It’s the first break period after Mr. Bordon took attendance.
“Why are there only two commoners in our class?”
“They should’ve just made it an all-noble class at that point.”
“I know, right?”
As I leave the classroom and walk through the hallway, I hear the big cliques of noble girls from my teen years talking amidst each other.
“Ah! Miss Natolie, please tell me how to change my hair color!”
When I pass by them, feeling nostalgic about the sight, they call out to stop me. Right, I forgot they asked me about that earlier.
Seeing the noble girls lean forward, their eyes sparkling with interest, I remember that it’s this cute side of theirs that prevented me from hating them and eventually allowed us to become friends. Of course, let’s not forget how much they tested my patience.
“Oookay... Ahem. Right, that spell...” I bring my hands together and start snapping my fingers. “Color, color, give thy blessing, grant the wish I am expressing.”
Puff!
I wave my finger at the end of the incantation, and my hair turns black. Then I make it blue again.
“That’s an interesting incantation!”
“There are incantations like that?”
I was genuinely surprised too when I discovered it back in the day, wondering who’d conjured up such a daft phrase to hang a spell on.
“This will let you change your hair color for an hour. You might have trouble getting it to work at first, but try to start by dyeing single strands or the ends of your hair instead of going straight for the whole thing.”
“Aaahhh!” the girl squeals. “Thank you, Miss Natolie!”
“Let’s go to the dorm and practice!” says another girl.
Ah, so adorable. As the group of girls starts another spirited conversation, I head away from the classroom.
I decide to rest in the school’s small library until the afternoon’s classes. The other four were given something to do by the teachers and couldn’t join me. Mr. Bordon didn’t really tell me to do anything—I asked him a few times whether he needed any help and he just insisted I rest. Which is why I’m here, in this quiet place. School breaks are fairly long, and I would often come study here back in the day.
Earlier, when I came in, I saw myself sitting at the corner table despite the fact it’s her first day at school. She looked to be lost in her work, so I didn’t go talk to her. Seeing my young self like that brings a smile to my face.
“Wait, forget about that. What should I do...?”
Who could’ve thought...? Who could’ve thought that this is how she would get to sit by his side? And if that really was the Treyse from the future, then where has her current-day self gone? Did Treyse possess her? Did she hide her somewhere? Regardless, nothing changes the fact there’s a lot of things to worry about here. I need to let everyone know first. Ah, what am I going to do...?
Wait... Does this really bother me so much? I rest my chin on my hand and look up at the gray ceiling. It looks old and spotted with pale, yellow-brown stains—there must have been a leak here, once. It catches shafts of sunlight pouring in through the window. The dust hanging in the air looks to me like drops of ice. The ceiling-high bookshelf has a wide selection of manuals, specialized grimoires, novels, and books on embroidery and other hobbies, and a heaping menagerie of more general antiquated reading.
“You’re gross, Nanalie,” slips from my mouth.
I feel disgusted, seeing myself so in the throes of love like some swooning ingenue. I’m not saying I find people who are in love disgusting, it’s just that I can’t endure myself being like that. Maybe that’s what I get for having taken so long to bother with it.
“Are you feeling unwell?”
“No, not at a...ll?”
I look beside me to get a fix on my sudden conversation partner and, once I process what I’m seeing, my elbow resting on the table slips and my tender chin slams into the table with a dull sound. Ow.
“Aaaaalois Rockmann!” I address him, rubbing my wounded chin with my fingertips.
“That was quite the sound... Ah, never mind. I’m glad you’ve memorized my name.”
He briefly shoots me a suspicious look before putting on a good-natured smile and tilting his head.
In front of me stands Alois Rockmann, aged sixteen. He freaked me out. I never thought he would come talk to me—I haven’t even learned to act like a teacher yet! As I am right now, it’s more difficult for me to deal with him than with all the other problems ahead of me. Can you blame me? He’s still the cheeky Rockmann I remember from those days, and of course he’s still mean towards my twelve-year-old self. Okay, maybe not exactly mean, but all of our interactions just looked like regular fights between two children, and yet here he is, starting a conversation with me like it’s the most natural thing in the world. How am I supposed to deal with this?
“That’s a lot of books. Are you studying?” I ask, still flustered, when I see what he’s holding. I count seven from a quick look.
“I had to wait an extra four years before entering school, so I’m obliged to know the curriculum better than my peers. I’m not allowed to make mistakes,” he says with a humorless smile.
Listening to that, all I can do is seal my lips and blink again and again. What is this feeling I get from him...?
“Um...”
Though I try to say something, I can’t find the words. I can’t help but feel I’ve come to understand him ever so slightly better—the way he was back in those days.
I remember our conversation when I found out about the age gap between us during Wall Helenus.
“Why do I have to lose to you even when it comes to age?!”
“Here we go again.”
Frankly, it got under my skin something fierce. He’d become an adult earlier than me! I was a child compared to him! It irritated me to no end. Now that I think about it, however, I probably couldn’t handle the fact there was a distance between us I had no way of closing.
“I just never told you because you never asked.”
“Physically speaking, I don’t think I’m any older than you or Satanás.”
At the time, I was furious at his shameless attitude, but perhaps I was seeing things that weren’t there. Looking at the sixteen-year-old Rockmann now, I can’t help sensing that the age gap with his peers bothers him more than anyone—surely it leaves him feeling kind of inferior. Why does he have this kind of smile on his face? It’s not like he’s done anything bad. Why do I sense immeasurable loneliness from this boy, like all his studying is just a way to fill some great bottomless hole in his life?
“Have you, perhaps, not heard?” asks Rockmann, looking uncomfortable.
“I was informed, don’t worry,” I reply, hiding my internal turmoil.
To gather myself, I ask him a question that’s started bugging me.
“Remember Nanalie Hel, the girl sitting next to you? She’s sitting over there. You aren’t going to talk to her?”
Can’t believe I’m asking something like that. It’s just that I was expecting him to, at the very least, go up to my young self and make some nasty comment, and he’s not doing that.
Rockmann looks up at her, then closes his eyes and frowns. What’s that look supposed to mean?
“She would distract me, so I’d rather not.”
“Huh.”
He stares at me as if to ask why I would suggest such a thing. I pretend not to notice it and look away, smiling for politeness’s sake.
“Okay, I should do some studying too!” I say through a fake grin to end the conversation.
As I was well aware, Rockmann is highly accommodating, gentle, sincere, and never disagreeable—with everyone except for me. But I don’t remember him ever ignoring me. In part due to my magical powers, our fights would eventually get physical. But why did he avoid me like this before that?
Though I ended the conversation myself, I’m too curious not to shoot him another question.
“Umm... Why did you tease her earlier?”
“Who knows?” he replies after a pause. “I don’t know it myself.” He looks away from me.
I pout at the fact I can’t figure him out at all. But look at me, asking one blunt question after another because I’m talking to someone younger than myself. I’m such an idiot. If only I could act this way with his grown-up version. It’s so silly that I can only talk to him normally when he’s a literal child. It feels like cheating, and not in a fun way.
“Say, Miss Natolie, do you happen to have an older sister?” asks Rockmann all of a sudden, a smile on his face.
“I have an older cousin, but that’s it. I’m an only child.”
“I see.”
“Why do you ask?”
Rockmann seems lost in thought for a moment. A few seconds later he looks up at me again like there was no particular meaning to that pause.
“No reason in particular. You’re very pretty, so I was just wondering.”
There it is. There it is!
“I-Is that so...”
These words he says so smoothly, without changing his expression, as though he doesn’t even consider it flattery! It’s this part of him! What’s wrong with this sixteen-year-old?! He may be twelve in terms of physical development if what he said is true, but this is how he is on the inside!
I’ve spent years wondering how he’s managed to enamor countless women, as was rumored, and I’ve just experienced his lady-killing prowess firsthand.