Chapter 204
He imagined a kick smashing into the man's shin, or a crushing blow from his still-normal right hand straight into the solar plexus.
Every muscle in his body, still carrying the memory of the explosion's thunder, now trembled not from fear, but from the suppression of a primal fighting instinct.
The elderly man's face was so close, so painfully clear.
Ilux could see every enlarged pore, every fine vein at the temple pulsing faintly.
The stiff, aged scent of bath soap rose from the man's wrinkled skin.
This intimate distance did not create fear.
It created an arena.
Inside Ilux's mind, the room filled with monitors, frozen people, and suddenly silent static faded away.
There was only him and the figure before him.
His animal instinct screamed that the nearest threat had to be neutralized first.
The alien pulse beneath the skin of his left arm seemed to respond, throbbing faster, as if offering power he did not yet fully control to unleash a devastating counterattack.
'The air feels oppressive.'
Fuuuuh!
"Yes. From the very beginning, the entire Academic Security command already knew who was behind the library bombing.
And don't bother pretending to be shocked.
Because all this destruction—"
Wusssssh!
"—came from the person you trust the most!"
The hanging silence felt like glass about to crack.
The air in the room, usually alive with electronic hiss and procedural whispers, now stagnated, heavy and unmoving.
All eyes remained fixed on the two figures at the center, watching a silent drama charged with thousands of volts of tension.
Ilux did not move.
He deliberately slowed his breathing and waited.
He was like a sword in its sheath—still, yet every edge within him patiently sharp.
At last, the elderly man released his grip.
The rumpled collar fell back into place, and for a brief moment the imprint of the man's fingers still lingered on Ilux's neck.
But the release was not a sign of calm.
From the deeply creased face, a darker, more bitter wave of anger began to rise.
It was as if the man were waging war with himself, struggling to restrain something already boiling at the edge of his lips.
The self-control he had long displayed as a leader fractured in an instant.
And then it broke.
His voice—previously hoarse yet measured—now shook with bitterness and unrestrained fury.
Then his left index finger, speckled and trembling slightly, rose.
It did not point to a digital map.
Not to data-filled monitors.
It pointed straight at Ilux.
Once.
Twice.
The gesture was sharp and emphatic, as though he were stabbing the air between them with each motion.
Each time the finger aimed at him, Ilux felt the weight of an unspoken accusation crash onto his shoulders.
The man's words then poured out like a ruptured dam, dragging with them frustration and dark knowledge long held back.
'And don't bother pretending to be shocked.
Because all this destruction—'
For a moment his breath hitched, his eyes widening with a certainty that hurt to bear.
'—came from the person you trust the most!'
That final sentence echoed through the silent room.
It was not merely a statement.
It was a verdict.
'The person you trust the most.'
Those five words changed everything.
They no longer spoke of anonymous terrorists or external enemies.
They dragged the threat into Ilux's most intimate circle, transforming him from victim or reporter into part of a personal and devastating equation.
The gazes of everyone in the room shifted—from simple curiosity to a mixture of pity, suspicion, and suffocating questions.
How far did this young man's involvement go?
"That makes no sense.
You're wrong. Someone close to me could never do this."
"That is the fact.
And worse still, the bomber did not die in the explosion at the Star Library.
She is still alive. Still roaming within this academy."
'I-I can't move. My breath is stuck.'
Huuuuuh!
'That voice—could it truly have come from Aldraya herself?
My teacher?'
"A… woman, ri—"
The shock struck Ilux like a sledgehammer to the center of his chest.
All denial, all resistance that had just formed a fortress in his mind collapsed into debris.
He shook his head, his mouth opening to protest, but the sound died in his throat before it could be born into words.
The world around him—the neon lights, the watching faces, the hiss of equipment—lost all meaning, dissolving into blocks of blurred color and sound.
Only the elderly man's voice remained sharp, stabbing at his eardrums with unimaginable news.
Then the man's tone changed.
The blazing anger faded, replaced by a weariness that sounded sincere and deeply pained.
A pain no longer aimed at Ilux, but at the horrific situation they all faced together.
As the words flowed—confirming that the perpetrator had survived, that she still wandered the academy—something inside Ilux broke.
His breath caught, trapped within a chest that suddenly felt too tight.
His blood seemed to stop flowing, freezing his limbs like ice statues within the cold control room.
His knees trembled, yielding to the unbearable gravity of the truth, yet his last thread of consciousness clung desperately to sanity.
He had to remain standing.
To fall now would mean total defeat.
From between his tightly locked lips came a hoarse sound—an attempt to speak that failed to form a complete sentence.
Only fragments, broken moans of words.
As he spoke, air escaped his lungs in short gasps, as if the act of speaking itself caused physical pain.
His eyes, wide with horror, locked onto the old man's gaze, searching for confirmation of the dreadful suspicion rising from the darkest depths of his soul.
He did not speak a name.
He could not even say the word "perpetrator."
Only a vague pronoun, and a question barely audible, yet heavy enough to shake the room with its implication.
"Your suspicion is not wrong—the bomber this time is a woman."
'Someone closest to me, a woman, truly became the mastermind behind an explosion that nearly buried me and my entire class in the library.
Could this be a slap from fate?'
Ilux's head shook stiffly, unconvincingly, like a robot programmed to deny.
Yet behind that denial, his eyes—once filled with shock and refusal—began to darken with other shadows: flashes of faces, memories of conversations, promises that suddenly felt hollow.
Every wrinkle at the corners of the old man's eyes, every fold of suspicion etched there, became a mirror reflecting the darkest doubts now gnawing at Ilux's own heart.
He tried to brush them away, to drive those images far from his mind, but the seed of distrust had already been planted too deeply by that horrifying news.
Then came the confirmation.
The elderly man's voice, though weary, sounded like an irrevocable final verdict.
Two simple words—"Yes. Accurate."—struck Ilux with a force far greater than shouting or a clenched collar ever could.
They were not merely words.
They were hammers, nailing shut the coffin of every remaining illusion.
What he had suspected—born perhaps from instinct or sublimated fear—was in fact the most bitter reality.
The world around Ilux truly lost its shape.
The noise of the control room faded into distant white hiss, the neon lights smeared into blinding fog.
What remained was a single, burning truth.
The woman close to him, the girl he knew intimately—whom he had once trusted—had raised her hand to destroy.
Not only a building.
Not only bookshelves.
But also the trust and sense of safety that had been the foundation of his world until now.
To be continued…