Chapter 338
This relationship was not merely a cold professional connection, but a bond forged through shared staff rooms, curriculum meetings, and, most likely, a mutual understanding of the complex dynamics of the magical education world.
Aldraya's status may have fallen by now, demoted from teacher to an ordinary student—a mysterious and stigmatized demotion.
However, to this old colleague of hers, there still seemed to remain a spark of solidarity, or at the very least, a habit of sharing information with someone who was once considered an equal.
The meeting in the corridor continued.
After exchanging greetings and perhaps briefly discussing Aldraya's new circumstances—a topic that surely carried both awkwardness and curiosity—the conversation unintentionally drifted.
The teacher, perhaps because he felt he was speaking to a former colleague who understood the inner workings of the academy and its influential families, began to lower his guard.
From his mouth flowed various matters that should have remained tightly sealed.
He spoke of Erietta's troubling condition, the Bathee family's furious response and their search for a scapegoat following the tragedy of his step-sibling's amnesia, and, most crucially.
News of a planned forced retrieval scheduled for six days from now.
This information was of the highest secrecy, circulating only among certain teachers and academy leaders with direct stakes in the matter.
This was the most critical point.
The information was extremely confidential, and Aldraya, officially, no longer had the right to access that inner circle.
Her status as an ordinary student should have cut off the flow of such strategic information.
However, the system's weakness lay precisely in the human factor.
In a moment of carelessness, the teacher forgot or ignored Aldraya's change in status.
He still treated her as a fellow colleague with whom he could share burdens and internal gossip.
This was a classic security leak, not due to cyber system hacking, but because of long-embedded trust and habit.
"If the story really ended there, then why does your face look like that, Aldraya?"
In Theo's mind, Aldraya's explanation briefly felt like a final full stop.
The story of an accidental meeting with an old teacher, the leakage of secret information in the corridor, all sounded logical and sufficient to answer his questions about the source of the data.
For a moment, his thoughts began to move away from this point of mystery, preparing to return to discussing rescue plans or the consequences of the information.
However, something was not right.
A subtle unease lingered at the bottom of his consciousness, refusing to be satisfied by the seemingly complete explanation.
He began to murmur inwardly, questioning his own conclusion.
If the entire story was truly limited to a technically passive information leak, then where did the heavy aura that had burdened Aldraya since earlier come from?
Where did the expression he had observed before originate, one that seemed shrouded in such a tangible sense of guilt?
Theo was not a careless observer.
He had spent enough time studying Aldraya, an entity that slowly revealed cracks of peculiarity within her flatness.
The "guilty" expression he had caught earlier was not something that could be easily dismissed.
It was not merely discomfort at holding someone else's secret.
There was a deeper, more personal quality there.
An internal conflict that seemed to slice into part of Aldraya's processor or "heart."
Guilt usually arises from an action, a choice known to have harmful consequences, or from knowledge of a wrongdoing that is allowed to happen.
The fact that Aldraya, with all her logic and calculations, displayed "guilt" indicated that the story was not as simple as overhearing a conversation and then leaving.
"She questioned the truth of the rumors circulating."
After a brief yet meaningful pause, Aldraya opened her mouth again.
However, the flow of words now veered sharply, leaving the realm of strategic information and entering territory that was entirely personal, even intimate.
She continued her story, revealing that the corridor conversation did not stop at the leakage of the Bathee family's secrets.
After inadvertently unraveling the thread of Erietta's fate, the teacher made an unexpected conversational maneuver.
With a tone perhaps filled with curiosity, suspicion, or even a hint of cynicism, the teacher turned to ask a question.
The question was no longer about academy policies or noble family drama, but about Aldraya herself.
More precisely, about a rumor that had spread among the teaching staff who still remembered her as a colleague.
The teacher criticized it, questioning the truth behind the circulating whispers.
The rumor concerned Aldraya, or more specifically, an alleged attraction harbored by the former teacher toward an individual described in harsh and insulting terms.
"A depraved samurai obsessed with money and crotches" named Theo Vkytor.
The label was not merely a name, but a character attack directed at Theo, encapsulating him in a negative stereotype of a morally bankrupt mercenary driven by base desires.
The true core of the teacher's question was about the nature of the relationship between Aldraya and Theo.
Was their relationship really as gossiped—a romantic or physical attraction deemed inappropriate between a former teacher and a controversial student?
"I'm sorry, I wasn't brave enough."
When the question struck her sharply in the quiet corridor, Aldraya experienced an unfamiliar freeze.
Her processing system, usually smooth in analysis and response, suddenly hung.
She was silent.
There was no neatly arranged data to form an answer, no binary logic capable of explaining the complexity of what was being asked.
She simply stood there, in a silence that might have appeared to the teacher as a tacit admission or an embarrassing confusion.
That silence was a vacuum, an empty space where all concepts of "attraction," "relationship," and "feelings" collided with her former definition of self.
Seeing her wordlessness, the teacher let out a heavy sigh.
The sound carried a mixture of disappointment, concern, and perhaps a faint sense of possessiveness as a former colleague.
Rather than pressing further, the teacher chose to offer a warning, advice born of a worldly perspective.
He reminded Aldraya not to make the wrong choice in selecting a male companion.
And he specifically highlighted Theo's characteristics—a man whom many might consider a "depraved samurai," a drifter without ties whose motivations were questionable.
The advice, though judgmental in tone, may have been spoken with the intention of protecting Aldraya from disappointment or danger, as perceived by the teacher.
The incident had passed, but its impact had not.
Aldraya, in the solitude that followed, continued to reflect on it.
And within that reflection, confusion only grew more fertile, becoming larger and more disturbing.
On one side, her pure logic continued to issue clear commands.
She had to be firm in her choice.
If her relationship with Theo was a strategic partnership to face a threatening narrative, then it was a logical choice that should be maintained and explained if necessary.
However, on the other side, there was an emerging "inner self," a newly formed region of consciousness that strongly refused to reveal or define what kind of relationship she truly had with Theo.
This refusal was illogical.
It was intuitive, protective, and vaguely personal.
And now, after enlightening Theo about the source of the information and that uncomfortable confrontation, Aldraya reached the core of the burden filling her gaze.
She was not apologizing for listening to gossip, nor for receiving secret information.
She was apologizing for something subtler and deeper.
Because she was not brave enough.
When challenged, when given the chance to declare something, she chose silence.
She apologized for lacking the courage at that moment to express—even to herself, let alone to the teacher—that she had "feelings" for Theo.
To be continued…