Transmigrated as an Extra: Awakening of The Ex‐Class'-Chapter 80 : Preparations for the School Festival Part 5

With her head bowed, her eyes swollen from silent crying, and a pain gnawing at her soul, Ivvy walked slowly through the cold halls of NOVA, her tears streaming down her face. She headed for her happy place, the small garden on the rooftop. She climbed the stairs leading to the rooftop, her trembling hands clutching the railing as if her body might collapse at any moment. The wind grew stronger as she ascended, carrying with it the metallic scent of the iron gate and the faint scent of flowers.

Pushing open the heavy black iron gate that led to the rooftop, it was like entering another world.

The wind whispered through the leaves of NOVA’s small rooftop garden, carrying with it the earthy scent of fresh herbs and the sweet scent of the flowers Ivvy cultivated with trembling hands. The sun set behind the clouds, a beautiful, bright, warm orange, painting dancing shadows across her tear-scarred face. Her thick, scarred fingers closed around a mint stalk, as if holding onto it might ease some of her pain.

Ivvy didn’t cry with high-pitched or harsh sounds, she didn’t moan or curse her fate. Her tears were always silent, like the fine rain that nourished her plants. Each drop was a memory, a fragment of her life crumbling away.

Her mother had been a half-elf and half-guman, her beautiful pink hair and platinum eyes giving her an ethereal beauty that caught the eye of Baron Edric of Aria. There was no courtship, no promises of love, only the cold command of a nobleman accustomed to taking what he wanted. Her mother, Elaria, had been tricked and then captured by the Baron’s men in the palace’s gilded cages, turned into a concubine, a silent ornament.

It was in that confinement that Ivvy was born.

From a young age, the girl felt the heartbeat of the seeds, the murmur of the flowers, the sigh of the trees. When she cried at night, the vines slithered to her cradle. When she dreamed, she dreamed in green. Her mother told her stories of the world tree, of the nectar that flowed through the great trees of Silvahïr, of the rituals that only elven women could perform during the full moon.

But the happiness was short-lived.

Ivvy was more human than anyone else, but the courtiers called her "the bastard," "the Baron’s stain." Her father regarded her only with hatred and a hint of curiosity, which sometimes fueled his desire for validation. He watched it with a mixture of contempt and curiosity, as if it were an exotic animal that might one day entertain him. Her half-brother, her half-brother, the legitimate heir, enjoyed beating her until she bruised, telling her that half-breeds don’t deserve to breathe the same air as him.

But her mother... her mother had been her refuge.

Elaria taught her everything she could except defend herself, told her of the forests where the trees danced in the midday sun and the flowers shone in the starlight. Which was a saying. "The stems keep us from falling apart, little leaf," she would say, stroking her hair. "Even if the world breaks us, there will always be soil to grow."

Until the poison took her words away.

If there was a day she could never forget, it would be this one. She remembered that day with painful clarity. Her mother had woken up pale, blue-lipped, trembling. No one called a priest. No one cared. The Baron was busy with a new favorite, a maid with blond hair and a hollow laugh.

Ivy, barely twelve years old, knelt beside her mother, holding her hand as the life drained from her. "Don’t abandon me, Mother..." she begged, but Elaria only smiled weakly.

"I will never... daughter..." was the last thing she whispered before her crystal-green eyes closed forever.

The palace held no mourning. It spent its time at extravagant parties, as if her mother’s life had only been shorter than a petro.

Ivy couldn’t bear it any longer and fled that same night, taking with her only a handful of seeds stolen from the Baron’s private garden. NOVA, the warrior academy, was her salvation. Between its great walls and steel towers, she found a forgotten and rarely visited corner: an abandoned rooftop where the sun shone without an owner.

There, Ivy planted her pain.

Each seed she buried was like a fragment of her soul, a memory of her mother. The vines grew twisted, like her memories. The roses had thorns as sharp as her mother’s words. half-brother. But there were also blue carnations, which smelled like the infusions her mother made, and lavender, which helped her sleep when nightmares plagued her.

And the plants... responded.

They didn’t speak fluently, but they whispered. When the wind moved their leaves, Ivy felt them caressing her hair. Xuando watered them, drops of tears running down her face. Sometimes, she noticed the flowers leaning toward her, as if they wanted to embrace her.

The day she realized she was special, she would never forget. It was after a particularly cruel dream—one in which she relived her mother’s death—that something changed.

Ivy woke up panting heavily, her eyes red, her heart pounding. She ran to the garden, sobbing, and buried her hands in the earth, trying to soothe her nightmares.

"I don’t want to be alone!" she cried, and then...

Loneliness was already a part of her life, whether at home or at school, but it was then that something moved.

The roots of the wisteria wrapped around her wrists, not to trap her, but to hold her. The mint leaves vibrated, emanating a calming scent. And, in the center of the garden, a small blue flower—one Ivy didn’t remember planting—opened, revealing a faint glow, like moonlight trapped in petals.

"Mother...?"* she whispered. Remembering Elaria’s words

"You will never be alone. I will never leave you. I will find a way to find you and I will hold you."

There was no response. But for the first time in years, Ivy didn’t feel the emptiness.