Ch 97: Eleena’s thoughts

Lucien was feeling incredibly cringe from the inside, having given something resembling a pep talk to Melissa. Though, it could hardly be called a pep talk. Nevertheless he was cringing inwardly after having uttered words like believe and life is hard and all that.

He was not cringing because he had said something childish, but because of how effortlessly those words had left his mouth. Lucien would never have said something like that to a girl under ordinary circumstances. It was the image of his old self that had momentarily blurred together with Melissa's, and from that blurring those words had simply fallen out of him.

His words were true, and they had come from his heart, having led a life of poverty and hardship, a life without parents to navigate it alongside him. He had endured so many difficulties throughout his previous life that continuing to live had demanded the greatest effort he had ever given to anything.

He was not a stranger to the hardships of life. Even in his current life, he had seen his fair share of sadness and hardships despite being the sole child of his parents and despite being the heir of the northern dukedom. Problems had never stopped knocking at his door. People from outside envied him and would have gladly killed to seize his position. But his life was not as glorious as others imagined it to be.

In his current life, his mother had been mostly absent from his life after falling ill, and he himself had been consumed by the relentless pursuit of power so that no one could ever harm his family again. He had watched his mother nearly die during the sudden attack of the miasma's beasts, through which she had contracted the dark miasma and been bedridden ever since. From that day onward, he had started hating himself. He had beaten himself with guilt for not being strong enough to protect her, for not being the shield to defend her.

His mother had been an innocent soul who had guided him all his life, and he had failed her because of his own weakness. And so, from that day on, he had poured every waking hour into the pursuit of strength, and it had not gone in vain, though he had paid dearly for every inch of it.

The house had turned dark since the day his mother fell ill, as though gloomy clouds had settled permanently above the sky and simply refused to move. So it was not something he could honestly deny, the experience of difficulty and weight in his life equally like others. The people who envied his existence would likely be terrified if they were made to walk even a single one of the roads he had been forced to walk and the decisions he had been forced to take just to keep himself standing upright. Even now, he was still held tightly by his nature and his past. The killing urges still haunted him. Just yesterday he had barely kept them contained, and they had only quieted after he had torn through hundreds of beasts.

"Haah." Lucien sighed like a tired old man. He pushed his thoughts to the back of his mind and turned to face Melissa, who had already completed a full round of the running track. She was doing well, running in a good rhythm and managing her pace perfectly, not going too slow, not going too fast.

Lucien nodded in quiet appreciation and settled himself onto an empty bench where Melissa had been sitting before. As he lowered himself onto the seat, he felt something loosen in his chest. Weights he had been carrying finally shifted off his shoulders. He had been worried that Melissa might think he no longer wished to train her, given that he had not appeared in the training ground.

She would have had every right to think that. On top of that, she had cried so much yesterday that he had genuinely begun to wonder whether she would even show herself today, whether she would not want to face him after everything that had passed between them. So seeing her here now, even with her eyes still moist, had taken at least some of that weight away. He had already resigned himself to the likelihood that either she would not come at all, or that even if she had come, she would have already retreated back to her dormitory and been sitting there crying, convinced he had abandoned her training altogether.

"Haah." He sighed once more. Even though his old life and his current one combined to make him mentally thirty-eight years old, having lived nineteen years in his previous life and nineteen again in this one, that accumulated experience had not seemed to make him any more adept at managing the weight he kept placing on himself. There were so many things he had to accomplish in this life. And it was exhausting, despite all the physical strength he carried and the mental fortitude he had built. It was beginning to seem as though even those were not enough.

Lucien breathed a long, warm breath out from between his lips and shook his head, scattering the thoughts. Worrying about tomorrow means losing today. Having settled his mind into some peace, he turned his gaze back to Melissa, who had completed another lap.

Good. He nodded to himself. He might have already given the girl a thumbs up if not for the fact that he was a rigid person.

***

Things that had transpired yesterday had caused Eleena to not fall asleep even a little bit. So, she had made her way to the training ground at two in the morning, while the sky was still completely dark. Her own footsteps had sounded so loud at night that the sound would have frightened her on any other night. But not tonight.

She was barely keeping herself upright, her eyes so tired and heavy they burned like a burning coal, and yet sleep had refused to come to her inside her room, and so she had come to the ground instead.

She had begun training alone immediately after arriving at the training ground. Her steps faltered here and there, but the heaviness in her eyes eased with time and the burning gradually became something bearable, something she was able to take.

She continued training until Melissa arrived. She could still recall the breath she had drawn in sharply at the sight of the girl, because Melissa had looked directly at her with an even, unwavering gaze the moment she stepped onto the ground. Neither of them spoke, but what had happened the day before had carved enough resentment between them that words were unlikely to heal, and Eleena had no intention of being the one to reach for the agreement. She had already lowered herself to apologize to the girl once yesterday. And, that was enough.

She turned her attention back to her own training, but it was difficult not to notice that Melissa was alone. Lucien had not accompanied her. At that, Eleena felt something unclench slightly in her chest. She had begun to think that perhaps Lucien had finally seen through the girl's facade.

While Eleena was still sitting with that relief, she watched Melissa stretch and move through a light workout entirely on her own, but the girl's shoulders sagged gradually with the passing minutes and she kept turning her head to scan the training ground. Eleena noticed all of it and made sure the girl would never know Eleena was observing her.

Melissa was eventually defeated by her own waiting and dropped onto one of the empty benches. All the benches were empty at that hour. There were none beside two of them at the training ground.

Eleena kept her eyes moving carefully between her own movement and Melissa. Melissa sat hunched over with her hands folded, her gaze drifting around the space as though she were expecting someone to materialize from the air. The girl kept lifting her head toward the sky, and sometimes Eleena would catch Melissa's eyes landing on her for a moment before sliding away. Nothing of particular interest happened, and gradually more students began to fill the training ground. The sun rose in its time, and by then Eleena would normally have already returned to her dormitory. She had been close to doing exactly that, steadily convincing herself to leave now that Lucien had not come.

But Melissa would not leave. The girl remained rooted to that bench with a stubbornness that made Eleena's jaw tighten, and so Eleena found herself unable to go either, continuing to run circuits around the training field as the morning stretched forward.

And then she saw him.

Lucien came through the entrance and walked toward Melissa, appearing before the girl almost without warning. He was wearing a black shirt and black trousers, and even from a distance Eleena could feel that something in his expression said he was worried, his brows were slightly knitted together, though she could not be entirely certain of it at this distance.

Eleena stopped running. She turned her head toward them fully.

She watched them talk. She watched Lucien raise his hand and lay it gently over the top of Melissa's head.

The breath left her body in one sharp pull. Her hand curled into a fist at her side so tightly that small drops of blood fell from her palm and struck the ground. The fury that climbed through her in that moment was so complete and so violent that she could have crossed the entire training ground without stopping and demanded to know why he looked at the girl with warmth and why he would turn cold like ice to her. She could have screamed these words at him repeatedly until she received the answers.

Instead, she tightened her jaw until her teeth ached and made herself resume running. But her eyes kept returning to them. Again and again, no matter how hard she tried to stare away, her eyes would drift back to where Lucien and Melissa stood talking with each other as though the rest of the world had simply stopped existing.

She hid her wet eyes by rubbing her eyes.

Her academy life was not what she had imagined it would be. She had imagined so many beautiful things she would do in the academy before arriving here. She had never once pictured herself like this, being broken apart piece by piece simply from watching Lucien speak to another girl.

***

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