SRS 14

“What’s wrong with you guys? Was the night walk fun?”

Mikael asked his friends, who looked frustrated and confused. Their irritation grew at that question, and they clenched their fists before slowly removing their clothes, which had become filthy with dust from running around the cliff.

Yohan wearily changed his clothes and sat on the bed.

“…We went looking for you because we couldn’t find you.”

“For me?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“We were worried you might be late for roll call.”

“I see.”

Only then did Mikael understand why his friends looked at him so fiercely, and he made an unfamiliar expression.

“I didn’t know you cared about me that much.”

“We weren’t concerned about you, we were concerned about getting demerits because of you.”

“But in the end, didn’t I get demerits because of you guys?”

“……”

He had a point. Although they had gone looking for him because Mikael came back late, he hadn’t actually been late for roll call, nor had he asked them to search for him. Looking at just the results, Yohan and his friends had gone out on their own to find Mikael and ended up causing trouble, so they had nothing to say. As they closed their mouths, Mikael got up from his bed and opened his desk drawer.

“But if you went out because of me, I apologize. I’ve lived alone for so long that I didn’t think to tell you before going anywhere.”

His calm and gentle voice penetrated their eardrums with a pleasant resonance. Mikael pulled out a stack of papers from the drawer and held them out to his friends.

“How about looking at this to calm down?”

“What is it?”

“Notes I’ve compiled over the past three years while taking herbology lectures.”

“…!”

Suhyeok and Kylus’s eyes lit up. Yohan was also interested and approached the two, then flinched.

Wait a minute.

“…You said the past three years?”

“Yes.”

“…Three years?”

“Yes.”

Mikael looked at him, seemingly asking what the problem was. Meanwhile, the other two friends who understood Yohan’s point turned pale and stared at Mikael just like Yohan. Suhyeok’s voice trembled.

“You’ve been attending for three years? Here?”

“That’s right.”

“But you’re still a first year?”

“I didn’t have enough attendance days.”

“……”

Suhyeok slowly took a step back, and distanced himself from Mikael.

“Ahem.”

Kylus turned around and pretended to enjoy the scenery by staring at the window.

Yohan was shocked at how someone could fail three years in a row, but at the same time felt sorry for Mikael, who despite enduring this school for three years still had five years left until graduation, and his eyebrows drooped.

Mikael must be someone who enjoys hell.

As he was pitying him, Mikael, who was holding the stack of papers, waved his wrist.

“Aren’t you going to take it?”

“No? Of course we should take it.”

Suhyeok quickly approached again, took Mikael’s notes, and smiled brightly. Yohan thought as he watched this.

Is this how nimble and materialistic hunters are supposed to be?

The attitude reversal was too absurd for someone who had just been looking at Mikael like an unknown life form, showing both pity and fear.

“Thanks, Mikael.”

“What are you thankful for?”

“By the way, if you’ve failed for three years… don’t you think about quitting school?”

“Not for now, at least.”

Why?

He almost asked, but Yohan swallowed the question that had risen to the tip of his tongue and nodded. After all, which student enrolled in Fantasiademia without a story of their own?

In this place, you couldn’t carelessly pry into each other’s information or past until each person felt like talking. That was also how you protected your own past.

“I see. I’ll root for you.”

“Thanks.”

“Where were you in the evening? We went out to the garden to look for you, but you weren’t there. Instead, we saw some strange illusion. The school turned into a cliff.”

When he told him about what happened at night in a disgruntled voice, Mikael laughed, seeming amused. He seemed to find the ordeal Yohan and his friends went through quite funny.

Yohan narrowed his eyes, and Mikael waved his hand once.

“…Originally, Fantasiademia has masterless illusions wandering around after 8 PM. They get increasingly violent starting at 10 PM in one-hour intervals, and only go back to sleep at 3 AM. You guys experienced one of them.”

“Masterless illusions? Who were their original masters?”

“Who knows? The professors? They probably created illusions and forgot about them.”

“……”

At Mikael’s answer that flowed out without a moment’s hesitation, Yohan rubbed his eyelids.

He had no idea what professors at Fantasiademia were supposed to be.

Is this what schools are normally like…?

Are professors normally such unreliable people…?

As he felt bewildered without hiding his confusion, Mikael comforted Yohan.

“Don’t worry, Yohan. After about a month, you’ll quickly adapt to this school too.”

“……”

It wasn’t really helpful, to be honest.

However, a month later.

Yohan couldn’t deny that Mikael’s words had been right.

˚ʚ♡ɞ˚

“Kyaaaah! Save me! Save me!”

4 AM.

The usual wake-up time in Fantasiademia new students dormitory, where if you sleep more than four hours a day, your partnered griffin comes to bite out your heart, so you have no choice but to get up.

Ignoring someone’s scream that rang out in place of an alarm, students gathered in small groups at Griffin Hall to attend their 0-period class.

“Oh, Yohan. Look at the sky. Isn’t that Melek?”

At Suhyeok’s words, Yohan tilted his head back to look at the sky. A familiar face was flying through the air, clutched in a griffin’s talons.

“You’re right. It’s Melek.”

“That Melek. He went to bed before midnight yesterday, so I guess he ended up sleeping more than four hours.”

“How unfortunate. Let’s hope his heart doesn’t get bitten.”

Yohan expressed his regret and put his hands together in prayer. Since there was an effect that greatly enhanced recovery within the school, he wouldn’t die just from having his heart bitten a little. It would just be painful.

Click.

When he opened the door marked Room 304 among the many rooms in Griffin Hall, a griffin with bright yellow eyes flapped its wings and rushed at Yohan.

-Purrr!

“Yes, yes.”

Yohan gently stroked the griffin as it acted affectionate, spinning twice in place and bumping its forehead against him repeatedly. Perhaps thanks to steadily infusing it with divine power over the past two weeks, its wings and feathers had a much more lustrous sheen.

“Kyaaaah!”

“Hey, hey! Don’t bite! Don’t bite me!”

“Whoa! Shun! I’m not your food! Don’t look at me like that!”

“No! No! Don’t let go! Hey! Don’t let go!”

Of course, only a few students, including Yohan, were having such tender moments with their griffins.

Even after a month had passed, most students who still hadn’t befriended their griffins were suffering, getting their heads pecked and faces smacked by wings from griffins that still wouldn’t obey their masters.

“…Has it already been a month?”

Yohan murmured quietly, lost in memories.

Seeing that he was completely unfazed by the sight of a friend being dragged by a ferocious griffin’s talons all the way to the window, being toyed with as the griffin decided whether to drop him or not, made the passage of the past month feel all too real.

When he first enrolled, he thought he’d never be able to adapt to this school, but just as Suhyeok said about humans being animals of adaptation, Yohan and his friends had somehow gotten used to sleeping only four hours at night, making up for the lack of sleep with naps during the day, riding griffins and doing gymnastics in the sky, and even fighting the professor’s summons in Ability class.

It was a really frightening phenomenon.

“…I feel like my sense of normalcy is disappearing.”

The boundary between what was normal and what was bizarre was gradually fading. Beginning to understand Mikael’s state of mind—why he always attended classes with such a detached face and enlightened expression, looking bored—Yohan sighed and climbed onto the griffin saddle at Suhyeok’s suggestion that they should get going.

Clop!

The two flew out the window side by side, heading for the Sky Garden. Not long after flying on their griffins, they encountered a familiar back of a head up ahead.

“Kyle!”

Suhyeok was the first to call out to him. The young man who had struggled no matter what he tried to befriend his griffin, but finally succeeded in taming it through intimidation, looked back. Kylus’s red eyes narrowed with annoyance.

“Don’t talk to me, Im Suhyeok.”

“Are you still sulking? About what happened the other day?”

“I told you not to talk to me.”

“Kylus. If you sulk for so long over something so trivial, you won’t be popular, you know? Let this hyung give you some advice…”

“Who said you’re my hyung?”

After a month of the two young men who shared a room bickering, it now just seemed like everyday noise.

Knowing they’d make up once they turned around anyway, Yohan didn’t bother with it and looked around, clicking his tongue. Mikael was nowhere to be seen today either.

“Mikael’s not around today either.”

Suhyeok noticed the same thing and mentioned it.

“It’s obvious. He went out alone early in the morning.”

“Will he come to class today?”

“That’s up to Mikael. The guy skips class like once every three days… I’m worried he might fail again.”

After spending about a month with Mikael, the students of Room 304 could now understand why Mikael had to repeat three years.

Their friend disappeared at the drop of a hat and skipped classes at the drop of a hat, as if asserting that he was a free spirit.

Even when asked where he went, he never told them, and the professors didn’t mention or scold Mikael’s absences either. They’d clearly adapted to this happening so often.

“…He’s really going to fail again.”

Worried about his friend’s fourth year of failing, Yohan left a concerned mumble and increased his flight speed.

Finally arriving at the Sky Garden and dismounting from their griffins, Yohan and his friends discovered someone who’d arrived first and grimaced.

“…How rude.”

Vice Principal Serdik Agor scolded the students who frowned at the sight of him. Regardless, the students hurled jeers with looks that said, “Why are you here?”

“The Vice Principal of Fantasiademia should guarantee students’ sleep time!”

“Guarantee it! Guarantee it!”

“The Vice Principal of Fantasiademia should regulate the professors’ irresponsible teaching methods!”

“Regulate it! Regulate it!”

The sight of students seizing the opportunity to even hold a protest would have been unimaginable a month ago, but this school was sufficient to turn students into uncivilized barbarians with bad manners in just a month, so when you thought about it, the Vice Principal had it coming.

The Vice Principal sighed at the students’ fierce protests and snapped his fingers.

“Mmmph!”

The eyes of the students struck with a silence curse grew fierce. Yohan realized anew why the Vice Principal had been able to cast curses on students so readily on the day they first met, and looked at him.

In any case, the fact that someone of his stature had visited the Sky Garden meant he had come on business.

Come to think of it, he’d said they could resubmit withdrawal applications after a month.

Recalling the old memory and wondering if today was that day, Yohan waited for the Vice Principal to speak. Only after the restless atmosphere settled did the Vice Principal reveal the purpose of his visit.

“From now on, we will conduct a qualification exam for formal admission.”

“…!”

“What?”

“An exam?”

“So suddenly?”

At the unexpected announcement, students looked at the Vice Principal in surprise. Yohan was equally shocked.

Regardless, Serdik Agor with his expressionless face continued with what he had to say.

“I will cast a madness curse on the griffins. Come to the banquet hall riding an uncontrollable griffin. That is the content of the qualification exam.”

At the Vice Principal spouting such insane words with a strange expression, Yohan wondered if he should hold a protest right now with his friends demanding that Serdik Agor wake up.