Fiona stopped a few steps in front of him and adjusted the glasses resting neatly on her nose.
She did not smile.
Not even politely.
Yuuta understood immediately that this was far more dangerous than Professor Melory's emotional breakdown. The professor could be distracted. He could be overwhelmed. He could even cry and walk away.
These girls?
They were organized.
They were focused.
And worst of all—
They were curious.
Within seconds, two girls from the back moved forward with rope.
Before Yuuta could fully process what was happening, his wrists were secured behind the chair.
Again.
He stared down at the knots.
"This feels excessive," he muttered.
Fiona stood directly in front of him, arms crossed. Her lips were pressed into a thin line. Her eyes—slightly red from earlier—were now sharp with determination.
Around her, the other girls positioned themselves like a coordinated task force. Some flipped pages. Some adjusted their glasses. One even drew a timeline diagram.
"Yuuta," one of them said crisply, pen hovering. "Care to explain?"
"Yeah," another added. "That was your kid, right? And that… woman?"
"You're twenty," a third girl interjected sharply. "Do you understand what that implies? If that child is four, then you would have had her at fifteen."
"Wait," someone corrected from the side. "Sixteen."
"That's still illegal!"
Yuuta's eyes widened.
"My hands are literally tied," he protested. "Can we not escalate the math like this?"
Fiona leaned closer.
"Start talking."
Yuuta inhaled deeply.
"She's not biologically mine," he blurted out.
The room stiffened.
He panicked.
"I mean— yes, biologically she— no— I mean it's complicated! She's from another world and I didn't—"
He froze.
Too much.
Way too much.
Silence filled the classroom.
Forty-five pairs of eyes narrowed at the same time.
"Another world?" someone repeated slowly.
"What do you mean by another world?" another demanded.
"Is this some kind of anime script you're pitching?"
"Yeah," a girl near the window added, flipping back through her notes. "She mentioned something about being Queen of Atlantis."
"And descendant of someone," another chimed in. "Serapa, I think?"
Yuuta swallowed.
Why did she have to introduce herself like that?
A girl in the second row leaned forward.
"And what was with all the threatening?" she asked. "Freezing us? Shattering us?"
"Like we're lining up to marry you or something," another scoffed.
A few nods followed.
Yuuta blinked.
"Okay, first of all," he said defensively, "I did not ask her to threaten anyone."
Yuuta cleared his throat, though the sound came out drier than he intended. The ropes around his wrists scratched against his skin as he shifted in the chair, trying to look composed in front of nearly half the girls in the class. Not exactly the heroic situation he had imagined for himself.
He forced himself to speak slowly.
"Secondly… she's from my hometown."
A few girls narrowed their eyes, pens hovering over notebooks.
"It's a rural area," he continued, choosing each word carefully. "People there talk differently. Their expressions are… unusual. She just speaks in a strange way sometimes."
Murmurs spread, but he pressed on.
"She tends to blur fantasy and reality. It's not intentional. It's more like she gets caught in her own imagination. There are cases like that. It's a kind of delusion where someone can't clearly distinguish between what's real and what isn't."
The room shifted. Suspicion didn't disappear—but it softened.
Someone in the back pulled out her phone.
"Wait. I'm checking."
Another girl leaned over her shoulder.
A long, suffocating silence followed. Yuuta could hear his own heartbeat.
Then—
"It exists," the girl said slowly.
More phones came out.
"There are symptoms listed here."
"It says stress can trigger it."
"There are reported cases in Japan, China and South Korea and many Asian countries."
The tension in the room subtly changed direction. What had been sharp and accusatory now felt uncertain, almost analytical.
Yuuta exhaled quietly. The lie was holding.
At least for most of them.
But not for her.
Fiona stepped forward.
Her fingers tightened around the notebook she was holding, the edges bending slightly under pressure. She wasn't looking at her phone. She wasn't looking at the others.
She was looking at him.
Her voice, when she spoke, was unsteady.
"Yuuta… why?"
It wasn't loud. It wasn't dramatic.
But it cut deeper than any accusation.
Yuuta felt something in his chest twist. He had never heard her sound like that before. Fiona was always composed—serious, disciplined, almost intimidating in her focus.
Now her eyes were glassy.
He opened his mouth, trying to find something—anything—that could make this better.
Before he could form a sentence, something struck his face.
A book.
It hit his cheek and fell to the floor with a dull thud.
"I liked you," Fiona shouted, her voice cracking in a way that made the entire room go still. "Even when you were weird. Even when you kept staring at me from the back bench with those red eyes under your lenses like some creepy villain!"
Yuuta flinched, but he didn't argue.
Because she wasn't wrong.
He had stared.
He had admired her from a distance instead of speaking honestly.
"You could've told me," she continued, tears spilling freely now. "Before getting married. Before everything changed. I was just busy with my revenge. You could have waited."
The word landed heavily.
"Revenge?" Yuuta repeated, stunned.
The rest of the class exchanged confused looks.
"Revenge for what?"
Fiona seemed to realize what she had said, but her emotions had already broken through the walls she usually kept so carefully intact. Her shoulders trembled as she covered her face for a moment.
The girls who had once surrounded Yuuta like investigators now rushed to her side.
"Hey, calm down."
"Don't cry over him."
"He's not worth it."
For the first time, they weren't looking at Fiona as the strict, serious girl who always topped exams and maintained order. They were seeing her as something far more fragile.
A girl in love.
The classroom door suddenly slid open with a sharp sound that sliced through the chaos.
A tall figure stepped inside.
Golden hair caught the light from the windows. Blue eyes scanned the room with quiet intensity.
He moved with confidence, not hesitation.
"Captain," he said immediately, his voice firm but laced with concern. "Why are you crying?"
The room froze.
"Captain?" several girls echoed at once.
He paused, as if remembering himself, and corrected his tone.
"I mean… Fiona."
He walked straight to her and gently took her hand. The gesture wasn't dramatic, but it was steady. Protective.
"Let's go home," he said quietly. "You're not yourself right now."
Fiona didn't resist. She looked drained, vulnerable in a way Yuuta had never imagined.
Before turning, the boy's gaze shifted.
It landed on Yuuta—still tied to the chair, still silent.
The warmth in his eyes disappeared.
In its place was something cold. Measured.
"I'll remember this," he said evenly. "Konuari."
Yuuta felt a chill crawl down his spine.
It wasn't shouted like a threat.
It was spoken like a promise.
The tall boy guided Fiona toward the door. The classroom parted for them without question. No one stopped them.
When the door finally closed, the room felt different.
Heavier.
Yuuta stared at the empty doorway, the ropes still tight around his wrists.
Revenge.
Captain.
Golden-haired protector.
He had walked into this thinking he could talk his way out.
Now he wasn't so sure he even understood the battlefield he was standing on.
One by one, the girls left the classroom.
Not dramatically. Not angrily.
Just quietly.
Notebooks closed. Chairs slid back into place. Footsteps faded into the corridor until the noise of the school thinned into distant echoes. No one untied him. No one looked back.
Soon, Yuuta was alone.
The classroom felt larger without people in it. Emptier.
The late afternoon sun bled through the windows, staining the desks in orange light. Outside, the sky was slowly sinking toward the horizon, as if the sun itself were preparing to drown in a silent ocean of clouds.
Yuuta lowered his head.
The ropes around his wrists felt heavier now.
He shook his head slowly, jaw tightening.
Anger burned in his eyes—but it wasn't simple anger. It was the kind that came when you realized something too late. The kind that hollowed you out from the inside.
Fiona liked him.
She had liked him all along.
And he only learned that after he had already given up… after he had already tied himself to a different fate.
He let out a bitter laugh.
"In another world," he muttered under his breath, "maybe that would've meant something."
But this wasn't another world.
This was the one where Erza had walked into his life like a storm.
Unexpected.
Unavoidable.
Ruining the fragile peace he had barely managed to build.
What kind of life was he living now?
A wife who might kill him at any moment.
A dragon queen whose temper was as sharp as a blade.
Would she spare him?
A year?
A month?
Or would he wake up one morning to find her claws at his throat?
The thoughts spiraled.
They darkened.
There is a place the human mind reaches when pressure becomes too much. A narrow cliff where a person stands between two choices—live or disappear.
Yuuta found himself standing there.
The classroom was empty.
The rope was tight.
The ceiling fan above him hung still.
If he stood on the desk…
If he tied it just right…
A long suffering could finally end.
He had been cursed since birth.
The strange eyes people whispered about.
The way his parents abandoned him.
The orphanage that treated him like something unholy.
Devil child.
Bad omen.
Monster.
Even when he tried to live quietly, something always dragged him back into chaos.
And now?
A dragon queen for a wife.
A classroom humiliation.
A love he discovered too late.
Maybe the world was simply correcting a mistake—him.
A horrifying calm began to settle over him. The kind that comes before something irreversible.
And then—
He heard it.
Whispers.
Faint, distant, but sharp.
Yuuta had always been able to hear things others couldn't. Conversations carried on the wind. Words murmured behind walls.
"…I never thought he was married like that."
"Me neither. You can't tell someone's past from their face."
"I heard he was raised in an orphanage."
"…My mom told me he was cursed. When he confessed to me, my family was against it."
"You too?"
"Yeah. Me too."
"What a weird guy…"
Cursed.
The word echoed louder than the rest.
Yuuta's eyes lost focus.
Cursed.
It wasn't just a rumor. It was a scar. A memory. A brand burned into his childhood.
He let out a hollow laugh.
"So that's what I am," he murmured.
The classroom darkened further as the sun dipped lower.
The rope.
The fan.
The silence.
He could end it.
End the long suffering. End the whispers. End the fear of living beside a woman who could snap his neck without effort. End the loneliness that clung to him even in a crowded room.
A horrifying calm settled over him.
It would be easy.
So easy.
And then—
A small voice broke through the darkness.
Soft.
Bright.
"My Papa is strong…"
Yuuta froze.
"My Papa's cooking is like a royal palace chef…"
His hands trembled.
"Do you like this, Papa?"
Another echo.
"Papa… where are you?"
His vision blurred.
That voice.
Her voice.
The little girl who didn't know his past.
Who didn't know about curses.
Who didn't know about humiliation or dragon queens or broken confessions.
She had simply looked at him…
…and called him Papa.
Not monster.
Not devil.
Not curse.
Papa.
A sob escaped his throat before he could stop it.
The image of her small hands tugging at his sleeve surfaced in his mind. The way her eyes lit up when he cooked. The way she waited for him to answer simple questions as if his response mattered more than anything in the world.
He was her real father but Coward who douge Responsibility.
She didn't owe him love.
Yet she gave it freely.
Yuuta's shoulders shook as tears fell freely down his face.
The rope around his wrists no longer felt like a tool.
It felt like something that was holding him back from doing something unforgivable.
He lowered his head, crying silently in the empty classroom as the sun continued to sink beyond the horizon.
The devil's whisper faded.
In its place remained a child's voice.
Calling him home.
The boys had been waiting just outside the classroom door.
At first, they were fired up—whispering strategies, replaying everything Yuuta had said, preparing to drag him into another round of questioning the moment the girls were done. Some of them were curious. Some of them were annoyed. A few just wanted answers.
The "happiest guy in class" didn't get to hide secrets.
Not from them.
One of them reached for the sliding door.
And then they heard it.
Not shouting.
Not arguing.
Crying Sliently.
Raw. Uncontrolled. The kind of Slient crying that didn't care who was listening.
The hand on the door froze.
The hallway went silent.
They looked at each other, confusion replacing irritation. Yuuta? Weeping like that?
"That's… him, right?" one of them whispered.
No one answered.
Because they all knew.
The sound coming from inside wasn't fake. It wasn't dramatic. It wasn't attention-seeking.
It was heavy.
Broken.
They had always known Yuuta as the easygoing one. The guy who laughed things off. The one who made sarcastic comments even when things got awkward. The one who seemed weird—but harmlessly so.
None of them had ever seen him like this.
One of the boys slowly lowered his hand from the door.
"…Let's not," he muttered.
Another nodded.
"If we go in now, it'll just make it worse."
They didn't know what had broken him. They didn't know about the orphanage, the curse, the dragon queen, or the weight he had been carrying alone.
But they understood one thing instinctively—
Pressing him right now would only tear something further.
So they stepped back.
Not dramatically.
Not with speeches.
Just a quiet, mutual agreement.
For once, they would leave him alone.
The hallway lights flickered on as evening settled in. The sun outside dipped lower, painting the corridor in fading gold.
Inside the classroom, Yuuta was still sliently weeping.
Outside, the boys leaned against the wall in silence.
This was the first time they realized something uncomfortable.
They didn't really know him.
Not beyond the jokes.
Not beyond the weird habits.
Not beyond the surface-level smile.
Who was Yuuta, truly?
What kind of past makes someone laugh that loudly… and cry that hard?
None of them had the answer.
For now, Yuuta was facing something he had been running from for years.
Reality.
And reality doesn't disappear just because you joke about it.
The question wasn't whether he could endure it.
The real question was—
When he stood up from that chair… would he still be the same Yuuta they thought they knew?
For now, all they could do was wait.
And see how this would unfold.