Why Is Someone as Noble as Me in This Wretched State…

Here in Luminus, it was hardly surprising for students to fall into comas.

That was because every student at this school was a novice mage forever yearning to advance, and dangerous things capable of leading that desire to improve in the ‘wrong’ direction were scattered everywhere.

Sealed grimoires, forbidden herbal concoctions, illegal magic cast out by the Tower of Hierarchy, and so on…. The joke that [Luminus students’ graduation assignments are written with water from the River Styx.] circulated so casually that falling into a coma was simply one of the everyday status abnormalities Luminus students suffered from, like a cold among the Blanks.

‘Of course, a first-rate mage like me would never make such a clumsy mistake!!’

Without realizing it, I gnawed on my thumbnail as I looked out the window. Through my active Dark Vision, I saw the faculty, led by the vice principal, rushing toward the infirmary.

‘How… how did this happen?’

Ms. Justina had clearly said ‘the eldest son of the Friesna family.’ When I asked, “Evan?” she had tried to brush it off with a look that said she’d made a mistake, but still.

Besides, as far as I knew, the vice principal had never personally intervened over a single student falling into a coma. There was no need even to mention the number of faculty members who had ever been mobilized like that.

To cause a commotion on that scale in the middle of the night… yes, someone of the stature of the eldest son of the Friesna family—the son of the school’s honorary chairman and a member of one of the Empire’s Seven Great Families—would have to collapse.

‘But I’m right here…?’

Somehow, I had ended up in the first-year dormitory, but I, Evan Friesna, was definitely in this room. Even though my hair had turned golden and I was about thirty centimeters shorter, ‘I’ was unquestionably alive and breathing here.

‘I’ was here, but ‘my body’ had been found in a coma.

My heart began to lurch again. My breathing grew rapid, and my field of vision narrowed. The skin beneath my tightly clenched thumbnail throbbed as though it were being pricked by needles.

“……Um, Rene, are you awake?”

A voice reached me at that moment.

I gnawed hard on my thumbnail, then pulled it from my mouth and turned toward the voice. A cold voice slipped out on its own.

“I told you not to talk to me so casually.”

This was also a kindness for her sake. If she learned that the person she had casually approached as though they were close was actually the eldest son of the great Friesna family, she would be quite shocked.

“You’re grumbling again~”

But despite my considerate kindness, the first-year on the bed got up with disheveled hair and staggered toward me.

She sidled right up against me as naturally as could be, gazed blankly out the window, then tilted her head and looked down at me.

“Can you see anything?”

‘……What a pathetic fool.’

Dark Vision was the most basic spell among first-tier magic.

The fact that this woman standing beside me couldn’t even use such a simple spell despite having been enrolled for four months proved that she was a hopeless underachiever. Well, it was obvious enough from the fact that she couldn’t even use a private room.

“Nothing.”

I snapped back coldly and returned to the bed. It wasn’t as though staring intently out the window now would change anything.

I resolved to meet the vice principal as soon as dawn broke and was about to lie down when the woman casually plopped down on my bed. I stopped halfway and glared at her through narrowed eyes.

“What are you doing?”

“I thought that if you couldn’t sleep like that, maybe I could sleep beside you for old times’ sake~”

“……What?”

I stared blankly at the woman for a moment, then recoiled in disgust and shook my head. After that, I turned my back to her and lay down.

“Sharing a bed is against school rules. Get back to yours.”

Were idiots who couldn’t even use private rooms incapable of learning the school rules as well?

I snapped irritably and pulled the blanket all the way over my head. I wanted to escape this horrible night already.

“Hup.”

“Ghk.”

Just then, an incredibly heavy pressure pulled down on my shoulder.

It felt as though my body had been caught in a closing iron door. As I struggled beneath the blanket, a teasing voice whispered into my ear.

“Getting shy~ You must have been all dejected after the knights gave you a thorough scolding, right?”

“W-wait….”

“Come on, you can call me ‘big sis’ like before~”

This time, something soft and enormous pressed against my cheek through the blanket. With the pressure already squeezing me and this added weight, I couldn’t even breathe properly anymore.

“Stop… stop it…!”

The words came out only with difficulty. No matter how hard I flailed my arms, the pressure didn’t disappear. Instead, it only grew softer and closer.

Thinking I was really going to die, I shook my head with all my strength. Only then did the horrible pressure crushing my cheek loosen slightly.

But the grip around my shoulder still didn’t release me, and an irritatingly affectionate voice continued to linger by my ear.

“There, there. Let’s go night-night with big sis now.”

And exactly five seconds later.

“Zzz….”

An absurdly peaceful breathing sound began to reach me.

Asleep? In just five seconds? Seriously? Beyond bewilderment, I was utterly aghast. A disbelieving laugh escaped me before I knew it.

‘I’m really going to lose it.’

Even more absurd was the fact that, while the regular snoring lingered in my ear, the arm stubbornly wrapped around my shoulder showed no sign of loosening.

Amid the jumble of disbelief, bewilderment, and irritation, I tossed and turned until I finally found a position in which I could sleep, uncomfortable though it was.

I let out a sigh of relief and was about to close my eyes when a sudden surge of anger made me fling them open.

‘Why am I in this wretched state….’

My specially made bed was naturally ten times more comfortable than this cheap excuse for a bed. And, naturally, there was no crazy woman constantly tormenting me.

My grievance blazed into indignation, and my indignation into violent fury.

I clenched my fists and gritted my teeth. Holding back a frustrated sigh, I swore to myself.

‘Just you wait, first-year… I’ll repay tonight’s humiliation a hundred, a thousand times over!’

With the snores that resurfaced whenever I was about to forget them serving as a lullaby, the worst night of my life grew deeper and deeper.

※※

“……”

The pressure that had tormented me all night was no longer there.

I slowly lifted my eyelids, vigorously scratched my tousled hair, and kicked away the blanket that had covered even my face. The dazzling sunlight pouring through the window made me frown involuntarily.

‘That crazy woman….’

Fortunately, she wasn’t in my bed.

I cautiously turned my gaze toward her bed, but it was just as empty.

Rubbing my eyes, I slowly sat up. As expected, there had been no miracle; my still-golden hair cascaded over my knees with a rustle.

I stared blankly down at my hair for a moment, then lifted my head with a deep sigh. I turned my gaze toward the old clock hanging on the wall and glared at it.

‘It’s nine.’

The minute hand was fixed precisely at twelve. How peculiar.

I habitually brushed my bangs back and started to get out of bed….

“Wait, nine o’clock?”

I looked up at the clock once more. The minute hand, which had been stopped at twelve, tipped slightly to the side at just the right moment. Click—the time became 9:01.

‘Yesterday was definitely Tuesday….’

Today was Wednesday, of course. It was 9:01 on Wednesday morning.

And the students of Luminus… at least as far as I knew, all followed a regular schedule of seven class periods running from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.

“This is insane!”

Had I really overslept? Evan Friesna, of all people?

Even more absurd was the fact that the crazy woman who had acted so familiar last night and treated me like a pillow by hugging me had completely ignored me at such a crucial moment.

Suppressing my panic, I ran to the bathroom, cast an oral-cleanliness spell, and filled the washbasin. At the same time, I stuck one foot into the bathtub and blasted hot water directly onto the top of my foot.

‘Wait, this isn’t even my body. Do I really need to go this far?’ ……The thought briefly crossed my mind, but my absurd sense of responsibility as a noble still outweighed it: I must never neglect my grooming, no matter the situation.

The red line my father had drawn ended with oral-cleanliness magic. I finished cleaning my mouth by rinsing it roughly, then immediately began washing my face. I tossed the cheap soap into the corner of the tub and used one foot to scrub the other instead of washing it properly.

“Damn it, damn it!”

I hastily dried off and burst out of the bathroom, only to find that the clock read 9:04. I yanked open the wardrobe beside my bed.

‘This is insane….’

But good heavens, unbelievably, it was completely empty.

Did commoners really have so little? With a sigh that mixed pity and contempt, I glanced at the wrinkled uniform I had carelessly draped over the back of a chair last night. I pounced on it and shoved my head into the shirt without even properly undoing the buttons. My fingers moved rapidly as I barely managed to fasten them, and finally I forced my legs into the crumpled trousers.

“Gasp….”

It was 9:06. I kicked open the dormitory door and ran outside.

The empty corridor was steeped in nothing but chilly silence. I practically sprinted along it, desperately trying to recall Wednesday’s second-period class.

‘Professor Macmillan’s Transformation Magic class!’

The classroom was Classroom C on the second floor of the West Wing. I raced down the stairs two at a time. At last, my dizzy vision cleared, revealing the vast first-floor lobby before me.

“Huh? Rene?”

And there, standing tall in the middle of it and stretching luxuriously, was Ms. Justina.

“Ah.”

It felt as though my breath had been knocked out of me. Goosebumps rose all over my body, and cold sweat trickled down me.

My feet stopped dead of their own accord. I froze in place, every muscle rigid. Ms. Justina tilted her head, slowly blinked her large eyes, and approached me.

“Where are you rushing off to in such a hurry?”

She wasn’t immediately angry. But that made it even more frightening.

That was because Ms. Justina was stricter and scarier than anyone when it came to behavior that disregarded a teacher’s authority—in other words, being late.

I could only repeat meaningless groans like “Ah….” and “Uh….” as my shoulders trembled. By then, Ms. Justina had come right up to me and leaned her face close.

“I asked you, where are you going?”

Ms. Justina asked again. This time, she even smiled gently. Damn, that was even scarier.

I felt as though I were sitting on a bed of nails. Even though I knew I had to come up with some excuse, my lips had gone completely dry and refused to move.

Ms. Justina stared down at me for a moment, then suddenly clapped her hands and showed me an even brighter smile.

“Were you perhaps on your way to meet Kairos?”

But that was… uh, truly not what I’d expected.

“What?”

I asked blankly. Why was that bastard’s name coming up here?

And at that very moment,

“Ms. Justina.”

A very… very, very familiar voice rang out from behind her.

“Oh, Kairos! You’re here early?”

Ms. Justina smiled brightly and moved to stand beside me.

Beyond the space she had vacated, what entered my unobstructed view was…

Jet-black hair, keenly gleaming silver eyes, and a height so tall it was almost insolent for a first-year,

“……Freshman?”

That psycho bastard.

Then his impassive eyes settled on my face, and his eerily gentle voice pierced my ears.

“Why did you come all the way out here instead of waiting in your room like usual?”

My mind reeled.