Beast Gacha System: All Mine-Chapter 168: Tears-Stealing Wind

Serayu, holding a tray of simple tea and shortbread biscuits, paused in the hallway.

She hadn’t made it to the study. The distinct, heavy crunch of boots on the gravel path outside, followed by the familiar grumbling accompanied by the jingle of keys, announced the professor’s return.

She set the tray down on a side table and moved to the front door, opening it just as Baswara reached for the handle. The forest air, cool and pine-scented, swept in.

"You have an impressive young lady with you," Serayu said.

Baswara huffed, brushing past her into the vestibule. "I do." He began shrugging off his heavy outer coat, his mind clearly already on the impending personal evaluation, on the girl who had dismantled his tasks.

But the anticipated scene of a waiting, respectful student did not materialize.

Instead, from the direction of the study, came the swift, sure sound of footsteps.

Cecilia emerged from the hallway. She didn’t look at them. Her gaze was fixed on some distant, internal point, her face pale, wiped clean of its usual gentle politeness. In her hand was a worn leather journal.

She walked past them as if they were furniture. Through the open door Baswara had just entered. Out into the daylight.

"Miss Araceli—?" Baswara began, his brow furrowing in confusion.

Cecilia didn’t stop. She didn’t turn. She took three more steps onto the gravel path, then her body simply... lifted. One moment she was on the ground, the next she was five feet in the air, then ten, then shooting skyward like an arrow loosed from a bow.

She flew.

She was gone, leaving the two stunned figures in the doorway.

Serayu and Baswara stood frozen, staring at the empty sky where the girl had vanished.

Then, slowly, Serayu turned her violet-eyed gaze to the old professor. "Did you see what she brought with her?"

Baswara didn’t need to ask what she meant. He had seen the journal. He knew its weight, its contents. The color drained from his face, leaving his skin ashen. The triumphant curiosity of moments ago was gone, replaced by dread.

"I did."

***

The midday bustle of the refectory was a familiar symphony of clattering trays, shouted gossip, and the low hum of a hundred conversations.

Oathran moved through it like usual. He had just finished his meal and was walking towards the return counter, tray balanced neatly in his hands, his mind already turning towards the afternoon’s lessons. The straight line of his shoulders was relaxed, his expression its usual polite detachment.

The calm shattered with gasps from students.

Heads turned. A ripple of attention spread.

Cecilia stood in the entrance, framed by the daylight. Her usually pristine golden hair was wind-whipped into a wild halo, strands escaping her tie and plastered across her flushed, tear-streaked cheeks.

Her uniform tunic was untucked, her skirt askew, as if she had dressed, or flown, in a hurricane. In one hand, she clutched a worn leather journal.

Her eyes, those usually serene blue-green-grey pools, were a storm. They scanned the room with a frantic, scorching intensity before landing on him.

Oathran blinked, his steps faltering. "Cecilia—?" The greeting, a question of pure confusion, died on his lips.

She was across the space between them in a heartbeat.

He had no time to do anything, to step back, to understand.

Her free hand shot out.

SLAP.

The sound was crisp, shocking, a gunshot in the sudden, dead silence of the hall. It was a full-armed, open-palmed strike that snapped his head to the side and left a blazing, red imprint on his pale cheek.

The silence that followed was absolute. A hundred students froze, forks halfway to mouths, conversations suspended in mid-air. You could have heard a pin drop in the sawdust.

Oathran slowly turned his head back to face her, his grey eyes wide with stunned, utter incomprehension. The sting on his cheek was nothing compared to the vertigo of the attack.

Cecilia didn’t let him wonder. A harsh, ragged scoff escaped her, a sound choked with tears that now flowed freely, cutting tracks through the dust on her face. She didn’t wipe them away. She thrust the journal in her hand forward, shoving it to his view.

His gaze dropped from her devastated, furious face to the book. He saw the familiar leather. He remembered what the old man had written there.

All the color drained from his face, leaving him parchment-white. The tray in his hands trembled, then fell with a deafening clatter of porcelain and metal onto the stone floor, shattering the fragile silence.

He didn’t seem to notice. He just stared at the journal, then back at her face, his own expression crumbling from shock into horrified recognition.

Cecilia watched the understanding break over him like a wave, watched the pale terror claim his features. She drew a shuddering, wet breath, a sob wrenching itself from her chest.

But the grief was instantly consumed by a hotter, purer fire.

Her tears kept falling, but her face contorted into a scowl of such wrath it seemed to scorch the air between them.

She didn’t say another word. She simply snatched the journal back and turned on her heel. She stalked out of the silent hall, leaving behind the wreckage of his tray, the stunned audience, and him.

Oathran remained frozen. The vivid red mark on his cheek glowed like a brand. He didn’t move to touch it. He didn’t look at the shattered dishes at his feet. He just stared at the empty space where she had been.

DING!

[You’ve succeeded in the task: Make him remember the life outside of this scenario!]

[Reward Rank 7]

- [5 Stars Skill Orb: Tactile Empathy]

Grant him the ability to influence the emotional state and surface thoughts of others through physical contact.

[Unlock Rank 7 to gain this reward!]

[Would you like to roll?]

To keep the world intact, the key will die the same year of his twentieth birthday at the first fall of snow. 𝙛𝒓𝓮𝒆𝔀𝒆𝙗𝓷𝒐𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝓶

He was twenty. The first snow was predicted in five days.

After that, his existence in this world, the memory of him, the proof that he was ever be, his presence, will be completely erased.

Five days. Not just death. Oblivion.

The silence in the refectory was held in place by the shock of the slap, the shattering tray, and the white-faced paralysis of the transfer student.

It was the kind of silence that precedes either a slow return to normalcy or an explosion.

It got the explosion.

A vibration. A deep, subsonic tremor that rattled the cutlery on the tables and made the floating magelights sway. Then it broke into sound. A roar that tore through the hall, bypassing the ears to resonate directly in the chest cavity.

"CECILIA! I CAN EXPLAIN!"

Oathran’s voice was unrecognizable. The polite, cultured baritone was gone, stripped away by a wave of pure, desperate panic.

It was layered with mana. Tumultuous, uncontrolled. Horrified. It made the air crackle and the very stones of the building seem to groan. A plea ripped from the core of a being who had just seen the personification of his sanity turn and walk away with his doom in her hands.

The sound was so primal, so powerful, it broke the frozen spell on the room. Students flinched, clapping hands over their ears, screaming in fear. Plates rattled off tables.

But Cecilia, already a fleeing silhouette in the courtyard beyond the doors, didn’t stop. The roar washed over her carrying his terror, his need. She heard it. She felt it vibrate in her teeth.

She wept harder, the sobs wrenching from her chest in ragged gasps, but her feet didn’t falter. Explain? What was there to explain?

There was no explanation that could unsay those words. She kept running, the wind stealing her tears.

Oathran, galvanized by his own outburst, took a single, frantic step forward to pursue her. The movement was jerky, uncoordinated, all his usual grace incinerated by panic. His eyes were locked on the doorway, his entire being focused on the vanishing point of his world.

He never saw the fist coming.

It came from the side, a blur of motion from the edge of the stunned crowd. It was aimed with the precision of someone used to combat.

Arzhen.

Oathran, his senses screaming for Cecilia, his mind reeling from the journal’s truth, didn’t register the attack as a threat. It was a minor disturbance in the atmosphere, a gnat buzzing at the edge of an apocalyptic storm.

He didn’t dodge. He didn’t block.

BLAM—

The fist connected solidly with Oathran’s other cheek, a brutal, meaty sound that snapped his head around a second time. This was a punch meant to damage, to punish.

Oathran staggered a step, more from surprise than force. The new pain was dull compared to the anguish tearing him apart inside. Slowly, he turned his head to look at his attacker, his grey eyes clearing from their frantic search for Cecilia to focus, with eerie, cold calm, on Arzhen.

Arzhen stood there, chest heaving, his handsome face twisted into wrath. His gaze burned into Oathran.

"What..." he ground out, "...did you do to make her cry?"