Never Die Villain

Two weeks later.

"Sigh. This is..."

The Magic Department was certainly different from the Knight Department. Now that Ilya thought about it, there was something strangely familiar about spending most of his day sitting through lectures, taking notes, and carrying around more books than he knew what to do with.

It reminded him somewhat of school in his past life.

The Knight Department had been different. There were lectures and written examinations, of course, but much of their education eventually brought them back to physical training, whether that meant swordsmanship, conditioning, sparring, or repeating the same techniques until their bodies could perform them without conscious thought.

Magic demanded far more time behind a desk.

There was simply too much to study. In a strange way, dying and being reborn in another world had somehow brought Ilya back to being a regular student again.

Except this time, the textbooks taught him how to set things on fire.

Every professor seemed to have several books they expected their students to read, and Ilya had already accumulated enough recommended material during the first two days that he was beginning to wonder where he was supposed to find the time for all of it.

Ilya wandered around campus without much of a destination in mind, only realizing after several minutes that he had found himself heading toward the Knight Department.

He hadn’t seen most of his old friends since the beginning of the new semester, and with his schedule completely different from theirs now, there wasn’t much chance of simply running into them between classes anymore.

Perhaps it was time to pay them a visit.

"They should be at the usual spot."

Ilya changed direction and headed toward the area where they normally gathered during lunch.

He still remembered the route without thinking, and despite having transferred departments, everything around him remained familiar enough that it hardly felt like he had left at all.

However, before he could get there, Ilya noticed something unusual.

"...?"

A crowd had gathered farther down the path.

There were far too many students for it to be an ordinary argument or sparring match, and more people were arriving by the second.

Several professors were already forcing their way through the crowd, while the students nearest the center stood in shock, and everyone farther back kept asking what had happened.

Ilya moved closer, squeezing between several students until someone finally noticed who was pushing through and reluctantly stepped aside. Ilya continued forward, growing uneasy at how pale some of the people coming from the other direction looked, until he finally reached the front.

Then he stopped.

"...."

Someone was lying on the ground.

A young man wearing the Knight Department uniform lay completely still, surrounded by several professors and students who didn’t seem to know what to do. Ilya only needed a glance at the face before he recognized him.

"...Charles?"

Charles was one of the people Ilya had spent most of his first semester with.

Their group wasn’t particularly large, usually only seven or eight of them gathering together between classes, and whenever they had enough free time, they would disappear somewhere secluded around campus to hang out, talk about whatever came to mind, or smoke where the professors were unlikely to catch them.

That was exactly where Ilya had been heading.

He had thought he might find Charles there with the others, probably wasting time in the same place they always did.

Instead, the first familiar face he’d come across since returning for the semester was lying motionless on the ground.

Someone beside him said something, but Ilya didn’t catch it. He kept looking at Charles, at the professors gathered around his body and the students standing farther back, until there was no point trying to interpret the scene any other way.

Charles was dead.

"Ilya..."

Someone placed a hand on his shoulder.

Ilya turned and found Gustav standing beside him, looking far more shaken than Ilya had ever seen him.

Gustav was also part of their small group, although unlike most of the others, he belonged to the Magic Department rather than the Knight Department.

Despite that, he regularly joined them at their usual secluded spot to smoke and waste time.

Ilya had actually asked for Gustav’s schedule during course registration, hoping they could arrange at least a few classes together now that he was transferring into the Magic Department himself.

Unfortunately, Gustav had several remedial subjects to make up for after his mediocre performance the previous semester, and their schedules hadn’t matched even once.

"Let’s go somewhere else, Ilya. Okay?"

Gustav grabbed him by the arm and started pulling him away from the crowd before Ilya could ask what was going on.

Ilya looked back at Charles as they left, keeping his eyes on the body until the growing crowd eventually blocked it from view.

* * *

"Hoo..."

Smoke drifted through the air as Ilya exhaled, holding a cigarette between his fingers. Gustav had brought him to their usual secluded spot, far enough from the main paths that there was little chance of anyone overhearing them.

"You seem to know something." Ilya turned toward him. "What the fuck happened? Why is Charles..."

"It was suicide."

"Huh?"

Ilya thought he had misheard him.

"You can’t be serious. Charles would...?"

Of everyone in their group, Charles had been one of the last people Ilya would have imagined ending up like this.

He was one of the more cheerful ones among them, always talking shit, making jokes, and frequently teasing Adrian before Adrian eventually dropped out of the academy.

Nothing about the Charles he remembered made it easy to imagine him reaching the point where he would willingly throw himself from a building.

"Ah..."

Then Ilya remembered Helene.

She had been like that, too.

"...."

The words Ilya had been about to say died down.

He bit his lip and took another drag from his cigarette instead. After what had happened with Helene, he knew better than to assume he understood what was going through someone’s head simply because they laughed often enough in front of other people.

"Why would he...?"

Gustav remained quiet for several seconds before finally looking at him.

"It’s because of you."

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