Chapter 330: Yandere – Yandere – Yandere

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Listening to the carriage wheels clattering over the uneven ground, the three remained silent. One leaned against the carriage, sleeping peacefully. One stared at her own palm, lost in thought. One watched the sun slowly rise outside the window.

After reading the Quest System Will had left them—the “future” he had written—and after their heated argument over their own “ideals” and “convictions” on the first floor, the three of them had a good idea of what the others were feeling. But the more they understood each other’s thoughts, the less they had to say as rivals in love.

However, the special road to Dustbone Corridor that Treya had proposed was not as smooth as one would expect for a royal carriage. As the sun began to rise, the carriage lurched violently, as if hitting a large rock, even drifting sideways.

“Young Master, be careful—! Leave an ambush like this to Eir!”

Eir, awakened from her dream by the jolt, instinctively extended her hand and unleashed an unconscious ice spell towards Leah. Treya, sitting opposite, was also caught in the crossfire.

“Calm down… no, you’re cold enough. Perhaps I should say, wake up?”

Shink.

Treya drew her sword, dispelling the spell with a touch of demonic magic.

“It’s not about waking up. This one’s dreaming she’s back years ago.”

The attack, from the defense-oriented Eir, wasn’t particularly “strong,” but Leah, who was looking down and not holding onto anything, had no room to dodge when her head slammed into the carriage wall. She rubbed her half-frozen wrist, using her own flames to thaw it.

“It’s dripping. You’re getting my carriage wet.”

“Why don’t you ask the culprit over there?”

“Eir… Eir just…”

Blinking in the sunlight, Eir realized what a foolish thing she had just done.

“Sorry, sorry! I had a long, long dream. It felt like it went all the way back to… when I first came to the Hysterm family. I should have slept properly last night, I shouldn’t have… shouldn’t have…”

Eir mumbled, clutching her still-drowsy forehead, but didn’t finish her sentence.

“Shouldn’t have read the book Will left us?”

Treya, sheathing her sword, seemed intent on breaking the unspoken tension—or perhaps, as always, she was just oblivious to the mood and spoke her mind.

“…You two read it too, didn’t you? Oh, of course you did. I could tell from your sleepless, red-rimmed eyes this morning.”

“Yes. And even with your heavy eyeshadow, it was easy to see.”

“Right, right, me too, me too.”

Exposed by Treya, Leah didn’t “deny” or “hide” her feelings, but admitted it directly.

“It’s impossible not to cry. He wrote such… such awful things in there. You… you two saw it too, right?”

“It wasn’t ‘awful.’ For him, it was perfectly normal. It’s precisely because… because it’s something he should do, that the colors he saw made us cry.”

Neither of them “specified” what Will had written that made them cry, as if trying to “be strong” even at the end. Trying to preserve a sliver of uniqueness in something “he would do for everyone.”

But Eir didn’t. She lowered her ears, stroking the collar on her neck, and asked tentatively, carefully—

“So, you two also cried because of what Young Master wrote about the… ‘future’… didn’t you?”

The carriage fell silent again. The carriage seemed to have finally left the rough path and entered a proper road. The sound of the wheels became rhythmic, and the sunlight shining through the window flickered at a steady rate as they passed by evenly planted trees.

“Not just that.”

Leah spoke first, a glimmer of tears in her red-rimmed eyes, which she had tried to hide with makeup. She rested her arm on the window and looked outside.

“It was also because of how he changed me.”

Treya glanced at Leah, then gave her own “perfect answer” with the same unwavering conviction as ever.

“I don’t know if the ‘ending’ he wrote about would have really happened. But I know that without him, I would have definitely met that original end.”

As Treya spoke, she gripped the hilt of her Shadowmare Blade.

“The reason I am who I am today, sitting here, is because of him.”

Listening to Treya, though they didn’t voice their agreement, both Eir and Leah thought of the “failed heroines” and “tragic endings” Will had written on the first page.

Whether it was the cowardly Eir, the denial-prone Leah, or the Treya who never understood herself or the world.

Whether defeated by a Fire Dragon, kneeling before an Ice Demon’s wall, or falling to a Ghost Swordsman’s blade.

They all knew that without the Will who had changed them, that would have been their past selves, and the ending they would have inevitably reached.

“And… the ‘true past’ he wrote about in such detail.”

Leah didn’t deny Treya’s words, but continued, as if adding to them.

“Even though he was just ‘acting according to a plan’ because he knew everything. But… he was truly… so serious in every moment, watching us grow, and… changing his plans for our changes.”

“That’s so unfair, you stupid student. Someone who actually follows through on a plan—you wouldn’t find many like that in the entire history of Entark Academy.”

“But… but still, what… what made Eir cry the most… was still the future he wrote…”

Eir sobbed, her head down, watching her tears fall onto the back of her hand.

“If… if Young Master really… really still dies in that dungeon, just like the ‘important events’ he never got wrong, then all these… these futures, they’re… they’re just illusions.”

“He would be… more upset than us! Those are goals he’ll never get to see—”

Eir cried out, giving a very “Eir-like” answer in the small carriage. The saddest part for her wasn’t just her own heartbreak, but the heartbreak that even a dead Will would feel.

“So, that’s what I meant, by the most awful part.”

Leah’s voice trembled.

“I once heard my mother say. When someone close to you dies, what truly makes you cry isn’t the happy past. It’s…”

She clenched her fists in frustration.

“…the unreachable future, the one that only exists in plans and fantasies.”

“Y-Yes, that’s it! He… he even wrote 35 unfinished quests for Eir… Eir counted them one by one.”

“…He wrote 44 for me. A few more, even.”

“…He wrote 53 quests for me.”

“Let’s… let’s not get competitive about something so strange—anyway, it’s awful, super awful, when… when I see him again, I’m going to shove these papers in his face, and as his teacher, give him a good scolding!”

“But, it’s… it’s okay. As long as… as long as we clear that dungeon, the future he predicted won’t happen…”

“Exactly. It’s just a B-rank dungeon, what can it—”

However, Eir and Leah’s “confidence” in their trip was shattered by Treya’s next words—

“What if he’s already gone?”

Treya spoke calmly.

“What…?”

“Do you have to say something so discouraging at a time like this?!”

Leah stood up, looking at Treya, questioning her.

“It’s not that I’m being discouraging…” she sighed. “From a timing perspective, from the Hysterm estate to Dustbone Corridor, it’s just right.”

“That doesn’t mean—”

“From a motivational perspective, the us he changed, the us he wrote about so seriously, the us he had such high hopes for… what did we do to him?”

“You… you think you can act all clear-headed now and absolve yourself?”

“That’s why I used… ‘we’.”

Treya looked up at Leah. Leah, looking into her eyes—one purple, one deep blue, usually devoid of emotion—saw, for the first time, a flicker of “regret.”

“Young Master… Young Master would never… never…”

“The way you described him at the end, wasn’t he already indifferent to life and death?”

“But… but Eir thinks… thinks if it was… him, there would be more complex feelings—see, it wasn’t until we got the Quest System that we truly understood everything he did before, right?”

Treya didn’t immediately refute Eir’s faltering reasoning. Eir always answered based on “her long-standing intuition about Will.” But for Treya, who had only recently begun to understand the world and herself, she trusted logic more.

“Are you… trying to demoralize us by saying this?”

“No.”

Treya looked up, her gaze sweeping over Leah and Eir.

“You two should have been prepared too. Because ‘if the one who wrote the future wasn’t going to die,’ there would be ‘no need to cry for it’.”

“…You’re right.”

“Is… is that so?”

Leah sat down. She understood what Treya meant… She wasn’t “heartlessly” revealing the secret the other two in the carriage were unwilling to face—though saying it so directly was indeed cold. She was just… stating a possibility all three had guessed in an instant—

“Will Hysterm, he might… have already gone to Dustbone Corridor, to his death.”

“We all knew this possibility.”

“Me too.”

Treya looked out the window.

From her pale blue eye, a single tear fell.