Chapter 28
The two of them went up the stairs. Noxia walked over to the bookshelf where books related to architecture were kept.
“They’re here, Young Master. Please take as many as you’d like.”
“Thank you.”
When Noxia spoke in a low voice, Jade smiled faintly. At the sight of his smile, her heart churned by habit. Jade’s gaze slid downward toward Noxia’s hand.
“Your hand has healed, I see?”
“Yes, Young Master. It was only a scrape, after all.”
The palm she had scraped when she fell in front of an alley last week had healed cleanly thanks to diligently applying ointment. As time passed, the memory of that incident had also gradually faded and grown dim.
“That’s a relief.”
Jade whispered. His deep blue gaze bored into Noxia. She was captured by that look.
‘…This is strange.’
Noxia had grown up being told she was perceptive. In truth, she was quite sensitive to other people’s emotions.
So even in this moment, she couldn’t possibly be mistaken. No matter how desperately she wished it were merely her imagination.
‘This is really, really strange.’
Jade Lanon had clearly said that he absolutely had not been following her since last week.
And so Noxia had accepted that their repeated encounters up until now were nothing more than coincidence. She had decided to acknowledge that she had been swept up in excessive self-consciousness.
But now—those eyes. Was even that gaze just her overactive imagination? Was everything truly just delusion? Had she once again been caught up in a ridiculous, arrogant misunderstanding?
‘Why is he looking at me like that?’
As if he had feelings for her.
‘Why with such desperate eyes….’
No—“feelings” was an insufficient word for that gaze.
‘How many times has he even seen me?’
This was only their fourth meeting. Even if she added up all the time they had spent talking over those meager encounters, it wouldn’t amount to more than an hour. Then where in the world could such fervent emotion possibly be coming from?
Before Noxia could make sense of this bizarre phenomenon, something even stranger occurred.
“Ugh…!”
“Miss Dekan?”
A horrific headache suddenly crashed over her. It was the same kind of pain as when her head had been viciously stabbed without warning last week while she was sitting across from Jade in a teahouse.
Noxia staggered, clutching her forehead, and Jade, startled, widened his eyes and reached out to catch her.
She ended up falling straight into the man’s arms, but Noxia couldn’t even spare attention for that right now.
<I told you to run!>
A hallucinated voice rang through her mind—without any warning, like a natural disaster or a nightmare.
<Run, Noxia Dekan. Before he breaks you!>
It was a scream as vivid as if someone were grabbing her by the hair, yanking her head back violently, and shrieking right into her ear.
<Ah, it’s already too late. You’re caught in a trap again. No—this time you really have to run. Run, run…>
Was this what it would feel like if hundreds of razor-sharp nails scraped relentlessly against her skull? Gasping as if she were being strangled, Noxia clamped both hands over her ears.
The incomprehensible screams gradually faded. Yet the sobbing voice left a damp residue hanging in the air.
“Miss Dekan? Miss Dekan. Noxia, are you all right?”
Jade Lanon, holding her close, whispered urgently in a low voice. It was a frightened voice—fear that went beyond mere concern.
Noxia lowered her hands from her ears. Slowly, she raised her head. Her gaze, different from usual, turned toward Jade. When their eyes met, he swallowed a dry breath. His jet-black pupils dilated widely.
“…Ah.”
At that moment, Noxia’s irises held a pale blue hue—like a clear lake, or bitterly cold frost.
The next instant, she lost consciousness in the man’s arms.
Noxia was in darkness. She turned a corner. Beyond it stood a woman—silver hair gleaming white as if sculpted from snowflakes, extremely pale irises, unusually pallid skin, and a precarious gaze.
Whether she was real, an illusion, or a nightmare, the woman reached out her hand toward Noxia.
Noxia sank even deeper into the darkness.
Two people were talking. No—strictly speaking, it could not be called a conversation.
Conversation implies mutual communication, and though the two were together, separated by a wall of disconnection, they could not truly converse.
One person was sitting collapsed on the floor, weeping bitterly, while the other tried to console them. The crying woman finally lifted her head and glared at the man opposite her.
“I hate you.”
The woman confessed. The man’s face twisted.
“You said you loved me.”
“My heart has changed.”
In the next moment, the woman raised a sword and stabbed it forcefully into her own neck. As bright red blood poured out, the man screamed.
“Farewell, my hateful love.”
Leaving behind the man howling like a beast, the woman crumbled in a pool of blood. Where she disappeared, only an even deeper despair remained.
Then darkness returned once more, and the vision was swallowed by unconsciousness.
The sound of a pounding heartbeat echoed—far too close.
Noxia struggled to open her eyes. Only then did she realize that she was being carried in someone’s arms.
The heartbeat sounded so close because her head was resting against another person’s chest. The heart throbbed right beside her ear.
She lifted her blurred gaze to check the face of the person holding her. A deep blue color, like a winter night lake, came into view—thick eyelashes, a straight nose, and lips as graceful as if painted.
“Miss Dekan, can you hear me?”
Jade Lanon asked anxiously. Noxia slowly nodded. Her head was still spinning.
“If it’s hard, sleep a little more. There’s no need to force yourself awake. You can close your eyes again, Noxia.”
Jade whispered her name as if singing a lullaby, and drawn in by his sweet low voice, Noxia closed her eyes once more. Soon, her consciousness sank back into darkness.
When she opened her eyes again, she was lying on a bed. It was an unfamiliar bed.
Noxia stared blankly at the ceiling, quietly trying to grasp what kind of situation she was in.
“This is the infirmary of the Central Library.”
At that moment, a gentle low voice murmured beside her. Noxia turned her head and found Jade Lanon. He was sitting on a chair, watching her with a pale face.
“You collapsed on the third floor. Do you remember?”
“Yes…?”
“It’s fortunate that the library building has an infirmary. Normally, it’s used to take care of students who collapse from excessive studying in the reading rooms…”
Jade trailed off as if choking on his words. Noxia blinked, her eyes filled with confusion. She still found it difficult to fully understand the situation.
“It’s fortunate that this happened while I was with you. If you had collapsed while you were alone, it could have been truly dangerous.”
“…I see. That’s a relief. Thank you, Young Master.”
A relief? Was collapsing suddenly a relief? Really? Then why had she collapsed in the first place?
Noxia couldn’t understand. She had always been quite healthy. Even as a child, she had rarely fallen ill. So why…?
She tried to recall the moment just before she collapsed. When she forced herself to dig deeper into her memory, a sharp pain rang through her head. Noxia scrunched her eyes tightly and pressed her forehead.
“Ugh…”
“Miss Dekan, are you all right?”
Jade asked with a desperate expression. He unconsciously reached out toward her, then, as if remembering something, clenched his teeth and withdrew his hand. Distracted by her headache, Noxia missed the gesture.
“I don’t know. My head hurts so much.”
She muttered. As the headache gradually subsided, she lowered her hand with a serious expression.
“This is strange. I’m not usually this frail. I’ve barely even caught a cold in my life…”
Noxia murmured as if talking to herself. Jade’s brow twitched. He quietly clenched his fist, as if holding something back.
“Have you perhaps been overexerting yourself lately?”
“No, I don’t think so. I’m not sure. It’s true that I had a lot to worry about starting work right after moving, but not enough to suddenly lose consciousness.”
“You never know. Even if your mind thinks you’re fine, your body may feel differently. Fatigue might have accumulated without you realizing it.”
“Well, that could be. I’m not an expert, so I don’t really know.”
Noxia sighed. It was embarrassing—this was the first time in her life she had ever fainted. And it felt even more unsettling because she had no idea why it had happened.
‘Accumulated fatigue?’
Had she really been working hard enough to collapse on the job? Hand on her conscience, she couldn’t say that was the case at all.
‘And if I collapsed just four days into the job because of overwork, that would mean something is seriously wrong.’
Either there was a serious problem with her health, or there was something wrong with a workplace that exploited its employees.
But Noxia swore she was healthy, and the librarians at the academy were not cruel seniors who would work a brand-new hire to the point of losing consciousness within the first week.
To begin with, a position as an assistant librarian—one that guaranteed punctual clock-out times—did not demand such extreme physical or mental sacrifice.
Noxia was keenly aware of this, and the more she thought about it, the more confused she became.
‘Wait.’
Suddenly, she thought of something else and went pale. When she jolted upright, Jade also sprang to attention.
“Miss Dekan, why all of a sudden—”
“Madam Artmon—does Madam Artmon know that I collapsed? What about the other librarians? What should I do? They must be worried…!”
Noxia floundered with a distressed expression.
She felt sorry that her seniors might be worrying because of her, embarrassed at the thought of becoming known as the new hire who fainted in her first week, and most of all, anxious that the news might reach Karnen through them.
‘Everyone knows that Karnen wrote my letter of recommendation. What if they heard I collapsed and reported it to him right away?’
She didn’t suspect that Karnen was deliberately keeping tabs on her. But that was simply how powerful figures were. Even without being asked, people would bow and scrape and bring them information on their own.
‘It’s not like Karnen would blame the other librarians or disadvantage them just because I collapsed at work… but still—he wouldn’t do that, right? I want to believe he wouldn’t.’
