Chapter 192
'There are many fractures.
Each word feels as if it is being forced out by something mutually opposed within.'
Fhaaah!
'It feels like wrath… not mere, ordinary anger.
This is clearly not just a reprimand, nor a warning.
This is hatred that has been stored for far too long, until it altered the very color of the voice.'
Hoooh!
'So why, then, is that voice calling me?'
Habit is a formidable fortress, and for a long time, Ilux had built his fortress upon foundations of memories that were measured and predictable.
Aldraya's voice in his memory was never a wild sound wave.
It was an instrument of precision, a single melody played consistently in the same key.
The key of absolute neutrality.
Every utterance from his teacher was always stripped of emotional skin—no vibration of joy, no friction of anger, no rise and fall of resentment.
It was the voice of a cold, lucid plateau, where each word stood alone, separate, clear, and unshadowed by feeling.
That memory of her voice had long served as Ilux's reference, a sonic map he used to identify her presence in his mind.
But the faint voice that had just pierced the silence of his library was something foreign, something transgressive.
It carried colors that had never existed in the palette of the Aldraya he knew—dark, dense, turbulent hues.
If it had been merely Aldraya's usual voice, Ilux might have dismissed it as a hallucination born of exhaustion.
But it was the complexity hidden within that tone that made him freeze.
That voice was like a flat sheet of paper suddenly folded into sharp, intricate origami.
It was no longer a straight line.
It had become curves, angles, and folds containing unexpected dimensions.
Within that obscurity were threads of emotion tightly wound together.
There were vibrations of suppressed sorrow, the sharp sting of disappointment, the echo of deep fatigue, and perhaps even a thin layer of anxiety.
All of it merged into a symphony of human feeling—so rich, and so alien, to a figure he had long understood as a monument of composure.
This was no longer the speech of a teacher.
It was the outpouring of a human being, and that stark contrast made the voice feel all the more real, all the more disturbing, and at the same time, all the more impossible.
Yet amid the sea of complex emotions he had only briefly perceived, there was one wave that rose with overwhelming force, cutting through all ambiguity and anchoring itself firmly in his awareness.
Anger.
Not anger that exploded, not a deafening scream.
But the deepest, most seething, most hateful kind of anger.
It was like the core of a volcano long believed to be solid and cold.
This anger was not ignited by a short fuse.
It was the result of a slow, prolonged burn, a hatred distilled until it reached its densest and most toxic purity.
It seeped into every crevice of the tone, becoming the foundation of every other vibration that accompanied it.
This was what made Ilux's blood run cold.
The Aldraya he knew had never hated.
The Aldraya he knew only evaluated, analyzed, and decided.
Hatred was an emotion too hot, too burdensome, too human for someone so nearly untouchable.
Who—or what—could awaken such fire from within ice?
That question lingered, heavier than the stack of five books before him.
If that voice was real, if it truly was Aldraya, then everything he understood about his teacher—about her departure, her composure, her world—was an illusion.
A raging ocean had been hiding beneath the icy surface he had long admired.
And if it was merely his own hallucination, then why would his exhausted mind project an Aldraya filled with hatred?
Which was more terrifying.
The reality that the cold teacher harbored a blazing fury, or the reality that his own subconscious had painted his role model in such unfamiliar shades of darkness?
Ilux sat motionless, his notebook no longer holding meaning, while the echo of that seething anger continued to spread through the silent air of the library, filling the space between the shelves with a question that threatened his newly built calm.
'If I ask now, they will laugh first before they think.'
His first instinct was to leap up, to turn around, and to hurl the question into the air thick with sudden tension.
But his muscles froze before the action could occur.
A vigilance colder and sharper than his own shock crept in, paralyzing every impulsive urge.
Shout? Ask?
In this room, in front of them?
That was not an option.
It was a gateway to mockery far deeper and more vicious than the isolation he usually endured.
He could almost hear it—stifled laughter, exchanged glances heavy with meaning, whispers of "He's starting to lose his sanity," or worse, "Look, the loner has finally gotten so lonely he's hearing his ghost lover's voice."
Aldraya's voice belonged to him alone, a fragment of memory or perhaps something more, and offering it to them to trample, to turn into fresh ridicule, would be a betrayal of himself—and of the possibility, however terrifying, that the voice was real.
He remained seated, his back rigidly straight, while inside, everything churned.
On the surface, he was merely an overly serious student, fixated on his book beneath the evening light.
His right hand pretended to hold the pen, fingers pressing lightly against the notebook paper, while his left hand, hidden beneath the table, clenched tightly until his nails dug into his palm, leaving deep, painful crescent marks.
He swallowed, trying to steady his heartbeat, which felt as though it might shatter his ribcage.
The dialogue that would unfold—if he were reckless—played out in his mind with painful clarity.
He could imagine the cynical faces, the questions feigning concern yet barbed with venom.
"Aldraya's voice? Are you sure, Ilux? Maybe you haven't slept enough," or "Wow, looks like Ilux still hasn't moved on. Hallucinating already."
And most crushing of all, the assumption that this was merely a hidden desire manifesting itself, a pathetic fantasy of a student infatuated with a teacher who had left.
They would reduce the pure—or supernatural—emotional vibration he had sensed into something filthy and contemptible.
His reluctance was not merely about fragile pride.
This was about protection.
That voice, laden with such immense anger and hatred, was a secret far too dangerous to share.
If it was truly real, then something was terribly wrong with Aldraya, something far removed from the perfect image of the "elite primadonna" and "pride of the Star Academy" they worshiped.
Opening this door would not only expose him to ridicule, but might also draw attention to a dark reality hidden behind the legend.
And if it was only a hallucination, then it was proof of his own mental fragility, a weakness that would be weaponized by those who already looked down on him.
Ilux was not afraid of the supernatural.
He was far more afraid of the profoundly human: cruelty, prejudice, and the impulse to destroy what they do not understand.
So he chose silence.
He became a statue that knew a secret, holding it within his cold skull, while his eyes, behind the lenses, scanned the surroundings warily, searching for any visual clue—an odd movement, a startled expression from someone else—that could confirm or deny what he had heard.
To be continued…