32 – Aden Feltner (2)
As we left the Aslet Hall early in the morning, the warm sunlight greeted us.
Up until last week, the cold in the flower spring was still quite rampant, but now I couldn’t even feel the chilliness, as if expressing the full spring.
After all, on a day like this, I have to lie down on the bed in my room and get some more sleep.
I am proud of myself for leading Aden and leaving the dormitory while suppressing my primal desire.
“Let’s just run to the gymnasium. Both as a body and pool.”
Coming down the stairs and entering the main building, I nodded and suggested Aden run.
I have no intention of going for a leisurely walk with my boy alone in the morning, listening to the chirping of birds.
“It’s quite far, will it be okay?”
Aden spoke with concern toward me.
No, it’s quite a distance from here to the gymnasium.
The distance from the dormitory to the main building is quite long, but the gymnasium is a place where you have to go to the west end of the main building and walk a little further to get there.
However, he shrugged his shoulders indifferently, not to a level of concern.
“Even if it’s far away. It’s not like running at full speed, so what’s up?”
“Well, that’s it too.”
It doesn’t matter because I’ll be jogging anyway, adjusting the tempo.
Arden nodded as if he understood what I was saying and started running together in earnest.
As I jog along the coniferous forest that I used to walk every day on my way to school, smelling the grass, I feel refreshed. I just want to know why I am doing this.
By the time she passed the main building and reached her destination, the gymnasium, she looked at Aden following her at a speed.
‘I’m fine.’
As expected, there was a bit of sweat on his forehead, so he didn’t even feel that he was struggling, except that his blue bangs were wet.
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His breathing is even, just like when he started.
It must mean that he took good care of his stamina and body like the main character in the original story.
Somehow satisfied, I led Aden to the front of the gymnasium.
There, a wide open glass door welcomed us.
‘It’s nice that the gymnasium isn’t locked.’
Most of the academy’s buildings are open to cadets even on weekends.
However, among them, there are a few places that cannot be used on weekends, and the representative places are the workshops and material warehouses mainly used by alchemists.
As far as I know, this place used to be open all the time, but it became impossible to use on weekends because the cadets who were working alone had too many incidents.
“Let’s go in.”
“Yes.”
As I approached the glass door, beckoning to Aden, I saw a phrase written on a large piece of paper that wasn’t there before.
[Only practice weapons can be used on weekends.]
Weapons for practice.
To put it simply, it means a weapon without a blade like a wooden sword.
Somehow, since the supervisors who manage the safety of the gymnasium have to rest on the weekends, only the cadets have no choice but to engage in sparring with each other.
“Oh, what you said?”
At this, I pointed to the announcement and let out a low exclamation as if I had seen Aden again.
Before she left the dormitory, she asked if it would be okay because Aden didn’t take her own sword, and she doubted that it would be meaningless to take it today.
I can’t believe there was a reason for this.
This is a setting that even I didn’t know about.
“I saw it by chance when I stopped by last weekend.”
As if I was dumbfounded at how much I admired it, Aden explained the inside story with a smile.
I was a little curious about why I came to the gym last weekend, but I didn’t intend to pry into other people’s private lives, so we went inside together.
Normally, the supervisor sitting in the hallway in front of the training room would have approached us, but that didn’t happen today.
The moment they stopped by the weapon storage room, picked up their own wooden swords, and entered the first training room.
Suddenly, Aden’s voice came from behind.
“Bell, how would you like to use magic?”
“Use mana?”
At a fairly unexpected question, I blinked my eyes blankly.
Of course, for safety’s sake, I’ve heard that there are cases where magic is banned and simply sparring, so I wonder if there’s something different from children’s house play.
In the first place, when you sparred with others in the original work, you didn’t even ask about these things and did your best, so why do you ask these things now?
Even if you use some magical power, it won’t be that your skills will be revealed.
“You should allow it. Well, as long as you don’t get seriously hurt, there’s no problem, right?”
As he replied without a second’s thought, I could see the worry on Aden’s face.
But that’s not my concern.
Rather, for me, it would be better for this guy to use his full strength and reveal his identity to me.
“Don’t worry about anything and pick up the sword. I told you, but I won’t let you go if you feel like you’re being watched.”
Holding a wooden sword and fixing his posture, he glared at him and bluffed.
Then, unlike before, when he passed it off with an awkward smile, Aden’s eyes were filled with a ray of suspicion.
“You keep saying that from earlier. It sounds as if I have the energy to look after you.”
“Right.”
“… Is that right?”
If she felt as if Aden’s shoulders were lifted momentarily, it would not be an illusion of her eyes.
Anyway, it would be frustrating to keep fighting like this.
Waiting forever for the other side to reveal it with my mouth isn’t my taste, so I decided to take this opportunity to spill some leeway from this side.
“I know that you are not suitable for class E. Therefore….”
I raised my wooden sword and pointed it at Aden, then added an afterword.
“Don’t think you’ll see it. Run properly.”
This has already been repeated the third time, but each time Aden’s reaction was quite different.
Consistently ignorant at first.
The second time, he threw his words out to read my insides to see if he was hot too.
Finally, the third.
“… ….”
I just kept staring at her with my mouth tightly shut.
But for some reason, it felt like that silent action was giving me an answer.
‘How do you know that?’
At this, I raised the corner of my mouth and corrected my posture, so this side also responded with action.
He said, ‘If you’re really curious, find out for yourself.’
* * * *
The sparring that began after such a long confrontation was so intense that it was believable even if the swords in the hands of the two were real swords.
Fighting spirits overflowing in all directions, sword strikes coming and going three times in one breath.
If the instructor in charge of swordsmanship was here, he would never have believed that these two were class E.
“Ha ha ha….”
Arden drew distance behind her, breathing hard.
At first glance, it seems that the battle continues on an equal footing, but in reality it is not.
The one-sided push is Bell, and the tempo keeps getting cut off as I follow her footsteps on this side.
Of course, Aden wasn’t at her full potential yet.
Not specifically to trick Belle, or because she’s big enough to ignore her friend’s bluff.
It’s just because the mission buried deep in her heart keeps tearing her body from trying to do her best.
‘If you show your strength now, you will only end up with the same ending as her father.’
Arden gritted his teeth as he suppressed her mana that was slowly being released from her body.
It was eight years ago that Aden lost her father.
At that time, after hearing rumors that the followers were raising their heads again from the darkness, Dillard, Aden’s father, was included in the group that started their own investigation.
Following in his footsteps, they broke into the house, brutally murdered Dillard right in front of their eyes, and ultimately tried to target Aden as well.
Fortunately, a colleague of the group to which Dillard was a member later found out about this and succeeded in chasing and sabotaging it, but in the end, he could not save Dillard’s life and even take revenge.
Since then, Aden has been living as much as possible hiding her identity.
Unfortunately for her, it was impossible for her to fully master the rites left behind by her father.
However, she somehow developed her strength by training alone, and she applied for admission to the academy thinking that this would not be enough to develop her power to take revenge.
She then thought that being in Class E, the worst class in this academy, would be the best place for her to stay, so she adjusted her powers in her entrance exam, and she has reached the present.
In other words, Aden has her own reasons for not living up to her friend’s wishes.
‘But did that make it?’
Still, Arden had deep doubts about whether what she was doing was really the right thing to do.
If her opponent was just a cadet from another class who came to see her skills, like Pareon did before, she would have dealt with her in moderation.
However, the Bell in front of her spoke with a nuance as if she had noticed that, through some circumstances, she was hiding her power.
At first, she thought it was just a poke, but after three warnings, Arden knew he was convinced.
When she asked herself if it was the right thing to do in this situation, hiding her powers with her eyes closed, she didn’t get a very positive answer.
‘Maybe he even knows my secret.’
Aden’s gaze turned to the ring on her right index finger.
While she thought
No, she also thought that maybe she didn’t know.
Looking at that man’s calm eyes, as if he says he knows everything, you can’t help but feel like this.
In the end, you have to choose.
Will I continue the invisible confrontation, or will I do my best and reveal the truth as he demands.
In the middle of that alternative, he frowned, unable to make a decision.
Bell’s soft voice that Arden had never heard before came.
“Aden.”
“Uh, huh?”
When Bell, who always spoke in a casual tone, said the name softly to her for the first time, Aden’s eyes were shaken.
“Well, I don’t know what happened to you….”
Swallowing her back, Bell scratched her cheek shyly avoiding her gaze.
At least it was the first time he had seen it, so the question of what he was going to say deepened.
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Bell, who was licking his lips as if searching for something to say in the silence, soon turned to Aden.
Only after a shy smile formed on his lips did he open his tightly closed lips again.
“Are we friends after all? Trust me a little bit.”
“Ah….”
A low exclamation flowed from Aden’s mouth when he heard that.
If it was a normal bell, I would never have taken it out.
Still, saying these words must be a kind of oath that I will hold on to this secret and not shake my friends.
Realizing that, Arden felt a mixed feeling and adjusted his posture.
At the same time, clear magic power was emitted in all directions, and the momentum completely changed from a moment ago.
As if the answer was to replace it with this, he began to clearly release the power he had been hiding until now.
After confirming this, the corner of Bell’s mouth went up to the point where it touched his ear, and he corrected his posture as well.
“Are you ready to do something now?”
“… Yeah, I’m sorry.”
“There is nothing to be sorry about.”
Bell shrugged his shoulders at Aden’s sincere apology.
‘I thought I was going to cringe and die.’
Actually, it wasn’t that comfortable inside.
Just looking at it, it doesn’t seem like Aden will reveal her strength, so she quoted the words Lone used when he first tried to open Aden’s heart in the original work, but fortunately it seems to work.
Her hands seem to be drying like squid on the fire, but she thought it would be a good business if she could bring out Aden’s true heart with this.
“Can I go from my side this time?”
“Anyway.”
Staring at Aden, whose eyes had changed quite a bit from a moment ago, Bell patted her hand as if telling her to come.
I think I will finally have a taste for dealing with him.