Don't Feed the Professor! - Chapter 65

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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“Why?”
Long fingers tapped impatiently against my index fingernail. I quickly tucked both hands behind my back.
“What, did you come to take back the Business Card now?”
He’d suddenly pulled me into his arms whenever he pleased, then just as arbitrarily cancelled class, ignored my texts, and now he appears out of nowhere demanding I hand over the Business Card?
“Keeping it won’t do you any good.”
“Whether it does or doesn’t is for me to judge.”
‘Don’t get angry. Getting angry means losing.’
But seeing that smile still playing across his face, irritation flared up inside me for reasons I couldn’t explain.
“I’m not a child. Why are you meddling in things like this?”
“…….”
“What are you going to do if I don’t give it? Report me to the dean?”
That’s when Mallo’s expression shifted subtly.
“……Don’t be sarcastic.”
“Oh? Now you’re lecturing me? But what can you do? I’ve already memorized your phone number without needing a Business Card.”
I spoke with a nastiness that even I found grating. And finally, that infuriating smile vanished from Mallo’s face.
My fleeting sense of victory was short-lived.
“Lee Yuri.”
“W-what…….”
Mallo stared down at me for a long moment before asking.
“What do you want to eat?”
My mouth fell open without my meaning to.
What do I want to eat? Is he really treating me like someone who’s irritable because they’re hungry?
Before I could protest, Mallo asked again.
“Ice cream?”
Ah.
‘That does sound good.’
Truth be told, I was hungry after my shift ended.
It’s shameful to cave over food, but really, isn’t everything we do ultimately for the sake of feeding ourselves?
As I hesitated, Mallo’s eyes narrowed.
“You’re just a kid, after all.”
And his fingertips, naturally moving to poke my cheek, froze in mid-air.
“……What?”
I asked, watching Mallo quietly withdraw his hand.
“What what?”
“What do you mean, ‘just now’?”
Mallo rolled his eyes.
“I think I’ve been treating you too…… casually.”
“Pardon?”
No, that doesn’t make sense at all.
Then I remembered. I’d said something like that before in the elevator.
〈Um, now that you mention it, isn’t it true that you’re too casual, Professor? The way you just lift me up without warning, and pull me by the waist……!〉
“I’m sorry for picking you up and holding you like that on a whim.”
“No, why are you suddenly…….”
“I won’t do it anymore, so don’t feel burdened. Okay?”
And he smiled. Like a kindly professor.
“…….”
Now I was beginning to understand. Why my chest had been twisting like this all along.
Whenever I reacted like this, Mallo always turned peculiarly adult on me.
Despite spouting nothing but nonsense most of the time and playing childish pranks, the moment I acted immature, he’d put on that annoyingly grown-up expression.
And that infuriated me beyond words.
“Come on, I’ll buy you ice cream.”
“What’s with that tone now…….”
As I grumbled, Mallo jerked his head toward one side of the Parking Lot. Only then did I notice his car parked there.
While I hesitated, the passenger door opened automatically.
“Ah.”
Mallo turned back to me as he started walking and added.
“If you’d rather sit in the back seat, that’s fine too.”
For reasons I couldn’t explain, something inside me—like the last thread of my patience—snapped.
“I don’t want it.”
“What?”
“I said I don’t want the ice cream!”
I stamped my foot and stormed past the Parking Lot, with Mallo simply staring after me in bewilderment.
Then, belatedly, he called out to my back.
“The photo shoot—you’re not really going through with it, are you?”
I spun around sharply.
Of course I had no intention whatsoever of becoming a cover model for some suspicious magazine. But I didn’t want to give Mallo a straight answer either.
“Is that really what matters right now?!”
I shouted the question at him, and Mallo stood frozen for a moment before asking.
“Then what does matter?”
……I don’t know.
“I don’t know!”
I really don’t.
I fled the scene. The truly maddening part was that I didn’t even understand why I was acting like this.
* * *
The moment I opened the Dormitory door, I sensed something off about the air inside.
‘What is it?’
Unsettling, or perhaps ominous—that was the feeling.
Even the Resident Advisor’s window was firmly shut. Usually it cracked open a handspan whenever someone passed, then closed after they acknowledged the greeting.
“Um……, hello……?”
I greeted them, but received no response.
‘Well, I did greet them anyway…….’
I headed straight up the stairs. My footsteps sounded muffled, as though the floor were damp.
‘Second floor…… nothing unusual.’
I gripped my phone, then shoved it back into my pocket.
‘Don’t be oversensitive.’
It would be ridiculous to contact him after throwing that fit just now. And what would I even say?
The Dormitory feels a bit strange?
That would be stupid enough after that one message yesterday.
With those thoughts, I climbed the stairs and turned into the third-floor hallway when the figure blocking my path made my entire body go rigid.
―Creak.
“Oh, so it was you…….”
It was Scarecrow. Scarecrow was standing in front of my door, waiting for me.
―Creak.
I clasped my trembling hands together and asked.
“You scared me. What are you doing standing there like that? If someone sees you…….”
I swallowed the rest—that they’d think you were a hanged corpse. The scene I’d witnessed at the Sarim Hotel last week flickered through my mind.
Compared to the crazy hotel manager and the gamblers, this one was nothing.
―Creak-creak.
Scarecrow raised their right arm. The sleeve of the Black Raincoat still gleamed wetly.
A long, skeletal finger pointed toward a wooden door at the end of the hallway.
‘That must be…… the Equipment Room, I think.’
That was information I’d dug out from my Diary—the day I found the footprints leading from the end of the hallway to the corner room. It supposedly connected to the storage closet in the Student Center.
Scarecrow seemed to use that door to come and go from the Student Center. The muddy footprints I’d noticed on course registration day must have been theirs too.
‘Probably…… looking for food?’
Hadn’t I found those strange offering traces behind the bulletin board that day? Given the lack of signs of contact, it seemed like it had come to nothing.
‘Has this one been starving all along too?’
I looked up at Scarecrow and pondered. Ever since Bibi told me that Scarecrow was a failed Survivor from an escape, they didn’t seem quite as frightening.
It was still creepy to look at them, sure, but I felt pity first.
They’d long passed the point where I should worry about their health, but the fact that they kept claiming hunger meant they still felt pain.
I wondered if the other Amelies hadn’t wanted to help as well. I slipped off my backpack and took out the paper-wrapped package inside.
“Here, take this. I got it from work. For Fortress food, it’s not bad.”
Goldilocks had packed me an Egg Tart before clocking out. It was more of a snack than a proper meal, but it should have filled the hunger anyway.
Scarecrow stared down at me blankly for a moment, then slowly reached out. With fingers as awkward as inexperienced chopsticks, they picked up an Egg Tart from the box.
I watched as Scarecrow very carefully brought it to their mouth.
The tart disappeared between long, damp strands of hair.
―Psshhh.
“……?”
Something poured down over the Black Raincoat. At first I thought it was tart crumbs, but it wasn’t.
‘Sand……?’
Scarecrow’s arms hung limp at their sides as they gazed at me. What scattered at their feet was unmistakably yellow sand dust.
The moment the Egg Tart entered their mouth, it had transformed into sand.
I realized it at once.
‘It wasn’t that there was no food to eat. It was that they couldn’t eat.’
Was it some kind of curse? If so, what could I do?
―Creak.
Scarecrow clenched and unclenched their fist.
“Sorry, I have no idea what you’re trying to say.”
If this could be solved so easily, they wouldn’t have been hovering around me for a whole month. Was it really true, as Bibi said, that there was nothing I could do to help?
Ding.
‘Huh?’
I pulled out my phone and checked the message.
[K4N_8■?JN: cntral libary]
“The Central Library……? Did you send this?”
I showed the phone to Scarecrow. They simply stood there limply, offering no reaction or response.
Ding.
[K4N_8■?JN: help me ameli]
“……You’re going to have to be more specific than that.”
I muttered, and soon a reply came back.
Ding.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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