Shattered Innocence: Transmigrated Into a Novel as an Extra

Chapter 1112: An Answer He Didn’t Have

Lucavion stared at Vitaliara for another moment.

Her tail remained perfectly still.

Suspiciously still.

He decided against commenting on it.

Instead, he pulled the rest of his coat free and crossed toward the narrow wardrobe beside his bed. The dark fabric slid from his shoulders, revealing the simpler clothes beneath: a fitted charcoal shirt with the collar loosened from the evening, dark trousers, and sleeves that had crept slightly upward around his forearms during the walk back. A thin line of pale skin showed beneath the open collar where the Academy coat had protected him from most of the night wind.

—Shhk.

He settled the coat over its hanger.

Vitaliara followed every movement from his shoulder.

Lucavion felt the stare.

”You know,” he said, ”for someone who wasn’t curious, you have remained remarkably invested in this conversation.”

[Hmph.]

He hung the coat.

”Compelling argument.”

Another hmph entered his mind with enough force to deserve punctuation of its own.

Lucavion turned.

Vitaliara had already jumped from his shoulder onto the edge of the desk. She sat with her front paws together, tail curled around them, luminous eyes fixed upon him as though she had been appointed to some ancient tribunal and found the defendant disappointing.

He leaned one hip against the wardrobe.

”Well, since you are so completely uninterested, Elara offered to teach me magic.”

Vitaliara’s ears twitched.

Lucavion smiled.

”Formal magic, before you become unbearably precise about terminology. Apparently knowing how mana behaves does not automatically grant me the ability to understand why scholars have given every part of it six different names.”

[Hmph.]

His eyebrows rose.

”What?”

Vitaliara stared.

”...”

Her gaze sharpened.

Then her voice reached him with the grave patience of someone explaining an obvious truth to a particularly slow child.

[You always train by yourself.]

Lucavion blinked.

[When you wished to learn the sword, you trained. When you wished to understand your flame, you experimented. When you could not understand your first core, you sat beneath the stars until I became tired of watching you stare at them.]

”That sounds supportive.”

[I was bored.]

”Ah. Naturally.”

[You read when you require information. You could easily ask professors when you require an answer. You could study this yourself.]

Lucavion folded his arms.

Vitaliara’s tail flicked once.

[You are making excuses.]

A beat passed.

Then the corner of his mouth rose.

”Well.”

He straightened away from the wardrobe and walked toward her.

”If a beautiful woman personally offers to spend her evenings teaching me, should I insult such generosity?”

Vitaliara’s eyes narrowed.

Lucavion placed one hand against his chest.

”I have principles.”

Her pupils contracted into thin slits.

”Several, in fact.”

[Did you actually study?]

The question arrived flatly.

Lucavion paused.

”...Yes?”

Vitaliara looked around the room.

Her head turned toward the bed.

Then toward the desk.

Then the empty side table.

Her gaze returned to him.

[Where are your books?]

Lucavion opened his mouth.

Nothing came out.

Vitaliara waited.

The room seemed to become rather quiet.

Somewhere beyond the window, wind rubbed softly against the glass.

—Fsssshh.

Lucavion’s eyes moved toward the desk.

One notebook.

Several Academy notices.

His examination schedule.

A half-finished page containing a sword diagram.

Nothing resembling the introductory magical text Elara had specifically told him to borrow before leaving.

His expression changed.

Elara’s voice returned with painful clarity.

”First, you will memorize the terms we covered tonight.”

Ley Conduction Principle.

Structural pressure.

Structural strain.

Supporting vectors.

Stabilization lattices.

Invocation cores.

Primary channels.

Supporting channels.

Anchors.

His eyes widened slightly.

Then another part followed.

”Second, you will reproduce the [Mana Light] circle on paper.”

Fifteen times.

Fully labeled.

And the introductory text containing the very terminology and formation he was supposed to review was—

Somewhere inside the Western Library.

Because Elara had specifically told him to find a copy before leaving.

”You can borrow a copy downstairs before you leave.”

Lucavion stared into empty space.

”Oh, shit.”

Vitaliara tilted her head.

The realization continued unfolding with exquisite cruelty.

He had walked through half the Western Library while admiring floating books.

He had mocked students for possessing self-writing quills.

He had spent several minutes studying enchanted stairs.

He had even stopped beneath a tree to interrogate his own hand like it had committed treason.

At no point during this magnificent display of intellectual discipline had Lucavion remembered to borrow the book required for his homework.

His palm rose.

—Pap.

It covered his forehead.

For a heartbeat, he remained that way.

Then his shoulders moved.

Once.

Again.

A laugh escaped between his fingers.

”Ha...”

Another followed.

”Hahaha...”

[What?]

Lucavion lowered his hand enough to look at Vitaliara.

She was glaring again.

That only made it worse.

He laughed harder.

”Nothing.”

[Grrr...]

The sound entered the room as much as his mind, a low feline vibration rolling from somewhere deep inside Vitaliara’s small chest.

—Rrrrrrrr.

Lucavion’s laughter broke again.

”Oh, don’t look at me like that.”

Her ears flattened.

[You disappeared for an entire evening to study with that woman and returned without the thing you were studying.]

”When you phrase it like that, it sounds irresponsible.”

[It is irresponsible.]

”I prefer distracted.”

[By what?]

The question reached him quickly.

Lucavion’s laughter faded at the edges.

His hand was still raised near his face.

He looked at it.

The amusement remained for another second, then softened into something harder to place.

Why had he laughed like that?

The forgotten book was ridiculous, certainly.

Ridiculous enough to deserve a laugh.

Yet something about the laughter had felt strangely loose, almost abrupt, as though the pressure inside his head had searched for the first opening available and escaped through it.

He slowly turned his palm toward himself.

Today had contained rather more than expected.

Selphine’s questions earlier had already dragged old pieces of his education closer to the surface. Then Elara had spent an entire evening feeding him terminology, making him draw formations, watching his hands, changing diagrams whenever she thought he had grown too comfortable.

And his body had answered her.

Again.

Lucavion rubbed his thumb across the side of his index finger.

The gesture came naturally now that he knew to look for it.

A quill should have been there.

That part had appeared before tonight.

During the oral examination.

Isolde’s name had unsettled him first, enough that his hand had slipped beneath the desk before he properly understood what he was hiding. Later, when Selenne asked about auxiliary chants, his fingers had curved around empty space and something old had tried to write through them.

Ink.

Paper.

A lesson.

His own smaller hand.

Then Elara had confronted him afterward.

”And then your fingers moved as though you were holding something.”

He had possessed the same excellent answer then that he possessed now.

He didn’t know.

Lucavion’s thumb stopped.

Tonight had simply taken that irritating little mystery and given it teeth.

His hand remembered structures.

His wrist anticipated strokes.

Then Elara touched him, and something far deeper than handwriting had reacted.

The faint pressure behind his temple stirred at the edge of awareness.

Lucavion let the thought go before it could sharpen.

’Later.’

He had already lost one argument with his own head tonight.

There was little honor in requesting a rematch immediately.

He turned away from the desk.

Then dropped backward onto the couch.

—Whump.

The cushions sank beneath him.

His head landed against the padded arm, one leg hanging partly over the edge while the other remained stretched toward the floor.

A dark blur crossed his vision.

—Fwmp.

Vitaliara landed squarely on his stomach.

Lucavion grunted.

”You know, there are other places to sit.”

[I know.]

She made herself comfortable.

Then she glared down at him.

Lucavion looked back.

Her expression was quite impressive for a creature whose entire face could comfortably fit in his palm.

[What was that?]

He knew what she meant.

The laughter.

Perhaps the hand.

Perhaps the strange mood clinging to him since he entered.

Lucavion rested one arm behind his head.

”Dunno.”

Vitaliara’s ears moved.

[You don’t know?]

”Yep.”

Her eyes narrowed further.

Lucavion raised his right hand above him and opened his fingers toward the ceiling.

The lamp beyond them blurred between the gaps.

His hand looked ordinary.

It had looked ordinary during the examination too.

Isolde had spoken.

His fingers had moved.

Selenne had asked a question.

His hand had searched for a quill.

Elara had changed a formation.

His wrist had supplied an answer his mind lacked.

Then she had taken his hand—

And something inside him had recoiled hard enough to show him a vision he still could not properly remember.

Different moments.

Different triggers.

Somewhere between them, there had to be a connection.

His mind kept reaching toward one.

It kept coming back empty.

Lucavion lowered the hand onto his chest beside Vitaliara.

”Yes,” he murmured.

For once, the answer felt irritatingly complete.

”I don’t know.”

The words settled more easily once they had been spoken.

Vitaliara remained on his stomach, staring down at him with the expression of someone who considered ignorance a personal failure on his part. Lucavion endured the judgment for several breaths before reaching up and pressing one finger against the center of her forehead.

—Poke.

Her head moved back a fraction.

[Grrr.]

”There. Much less frightening.”

Her paw slapped his finger away.

—Pap.

Lucavion smiled.

The movement came naturally enough this time.

Whatever waited behind those missing memories had survived years without his understanding it. Another night was unlikely to offend it. If his hand wanted to remember dead lessons, it could remember them. If his head wished to punish curiosity with headaches, then the two of them would simply have to renegotiate their relationship sometime tomorrow.

Preferably after breakfast.

He had learned long ago that the future possessed an irritating habit of arriving whether invited or not.

There was little point greeting it exhausted.

’Besides, I got something out of today.’

His gaze drifted toward the hand resting over his chest.

Old magical habits remained.

That was useful.

Elara had found a way to draw some of them out.

Also useful.

The fact that being touched by her had apparently caused his mind to throw a small rebellion was...

Lucavion’s mouth twitched.

’An exciting bonus feature.’

Excellent.

Far more manageable when phrased that way.

Vitaliara continued staring at him.

”What?”

[You are doing that thing.]

Lucavion raised an eyebrow.

”What thing?”

Her tail slid once across his shirt.

[The thing where your face becomes annoying.]

”My face is naturally gifted.”

[Your thoughts are noisy.]

”That sounds like a problem on your side.”

Her claws pressed lightly through his shirt.

Lucavion reconsidered the wisdom of antagonizing something currently positioned over several vulnerable organs.

”Which I sympathize with deeply.”

[Hmph.]

Peace restored.

For approximately three seconds.

Lucavion turned his head toward the desk.

His examination schedule lay beneath one corner of the abandoned notebook, the parchment catching the edge of the mana lamp. He had been staring at that miserable thing for days now, though the number of unchecked entries had finally become pleasantly small.

His eyes moved down the list from where he lay.

Mana Control Trial.

Done.

Magical Theory.

Done, assuming the Academy did not suddenly develop standards.

Tier II.

Done.

The oral examination had already extracted its preferred amount of suffering.

His gaze reached the final line.

Etiquette Evaluation.

Friday.

21:00.

Lucavion blinked.

Then blinked again.

’That’s it?’

He reached blindly toward the table.

His fingers found only air.

The schedule remained several spans away.

Lucavion looked at Vitaliara.

She looked back.

”Would you—”

[No.]

”I hadn’t even asked.”

[You were going to.]

He clicked his tongue.

What an abuse of telepathy.

Lucavion shifted beneath her, stretched one leg toward the desk, and hooked the nearest chair with the side of his boot.

—Scrrrk.

The chair scraped closer.

Vitaliara’s ears flattened at the sound.

”Civilization.”

He reached across, caught the parchment between two fingers, and brought it over his face.

The answer remained the same.

21:00.

A small laugh escaped him.

”Well.”

That changed things.

The whole day was his.

There was no lecture hall waiting at dawn, no examination parchment threatening to reveal another magnificent hole in his education and more importantly no proctor asking him to explain a magical concept whose name sounded suspiciously like someone had assembled it by throwing scholarly terms down a staircase.

Just etiquette.

At nine in the evening.

Lucavion considered that.

Etiquette was apparently important. Very important, according to nearly everyone who had spoken about the examination so far. Academy had a tradition?

That was new....

Though, he could worry about that tomorrow evening.

A book had been forgotten to get borrowed from the library.

He could get it tomorrow.

Elara had assigned terms to memorize?

The morning still existed.

Fifteen [Mana Light] circles?

His hand apparently loved drawing things without permission these days. Perhaps it could finally make itself useful.

Lucavion folded the schedule once and rested it against his chest.

’See? Plenty of time.’

A particularly reasonable conclusion.

His headache had nearly vanished.

His hand behaved.

A copy remained safely inside the most heavily protected library in the Academy rather than, say, burning in a battlefield somewhere.

Everything was fine.

More importantly, tomorrow possessed possibilities.

He had an entire day free until the Etiquette Evaluation. He could collect the book, figure out exactly how much of Elara’s homework qualified as cruel and unusual punishment, perhaps train a little, perhaps annoy someone important if opportunity presented itself.

The Academy had rarely disappointed him on that last front.

Lucavion looked toward the ceiling.

Warm mana-light spread across the plaster in a soft amber circle, trembling faintly whenever the wind pressed against the window.

—Fsssshh.

His thoughts wandered toward the morning waiting beyond it.

A book to retrieve.

Magic to study.

A hand that might remember something useful.

Elara, who would undoubtedly have several comments prepared once she realized he had walked through the entire Western Library and forgotten to borrow the book she told him to get.

And eventually an examination dedicated to determining whether Lucavion could behave like a civilized human being.

His lips curved.

’Tomorrow is going to be a banger.’

Vitaliara shifted against his chest, circling once before settling into the hollow beneath his ribs.

[Your standards for entertainment remain concerning.]

”That’s why I’m never bored.”

He closed his eyes.

The unanswered questions still existed somewhere behind them.

For tonight, that was where Lucavion left them.

Tomorrow could have the rest.