DPAA 58

chapter 58

“Uh? No, not really…”

“By any chance, do you want to poison your older brother to become the Viscount Agrippa?”

“Are you insane?! Why would I ever kill my brother?”

“Then lastly… do you dream of a love marriage?”

“No, not really… I haven’t thought about it that way—wait, why are you asking all of a sudden?”

“Just a survey.”

Kanis smiled faintly after hearing all of Felix’s answers.

“Anyway, you’re saying that right now you have no fiancée, no one you like, no desire for power, and you wouldn’t mind an arranged marriage, right?”

“That’s all correct—wait a minute. Hey, you.”

“What?”

“No, you just now…”

Felix was about to speak, but seeing Kanis’s face grinning as if she knew nothing, he closed his mouth.

A slight silence passed.

Felix stood, observing Kanis deep in thought.

“Let’s just go have lunch first.”

Usually, he ate with Daeun or Aiden, but on Tuesdays during the fourth-period astronomy class, it was only with her.

So he naturally assumed they would eat together, but Kanis refused his offer.

“Have lunch with someone else.”

“What? Why?”

“I already have plans.”

With a snap, Kanis tossed her textbook into her bag and smiled mischievously.

“If you don’t, they might pounce on you again.”

“What? You don’t mean—”

Seeing Felix’s shocked expression, Kanis erased her cheeky smile and nodded seriously.

“Exactly.”

“Ah… even though you said that, with Aiden…”

“I’m having lunch with my little brother today.”

Their sentences overlapped.

“Huh?”

“Huh?”

Two question marks seemed to hang in the air.

Luna Einser sensed it immediately.

‘They’re in a bad mood today.’

Her intuition told her that her new seatmate, May Escliff, was in a very low mood.

Truthfully, it didn’t even need intuition—her eyes alone gave it away.

The reason was obvious.

Wasn’t there a scandal about Kanis Escliff circulating in the school?

May’s expression had turned cold immediately after hearing about it.

Claire approached the gloomy May.

“May! Did you understand the class we just had?”

“Huh? Ahaha, no. How would I know that?”

Then they began chatting like ordinary schoolgirls.

“Really? But today’s class wasn’t too bad, right?”

“Mm… yeah, it was okay. Even without studying.”

“Do you think you’ll graduate?”

“Wouldn’t I?”

Wow.

Luna was impressed.

‘A double personality, maybe?’

Her judgment wasn’t unreasonable.

For most students in Class 1-A—and even beyond this class—‘May Escliff’ was known as someone not great at studying but kind and pleasant.

‘Well, she’s not like that at all in reality.’

But the May Escliff Luna observed wasn’t a gullible, overly kind person.

On the contrary.

There was something off, like a loose screw somewhere—

“Psychopath…”

“What?”

Luna muttered absentmindedly, and the blue eyes followed her immediately.

“Oh, nothing. Nothing at all.”

Even though she hurriedly covered it up, the piercing blue gaze lingered on her for a while before losing interest.

That alone was unnerving.

‘What kind of mind does that girl have?’

Luna hadn’t been wary of May for long.

If measured by dates, it was last Sunday.

When she looked at May Escliff’s textbook.

At first, she thought May had simply copied her answers.

Of course, any normal person wouldn’t just copy the right answers.

But May Escliff was foolish.

At least when it came to studying.

She had even asked Kanis once what the multiplication table was.

That wasn’t all.

Even when told to come up to the board to solve a problem, she hesitated and wrote only a few characters before turning away.

These days, professors had seemingly given up on her and didn’t even call her up.

“Since her talent in healing magic is exceptional, let’s not waste her energy on other things,” that was their reasoning.

That reasoning changed when Luna returned to the dorm and opened the textbook to check homework.

“Question 1: 2, Question 2: 15, Question 3: 72… Question 19: 5㎛… huh?”

Question 19, one of the hardest problems.

Even Luna, the top student of the grade, had struggled for over 30 minutes to get the answer.

‘I wrote the wrong answer. I almost got it all wrong.’

She had scribbled 5㎛ in the corner but actually wrote 8㎛ in the answer sheet due to sloppy handwriting.

A common mistake any student could make.

Luna initially thought it was just a mistake and corrected it.

But then she felt a strong sense of unease.

“May also… wrote 5㎛.”

It was certain.

Even if she didn’t know the other answers, she remembered exactly what was written for Question 19, which had taken up much of the space.

It was impossible to forget, because that problem was the first she saw in May’s textbook.

She had thought, “Of course, her answer is exactly the same as mine. She definitely copied it.”

Since that day, Luna had been observing May.

Although it was only for two days, observation was observation.

It started Monday morning during the “Basic Magic Rituals” class homework collection.

Luna secretly looked at May’s textbook while collecting assignments.

It was filled with neatly written answers and solution processes.

Half of them were wrong.

May scored 45 points—the average in Class A.

Claire was surprised.

“What? How did you get 45 points? Last time you couldn’t solve a single problem!”

“You helped me, didn’t you?”

“Eh? Really? Then shouldn’t you have gotten 100 points? That’s totally cheating!”

“No, there wasn’t enough time. She only helped me halfway, up to question 10.”

“…Wow, so only the first 10 were correct. You really are you.”

Hearing that, Luna thought:

‘No.’

That couldn’t be.

‘Yesterday, May wrote all the answers correctly. She’s not a fool—if she wrote them, she would remember at least some.’

Moreover, even though Luna herself had written the wrong answer for Question 19, May wrote the correct one—without showing her solution process.

Even as Claire led her to the cafeteria, Luna kept thinking:

‘Could it have been a coincidence? Maybe she has good eyesight and saw the correct answer? Or maybe she’s really a fool who wrote the correct answer but couldn’t memorize it?’

Honestly, given May Escliff’s behavior so far, the latter seemed more believable.

Then a key figure appeared.

Kanis Escliff herself.

Luna happened to meet Kanis in the hallway and stopped her.

“Excuse me, senior.”

“I don’t take on students.”

And just like that, she was flatly rejected.

Slightly frustrated, Luna snapped:

“I’m not asking that.”

“Then what?”

“Did you happen to help May with her homework yesterday?”

Kanis instead asked, seemingly puzzled:

“There was such a thing?”

Luna froze in place. Kanis tilted her head and walked past her.

Immediately, memories of May flashed in Luna’s mind:

A lifelong poor student.

Neatly written answers showing traces of long effort.

Kind and gentle to everyone.

And the indifferent gaze she sometimes gave when others turned away.

May Escliff was a character full of contradictions.

And the final touch:

“I’m having lunch with my sister today.”

“I’m going to eat with my sister.”

That tedious, repetitive line.

“My sister is amazing.”

“My sister.”

“Sister.”

“Sis…”

“Don’t approach my sister.”