Chapter 221: Hand in Hand
Chapter 221: Hand in Hand
When morning came, the courtyard of the Academy was still under a freezing blanket of snow. The sky was covered in thick, gray clouds, and large snowflakes continued to drift down heavily.
The focus of the crowd heading to class wasn’t on exams or the bizarre snow. Everyone’s eyes were locked onto two completely opposite people walking right down the middle of the path.
Iris, the cheerful, hardworking, and universally loved member of the Student Council, was walking with her face flushed red from embarrassment.
She kept her head down, trying to avoid the stares around her. The reason for this was very simple: her hand was tightly interlocked with Cassian’s.
Iris was so embarrassed by this situation that her steps tangled together. Cassian, however, viewed holding Iris’s hand as the most ordinary, logical action in the world. He walked tall with a blank stare, not showing the slightest reaction to the storm of whispers or the fingers pointing at them.
"Hey... Who is that guy?" an upperclassman whispered, unable to believe his eyes.
"I don’t know... But isn’t that Iris next to him?! The girl from the Student Council!"
"No way! Isn’t that the guy? The devil of the freshmen! The psychopath who butchered his own team during the exam and wreaked havoc in the forest!"
"Devil?! Uwaaa... He really looks terrifying. He has an aura like he’d freeze you if you got close."
A few female students whispered, giggling: "Can you believe it? Iris is always so sweet and polite... So it turns out her type is a total psychopath! This must be what they mean when they say opposites attract."
Iris nervously turned her head slightly toward Cassian.
"Cassian..." Iris murmured, watching the snowflakes drifting in the air. "Why is it still snowing?"
Without slowing his pace, Cassian tilted his head slightly to the side. Snowflakes fell onto his pure white hair and melted.
"I like the snow," he said simply, in a flat tone.
"Uhh... I see..." Iris said, pouting slightly. "But... Is it going to be like this forever?"
"Yes," Cassian said, without any hesitation, very clearly and directly.
Iris’s eyes widened slightly. "For the whole year?! But... wouldn’t it be nice if it was sunny sometimes, if the flowers bloomed?"
Cassian couldn’t fully grasp the girl’s concerns. He turned his head to Iris.
"Are you cold?"
Faced with his overly literal logic, Iris let out a deep, misty sigh. "No... That’s not what I meant. Anyway, never mind..."
They continued walking. However, this small, peaceful walk of Iris’s came to a horrifying end as they approached the Academy’s massive wooden doors.
Iris froze in her tracks when she saw the familiar silhouette standing right in front of them.
Myra.
Iris’s best friend, Myra, was clutching her bag to her chest, her jaw dropped, her eyes wide as if they would pop out of her head, staring at Iris and Cassian’s tightly interlocked hands. The look of shock on her face was something you’d only see if she witnessed an alien invasion.
Iris’s brain short-circuited that very second. The redness on her cheeks had now spread all the way down to her neck.
In a panic, she quickly snatched her hand back from Cassian’s, as if she had been burned.
"I’m sorry, Cassian!" Iris stammered hurriedly, not even looking back. "I have to... I have to go right now! See you later!"
The moment she said that, she lunged forward like a storm, forcefully grabbed the arm of a shock-frozen Myra, and disappeared from sight, dragging her friend behind her.
Cassian just stared blankly at his suddenly empty left hand. Even though he couldn’t make sense of why Iris had just had a panic attack, he shrugged and continued walking toward his class. *’Social dynamics... Are too exhausting,’* he thought to himself.
---
**A few minutes later, 2nd Year Classroom**
"I- I- IRIS!"
Myra had grabbed Iris by the shoulders and was practically shaking her like a milkshake at their desks. Her face was bright red with excitement and curiosity. "Who was that guy?! I couldn’t believe my eyes! You! With a guy! Holding hands!"
Dizzy, Iris whispered, "Shhh! Myra, please lower your voice, the whole class is looking at us," she pleaded, covering her face with her hands.
But Myra wasn’t about to stop. Pulling Iris’s hands away from her face, she repeated her question, this time in a more threatening whisper: "You are going to tell me right now. Who. Was. That. Devilishly handsome but equally terrifying guy?"
Iris averted her gaze. Desperately, she mumbled in a trembling voice: "Cassian..."
"Who is Cassian?! Who is Cassian, Iris?!" Myra was getting even more excited by Iris’s embarrassed demeanor. She shook her again, continuing the interrogation.
Dizzy, her world spinning around her, Iris stammered: "Uhhhh... My childhood friend..."
"Liar!" Myra shout-whispered. "I know all your friends, all your family! Even when I came to the duchy, you never told me you had a childhood friend named ’Cassian’! Where did this guy come from?!"
"It’s a bit complicated..." Iris groaned, wanting to bury her head in the desk.
"How is it complicated?!" Myra demanded, crossing her arms. "Who walks around holding hands like lovers with their childhood friend at the crack of dawn in front of the whole academy?! Don’t give me that ’we’re just friends’ fairy tale."
Iris swallowed hard. She stared at the wooden surface of her desk. She didn’t know how to explain those warm, weird feelings in her heart to Myra.
"Cassian is... someone very special to me," was all she could say.
Myra’s eyes sparkled, a cunning smile appearing on her lips. "Special? How special? In a romantic way?"
Iris’s cheeks caught fire once again. "I don’t know..." she said honestly, her voice trembling. She wasn’t sure how Cassian felt about her; it was hard to break through that emotionless wall. But she was absolutely sure of her own feelings. "...Well... At least I love him."
Just as Myra was about to let out a cry of victory and continue bombarding Iris with questions, the Academy’s saving bell echoed through the corridors. With the professor walking in, Iris was spared from Myra’s suffocating pressure and endless interrogation, for now.
---
**Class 1B**
Meanwhile, due to that little walk and separation with Iris, Cassian was slightly later than usual to Class 1B.
When he stepped into the classroom, he brought his usual silencing aura with him. With heavy steps, without looking at anyone, he walked to his seat in the back row.
Saintess Alicia had already taken her place at her desk, organizing her books. Even though her body tensed slightly when she felt Cassian’s dark aura, she decided to continue the bravery of yesterday’s little greeting today as well.
As Cassian sat down at his desk, "Hello," Alicia said, without taking her eyes off her own hands.
"Hello," Cassian replied, in his usual dull voice.
Just as the class was about to fall into a deep silence, a chair in the front rows was pushed back noisily. Layla stood up, her arms crossed over her chest, an angry and mocking expression on her face, and turned directly to Cassian.
"Hey, freak," Layla shouted, keeping her voice loud enough for the whole class to hear. "Who was that red-haired girl you were holding hands and rubbing up against in the courtyard this morning?"
Most of the students in the class didn’t understand who she was talking about and turned their heads toward Cassian curiously. Only a few had heard the gossip in the corridors.
Faced with Layla’s rude question, Cassian rested his chin on his hand and began to think. *’How should I define Iris?’* he asked himself.
He had bought the entire series of those rings worth a fortune from the jeweler, and the rings were still inside his dimensional ring.
He hadn’t proposed to her yet. So, was saying ’my childhood friend’ enough to explain Iris’s status? Or should he just say ’my girlfriend’? No, those terms were too simple and inadequate for him.
After a short and intense silence, Cassian fixed his freezing red eyes directly on Layla’s and spoke as if stating an extremely casual, ordinary fact:
"The girl I am going to marry."
A deafening silence, literally as heavy as lead, descended upon the class.
Even the students’ breathing stopped. This sixteen-year-old, first-year psychopath had just casually announced in the middle of the whole class that he was going to marry a girl!
Even Layla hadn’t expected this answer. Her eyes widened in shock, her mouth hanging open for a moment. But she quickly shook off her shock and returned to her disgusted expression.
"The girl you’re going to marry?!" Layla let out a mocking laugh. "What girl in her right mind would marry a sick psychopath like you?!"
Upon hearing the word "psychopath," Cassian tilted his head slightly. In his own inner world, in those dark corridors of his mind, he made an assessment.
’A psychopath? On the contrary, I am extremely logical, free from emotional delusions, rational, and clear-headed,’ he thought to himself. ’Of course... excluding a few minor incidents where I slaughtered those who got in my way, manipulated people, and took over some people’s minds...’
When Cassian didn’t answer, Layla kept pushing him. "What’s wrong? Are you not? The whole academy knows what you are! You’re a disgusting playboy who harasses innocent girls and corners them in the middle of the corridor, and a violence addict who doesn’t even hesitate to butcher his own team!"
Faced with these accusations, Cassian frowned, particularly getting hung up on the word ’playboy.’
His checking to see if he had injured that stupid girl in the corridor was still echoing as harassment in people’s shallow sense of morality. However, he had neither the time nor the patience to deal with this nonsensical moral policing. The most effective and logical way to launch a counterattack was to strike the opponent’s weak point.
Cassian shrugged and spoke in a completely indifferent voice.
"Instead of worrying about me..." Cassian said, his voice clear enough for everyone in the class to hear. "Why don’t you worry about Felix, Layla?"
The angry expression on Layla’s face froze for a moment. "W-what?"
"Right now, I’m sure there are a lot of curious girls around him," Cassian continued ruthlessly. "If you waste time getting into pointless arguments with me in class like this and don’t act early... he might even end up dating that new girl he met, Rose."
Cassian took a deep breath and delivered the killing blow. "Instead of arguing with me, why don’t you go and claim the boy you’re in love with, Layla? That way... I won’t have to crush and break his fragile bones all over again."
The atmosphere in the class changed instantly. Even though most of the students shivered in fear and shrunk in their seats due to Cassian’s threat of "breaking bones," the main center of attention had suddenly become Layla and that innocent crush she had been trying to hide for so long.
The whole class started looking at each other and whispering at the thought of, *"Is Layla in love with someone?!"*
Layla’s face practically turned into a bright red tomato from the embarrassment and anger of hearing these truths and having her secret exposed in public.
A few female students next to her immediately turned to her and asked excitedly: "Layla?! Is it true? Are you really in love with Felix?!"
"W-what?! No! Of course not!" Layla shrieked, waving her hands around like a total tsundere, trying to suppress her embarrassment with anger. "Who would fall in love with that stupid, airheaded boy?! This freak is just talking nonsense!"
Even though her words denied it, her burning face and panicked body language completely gave her away. Layla shot absolute death glares at Cassian because of this humiliating, defenseless situation she had fallen into, and quickly slumped down at her desk, hiding her face behind her books.
Meanwhile, Saintess Alicia, sitting right next to this weird and tense argument, couldn’t handle Layla’s tomato-red state and Cassian’s absurd, ruthless honesty anymore.
"Pff..."
An involuntary, suppressed little giggle escaped from between Alicia’s lips, which she was covering tightly with her hands.
In a split second, Cassian’s blood-red eyes slowly shifted to the right, landing on Alicia.
The moment Alicia felt that dark gaze on her, she swallowed her laugh instantly. Her face went deathly pale from fear. Laughing out of nowhere in the middle of class, especially right next to such a terrifying entity... It could be the most dangerous, stupidest thing she had done in her life. Her hands began to tremble with fear.
However, Cassian merely settled for giving her a blank, meaningless look. He wasn’t interested in Alicia’s unprovoked amusement. He slowly turned his head back to the window, to the endless whiteness outside and the peaceful snow that continued to fall.