207 The Illusionary Sun (1/2)
It was late at night at the Royal Academy of Music. Two figures met in the main building without meaning to. When they discovered each other, they instantly felt awkward.
”Good evening, Mr. Egor.” Ludwig, who had descended the staircase first, uttered a greeting. Egor, who had just came through the door, returned the greeting.
After some small talk, the awkward atmosphere had almost disappeared, but the insubstantial conversation continued. Ludwig realized that Egor’s thoughts were elsewhere and he suddenly cut to the chase. ”Are you here to investigate the results of the draw too?”
”No, no.” Egor chuckled as if he did not mind at all, but his eyes grew cautious. Ludwig was ten years older than him, but his actions were always faster. He was sensitive to every change and always got to things first. This time was not an exception either.
Egor had just entered, but Ludwig was already leaving. He did not know what the result was, but how could someone who liked saving face as much as Egor admit his reason for coming? He stated, ”The drawing was done under our monitoring. How could anything happen?”
”Oh?” Ludwig glanced at him with a smile. ”Then why are you here so late at night? Don’t give me the excuse that you forgot some documents. You never bring documents to meetings.”
Egor’s expression grew even more awkward, as well as humiliated and angered. ”Ludwig, aren’t you the same?”
”To be honest…I just wanted to satisfy my curiosity.” Ludwig chuckled. Under the moonlight, his eyes became the vertical pupils of snakes. They fluttered and fluttered, making Egor slightly unsettled.
The musicians of the School of Summoning developed beastliness inside of them and controlled demons during battle. At the same time, their sanity would be even more powerful. But no matter what, they would be affected by it. Because of this, Summoning musicians would have strange fetishes. Ludwig was not an exception. For example, he was overly curious.
Egor scoffed. ”I just wanted to ensure the fairness of the results.”
Hearing Egor’s refutation, Ludwig could not help but chuckle. ”Egor, when humans start talking about fairness, it means that unfair things are going to happen. Did you sense something?”
”Don’t beat around the bush, Ludwig. Get to it.” Egor rolled his eyes. ”I hate philosophy and theories.”
Ludwig shrugged. ”I’m just saying that things like drawing lots are never fair.”
”Are you saying that the music department has problems? But all three of us monitored the drawing” Egor said.
”Don’t forget that this is under the Requiem enchantment. Even the results of the lots are controlled by the enchantment. We can only monitor the students, but can’t do anything to do the enchantment.”
”It’s impossible for the enchantment to have problems” Egor argued.
”Of course. It won’t have problems, but humans can,” Ludwig said lightly. ”The results of my investigation confirmed what I felt during the day. I’m not the most familiar with the School of Abstinence, but I still felt this afternoon that the enchantment had been shifted three times.”
”Three times?” After pondering, Egor felt something wrong. ”There’s no need to use one’s authority three times to change the results. Unless…”
”Yes, there were three authorities trying to change the result.”
Egor fell silent, finally sensing the complexity behind this event.
”Of the three authorities, the lowest one came from the student council. One came from the school board, which is obviously Sydney.”
”That’s not strange,” Egor said. ”Sydney doesn’t want to the history department to draw empty again. And hasn’t Gavin been trying to help his brother inherit his position? The history department is the best stepping stone to becoming the head of the student council.”
Ludwig just snickered. ”But it’s a pity because nothing they do will be successful. The third authority canceled out everything they did.”
”Canceled out?” Egor glanced at him, eyes suspicious. ”Only one person can cancel out the school board’s authority.”
”Yes, it’s our principal.” Ludwig kind of wanted to laugh mockingly at how he and his colleagues had acted these days. ”What are we so worried about? The principal had probably already dug a ditch for us to jump in. Egor, I’m afraid we’ve all been tricked by those guys.”
He patted Egor’s shoulder and saw a bitter smile on his old friend’s face. Egor sighed and gave up on the urge to continue asking. If he continued investigating, he would just increase the tension between the school board and the principal. But he did not understand why the principal would go against the school board for such a small thing.
”What is he trying to do?”
”How would I know?” Ludwig slowly filled his pipe with tobacco. Thinking of what had happened during the day, he could not help but mock himself. ”I’ve lived so many years, but I don’t even know what a dog is thinking. How can I understand what’s hiding in someone’s heart?”
-
Ye Qingxuan had slept for twenty hours. He was sleeping so heavily that not even the sky falling down would wake him. It seemed that he could still continue sleeping…
After being carried back from the field, Ye Qingxuan was thrown onto the sofa. Traces of Bai Xi’s off-handed graffiti still remained on his face. He was still in his original posture, like a wax figure.
”Charles, is he okay?” Bai Xi poked Ye Qingxuan’s face as if she had found a giant toy and was playing happily.
Across from the sofa, Charles shrugged. ”I don’t know either.”
Ye Qingxuan had sweated for the first few hours. Now, he had no movements other than his heart beating. His pupils had no reaction when shone with blinding light, but at least he was still breathing. There were no other strange conditions. He just looked like he was sleeping.
”Did he get some weird disease?”
”I don’t think so. His health was good during the physical examinations at the beginning of the school year, just a little thin.” Charles paused and shook his head. ”He’s like a girl, ugh…Boys should be like me and have an eight-pack!”
”You talk like you have one!” Bai Xi rolled her eyes. ”Should we take him to the hospital?”
”To be honest, I think that we should just let him sleep if it’s not an emergency.” Charles took a bottle of liquor from a cabinet. Opening it with expertise, he took a whiff and let out a satisfied breath. ”As the saying goes, get drunk today if you have wine. There aren’t any other solutions, right?”
Bai Xi was stunned. ”But we can’t just leave him like this.”
”Maybe he just wants some peace. Huh, don’t ask me who peace is. Anyway, just let him sleep a bit more. He’s played soccer for so long. He should get a halftime break, right?” Charles looked down and wiped his glass. His eyes filled with lamentation. ”No matter how powerful or strong someone is, they still have a time where they want to escape from reality. Saints are like that, not to mention mundanes like us.
”Cheers.” Charles stuck a glass into the youth’s stiff hands and clinked glasses with him. He tilted his head back and downed the glass. When his gaze fell on Ye Qingxuan, it grew distant yet troubled. He seemed to look past Ye Qingxuan’s body to some unknown place.
”Hope you can escape, kid.”
-
A blizzard fell from the sky, falling into Ye Qingxuan’s eyes. The sky was still the empty whiteness from before. Numerous snowflakes fell from the sky.
He walked barefoot in the ice and snow. His soles had been pierced and his footprints were tinged with stark red. But later, the red disappeared gradually, freezing into the ice.
He panted and forged on. He tried to feel his lower body, but his legs were almost numb. Sometimes, he would look back at his long trail of footprints. They extended from deep within the field of ice. Slowly, the footprints were covered by snow and disappeared.
It was no longer like a search for something.
It was an endless escape.
The shattered snowflakes and crystals crashed against each other in the cold wind, producing tiny yet fine sounds. The countless sounds rose like rainwater, but in the ”rainwater,” a hoarse voice sang an unnamed song. The voice was sometimes close, sometimes far; one could hear it clearly but could not grasp it. But in the end, the song disappeared as well. Only mocking laughter rang in the silence.
Mockery.
Ye Qingxuan lowered his eyes and looked at his cracked and frozen feet. His toenails were tipped up and his toes no longer had feeling. There was just a trail of frozen dark red blood.
It was familiar. So familiar.
Maybe these was his real feet. When he studied his feet for the first time, they were like this too. They were numb and deathly pale, but with a dull pain that reached his bone, reminding him that the long trip had not ended yet and that he was still alive.