Chapter 49: Awareness and Priority.

The rustle of cloth, the slightly ragged breathing from tension, the scratch of pen on paper; all tiny sounds, yet they grated on her ears as if her nerves had been sharpened to a blade.

Her heartbeat was racing so loudly she half-feared it was audible to everyone around her. Of course that was impossible.

“Vio-chan, your hand stopped. Don’t understand something?”

“Eh? Ah… no, I’m fine. No problem.”

There was no problem. In fact, things were going suspiciously well.
If this kept up, she might score even higher than last time.

Yulan nodded with his usual cloudless smile.
He had always believed whatever Violet told him without question.

But right now, that very “usual” felt like a glaring anomaly.
This was definitely not okay. There were huge problems.
Was Yulan really so oblivious he hadn’t noticed?

…No, she realized. She was the one who never doubted Yulan, so questioning his perceptiveness was pointless.

Still, in this place, with these people, she couldn’t help but feel bewildered.

“Violet, that section probably had the wording changed. The teacher in charge was…”

Golden hair swayed in front of her eyes, following gravity.
The fingertip pointing at her worksheet belonged to the past test she had borrowed.

She fully understood her current situation.
She understood it perfectly, and yet she still had to ask.

How on earth had it come to this?

––––––––––

It had started innocently enough.

Yulan had invited her to study for the upcoming tests.

At the time she thought nothing of it; after all, he was the one borrowing her old tests.
She no longer needed them herself, so she would have happily handed them over, but Yulan stubbornly, almost aggressively, refused.
So the stack of papers continued to gather dust in her room.
It was only a few sheets; leaving them at the academy would have been fine, but she did worry whether it was inconvenient when he wanted to review at home.

(In truth, Yulan never studied alone unless Violet was with him, so it didn’t matter.)

They had been coming to the library together for several days.

As usual, Violet was looking for a quiet corner when Yulan made a suggestion.

“I arranged to borrow last year’s second-year tests from someone, so let’s study there today.”

“Eh…”

Last year’s second-years, meaning the current third-years.

It took her an embarrassingly long time to process that simple fact.

Yulan just smiled, neither rushing her nor offering further explanation, waiting patiently like a loyal dog for whatever she would say next.

In the quiet space, Violet realized he had already said everything he intended to.
With a sigh mixed with exasperation and resignation, she spoke.

“…You know a third-year, Yulan?”

She knew he had acquaintances, but she could not picture him interacting with the kind of people she imagined.
He was always gentle with her, but she wasn’t shallow enough to think that was the entirety of him.

She was well aware that Yulan did not get along with Claudia.
The complicated relationship between those two was something the entire academy vaguely sensed.

Perhaps because of that, she had assumed Yulan didn’t associate much with Claudia’s year, the current third-years.
At least, she had believed so until this very moment.
Apparently she had been mistaken.
Thinking about it calmly, someone as naturally sociable as Yulan having friends across grades was hardly strange.

“Well… something like that.”

“…?”

“Come on, let’s go. They’re probably already there.”

“Yes… we shouldn’t keep them waiting.”

For a single instant his expression clouded, then immediately returned to its usual gentleness; a change so slight most people would dismiss it as imagination.
But they were not most people.

And even if she asked, she knew he would never answer.

She told herself she would understand once they arrived, and tried not to mind.

Yet as they walked, the destination became clear in her mind, turned into certainty, and she kept glancing up at Yulan in disbelief; but he offered no reply.

Even walking half a step behind diagonally, there was no way he couldn’t read her mood.

Which meant he knew exactly where they were going and had deliberately chosen not to explain.

The place they arrived at was the student council room.

And now, in the student-council-affiliated salon, Violet was receiving study help from the very person she had mentally excluded first: Claudia.

She truly, sincerely, from the bottom of her heart, wanted to know:

How on earth had it come to this?