C189: Lanterns for the Abandoned (1)
Chapter sponsored by Jae, Bromo and myo. Thank you for your support.
Enya walked away at a quick pace. She held on to her breath, and her legs were about to loosen.
Facing the past that she had barely forgotten here felt like the wounds which were deeply engraved in her heart, were opening up again.
'I wanted you to at least apologize.'
Alex looked at her coldly, and she couldn't feel any emotion from him.
'You've forgotten everything.'
She hated Alex so much so she desperately held back her tears. She didn't want to show her weakness in front of him.
"Enya."
"Leader."
Enya found Trina waiting for her and immediately lowered her head.
"I'm sorry I'm late, sir."
"I guess you're done talking."
"Yes."
"Did you know each other?"
Trina asked, glancing at Enya's figure.
Enya wouldn't have tried to make it obvious, but Trina noticed at once that her deputy was in a worse mood than usual.
"……Yes, once upon a time, very briefly."
"Wasn't that Alex just now?"
One of the Nightcrawler knights who came with them opened his mouth.
Enya tried to stop him, but Trina reacted first.
"Alex"?
"Oh, yes, sir. He was once one of the most talented Noble Knights cadets."
"Oh."
While Theon Academy is the empire's number one educational institution for training good wizards, Noble Knights is a training center for nurturing knights.
Almost all of the famous knight families came from these Noble Knights graduates, and the competition to enter here was tough.
However, since Alex, who seems to have been in a relationship with Enya, was from the Noble Knights, Trina couldn't help but be interested.
"Then, Nya, he must have been your colleague."
"……Yes."
Enya didn't want to think about it much, but when the leader asked, she had no choice but to answer.
"Why is such a person in this back alley?"
As Enya couldn't respond to Trina's question one of the knights did.
"Oh, the one named Alex."
"What happened?"
"He was dishonorably discharged."
Enya bit her lip at the word of discharge but no one noticed her reaction.
"Why?"
"A few days before the commission ceremony, he assaulted a fellow cadet and instructor."
After assaulting five classmates and two instructors Alex became a disgrace and was expelled from the academy.
* * *
"Is that true that you beat up your colleagues?"
Alex opened his eyes wide and shook his head as if he could not stop Arpa from asking innocently.
"Yeah, I beat them. Not only did I beat my colleagues, I also beat the instructor."
"Why did you beat him?"
"Because I was the problem……."
"That can't be true. Alex isn't a bad guy, is he?"
"……."
Alex was speechless at Arpa's words.
"You, we're doing illegal things right now but I'm not bad. Do you know what that means?"
"But that's how I felt."
Alex tried to rebuke Arpa; however the moment he saw his transparent eyes, those thoughts disappeared.
"……I had a problem with them."
"Those guys?"
"The people I beat up on. Well, it was actually a 5-1 fair fight, and I was so strong that I was a one-sided beatdown. They were jealous because I, a commoner, was doing well even though they were aristocrats."
The competition in the Noble Knights was fierce and it was unbearable that a commoner was better than them so the aristocrats couldn't let it go.
At his words, Rudger recalled the situation of Theon. The discrimination between aristocratic and commoner students and the indelible huge crack, carved between the two groups.
"I may seem to be pretending, but I was the best cadet even if I look like this."
In fact, Alex was close to the top spot in terms of grades and skills. Without the unsavory incident that day, Alex would surely have been a great knight and a commoner may have been given a title as an emerging noble.
"But why are you here? If you held it in, you would have lived your life without a fuss."
Alex laughed bitterly at Violetta's criticism.
"I wonder if it was because I was tired. Actually, I didn't do it out of anger. The anger that had accumulated and accumulated for a long time exploded."
He didn't make a mistake at that time simply because he was overwhelmed by anger. Their sabotage actually started from the moment he entered the Noble Knights.
"The same goes for the instructors. It must have been unpleasant for them to have a commoner show off in a place where aristocrats should be doing well. They were determined and kept interrupting me."
Whatever he did, they punished him. Even when others rested in their accommodation in the evening, Alex ran through the training ground sweating under the pretext of guidance.
He couldn't sleep well, and even though he showed excellent results and didn't receive a word of praise.
Alex has endured the inequality with his teeth clenched
for three years.
"Oh, my God. For three years……."
"You managed to endure it."
"In the end, I couldn't stand it."
The lump in his heart that had accumulated over the past three years exploded shortly after the appointment ceremony so he got involved in cadet violence.
In the end he was expelled in disgrace without completing the appointment ceremony.
"But she didn't seem angry simply because you were discharged. Wasn't there something else?"
Pantos, who had been listening silently with his arms folded, opened his mouth. He pointed out Enya's appearance and attitude.
'Hmm?'
'He's surprisingly quick to sense!'
Violetta, Seridan, Hans and other members were silently shocked by Pantos' question, which they thought was muscle brain that only wanted to compete with the strong.
"What's wrong with everyone?"
Pantos asked if he felt something from the gaze of his colleagues but instead of answering, they looked away since they couldn't say "I didn't expect a muscle brain like you would say that."
"Pantos is right."
Alex agreed with Pantos.
"Because she and I were lovers."
"She was the one I saw at the auction house at the time. How did you meet her?"
"No matter how she appeared here, Enya is a very high-ranking person."
Enya is a woman and is smaller than others and since knights use their bodies Enya was naturally full of disadvantages. It was purely the result of effort that Enya had better results among other knight cadets.
Alex and Enya, of course, competed with each other. Since they had a reason to do their best it was natural for the two to get close in a way.
"She was a rival at first. I thought I could never lose to her, so I fought with my teeth clenched."
Alex still vividly remembered the time when his blood was boiling. They were the few good memories of his life.
"Then, from some point on, I felt strongly that I wanted to be with her rather than beat her."
"Oh, my."
At the love story, Violetta covered her mouth with her hands and made a fuss.
"And Enya thought the same thing as me. It was a time when we were young."
They also promised each other's future. But the happiness didn't last that long.
As Alex stayed close to Enya and Enya had high grades in the military academy, public interference toward Alex continued to come in.
"You don't fit in with her. How can it be fair for a commoner to go out with an aristocrat? Not only the cadets blinded by jealousy, but also the instructors said so."
"Did lady Enya not know that?"
"She didn't know."
"Why?"
"Because I hid it."
She didn't want to let her know. If he had been honest with her, the stubborn Enya would have been arguing with them.
"Enya rose to that position through her own efforts and I can't make her go back to the past just because of me."
Enya, an aristocrat, immediately changed the opinion when she proved her ability in contrast to Alex, who was a commoner.
Nevertheless, he was jealous of Enya. He wanted her to congratulate him.
"Maybe that's why I couldn't deny the words of those bloody cadets and instructors."
There was a real reason why Alex kept everything secret from Enya. It was because Alex himself, no one else, was agreeing with them.
"There is a big difference in status. No matter how well I finish the commission ceremony, the label of commoner will continue to follow me even if I become a knight."
Enya, on the other hand, was a noble and thanks to her skills and hard work Alex was sure that she would be more successful than him.
"I was nothing more than a stumbling block in her life."
No one could console him when they heard his words.
"So I pushed Enya away."
"You pushed her away?"
"Yeah. I intentionally dumped her pretending to be dating someone else. If I had just said that we should break up, she wouldn't have listened."
He still can't forget Enya's shocked face and how tears flowed down her cheeks when he told her that.
He repeated to himself that it was okay several times, but his thoughts and the reality he actually faced were different.
Alex, who broke up with Enya like that, felt an endless emptiness.
"I thought it would be okay if we broke up, but it wasn't. Rather, I felt like a fool after enduring it for the past three years."
At that time, aristocratic cadets approached Alex, mentioning Enya and as soon as he saw their blatant ridicule, Alex burst into laughter and beat them up.
They were five and even had swords, but they were no match for the bare-handed Alex. The instructor who came to stop it also favored the aristocracy so he beat him as well.
Being banished from the Noble Knights was simply a fitting end for a commoner.
"I was being too arrogant. The commoner looked up at the high place without knowing his place."
He hurt the person he loved and was kicked out of the place where he could achieve his dreams.
There was nothing left for Alex.
* * *
"He has talent, but he was discharged in the end."
Trina listened to her men and ran her gloved hand over her chin once and shook her head.
"It's a pity."
She doesn't know exactly what happened between Enya and the man. However, when Alex first entered the room, Trina could feel it through her knight intuition that he was well trained.
"Why is such a man working for Owner?"
Even though he was expelled he was still from the Noble Knights so he could've found a better place instead of being a subordinate of the backstreet ruler.
"Well, it's because he's a commoner after all."
"Because that's the only thing he could do."
At the words of the Nightcrawler Knights, who were chatting among them, Enya bit her lips softly.
Trina asked, looking at Enya's reaction.
"Are you okay, Nya?"
"……I'm all right."
"But…"
"I have nothing to do with him in the first place."
Trina didn't ask any more questions at Enya's words.
* * *
"I've been wandering ever since."
Alex wandered around like a bum. He drank and gambled every day.
After a quarrel with the gang that was manipulating gambling Alex could have beaten all of these guys, but he didn't. Rather, he was beaten and chased by them, and even rolled in the mud.
It was a rainy day and Alex, stretching out of the mud, looked up at the sky. He knew his life was miserable but it didn't matter because trash like him deserved that.
It was then that someone appeared in his field of vision.
-Why are you being bullied by someone weaker than you?
Even the people passing by the street pretended not to see it on purpose but a man who spoke to him.
-Who are you?
– I just happened to see you in the bar. You knew they cheated, but you lost. Is getting hit a hobby?
-Don't talk nonsense.
-Then I'll ask you another question. Is it satisfying to live like that?
The words touched Alex nerves and he raised his upper body.
– If you tell me, then will you back off noble?
-It depends on what you say.
Even though he was sarcastic the only thing that came back was a blunt answer.
Alex gritted his teeth because he knew that the other person only came to him with pure intentions. If he wasn't really interested, he would have ignored him like everyone else but he couldn't control this anger even though he knew it.
– Self-loathing. Are you releasing your anger on yourself?
– So what do you know….
-Aren't you angry?
-What?
-Bowing down to guys who are worse than you. You have skills, but you are not treated well.
-Don't bullshit.
-But why are you blaming yourself for that anger?
– Stop talking bullshit!
It was a sudden outstretched hand that came back to Alex's cry.
-Let's do it together.
-Why would I believe you?
– Do you really need to believe me?
-What? Then would I go with you?
The man laughed and said,
-At least you don't think I'm a commoner.
-…….
He thought it might have been just lip service. No, actually, maybe that's what he wanted to believe but Alex knew that while everyone ignored him there's no way this guy who was the only one who talked to him and held out his hand would lie.
– You can hold my hand or push me away. I don't mind if you borrow money from me. I'll lend it to you if you want. I have a lot of money even though I look like this. But can you do this one thing?
-What is it?
-At least don't do anything that hurts yourself. Isn't that painful?
-…….
It was the first time that someone truly comforted him. No. It wasn't actually the first time because even though he couldn't see her anymore, she kept worrying about him. Nevertheless, it was him who pushed her away and ran.
At that moment, the dam that had blocked Alex's heart collapsed.
– Damn it. Why me?
Even when he broke up after hurting his beloved lover, even when he was kicked out of the Noble Knights Cadet Academy or even when he ran around drunk he didn't shed any tears but Alex burst into tears like a child for the first time that day.
-It's raining a lot.
Rudger murmured so, watching the rain pouring from the sky but Alex, who bowed his head, could not answer.