Guiding the Male Lead out of His Trauma - Chapter 22.2
{ content warning: depictions of suicide and self-harm }
“Gasp…!”
My classmate, horrified, quickly clapped a hand over his own mouth to stifle a scream.
There was no time to check on anyone else.
I rushed over to the upperclassman and quickly checked her condition, starting from her limbs.
‘Her left wrist and leg are bruised, but I don’t think they’re broken… No, her ribs might be cracked too.’
“Ack…!”
Even though I only touched her torso lightly, her body twisted in pain.
“This isn’t good. I’ll go in. Can you check if she has any other injuries?”
To make sure she gets treated safely… I have to get Acteon to regain his senses first.
But there was no answer.
I turned around to ask for first aid again. And in that moment, I made eye contact with the classmate, who was backing away.
“I… I can’t do it…!”
Mumbling, he hesitated, then ran away, back in the direction we’d come.
…Honestly, I understood.
‘I can’t even blame him.’
But that didn’t mean I could forgive leaving an injured person behind.
I forced myself to calm my irritation, and just then, the upperclassman opened her eyes and spoke.
She seemed to have a sense of what parts of her body were injured.
“Be… careful. He attacked me the moment he saw me…”
“He attacked you?”
“More precisely… it felt like he was trying to keep me from coming in.”
She quickly described what she’d seen.
The more I listened, the heavier I felt.
It was as if Acteon was trying to keep everyone away from him.
Ah, damn it.
I remembered Acteon right before he collapsed.
‘Stay away.’
He meant that it was dangerous to approach him now.
He was pushing people away and hurting them in the process.
He couldn’t control his mana properly.
I bit my lip, then let go, and asked her,
“Can you stay here alone?”
“…The pain is bad, but I’m not bleeding. …Are you going in?”
“If I don’t get any results, we won’t be able to leave. I’ll be back.”
Even after saying that and standing up, I was so worried that my feet wouldn’t move.
But stopping now wasn’t the best choice.
Since I knew exactly what I needed to do, that made it easier.
Cautiously stepping into the auditorium, I calmly looked around inside.
Surprisingly, not much had changed from before.
Except for one thing.
The mana, which was now almost visible to the naked eye.
Blue, shimmering mana drifted like a thin mist, filling the entire space.
‘Even just entering, you can tell. If he’s not the protagonist, who is? That’s a level of mana manipulation that’s enough to make anyone flinch.’
To be able to reach this level…
All the surrounding mana must have been drawn in by Acteon.
Just by the sheer amount, it would cover half the academy grounds. Having already converted the natural mana into his own, there was likely little left for any other Transcendent to use.
I worried for a moment that, like with that upperclassman, I might get thrown out just by entering.
But once I stepped inside, the gust of wind-like mana seemed to recognize something familiar in me and did not push me away.
“…It’s actually more unsettling because it’s so quiet.”
There isn’t something more, is there?
I brushed my arm, shivering at my own imagination, and passed through the ring of seats to step onto the black carpet.
Going a little further down, I found Acteon leaning against the large window.
Outside, the sun had already set and dusk was falling.
Beyond the glass wall that spanned the entire side of the room, the mana stone lamps flickered.
“…Acteon?”
He hadn’t moved a muscle. I hadn’t even touched him yet, but it was obvious at a glance that he was suffering from a raging fever.
It’s going so smoothly… Is it really okay to proceed like this?
While I was doubting, I reached out to touch his cheek.
Click.
“…What is that?”
With no warning, my field of vision changed.
As I blinked in confusion, a woman I didn’t know appeared before my eyes.
* * *
“Acteon. I’m giving you this advice because it seems like you’ll awaken like I did. Listen well…”
“…Claire.”
“Don’t trust Guides. Don’t entrust yourself to them. In the end, monsters like us will only be too much for them, and they’ll die.”
Things like ranks don’t matter.
You know that, right?
That we’re not people who can be classified by those standards.
The man embracing the unfamiliar woman in front of me exploded and died.
The woman, still clinging to the corpse, smiled with an eerie lifelessness.
“I’m sorry. You looked up to Aren even more than you did to Cassiel. I’m the one who took him away from you.”
And before long, the woman, covered in his blood, turned to ‘me’ and wept, speaking coldly,
“Don’t forget what I said. We’re monsters.”
No one can handle us.
Then, the woman raised the gun in her hand to her own head.
The sound of a gunshot echoed.
* * *
What was that just now?
Suddenly, as if I’d been pulled out of water, my vision returned to normal.
At some point, my chest had started to heave, as if I’d nearly drowned, pounding with frantic urgency.
‘That just now… Could it be what Acteon is seeing?’
The same thing had happened during his first awakening.
His emotions had been transmitted to me just as clearly.
I don’t know why it happened, but by the circumstances, it was clearly the same as before.
‘He’s been watching that the whole time he’s unconscious?’
I didn’t know exactly what was going on.
But I could tell who that woman was.
Claire Brondearn.
Cassiel’s already deceased twin sister.
Only then did I understand why Acteon had reacted that way at the time.
He’d experienced it once before.
The experience of seeing a Guide die before his eyes.
And it wasn’t even a death anyone had wanted.
‘He was projecting. Because of what Claire had said, he thought the same thing would happen to him…’
A family member took someone like family along with her to death.
And branded him as the same kind of monster.
That was when Acteon, who hadn’t moved at all until then, finally reacted.
Flutter.
His long eyelashes trembled and hazy eyes appeared.
Even as I steadied my breathing, I couldn’t look away from the ominous sign Acteon was showing.
Crack.
Somewhere, I heard the sound of something cracking.
Or maybe it was a sound like something solidifying. It sent a chill down my spine.
Flicker, flicker.
Meanwhile, the mana stone lights outside kept flickering.
Each time that uneasy light wavered—
“How am I supposed to calm that down…?”
Crackle.
I could see, in real time, the process of Acteon’s mana crystallizing like a jewel.
The crystal, catching the glint of the lamplight, shone pure white—or perhaps vivid blue.
And it was directed right at me.
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