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Chapter 62
Jaeyllin hurriedly waved her hands to decline Sasha’s suggestion.
“Uh, n-no. It’s fine. Just… just tell me what you’re doing.”
Before Sasha could even open her mouth, Stefan spotted Jaeyllin and greeted her first.
“Oh! Puppy, when did you get here?”
“Uh, hi? I just got here.”
Stefan quickly plopped down in the seat across from Jaeyllin.
“Hey, Puppy. I’ve got this huge problem, you gotta hear me out. We have to open a booth for the festival—what should I do? It’s best to go with something you like, right? Since I like bread, how about we open a bakery? Doesn’t that sound good?”
Jaeyllin hesitated for a moment before speaking.
“St-Stefan, can you make bread?”
“Nope.”
It was a very confident answer for someone making the suggestion.
“I-I can’t make bread either.”
“Then Adrian… of course he can’t make it either.”
Jaeyllin nodded, agreeing with Stefan’s conclusion.
Stefan’s shoulders slumped.
“Do we have to make the bread ourselves to sell it?”
Sasha, who had been quietly listening to the two, finally spoke.
“Huh? Then what?”
“You could just make a contract with the academy cafeteria.”
“Ohhh, so we’d get the pastries and drinks from the cafeteria, and our club members would just handle the selling? Wow! Sasha, that’s brilliant!”
“Right?”
“Whoa, I can’t believe it. You’re actually being helpful for once! Jaeyllin, let’s do a bakery for the festival. How about ‘Stefan’s Milky Way Bakery’?”
Before Jaeyllin could even answer Stefan’s excited proposal, Sasha cut in.
“Actually, that’s what our student council already decided to do!”
“Huh? Wh-what?”
“We already signed a contract with the cafeteria to supply the goods for the festival.”
Stefan just stared at Sasha, dumbfounded.
“T-then why did you even tell me about it?”
“Hmm. Just to let you know there was that option?”
“Ughhhh, Sasha, youuuu!”
Even though Stefan was practically fuming, Sasha calmly replied.
“How is it? Lionel came up with the idea. Pretty good, right?”
“Not good at all! What does the student council have to do with the cafeteria anyway?!”
“Why do they need to have a connection? You were planning to run a bakery that has nothing to do with astronomy too, weren’t you?”
“What do you mean nothing to do with it? I told you—it’s called the Milky Way Bakery! Don’t you know the Milky Way? It’s literally astronomy!”
“But in the end, it’s still just a bakery.”
With nothing gained from the conversation, Stefan closed his mouth and grumbled under his breath.
Sasha only shrugged primly and bit into the bread in her hand.
Realizing it was hopeless to rely on Sasha, Stefan began complaining to Jaeyllin.
“Ughhh, what should we even do? Puppy, give me some ideas. Adrian doesn’t care about this stuff at all—he just told me to handle everything myself.”
Jaeyllin had just bitten into a piece of bread when Stefan suddenly called her out, making her flinch.
Truthfully, Jaeyllin wasn’t very interested in the festival either.
She’d only just learned it was even happening, and she had never once been to anything called a festival before.
She had no idea what people even did for fun at one. How was she supposed to come up with ideas?
But she was a member of the astronomy club. She didn’t want to shirk her duty.
So Jaeyllin nervously opened her mouth to add even a small opinion.
“Um… since, since we’re the astronomy club, maybe we should do something related to stars.”
“Exactly! Then let’s make our booth star-related this time!”
She’d only repeated something Sasha and Stefan had already mentioned, but Stefan reacted as if Jaeyllin had just come up with a stroke of genius.
‘Stars… what could we do with stars?’
Jaeyllin fell into thought again.
She pictured the stars scattered across the night sky.
Though they rose and set every day, it wasn’t easy to make time to go out and truly observe them. Yet whenever she happened to glance up at the night sky after a long, exhausting day, the stars were always there, keeping her company.
Countless stars drifted across the heavens, each carrying its own story, whispering comfort.
Who wouldn’t like such a marvel? Humans could only revere and praise the beauty of nature.
Even just showing people the sky where stars seemed to pour down like rain would be enough, Jaeyllin thought.
But she wasn’t sure if her idea was really good.
After hesitating briefly, she made up her mind and spoke.
“What if… what if we recreated the constellations?”
Sasha and Stefan tilted their heads, not quite understanding, and looked at her.
“L-like this?”
Awkwardly holding a dagger, Jaeyllin thrust it forward in a clumsy stance.
Lionel, who was watching with a serious face, shook his head.
“No. Not at all.”
Once Jaeyllin had built up enough basic stamina, Lionel had started teaching her how to use a blade.
At first, Jaeyllin had simply been happy to spend time with him.
But ever since he began giving her lessons with a weapon, she’d started to feel like Lionel was wasting his time.
Even if she learned, could she ever properly strike down a monster?
“…No, keep your spine straight. Arms a little lower…”
Whenever a monster was in front of her, her whole body froze. She could barely move a finger.
Even aside from that, her current form with the dagger was pathetic.
If a monster actually lost to her at this level, it should probably give up calling itself a monster.
“…llin?”
Lionel’s voice cut through her spiraling thoughts.
“Jaeyllin!”
Only then did she realize he’d been calling her. She quickly answered.
“Y-yes!”
“You were daydreaming, weren’t you?”
“N-no, I wasn’t.”
Lionel looked down at her with a neat smile.
He smiled gently, but his golden eyes seemed to pierce right through her. In the end, Jaeyllin had to confess.
“Y-yes, I was daydreaming. I’m sorry.”
Her voice shrank with guilt.
“Guess my explanation was boring.”
“N-no! That’s not it at all!”
Jaeyllin waved her hands, denying it, but his slightly fallen eyebrows didn’t lift back up.
“Really, it’s not that! I was just… just worrying that even if I learn now, I won’t be able to use it in real combat. If a monster actually gets hit by me, doesn’t that mean it should probably give up being a monster?”
Jaeyllin said timidly, glancing at him.
“What?”
“I mean, look at me. My skills are this bad—what monster would ever get stabbed by my dagger? Unless it suddenly lost its mind and ran into it on its own…”
“So you were thinking all that instead of listening to me?”
“Y-yeah…”
A small laugh escaped Lionel’s lips. It grew louder and louder.
Jaeyllin stared, confused. Was what she said really that funny?
“Hmm… Jaeyllin, do you not trust me?”
“N-no, I do!”
“Then you can do it.”
“It’s not that I don’t trust you, I just… don’t trust myself.”
“But I trust you. So if you trust me, shouldn’t you also trust yourself, since I’m trusting you?”
“B-but…”
“My goal isn’t as big as you think. All you need is to dodge once, then counter. If you can just buy that little bit of time, you’ll survive until someone else arrives. And I’ll make sure you can do exactly that.”
“O-okay…”
Jaeyllin still doubted her own ability, but since Lionel insisted, she had no choice but to try to believe she could.
“And the fact you couldn’t focus means I didn’t make the lesson interesting enough, right?”
Before Jaeyllin could protest, Lionel stepped closer.
“Now, get back into position.”
Jaeyllin adjusted the practice dagger and awkwardly repeated the stance.
She tensed her body and inhaled sharply.
Lionel’s fingers lightly touched her chin, lifting it. His hand soon fell away.
“Eyes forward.”
He stepped behind her and pressed her shoulders down with his hands.
“Shoulders to the ground.”
He moved to her side, pushing her arms lower.
“Arms below your shoulders.”
Then his hands wrapped around hers, adjusting her grip on the hilt. He guided her other hand to support the pommel.
“Your grip strength isn’t enough. You have to use both hands to hold it. Otherwise, you’ll drop it or get pushed back with one strong hit. Always be careful.”
“Y-yes.”
Satisfied with her posture, Lionel stepped back.
“Now, can you remember this stance?”
Jaeyllin nodded.
“Good. From there, use your shoulder strength to thrust upward.”
She did as told, thrusting upward with her shoulder power.
Keeping the form intact while moving the dagger wasn’t easy.
“Very good.”
A smile and praise followed. She thought she’d messed up a little, but apparently Lionel found it acceptable.
“Keep repeating that move until it feels natural.”
“Eh?!”
She had heard him, but reflexively asked again. Until it felt natural—how many times would that be?
In the end, Jaeyllin wasn’t released until she had swung the dagger enough times to satisfy Lionel.
Even as they parted, he reminded her to practice daily, even on days they didn’t meet.
The next morning, when Jaeyllin woke up on her boarding house bed, she couldn’t even wiggle a finger.
She’d only trained with Lionel for about an hour, but her shoulders throbbed like crazy. It felt less like fighting monsters and more like someone had stabbed knives into her shoulder muscles.
She thought she’d rather go three days without sleep drawing blueprints—it would have been much easier.
