My High School Nerd Rival - Chapter 66

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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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Episode 66
She couldn’t even think about the rule that you weren’t supposed to make heavy footfalls in the corridor.
Ivy charged toward Cyrus’s room with a face so frightening that the passing students stared at her without really meaning to.
“Cyrus Quinton, have you lost your mind?!”
And she shoved his door open roughly without bothering to knock.
He, who had been sitting at his desk, turned around, and Logan, who had been lying diagonally across the bed, startled and dropped the basketball to the floor.
“What kind of message was that for you to send like that?”
Come to my room.
After she’d confirmed that audacious message.
Joy seemed quite startled, but she didn’t say anything.
Ivy thought that was worse.
It meant she’d interpreted Cyrus’s message in a very ‘peculiar’ direction.
Of course, Ivy had been very level-headed about clarifying the facts.
That he hadn’t sent it with any other meaning in mind.
But Joy had only raised the corner of her mouth slightly.
She was definitely thinking, ‘If you want to believe that, I won’t stop you.’
Ivy moved right up to Cyrus’s desk.
He spun his chair around to face her.
“Is that a problem?”
At that calm question, Ivy immediately let out a cry.
“Of course it is……!”
But soon she noticed Logan slipping quietly out of the room and paused mid-sentence.
As if he were making room for them.
“Logan. You don’t have to leave.”
This is just about our group project.
“I’ll pass. I enjoy interrogating the class president, but I’m not the kind who enjoys being interrogated.”
He took another step back toward the door, gesturing at Cyrus with his chin.
“The one who enjoys being tortured is the one I’ll leave behind, so go ahead and roast him.”
And he quickly left the room.
What annoyed her was that despite what he said, he was ultimately making room for them.
Ivy roughly swept back the hair covering her face and glared at Cyrus.
There was his face, composed to an infuriating degree.
“You always just sent ‘Confirmed’ before.”
“I confirmed.”
“So couldn’t you just reply with ‘Confirmed’ this time too?”
“I confirmed, and then I judged that you needed to come to my room.”
But why!
Before Ivy could shout that, he held up a book.
Metamorphoses Book 1.
The book containing “Apollo and Daphne,” their assigned translation task.
It hadn’t been borrowed from the Library. It was an older edition than the ones in the collection, and above all, it had no call number label.
“I’ll lend it to you.”
He extended the book toward her.
A flush of embarrassment was unavoidable.
She’d gone and shouted at Cyrus without even knowing this.
“It’s just, you see……”
Ivy opened her mouth barely as she took the offered book.
She needed to offer some explanation, in any case.
“I was with Joy. We were looking at my phone together. You know how Joy is……”
Ivy touched the worn spine of the book.
“Anyway, that’s why it was like that.”
An honest explanation, painfully drawn out.
But she held no expectation that he would understand this vague feeling.
Probably by now he was thinking, ‘Is that a problem?’
When you looked at him, he was really smart, but then he had this incredibly stupid side to him.
“That must have been difficult for you.”
“Huh?”
An answer different from what she expected.
“I’m sorry.”
Ivy examined his face carefully. She had reason to doubt whether the person in front of her was actually Cyrus himself.
“Is it really that surprising?”
Ivy nodded immediately.
“I didn’t realize that what I said could come across with a different nuance. Seems like enough reason to apologize, though.”
“I didn’t know you were someone who could recognize that different nuance.”
Ivy quickly apologized for the words that had spilled out without her noticing.
“Sorry, my true thoughts came out.”
…….
“Oh, sorry. Not my true thoughts.”
In her attempt to make excuses, she’d only made the situation worse and embarrassed him further.
“Anyway, you really can’t lie, can you?”
“Huh?”
“Never mind. Just take the book anyway.”
He leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms.
“Even ordering online would take a long time for delivery.”
Before starting in earnest, it was his way of saying she should familiarize herself with it.
You couldn’t plan a project in complete ignorance.
“But what about you?”
“Me.”
His gaze lingered briefly on the book she held.
“I read it recently.”
“……What?”
She doubted her ears.
He’d read a book in Latin recently? What kind of self-torture was that?
“Out of boredom.”
“No one in this world torments their own brain just because they’re bored.”
Ivy stated it as an absolute.
But he tilted his head. He clearly couldn’t understand her reasoning.
Good heavens.
Ivy flipped through the book’s pages with a soft rustle.
Latin was truly a language that deserved to be called torture.
You had to memorize all the cases and inflections, and the word order was arbitrary at that. And yet the content it contained was endlessly deep, drawing readers into a labyrinth with every sentence.
“If this were the last book left in the world, then maybe.”
Ivy turned through the remaining pages.
At the same time, a white memo that had been tucked between the pages fluttered down to the floor.
“Ah.”
It was natural to leave notes while reading a book in Latin.
Whether it was a grammatical issue or a question of reflection after understanding the content.
Even Cyrus wouldn’t process everything only in his head.
Ivy’s hand reached for the memo. It was natural—she’d dropped it.
Ivy bent down toward the fallen memo.
The cold of the floor seeped through the thin memo and into her skin. But before that chill could settle, another temperature pressed in.
Warmth at the tips of overlapping fingers.
An accident that happened because they both reached for the small memo at the same time.
Or rather, it wasn’t even an accident. It was just the slightest touch.
It was nothing. Nothing to be embarrassed about. She just needed to pull her hand back quickly.
If she did that, it would be ‘as if nothing had happened.’
…….
But she didn’t move.
Ivy stared at the hands of both of them resting over the small memo, and she realized one thing.
Cyrus wasn’t pulling his hand away either.
Was it stubbornness about picking the memo up himself?
‘If that weren’t it……’
She lifted her head. Their eyes met at once, and it seemed to suggest that his gaze had been on her all this while.
Meeting at the same level was unfamiliar, yet Ivy knew the sensation of this moment.
‘It’s like…… that time.’
The Easter Market.
Knowing it couldn’t possibly be.
She dropped her gaze as if fleeing. Her face had probably gone red.
But that didn’t mean anything else. It was just nerves.
Simply fear that her identity might be exposed.
That was all. It had to be.
He must have known it was an odd reaction, yet he still hadn’t pulled away. Now she couldn’t feel the cold from the floor at all.
Perhaps the place where they touched had grown warmer, but she didn’t want to think about it that way.
Her wavering eyes settled on his memo.
Latin, faintly visible.
videt.
inornatos.
capillos.
Did he notice that her eyes had gone to his handwriting?
With a crinkle, he crumpled the memo slightly in his grip.
His fingertips brushed past along with the paper.
“It’s……personal stuff.”
He slipped the crumpled paper into his pocket.
She thought it sounded like an excuse, but she couldn’t ask what it was an excuse for.
There was no reason to ask, and thinking about it, it didn’t seem like an excuse at all.
Ivy also wouldn’t want to share notes she’d written while studying.
“Oh, yeah.”
Ivy stood up as if nothing were wrong.
“If there are other memos in the book, I’ll pretend not to see them.”
Joking words spilled out on their own. She felt it necessary to do this.
“There aren’t any other memos.”
“So you’re bragging about being able to read without notes?”
“I don’t deny it. It’s not bragging, though.”
He adjusted his Glasses, and without meaning to, Ivy’s gaze lingered on the movement.
But she quickly turned her head away as if fleeing.
“……Having a partner must be a hindrance for you.”
“It probably would be for you too. Especially since you didn’t want to work with me.”
That wasn’t wrong.
“Well…… I suppose you’re right.”
When she grasped the cold doorknob, she found herself turning back without meaning to.
“I’m going.”
“Yeah.”
As they exchanged a parting with little meaning, Ivy found herself thinking that being with him wasn’t necessarily a loss.
‘He just…… just lent me a book that’s hard to find. That much is worth acknowledging.’
That was all.
There was no other reason. There wouldn’t be.
There couldn’t be.

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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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