Chapter 53
“Oppa.”
“Snooore.”
“Oppa, are you asleep?”
“Snooore….”
Only the steady sound of breathing continued.
Elli carefully lowered the blanket she had been under and climbed down from the bed without making a sound.
‘He falls asleep so quickly.’
It had been barely five minutes since the two-hour conversation about their memories had ended.
Elli quietly gazed down at Rene’s… no, Oppa Evan’s peacefully sleeping face for a moment, then went to the desk and brought back her wand and the gleaming blue mana stone she had kept in the drawer.
“Vinculum Mentis.”
What Elli had just recited was a fourth-tier mental-link spell that allowed her to connect to someone else’s mind and search through their memories.
It was her own way of uncovering Rene’s secret, something she had been thinking about all afternoon.
The mana stone in Elli’s hand emitted a strong blue light for a brief moment, then lost its glow and turned into an ordinary-looking stone.
At the same time, a faint silver thread appeared, linking Elli’s head to Rene’s.
Elli quietly closed her eyes and began concentrating.
‘Let’s avoid touching Oppa’s personal memories as much as possible… For now, let’s focus only on finding traces of Rene.’
There was only one reason Elli hadn’t told Evan about this plan in advance.
She feared that if he learned of the operation beforehand, the soul of the ‘real Rene’ hiding somewhere in Oppa’s mind might prepare for her mental intrusion.
Before long, they arrived in the mental world of Rene and Evan. It took the form of a long, dark corridor with dim candles lit here and there.
Elli took a deep breath, then began walking.
Various emotions and memories Evan had experienced while in Rene’s body hung like framed pictures along both walls of the corridor.
Elli forced herself not to look at those memories as she passed them, walking down the corridor of memories toward the deepest part of Rene’s heart.
‘……A flutter?’
Just then, one frame among the countless memories, containing an especially intense emotion, suddenly caught Elli’s attention.
‘Oppa felt such a strong flutter while he was in Rene’s body?’
She suddenly became intensely curious. What on earth had he been doing?
Of course, there was no guarantee that the emotion called ‘fluttering’ was necessarily romantic or born of affection.
Perhaps it was the excited flutter of buying new clothes, or even the flutter mixed with relief he might have felt after securing first place in the treasure-hunt exam.
‘…….’
Still, she was curious. What had made Oppa’s heart flutter so much?
After all, Elli had always been a young girl who wanted to know more about Evan as a person.
‘Just taking a quick look wouldn’t hurt….’
Elli cautiously reached toward the frame containing the memory.
‘……Huh?’
But at that very moment, a prickling sensation—as though something had stabbed hard between her brows—made her gaze whip toward the far end of the corridor.
‘Could that be… Rene’s true essence?’
At the far end of the corridor of memories, something black had coalesced like a deep abyss.
A pitch-black darkness so dense that nothing within could be seen, surrounded by a chaotic vortex of incomprehensible emotions swirling wildly like a storm.
Elli involuntarily swallowed. Steeling herself despite her trembling, she cautiously began walking toward the ominous mass.
But it was at that very moment.
“No.”
A cold, resolute voice came from directly behind her.
“Ugh…?”
At the same time, Elli’s body went rigid as stone.
“You… just who are you….”
As Elli concentrated even more mana and barely managed to turn her head, she saw a girl about her height, shrouded in an old robe.
At that moment, a pair of blood-red, sinister eyes gleamed menacingly from beneath the old robe.
“Go back.”
At the same time, the pressure crushing down on Elli’s mind grew even stronger.
‘Could she be trying to reverse the spell?!’
Vinculum Mentis was a spell that connected the minds of ‘both’ parties.
In other words, just as she could look into Rene’s mind, the other party could look into Elli’s memories as well.
And if she used this connected passage… then, in theory, it wasn’t impossible to overload the other person’s mind for an instant and forcibly induce an A.C. state.
“Ugh….”
Even with the mana stone’s assistance, Elli was already at her limit simply maintaining this high-tier mental spell.
Besides, Elli’s field of expertise was elemental magic, not this kind of mental magic. In a pure battle of willpower like this, she had virtually no chance of winning.
“……Haa.”
In the end, just before the mysterious robed girl’s attack could flow back into her mind, Elli had no choice but to sever the magical connection herself.
She wiped the cold sweat beading on her forehead with the back of her hand and stared down at the mana stone, which had gone cold.
‘The mana stone is completely drained….’
Even a top-grade mana stone had been reduced to this… Elli unconsciously bit her lower lip and looked at Rene’s face.
‘Who on earth was that girl?’
She had risked herself to uncover the truth, yet all she had gained was an even greater number of unanswered questions.
Moreover, when she recalled the ominous black mass that had made her head throb just by looking at it and the mysterious robed girl, she began to feel certain that Oppa Evan’s soul transference might not have been the result of a simple, unlucky accident.
“……Oppa.”
Elli felt a profound anxiety she had never experienced before and cautiously reached toward Rene’s sleeping face.
The soft, smooth feel of the cheek beneath her fingertips was, as expected, completely different from Evan Oppa’s.
‘I should discuss this with Erika unni.’
Even after that, Elli silently gazed down at Rene’s face for a long while, then returned to her own place with a deep sigh.
※※
“Hmm….”
Blearily, I opened my eyes as sunlight shone directly onto my eyelids.
As I rubbed my eyes and sat up, I saw Elli’s back as she sat before the vanity mirror, fixing her hair.
“Yawn, what time is it?”
“Oh, you’re up earlier than I expected.”
Elli turned around at once and smiled brightly.
“It’s 8:20.”
“It’s already eight….”
It was a thoroughly ambiguous time—neither a punctual wake-up nor sleeping in.
Scratching my head vigorously and spacing out for a moment, I pulled the hood of my pink rabbit pajamas over my head and shambled down from the bed.
“Did you eat breakfast?”
“No. Of course I was waiting to eat with you, Oppa.”
Apparently having finished fixing her hair, Elli set the silver comb in her hand down on the vanity and rose from her seat.
She then offered me the chair with a gesture and asked,
“Would you like me to brush your hair too, Oppa?”
“No, I’ll just leave it like this.”
Just handling Rene’s thick blond hair was a chore in itself.
Besides, Lia always took care of my hair in the dormitory, so to be honest, I wasn’t confident I could brush or tie it properly on my own.
“Hehe, with the hood on too, you look really cute, Oppa.”
“I keep telling you, it’s Rene who’s cute, not me.”
Well, even objectively speaking, Rene did have a fairly cute face.
I roughly swept my bangs back with my hand and approached Elli.
“Then shall we go eat breakfast right away?”
“Yes, let’s go.”
Elli readily nodded.
Since I was already fairly familiar with the dining room at the Clostermann estate, this time I took the lead and walked toward the door.
“Hey, Oppa.”
As we stepped into the corridor, Elli called to me while closing the door behind her.
When I turned around without a word, she continued with her question.
“Did you happen to have any special dreams last night?”
“A dream?”
Last night’s dream…
“Yeah, I did.”
“May I ask what kind of dream you had?”
“Well, it was….”
It hadn’t been a particularly pleasant dream.
I slightly furrowed my brow and asked Elli in return,
“Why are you suddenly asking?”
“I was wondering if you’d been uncomfortable sleeping.”
“The bed was very comfortable. You don’t need to worry about that.”
Then I added in a resigned tone,
“As for the dream… I was just standing alone in a very dark, spacious room. Nothing much happened.”
“A dark room… Do you remember what it looked like?”
“I’m not sure. I don’t remember it clearly.”
All that came back to me was the unpleasant feeling that it had been extremely dark and cold, along with the strange vastness of the space itself that I had instinctively sensed.
“I see.”
Elli seemed to ponder something for a moment, then lightly laughed as if nothing were wrong and moved closer to my side.
“Could you have had that dream because my room is too spacious?”
“Well, that’s possible. It’s three or four times the size of my dorm room, after all.”
Besides, I had always been the sort of person who dreamed a lot.
Compared with all the ridiculous dreams I usually had, simply standing alone in a dark room hardly qualified as a nightmare.
“Hmm, anyway, I didn’t snore or anything last night, did I?”
“Why? Are you worried?”
“I’d feel bad if I disturbed your sleep because of me, Elli.”
It was only natural to worry. I was, after all, a guest here.
Elli stared at my face for a moment, then chuckled and shook her head.
“Don’t worry, Oppa. You slept as quietly as a baby last night.”
“Really? That’s a relief.”
A sigh of relief escaped me before I knew it.
Then, as I began walking toward the dining room a step ahead of Elli again, she followed close behind and asked,
“You’re going straight to the library after breakfast, right?”
“Yeah. I still have to look through everything I haven’t gotten to.”
“After that, you’ll stop by McCullen’s Antiquarian Bookshop downtown, then head straight to the train station.”
“That’s right.”
Honestly, I had mostly given up hope, but if you didn’t even try, you’d never get any results.
“I hope we find something today.”
I nodded earnestly in response to Elli’s heartfelt wish.
※※
It was four-thirty in the afternoon, and the sun was beginning to sink westward, casting a reddish glow.
“Haa….”
Though it was a little earlier than planned, Elli and I arrived at the train station with heavy steps.
As I sat down on an empty platform bench and let out a deep sigh, Elli forced a bright smile and patted me on the back.
“Don’t be too discouraged. I’m sure there must be another way.”
“I hope so….”
Today’s results were a bust as well. Neither the vast library of the Clostermann family nor the famous McCullen’s Antiquarian Bookshop downtown had yielded a single meaningful clue or lead concerning soul transference magic.
“So there really aren’t any records….”
Then again, if a clear clue had been written somewhere in a book, soul transference magic probably wouldn’t be an eighth-tier miracle spell.
As I hung my head dejectedly, I heard the sound of someone trudging toward us from far away.
“Oh my, Kairos.”
Elli’s voice came at once.
Yeah, I had a feeling it would be him… I let out a deep sigh and raised my head.
“Did you both have a good weekend?”
It was Kairos, carrying enormous bundles of things in both hands.
I didn’t bother answering his greeting, simply staring in fascination at the various kinds of things he held in both hands.
“What, are you setting up shop somewhere?”
“Oh, this? They’re all medicinal herbs my grandfather packed for me.”
“Th-that many?”
Elli’s voice trembled slightly in surprise.
Kairos awkwardly smiled and scratched his head.
“He really loves his grandson.”
Then, as though it were the most natural thing in the world, he plopped down in the seat right beside me.
“By the way, you two got here earlier than I expected?”
“We didn’t have anything else to look at. What about you, Kairos?”
“I came straight to the station as soon as I left my grandfather’s house.”
The two of them then chattered for a while about their weekends.
In the past, I might have felt jealous watching Kairos chat so companionably with Elli, but now I truly didn’t care at all.
I merely propped my chin on my hand and idly began identifying the various herb leaves peeking out from the bundles he had set on the ground.
Pat, pat.
Just then, I suddenly felt a hand on my shoulder.
At the same time, a small pouch was discreetly placed in my hand.
“Elli, your household has a lot of butlers, right?”
“Not that many. My mother likes doing the housework herself.”
‘……?’
It was definitely Kairos who had just placed the pouch in my hand, yet he continued chatting with Elli so calmly, as if nothing had happened.
I tilted my head and turned slightly to the side.
Then I took a quick peek inside the little pouch in my hand.
‘……Moonlight Herb?’
It was definitely the Moonlight Herb. There looked to be at least twice as much as what I had eaten in the cave before.
Feeling a little dazed, I looked over at Kairos’s profile.
Kairos immediately gave me a mischievous little smile, then rapidly blinked one eye and winked at me.
‘……Yuck.’
I was grateful that he had returned the Moonlight Herb, but he was still an obnoxious pain in the neck.