Even ignoring the matter of blood magic, there was another issue, one that may have been an even bigger problem.
The woman sitting next to him.
Amelia Indras Einhardt.
Still inexplicably present in a way that made the whole situation harder to think about properly.
Right before the practical had ended, she had asked him something.
Not dramatically or with any buildup, and not with the kind of emotional framing that should have surrounded a moment like that.
She had just asked one simple question:
— Can we be friends?
The memory of it echoed in his head now with renewed absurdity.
He turned his head slightly and looked at her.
Amelia was sitting beside him on a low stretch of broken ground near the edge of the exam field, posture loose, hands resting where they fell, her earlier grin faded back into that calm, unreadable expression she wore when she was not actively fighting.
She looked relaxed, comfortable, even.
As if sitting next to him like this, after everything that had just happened, was the most natural continuation in the world.
Soren did not understand it.
He really, genuinely did not understand it.
She had sought him out.
She had pushed him into a fight he could not win.
She had tested him, rewarded him, watched him like he was something worth focusing on, and then, with no warning and even less explanation, asked to be friends.
Not allies.
Not rivals.
Friends.
And the more he turned it over in his head, the stranger it got.
Because this had not even happened with Alex.
That was the part that kept snagging.
In the original story, Amelia's interest in Alex had built differently.
She fought him, yes, recognised something in him, yes, but she did not immediately close the gap like this.
She watched first.
Not subtly, because subtle was not really Amelia's style, but there had still been distance.
A pause.
Space before approach.
And even that had caused a stir, enough that people paid attention, enough that the royal family and academy circles alike had taken note.
That was supposed to have been special.
Important.
The beginning of something story-shaped.
'So why me?'
If he had simply slotted into Alex's place, he could maybe have rationalised it.
The idea would still have terrified him, but at least it would have made narrative sense.
This was different.
This felt messier.
Less explainable.
More personal, somehow, which was exactly the kind of thing he did not know what to do with when the person involved was Amelia Indras Einhardt.
And the worst part, the part he did not want to look at too directly, was that beneath all the confusion, beneath the fear and disbelief and the constant awareness that getting dragged too close to people like this was dangerous, there was still a small, treacherous warmth in him.
He was happy.
Not wholly.
Not cleanly.
Not in a way that sat without friction.
But happy.
Because of course he was.
That was the part that made it difficult to breathe normally.
Amelia Indras Einhardt was one of the three main heroines.
Even thinking it that plainly did nothing to blunt the effect of sitting beside her in person.
She was beautiful in the sort of way that felt unfair when seen up close.
Not delicate or ornamental, but striking enough that the eye kept getting caught anyway, from the ash-grey hair to the wolf ears and tail that shifted with small, thoughtless honesty, to the neon-yellow eyes that always looked a little too direct, a little too unfiltered, as if she had never learned that most people softened their attention before letting it rest on someone.
And Soren liked her.
Not in any extreme way, just in that simple way that a fan likes an idol.
He had before coming here, and whatever confusion he felt now had not erased that.
That was part of the problem.
Because liking someone in theory and having them sit next to you after nearly beating you senseless were two very different things.
And even now, with his body aching in the aftermath and his thoughts still not settled from the practical, there was warmth there too, inconvenient and immediate, the simple warmth of being noticed, of being chosen, of being asked something as normal as "can we be friends" by someone who should have felt impossibly far away.
It made something in his chest loosen.
It made something else tighten.
The two feelings sat against each other so awkwardly that he could not separate them.
The warmth was real.
So was the unease.
So was the thin, ugly sense that he was standing in a place he should not be standing, reaching toward something he had no right to touch, while some other part of him still leaned toward it anyway because it felt nice.
'…This is bad.'
Not because Amelia herself had done anything wrong, not exactly.
If anything, she had been more straightforward than anyone else here.
Brutal, insensitive, impossible to predict in motion, yes, but not false.
The problem was that people like her changed things simply by getting close, and Soren knew that too well now.
Still, knowing it did not stop the warmth from spreading when he replayed the question in his head.
— Can we be friends?
Simple, blunt, and almost childishly direct.
No careful lead-in, no reading the mood, and no attempt to make it less strange.
That was Amelia.
And somehow that only made it harder to deal with.
'Does this count as stealing from the protagonist?'
The thought slid in so abruptly that he nearly winced.
He genuinely did not know.
He had told himself, more than once, that he would not interfere with the main romance lines, would not get tangled up in that kind of thing, would not touch what was supposed to belong to the story and the people it was built around.
That had felt simple when everything was still theoretical, when the heroines were still names and quests and scenes he could keep at a distance.
It felt less simple now.
Because now Amelia was beside him, real and warm and weird and blunt, and asking to be friends was not the same thing as romance, obviously it was not, but it still felt like crossing some line he could not properly define.
And it was ridiculous, really, because another part of him, a much simpler part, just kept circling back to the same dumb response.
'I mean… who wouldn't be happy?'
That thought embarrassed him enough that he let out a quiet noise of frustration.
"Ugh…"
Amelia turned her head toward him immediately.
"What's wrong?"
Her voice was closer than he expected.
It caught him off guard in a completely different way than the fight had.
Without the strain of combat, without adrenaline and panic and the immediate need to react before dying, he could actually hear it properly now, the low, steady bluntness of it, how naturally it sat exactly in the range his stupid brain liked.
For one disastrous second, that was all he could think about.
'…Her voice is ridiculous.'
Which was not helpful, not remotely.
He took a slow breath and forced his expression back under control.
"I was thinking about a spell I learned."
Amelia's ears twitched.
"Oh?"
The response came quick and plain, interest showing without any attempt to hide it.
"What is it?"
Soren hesitated, then lifted a hand.
A crimson magic circle unfolded in his palm, thinner than the others he was used to, its light darker somehow, less clean.
The moment it formed, a wave of dizziness washed over him, sudden enough that his shoulders stiffened.
"「Hemokinesis」."
A small sphere of blood rose above his hand.
It wavered there unsteadily, trembling in place rather than floating with the stable ease of his usual spells, as if the magic itself did not quite want to settle under his control.
Amelia leaned slightly closer.
"Huh."
Her eyes sharpened with obvious interest, and she looked from the sphere to the circle and then back to him.
"Interesting."
The word came out once, then again a moment later, quieter, more to herself than to him.
"Interesting…"
Then she looked at him directly.
"So what's wrong?"
Soren let the spell dissolve, the blood dropping away with it before the dizziness could get any worse.
"I'm human."
Amelia nodded once.
"Oh, right."
There was no offence in it, no embarrassment either, just immediate acceptance of the point as soon as it was stated.
She fell quiet for a moment after that, thoughtful in the blunt, visible way she did everything, and Soren got the uncomfortable feeling that whatever she said next would probably be just as straightforward.
Before she could, another voice reached them.
"Hello, Soren."
Gentle.
Familiar.
Soren's head snapped around so quickly that his body moved before his mind caught up.
He was on his feet almost immediately, the motion abrupt enough to startle both Amelia and the person who had just approached.
Amelia shifted back with a faint flick of irritation crossing her face, while Lilliana stopped short, clearly not expecting him to react as if someone had yanked a wire inside him.
He barely noticed either response.
Because Lilliana was here.
And more importantly…
His gaze locked onto her status.
.
[Lilliana Roseblood]
Age: 22
Gender: Female
Race: Dhampir (Beastkin)
.
Dhampir.
Half-vampire.
The answer landed so fast it almost felt like physical relief.
Of course.
If anyone here could teach him blood magic safely, or at least safely enough not to immediately kill him, it would be Lilliana.
She was close enough to vampire physiology to understand it, close enough to human to understand the limits on his end too.
She was the perfect middle point.
The moment the thought hit, urgency overtook everything else.
He stepped forward and caught her hand before he could think better of it.
"Soren…?"
The word left her in soft surprise.
Her eyes flicked down to their joined hands, then back up to his face, the brief composure crack in a way that felt almost intimate simply because Lilliana usually held herself so carefully.
"Please teach me blood magic."
The request came out too quickly, too directly, but once it was said he could not take it back.
For a moment Lilliana simply stared at him.
Then the colour left her face.
Not just a startled paling, not simple discomfort.
It was as if something had reached through the present and dragged up another image behind her eyes, something old and sharp enough that her whole body reacted before she could smooth it away.
Her shoulders tensed.
Her fingers went cold in his grasp.
For the smallest moment she looked less like a composed professor and more like someone trying very hard not to let herself be pulled somewhere she did not want to go.
When she spoke, her voice was controlled, but only just.
"I'm sorry, Mr Arden… I can't."
He blinked.
"Huh? Why?"
It was such an immediate refusal that it caught him completely off guard.
Lilliana did not answer at once.
Her gaze stayed on him, but not evenly.
It kept catching on details, his face, his eyes, the fact that he was standing here asking this of her, and whatever she was seeing seemed to trouble her more the longer she looked.
"Soren…"
The name slipped out softer than the rest, warmer and more shaken all at once, then she steadied herself and started again.
"You're human, aren't you?"
"I'd like to think so?"
Under different circumstances he might have tried to make it sound lighter; here it only came out uncertain due to the mood.
Lilliana swallowed.
"Then it's dangerous."
Her voice dipped, and though she was clearly trying to keep it professional, something frayed at the edges anyway.
"Very dangerous. I'm sorry. I can't teach you that."
Her hand pulled back from his.
Not sharply or in rejection, but with the careful, deliberate distance of someone refusing a door they could not bear to open.
Soren stared at her.
For a second he wanted to push, to ask again, to point out that danger had very little meaning to him at this point when half the things keeping him alive were already dangerous.
But the look on her face stopped him.
Because this was not simple disapproval.
Not caution in the abstract.
Something in the request had hit a place in her that already hurt.
He could see it in the way her composure had gone too still, in the way her eyes no longer quite rested on him without slipping away, in how the refusal had come with strain rather than firmness, as if saying no cost her more than it should have.
And then she turned.
"Excuse me."
The words were polite, too polite.
Professor-like.
But the softness that had slipped into "Soren" a moment before still lingered enough to make the retreat ache more than a cleaner refusal would have.
He watched her go, chest tight in a way that had nothing to do with the fight.
"This is hard…"
The words left him under his breath after she was already several steps away.
He understood enough to know this was not casual for her.
Understood enough to know he had touched something raw.
But understanding did not help him much.
Because he still needed to learn it.
Still needed to do something with the skill he had nearly gotten himself killed for.
Still needed a way to make the reward worth the cost.
'I need to learn it.'
The thought came hard and flat.
He looked down at his hand, at where the red circle had formed before, at the faint memory of dizziness that had followed.
'I worked too hard for this.'
That version sounded cleaner than the one underneath it, so he kept that one.
After a moment, he turned back and sat down beside Amelia again.
She looked at him for a second, then asked a question, with complete bluntness and no visible awareness of how unhelpful it was.
"Can't you just learn?"
Soren closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose.
Of course that was her response.
Of course, to Amelia, the problem would flatten down into something that simple.
If a skill existed, learn it.
If there was danger, account for it.
If there was difficulty, overcome it.
That was probably how the whole world looked from where she stood.
'Right.'
She was a genius.
————「❤︎」————