I Thought Your Friend's Sibling Wasn't a Girl? - Chapter 16

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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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Chapter 16
* * *
One week remained until the Practical Exam.
After meeting with Aiden that day, Olivia had returned to the Dormitory and, for the first time in ages, buried her face in her pillow with silent sobs. The pillowcase bore tear stains in the shape of her face—a sight both pathetic and telling.
“I don’t have the confidence to fight while protecting you.”
Aiden’s words circled endlessly through her mind.
I didn’t take up the sword to be protected. Olivia wanted to argue that, but she couldn’t. The moment she heard those words, it felt as though Aiden had pushed her away—left her standing alone at the edge of something vast and cold.
Olivia gripped her jaw tight and swung her sword again.
Whoosh! Crack!
“Ah!”
The unfortunate victim was Martin, a classmate who had been wandering carelessly past her. Fragments of the shattered Wooden Dummy exploded like fireworks, raining down upon him in a violent shower.
“I’m sorry, Martin.”
“It’s fine, it’s—but Olivia, did something happen……?”
“Good grief! And here I thought you’d learned some sense. You can’t just wander past someone who’s training! Don’t worry, Olivia. I’ll have a serious word with him.”
Olivia nodded listlessly and turned to retrieve a new Wooden Dummy from the corner of the Training Grounds, while Bennett and Panya—their fingers clamped firmly over Martin’s mouth—dragged him toward a shadowed alcove.
“Why, why are you doing this? What’s going on?”
“Keep your voice down. We just saved your life, so be grateful.”
“Saved my life? I came here to train, same as you!”
“Don’t you see those Wooden Dummies over there?”
Martin’s gaze drifted toward where Panya was pointing, then wavered like a ship caught in a storm.
“When did the Training Grounds get… whatever that is? It looks like a mountain.”
“Wake up, Martin. A mountain?”
“Then… a graveyard of Wooden Dummies?”
There, in careful rows, lay the shattered remains of countless Wooden Dummies. Utterly, devastatingly destroyed.
Seeing the broken figures stacked upon one another in neat lines, Martin felt a chill despite knowing they were merely wooden training tools.
Panya and Bennett, observing his reaction, lowered their voices to conspiratorial whispers.
“Every Wooden Dummy in the Academy—she’s intent on smashing them all to pieces.”
“Something definitely happened that day. You know, when we all went to the Plaza together?”
“Something? What happened back then?”
At Martin’s innocent question, Panya stiffened and sealed her lips.
Something had happened—that much was certain. Because Olivia’s expression that day had carried an emotion Panya had never witnessed before, not once in all their time together. And when they’d met again in the Dormitory, it was the same.
“Olivia, what happened earlier?”
“Nothing happened.”
“Really?”
“Just… an ordinary day, like any other.”
“Would you come to my room for a bit? Talk to me? You look like you’re struggling.”
“I’m fine. I’m used to it. Used to this.”
That day, Olivia looked unbearably alone. She forced the corners of her mouth upward, as if denying her own pain, but Panya had learned to read her friend’s face well enough by now.
This present state was far better than how she’d been that day. So Panya resolved to do everything in her power to help her friend recover.
“Well, so… Olivia, you’re just a bit…….”
Panya seemed to be searching for words, her mouth working silently before she clapped her hands softly and spoke.
“Let’s say you’re just tired.”
Yes. Her friend—unique, strange perhaps, but warm and tender—was simply tired right now.
“Anyway, stay away from here. Don’t talk to her. If you do, you might end up taking her place in that pile.”
Martin’s eyes fixed on the bisected Wooden Dummy, and his face grew taut with tension.
“Th-thank you. I won’t come near this area for a good long while.”
“Right. The Practical Exam’s coming up—no need to invite bad luck.”
“I’ll go tell the others too.”
“Good, good thinking. By the way, that was the last—”
Crack!
……
“—the last Wooden Dummy.”
Three pairs of eyes snapped toward Olivia, who stood staring at the remains with an expression of profound absorption, as if lost in thought.
Their survival instincts flared to brilliant life.
Olivia stared at the bisected dummy, her voice hollow and distant.
“There are no more Wooden Dummies left…….”
Gulp.
Creak, creak.
Olivia’s head turned with mechanical precision toward the three of them. Their instincts screamed warnings.
“Run. Run now.”
“Wait, you—”
“Ahhhhhhh!”
Bang, crash, bang, crash!
A tremendous noise erupted; dust billowed thick and pale. The three fled for their lives.
“… What was that?”
Only Olivia remained, bewildered and alone, tilting her head in confusion.
* * *
The empty Training Grounds. Wooden Dummies shattered beyond recognition. With her turmoil finally vented, Olivia stood hollow-eyed before the wreckage she had wrought.
Limbs of the stacked dummies twisted together at grotesque angles—a scene almost obscene in its destruction.
“Sigh……. So frustrating. Really.”
Gripping the Wooden Sword, Olivia had needed to strike something, anything, to dispel this suffocating ache. Her hands, it seemed, had gotten somewhat out of control.
With a long, weary breath, Olivia slumped against the heap of shattered dummies.
“What’s wrong with him?”
What was Aiden hiding? Why had he suddenly started talking about “protecting” her? Olivia still couldn’t grasp it, couldn’t make sense of it at all.
There was definitely something he wasn’t telling her.
“And what’s your problem, anyway?”
Umm, ummm.
Defensor, held in her hand, hummed discordantly. Olivia grasped it and shook it once, speaking sharply.
“What’s got you so upset that you let me destroy every single one of these dummies? Can’t you help me control my strength?”
Panya and Bennett had guessed only half right.
Yes, “something” had happened that drove Olivia to pummel the dummies—but this training was not mere venting. There was more to it than that.
“Listen to me. I’m taking only you to the Practical Exam. So you’d better shape up, understood?”
Umm.
“I’m your master, remember? Can’t you accept that by now?”
Mmm.
“If you keep acting like this, things won’t be any fun.”
Ummmmm.
Despite her serious tone, Defensor continued to answer back—or at least, continued to respond in its own way.
The ability to communicate with Defensor in this strange, wordless manner was still new—perhaps a mere few days old? Or was it around the thousandth time Olivia had tried?
“Why do you keep doing this? If you have a complaint, just tell me. If you don’t say anything, how am I supposed to know?”
“Ow! Stop being so sharp and just talk straight.”
“Fine then, let’s settle this once and for all—let’s see who wins.”
That day, Olivia’s stubbornness had flared hot as a flame, and she’d grasped the still-defiant Defensor with all her might.
Defensor had fought back fiercely, refusing to submit to her grip, its handle alternating between scorching heat and icy cold.
But Olivia, determined this time to dominate it once and for all, held fast with equal force. It had been quite the intense battle.
Of course, such a thing was only possible because the pain Olivia felt had diminished compared to before.
In any case, Olivia had emerged victorious that day. After that, Defensor seemed to have given up—at least, it no longer threw tantrums like it once had.
Though it seemed to have developed a different kind of defiance…….
“What? You don’t like how I’m gripping you?”
Mmm. Umm. Ummmmm!
“Why must you…….”
Reading the human heart was difficult enough; now she had to decipher a sword’s feelings too? The unfairness of it all weighed heavily on Olivia.
Aiden, her instructor, had said it clearly: a turbulent heart would scatter the Sword Flow. Yet Olivia’s mind was still full of afflictions.
Forced to read both the feelings of people and blade alike, she found herself drowning in an excess of thought—a monumental problem with no easy answer.
Olivia carelessly draped Defensor across her body and sprawled against the pile of broken dummies, utterly depleted.
What was the problem? What was wrong with him, and what was wrong with this sword?
Defensor’s white blade caught the sunlight, gleaming with a soft, ethereal radiance.
Whether or not the sword understood Olivia’s complicated heart, the sky remained endlessly clear. Sunlight poured down gently, soothing her entire being.
Perhaps for that reason, her eyelids grew heavy. Olivia drifted into a shallow sleep, cradled against the graveyard of wooden dummies.
And so she never noticed. The figure watching her from a distance.
“Your dear student seems to have something on her mind.”
“I know.”
“I wondered where all the Wooden Dummies went…… You’ve certainly taken on quite the remarkable student.”
“Sena. Quiet.”
Eyes heavy with complex emotion remained fixed on the sleeping Olivia in the sunlight—long, lingering, utterly still.
They remained there for an eternity, until Olivia suddenly woke in alarm at finding herself asleep on the ground and hurried back to the Dormitory.

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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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