can he guard Felix’s body if he can’t be with Felix? If Mathias continues to fail in his duty and something happens to Felix…
“Mathias…”
Mia hesitated. She was afraid of losing Mathias, too.
“I’m stayin’ with the team. I don’t care what Felix does.”
Seeing the look of desperate hurt in Mathias’s eyes, Mia had to wonder if he was the one who’d been most affected by Felix’s abandonment, after all.