The Academy’s Deceased Ate It All

"I'd spent so long living comfortably and freely that I forgot. In the end, I am bound to you, and my fate is to make your shadow my dwelling place."

Sitting beside Yu Ji-hyeok on a second chair pulled up next to his, Minerva murmured the words half to herself.

Now nearly the same size as Yu Ji-hyeok, Minerva's horns and tail looked absurdly oversized — and because of that, she had to brace her tail against the floor like a prop to keep the horns from tipping her over.

"……"

Watching the two of them, Lee Ye-eun was silently taking pictures and video on her phone.

The deathly serious look on her face could've been mistaken for an anguished artist on the verge of completing a masterpiece.

"Explain it in more detail. Given everything coming up, I need to understand exactly what's going on right now."

"I am aware of that. Hmm, where and how should I begin…"

"I already know what you went off to do, so don't bother dancing around it."

It was a look of mingled resentment and reproach, as if to ask why she had spilled everything to him.

Catching the cold weight of that stare, Lee Ye-eun felt her heart drop into her stomach.

Though not at all in the way Minerva had intended.

"…Then I shall start there. In short, I moved to cut down the ones on the list. A-and don't misunderstand. I didn't intend to kill all of them — only the ones directly threatening your life."

Minerva glanced at Yu Ji-hyeok almost defensively as she went on.

She knew well enough that even he had his reservations about killing fellow humans.

But instead of disappointment, his eyes carried something closer to guilt, and Minerva's expression grew puzzled.

"Are… are you not angry?"

"Why would I be?"

Yu Ji-hyeok turned the question back on her.

"Minerva, I'm not some pleasure-killer who enjoys taking lives. But I'm not so soft-hearted that I'd extend mercy to people scheming against me and the people around me, either. If you hadn't moved, I'd have done it myself."

"M-mm…"

"So why would I be angry with you? If anything, I should be thanking you. …You ended up with blood on your hands cleaning up after me — blood you never should've had to spill."

Seeing the dejected look on Yu Ji-hyeok's face, Minerva grew visibly flustered, hands fluttering at a loss.

Lee Ye-eun kept her focus on her phone screen, saying nothing.

"Mm, let me carry on with the explanation. I moved to cut down the ones on the list. After fusing with your shadow, it costs a touch of mana, but I can move with great speed. I worked down the priority order, and after dealing with the first two, I felt my mana running low. So I thought I'd draw a little — just a little — through our connection. But then…"

Minerva raised one small, fragile child's arm and held out her palm.

A hand that had once held enough overwhelming force to crush anything it caught now looked like it might struggle even to flatten a marshmallow.

"The moment I drew on your mana, my body changed like this… as I said before, I am your shadow itself, so it seems I'm affected by your current state."

"…So that means, conversely, if I get older, you'd take on an older form too — or if I drank, say, a potion that changed my sex—"

At Yu Ji-hyeok's appalled mutter, Minerva nodded.

"Likely so. While I draw solely on my own mana, it should be fine, but the instant I borrow from you, my form will shift accordingly."

He thought for a moment, then nodded.

"…Right, I more or less get it. Honestly, it's a relief we found out this way. If we'd shrunk like this in the middle of an emergency, we'd both have been in serious trouble."

"Mm, just as you say. In this body, I can still handle mana well enough, but moving about is a hassle. My limbs are short, so my reach is shrunk to nothing, and worse — I cannot grip and swing a weapon properly."

Lee Ye-eun swallowed quietly at the sight of the two children chattering away like sparrows.

They were having a serious discussion with serious faces, but in her eyes it looked like nothing so much as two kids putting on an adorable show.

"So about that…"

Yu Ji-hyeok stole a hopeful glance at her form, then continued in a deliberately casual tone.

"Wouldn't it be better to change back first? A neutralizer would take care of it in no time. We'd return to normal on our own eventually, but the sooner the better…"

"Don't even try, you."

Minerva looked at Yu Ji-hyeok as if she found him laughable.

"Your shallow little scheme is as plain to me as something on the palm of my hand."

She let out a small giggle.

At that, Lee Ye-eun barely managed to swallow an excited sigh.

In her girl-form, Minerva was laughing with the back of her hand pressed to her lips, like a child imitating an adult.

"You seem to forget, but this name — Minerva — once referred to the being who stood at the very apex of dragonkind."

Minerva tipped her chin up smartly.

"In other words, to me, my old body and this one are equally small and inconvenient. So I lose nothing here. If anything, I get to see and enjoy what I never had the chance to before — my childhood form. I cannot remember the last time I felt so delighted."

If she'd delivered the same lines in her original form, the sheer presence and mana would've made her seem imperious and aloof beyond words.

But coming from a Minerva in a child's body… from Lee Ye-eun's perspective, she just looked like an adorable little kid putting on airs.

'I was originally going to step out so the two of them could enjoy themselves…'

If she was honest, Lee Ye-eun didn't want to leave this spot.

In fact, she wanted to jump right into the middle of it and play along with them.

Having grown up an only child for as long as she could remember, she had a soft spot for little kids — her face would relax into a smile around them without her even realizing.

Even knowing perfectly well in her head that these two weren't actually children but adults, her guard slipped without her noticing.

"Ack…!"

Catching herself mid-thought, Lee Ye-eun jolted in alarm and gave her own cheek a quick light slap, as if to snap out of it.

Nothing was more foolish than being taken in by appearances.

Steeling her heart that way, Lee Ye-eun started taking deep breaths.

"Haaa…"

Earlier, she'd told Yu Ji-hyeok she wasn't jealous of Minerva — but she knew perfectly well that, on some level, she was.

That jealousy brought a creeping sense of crisis and unease with it, and at the bottom of it all, a quiet pang of hurt and irritation toward Yu Ji-hyeok.

'No, seriously — who does that woman think she is? She talked about lopping his head off, ripping out his heart, killing him outright, and now she's clinging to him like nothing happened, all "you this, you that," cooing in his ear? And Yu Ji-hyeok's just as bad. The nerve — she's parked in his shadow, and frankly if she ever decided to kill him, he wouldn't be able to do a damn thing about it. So why does he trust her, lean on her like that? By that logic, shouldn't I come first? We went through hell together when Sbeungali got his claws into us. The things I did to drag him out when he was sniveling in the grip of that trauma… jerk. Bastard. I hope he trips on flat ground and smashes his nose…'

She was muttering away in her head, struggling to hold onto her composure, when she felt something tap-tap her arm.

It didn't feel like a hand — something blunt — and when she looked down to check, it turned out to be Minerva's tail.

"Excuse me, sorry — could I trouble you for some water? With my body like this, getting up is a bit of a pain."

Minerva quietly drew her tail back, looking sheepish.

Normally Lee Ye-eun would have ignored her, but with that look — a little girl peering up at her with big, round eyes — there was no way she could refuse.

Almost as if she was under a spell, Lee Ye-eun poured a cup of water and handed it over, and Minerva accepted the paper cup with a word of thanks and started gulping it down.

"…Mph?!"

"Ah!"

When she tipped her head back to drink, the weight of her horns suddenly threw her off-balance, and she tipped sideways, flailing.

Yu Ji-hyeok, right beside her, lunged in alarm to catch her — and ended up toppling over with her.

"No!"

Lee Ye-eun threw herself across the gap faster than she ever had in her life and caught the both of them with her own body.

There was a clatter, and a dull pain bloomed across her head, back, and chest, and her face screwed up at the impact.

But almost immediately, she felt something squirming on top of her chest, and her eyes flew wide open.

"Ugh…"

"H-how could I, of all beings, end up in such a sight…"

Yu Ji-hyeok and Minerva.

From a certain angle, the two of them looked like they were curled tight against her chest.

The wriggling pair on top of her froze her solid where she lay.

"Ye-eun, are you okay? Looked like you hit your head first."

"……"

Yu Ji-hyeok peering up at her, worried.

And Minerva, face flushed, looking thoroughly mortified.

'A-aah…!'

Lee Ye-eun's mind drifted clean away.

In one corner of her brain, a thought kept rising up: honestly, would it be so bad to stay like this? Why not just scoop them both up and take them home?

"…Right, let's talk later. We're almost out of time."

Xiao Jie, one of the Six Stars, set the phone down as she said it.

She glanced around. Apart from Choi Jun-hyeong and Yoon Seul-hye, every member of the Six Stars was in the room.

Hailey, who doubled as the strike-team commander.

Maxim Goldenberg, who spent more time padding his fortune than playing the part of a hero — so much so that you could barely catch a glimpse of his face.

And the unnamed Arab man who'd taken the place of Manchas, listed as missing and effectively presumed dead.

By order of Choi Jun-hyeong, their de facto leader, everyone but Yoon Seul-hye had been on what amounted to lockdown, told to keep their heads down.

What had he dragged them all in here for, anyway? Just as Xiao Jie was thinking it—

"Ah, you're all here."

—Choi Jun-hyeong pushed the door open and strolled in with his usual swaggering gait.

Behind him stood an enormous stranger and an old man with ramrod-straight posture.

"Hey — what's so important that you had to round all of us up?"

Hailey kept his discomfort barely in check as he asked carefully.

"Yeah, yeah. Nothing major. Just figured I'd see all your faces — there's something I needed to tell you in person."

Choi Jun-hyeong said it as he dropped into a chair, while the old man closed the door and planted himself in front of it like a guard.

Xiao Jie shot an uneasy sideways look at the enormous man, who had positioned himself right beside Choi Jun-hyeong.

"…Who are those two?"

"Xiao Jie, I'll explain everything. Just hold on."

Choi Jun-hyeong drew a large cigar from his jacket as he spoke.

He lit it with a thoroughly stylish flourish, then glanced at the enormous man and the old man and asked,

"Care for one?"

"……"

"I'll pass."

The huge man said nothing and only stared, while the old man's reply was as curt as his posture.

His expression suggested he hadn't really expected anything else, and Choi Jun-hyeong turned to look at the people seated at the table.

"All right — thanks for coming, I know you're all busy. So I'll skip the pleasantries and get straight to it. The reason I dragged you all in here…"

He blew a stream of smoke into the air.

"It's because we've got a rat among us. Not just any rat, either — one who came in planning to sell us out from day one."

CRASH!

Hailey, instantly incensed, slammed his fist down on the table and shouted,

"What?! Goddamn — I'll tear the bastard apart! Who the hell is it?!"

His glittering eyes swept across the table, and the others quietly averted theirs.

For all the posturing, he was — Choi Jun-hyeong aside — the most physically dangerous man in the Six Stars.

"…Huh?"

Then, noticing that Choi Jun-hyeong's gaze had settled on him, Hailey paled and stammered out,

"H-hold on. You can't seriously be suspecting me…? Why would I do something like that?!"

"You're right, Hailey. You're not the type."

At that, Hailey's face flooded with relief.

Choi Jun-hyeong gave a small shrug.

"Truth is, I know we've got a rat, but I couldn't figure out who. So I stayed up all night trying to work out how to flush them out…"

Without warning, the enormous man behind him swept his arm.

For an instant Xiao Jie didn't know what was happening — until she felt something spatter across the left side of her face, and registered, a beat later, that it was blood.

Last of all, she registered that the head of the unnamed Arab man was hanging from the giant's hand.

"Aaaaaaaagh!"

"Hk!"

The moment Xiao Jie's scream tore out, Maxim Goldenberg — a man whose build matched the name — flipped the entire table over.

He hurled himself forward and drove his fist toward the stranger with everything he had.

There was a sickening crunch as fragments of the shattered table flew everywhere, and the headless corpse went crashing to the floor at an unnatural angle.

"…And this is the Association's strongest force."

"Insane…"

Untouched after taking Maxim's punch head-on, the man muttered the words almost lazily.

A beat later, Maxim too became a headless corpse, his body sagging to its knees.

"What the hell?! What in God's name are you doing?!"

To Xiao Jie's hysterical shriek, Choi Jun-hyeong — still calmly seated, still smoking — answered,

"Cleaning house."

"W-what did you say?"

"I told you, Xiao Jie. I couldn't tell which of you was the rat, who the traitor was."

He flashed a grin.

"So I'm just going to kill the lot of you. Easier and cleaner that way. Right?"

"You son of a BITCH—!"

Hailey roared and launched himself at Choi Jun-hyeong.

The enormous man cut him off, and Hailey ground his teeth with a grating crunch and snarled,

"I'll kill both of you — I'll grind you into paste!"

With that, Hailey threw a mana-clad punch, and the giant threw his own back.

A grating metal screech rang out like a bomb going off.

In a panic, Xiao Jie screamed, clamped her hands over her eyes and ears, and curled up where she sat.

More crashes followed.

Someone's scream.

Only after a long while did Xiao Jie slowly open her eyes, and find that there was now one more corpse missing both arms and its head.

"H-hiik…"

The enormous man was standing right in front of her.

"P-please. Spare me. Sir, please, I'm begging you…"

"……"

"I-I was wrong. They promised me a huge reward later, so I just—!"

Without a word, the man raised his leg.

The sound of something being crushed reverberated through the room, and Xiao Jie spoke no more.

The unnamed man, Maxim, Hailey — and now her, joining them in the same condition — her body slumped lifelessly forward.

"Phew…"

Even with four people dead in the space of a few moments — comrades he'd spent years with, no less — Choi Jun-hyeong was wheezing with laughter.

"That's a load off my chest."

But there was one thing he hadn't noticed.

A World Tree seed planted by Yu Ji-hyeok was inside the meeting hall, and through it, every moment of what had just happened was being relayed back to him.

And that besides Yu Ji-hyeok, there was one other person who had caught the whole thing.

"A-aah…"

Yoon Seul-hye couldn't keep her trembling body upright, and ended up sinking down onto her backside.

In her hand was the phone she'd been on, only moments ago, with Xiao Jie.

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