The days had started to feel normal again.
Not in a perfect way, not in the cheap “nothing happened” way, but normal enough that Soren didn’t walk into rooms bracing for the air to bite him, normal enough that silence didn’t automatically mean something was about to go wrong.
He sat near the back of Class F’s homeroom with his elbow on the desk and his chin resting lightly against his knuckles, eyes drifting without urgency across the familiar, bland space.
Plain desks, faint chalk dust hanging in the air, windows that let in far too much light if you sat at the wrong angle.
Most people treated the room like a waiting area, a place you survived until you could go do something that mattered.
Today, the boring consistency of it was… soothing.
His gaze shifted toward the front of the room.
Lilliana stood by the board with a clipboard tucked against her side, posture straight, expression composed.
She still looked like she belonged in a different category than everyone else, not because of authority, but because she carried herself like she had decided long ago that falling apart in public wasn’t allowed.
Her pink hair was tied back neatly, and her ears twitched every time the class got too loud, betraying irritation even when her face didn’t.
She didn’t speak coldly the way she used to, either.
Not much, anyway.
Maybe Soren was projecting.
Maybe he was just better at noticing small shifts now that his own head wasn’t screaming constantly, now that he wasn’t living on the edge of a panic that could be set off by a wrong look or a wrong tone.
Lilliana cleared her throat.
“Alright,” she said, voice steady. “Roll call.”
A few students groaned like it was a personal attack.
She ignored them with effortless professionalism, eyes dropping to the clipboard as her pen poised like a tiny weapon, then she began reading names with the same calm, even rhythm, and the class responded in its usual patchwork chorus.
“Here.”
“Present.”
“Yeah.”
“Mm.”
One voice sounded energetic, a couple sounded half-asleep, and one person sounded like they were being forced to speak at sword-point.
Soren didn’t join right away, not because he was trying to be difficult, but because he found himself listening to everything else instead, the small noises that made up a room full of people.
The scrape of a chair leg.
A pencil being picked up, then dropped again like someone changed their mind halfway.
The faint thump of footsteps in the hallway outside.
A small laugh from the front row when someone answered too loudly, an irritated sigh when someone answered too quietly.
It was boring.
It was comforting.
When Lilliana’s gaze reached his row, Soren lifted his hand lazily.
“Present.”
Her eyes flicked up for a fraction of a second, just long enough to confirm it was him, then dropped back down.
Her pen moved, neat and precise.
No pause, no lingering, no strange tension that made the room feel sharp around the edges.
Good.
His shoulders loosened without him meaning to, and the roll call continued until the last response was marked.
Lilliana set the clipboard on the desk at the front with a quiet tap, and the lightly noisy room settled into something closer to attentive silence, the kind that came less from respect and more from instinct.
“Announcements,” she said.
No drama, no suspense, no attempt to make it sound like she was delivering fate itself, just a flat statement, like she was listing ingredients.
“The day for the mock duel has been set,” Lilliana continued. “Friday.”
The reaction was immediate, rippling through the class like a single shared flinch.
Some students straightened as if bracing, some slumped harder, a few started whispering under their breath with that familiar, private panic that lived in the space between “I know it’s coming” and “It’s actually here.”
Soren blinked slowly.
Friday.
Everyone had known it was approaching, but hearing the date out loud did something cruelly efficient to the brain, turning “eventually” into “soon,” and “soon” into “you’re running out of time.”
Lilliana didn’t give them the opportunity to spiral.
“And opponents have already been decided.”
That earned louder murmurs, fragments stacking over each other.
— Who do you think—
— Please not him—
— Maybe I’ll get someone weak—
Soren snorted quietly, more amusement than judgement.
Everyone wanted someone weak, yet nobody wanted to be the person someone else prayed for.
Lilliana lifted a hand, palm open.
It wasn’t aggressive, it wasn’t threatening, it was just… teacher-like, the kind of motion that said she had done this enough times to know exactly how much pressure it took to settle a room.
The whispers died down.
“You will be informed of your matchup through the standard method,” she said, calm and unyielding. “If you have concerns about your opponent, speak to a professor during office hours. Otherwise, prepare properly.”
Her ears twitched once, a small, irritated tell that made her seem more real for a moment, then her expression softened, not into pity, not into coddling, just into something human.
“I wish you luck,” Lilliana said, voice quieter, steadier. “Mock duels are stressful, but they are meant to show you what you need to improve. Treat them as that. Not as a judgement of your worth.”
A few students looked genuinely surprised, like they weren’t used to being spoken to as people instead of statistics, especially by Lilliana of all people.
Soren didn’t react outwardly, but something in his chest shifted anyway.
‘That was a good way to put it,’ he thought.
Lilliana glanced at the clipboard again as if checking there wasn’t another landmine waiting in the list, then set it down and straightened.
“That’s all. Everyone is dismissed.”
The class dissolved instantly into movement.
Bags were grabbed, chairs scraped, conversations resumed mid-sentence like they had never paused, and complaints started up again as if it were a hobby people took pride in.
Soren stayed seated a few seconds longer than necessary.
He watched Lilliana organise her papers with the same neat precision she used for everything, then tuck the clipboard under her arm like it was a shield.
She looked up briefly, scanning the room, and her gaze flicked toward him again.
Not lingering.
Just noticing.
He lifted a hand in a lazy wave.
For a heartbeat, her ears twitched as if she wanted to scold him, then she looked away so quickly it was almost suspicious.
Soren’s lips quirked.
‘Cute.’
He stood slowly, rolling his shoulders once as if shaking off stiffness, then left the classroom with his hands in his pockets, letting the noise behind him fade into the general hum of the academy.
The hallway outside was bright and crowded, students flowing between classes like a current.
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
Soren walked with his gaze unfocused, mind drifting toward Friday whether he wanted it to or not.
He tried not to dig too deep into it.
That was how his brain used to sabotage him, turning one event into ten disasters, imagining worst-case outcomes until his body reacted like the threat was already real, nausea creeping up, palms slick, chest tight.
But his thoughts didn’t latch the same way they used to.
Things had changed.
He was different.
Not in some dramatic, magical sense, not in a way that made him feel invincible, but in the slow, unpleasant way you changed when life forced you to survive the same kind of stress over and over until your brain had fewer places to hide.
Besides, he wasn’t alone.
He didn’t have to swallow everything until it rotted inside him.
The party had proved that, and the realisation still sat in his chest like a weight he didn’t quite know how to carry yet, heavy but grounding.
Maybe that was why the mock duel didn’t feel like a cliff edge this time.
It still felt stressful, and he still felt that familiar, ugly awareness of his own limitations, the way his body didn’t match the people around him, the way the academy rewarded certain kinds of talent and punished everything else.
‘I’m not built like them,’ he thought, dry and blunt. ‘I’m still… me.’
Not strong.
Not gifted in the way the world liked.
Not someone people looked at and expected great things from.
But he wasn’t helpless either.
Blood magic had given him options, even if he kept most of them locked behind his teeth.
Experience had carved instincts into him, and even if he hated admitting it, being shoved into situations again and again had made him harder to break, not because he had become braver, but because he had learned what it felt like to keep moving while afraid.
Soren exhaled quietly.
“It’ll be manageable,” he muttered.
Not easy. Not fair.
But manageable.
For now, that was enough.
- ??? ? ????
A couple of days later, the mock duel arena looked exactly like it always did.
Too loud, too crowded, too full of people pretending they weren’t nervous.
The stands circled the training grounds in neat tiers, and the academy had done that thing it loved doing, turning something stressful into entertainment.
Students packed in shoulder-to-shoulder, whispers stacking over each other, the occasional laugh too sharp to be real, as if mocking their own fear was the only way to keep it from showing.
Soren sat a few rows up with Felix, Esper, and Amelia.
Not the whole group, which was fine, normal, even.
They didn’t need to be glued together all the time, they didn’t need to prove anything by sitting in a perfect cluster like a unit.
And yet, his eyes still scanned the crowd out of habit, brain trying to count faces, trying to confirm who was where, trying to make sure nothing was missing.
He caught himself and forced the reflex down.
‘You’re doing it again.’
The overthinking, the quiet accounting, the part of him that still flinched at distance like separation meant danger, like if everyone wasn’t close enough to touch then something was wrong.
He exhaled and leaned back against the bench, shoulders dropping.
To his left, Esper sat like she owned the entire arena.
Legs crossed, posture relaxed, expression bright in a way that made people forget she was dangerous.
If Soren hadn’t known her, he would’ve assumed she was here to gossip, not to fight.
She glanced toward him, eyes sparkling with mischief that didn’t quite cover the tiredness underneath.
“Sooooo~” Esper dragged the word out like it was a string she planned to pull. “Did you enjoy the party?”
Soren didn’t even look at her.
“It wasn’t a party,” he replied flatly.
Esper leaned closer, smug.
“It was a party.”
“It was a meeting to reset things,” Soren corrected, because he refused to let her win on principle.
Her smile widened.
“Then why was there alcohol?”
He finally glanced at her, deadpan.
“That part was a mistake.”
Felix snorted from Soren’s other side.
“You’re just mad because you can’t handle it.”
Soren’s gaze slid to Felix slowly, like he was assessing a pest.
“I handled it fine.”
Felix’s mouth twitched.
“Oh yeah? You looked really fine when you were trying to hide the drinks like a paranoid housewife.”
“I was being responsible,” Soren said, tone perfectly even.
Esper hummed, delighted.
“You were being controlling.”
Soren pointed at her without looking away from Felix.
“And you were being desperate.”
Esper didn’t deny it, because she never denied the truth when she thought it was funny.
“True,” she said cheerfully, then tilted her head, smile turning playful again. “So, Hubby—”
“Don’t call me that,” Soren cut in instantly, sharper than he meant to.
Esper blinked once, then her grin turned predatory, like she had just found a weak spot and planned to poke it until he snapped.
“Oh? That was faster than normal.”
Soren clicked his tongue and looked away, refusing to feed her.
Felix leaned back, stretching his arms behind his head as if he were relaxing, but his eyes flicked to Esper’s grin with a faint, irritated edge.
Esper, either oblivious or pretending to be, leaned even closer, voice dripping with exaggerated innocence.
“Cutie,” she corrected, “you’ve been in a better mood lately.”
Soren paused.
He didn’t want to admit it out loud, not because it wasn’t true, but because saying it felt like inviting bad luck to ruin it.
“Maybe I’m just used to you being annoying,” he said instead.
Esper placed a hand over her heart like she had been mortally wounded.
“That’s horrible.”
Felix scoffed.
“She is annoying.”
Esper snapped her gaze to him.
“And you’re jealous.”
Felix raised an eyebrow.
“Jealous of what?”
Esper smiled sweetly.
“That I’m sitting close to him.”
Felix stared at her for a beat, then looked at Soren, voice turning too casual, too pointed.
“Are you enjoying that?”
Soren’s face twitched.
“Why would I enjoy it?”
Esper’s grin widened, triumphant.
“He’s flustered.”
“I’m not flustered,” Soren said flatly.
Felix snorted.
“You’re flustered.”
Soren narrowed his eyes.
“Both of you shut up.”
Esper giggled, utterly unbothered, and leaned back into her seat like she had won something important.
Soren exhaled through his nose and let his gaze drift toward Amelia.
She sat on the other side of him, close, closer than most people would sit, but not close in the way Amelia used to be.
There was a gap, small, barely a hand’s width, but it might as well have been a wall.
Before all of this, Amelia didn’t do gaps.
She didn’t hesitate.
If she wanted to be near him, she was near him, shoulder pressed against his, head leaning into him, sometimes using him like furniture with zero shame.
Now she sat straight with her hands resting on her thighs, eyes forward, still watching the arena, still present, but restrained.
Soren’s gaze lingered on the space between them, a faint discomfort curling in his stomach.
Not anger.
Not disappointment.
Just that quiet, unpleasant awareness that something still hadn’t settled.
‘It’ll take time,’ he told himself, because that was the only sensible answer.
A few days weren’t enough to undo a week of guilt and warped emotions, and honestly, the fact that Felix and Esper were bickering again at all was probably a miracle.
Amelia was just slower.
Or maybe she was different.
He didn’t want to rush her, and he didn’t want her to think he was punishing her for being cautious either, so he did what he always did when he didn’t know how to handle something delicate.
He pretended he didn’t notice.
It was better to wait.
This wasn’t the kind of situation where he needed to push.
It wasn’t like she was avoiding him anymore, so he could just give her time.
His attention returned to the arena, letting the crowd noise fill the spaces where his thoughts tried to gnaw.
Below, students duelled in pairs, matches moving fast enough that nobody had time to relax.
Magic flared.
Mana enhancement cracked against the floor.
Defensive barriers shimmered and shattered.
The arena staff rotated opponents efficiently, like they were running a schedule, not watching teenagers throw themselves into the ground for ranking points.
Soren watched with only half his mind, eyes tracking motion without letting himself get pulled in too deep.
Esper watched like she was judging everyone.
“That one’s stance is awful,” she commented casually, like she was talking about fashion.
Felix snorted.
“Like you’re an expert.”
Esper turned to him with that same sweet smile.
“I am.”
Felix scoffed.
“You’re Rank 2 of Arcane Studies. Not Martial.”
Esper’s smile didn’t even flicker.
“And you’re neither.”
Felix choked on air, straightening like he had been slapped.
Soren’s mouth twitched despite himself.
Felix leaned forward, eyes narrowing, and Soren felt it in his bones, the shift in tone, the smug setup, the incoming derailment.
“I have plenty of experience, just in different areas,” he said, voice turning smug.
That tone.
Soren already knew where this was going.
“Don’t,” he warned, already tired.
Felix ignored him like Soren hadn’t spoken.
“I was with this girl last night,” Felix continued, voice far too casual, far too proud. “Third-year. The one with the—”
“Stop,” Soren said immediately, sharper this time.
Felix blinked, annoyed.
“What?”
“Stop talking,” Soren repeated. “Nobody asked.”
Esper burst into laughter, loud enough that a couple students nearby glanced up with irritation.
Felix scowled.
“What? I’m just making conversation.”
Soren’s expression stayed flat, because if he made it too expressive, Felix would treat it as encouragement.
“You’re making me nauseous.”
Felix stared like he had been personally insulted.
“You’re jealous,” he said automatically, reaching for the only defence he ever used.
Soren didn’t even blink.
“I’m disgusted. There’s a difference.”
Esper leaned toward Soren again, delighted, lowering her voice like they were sharing a secret.
“I like it when you bully him.”
Soren sighed.
“Don’t encourage me.”
Amelia didn’t react.
Her gaze stayed on the arena, expression unreadable, but Soren noticed the faintest shift in her eyes at Felix’s voice, like her attention sharpened whenever Felix started acting like that.
He wasn’t sure what it meant.
He didn’t push it.
He let the bickering settle and let the noise of the arena swallow the last of the tension, and for a few minutes, it almost felt normal again.
Not perfect.
But close enough that his chest didn’t feel tight.
Then, from below, a clear voice rang out, one of the overseers stationed near the arena, calling over the crowd like a bell.
[Rank 1 of Martial Studies and Rank 2 of Arcane Studies come down to the arena!]
————「??」————