My High School Nerd Rival - Chapter 71

The look in his eyes as he said this was the same as it had been “back then.”
That moment when he’d gazed at her, grasping at a last shred of hope.
A place where old regret still ached.
‘……Yes, it was.’
No matter how much cruelty he’d inflicted, it could never match the cruelty of what Ivy had done in those days.
She had stripped away his only thread of hope.

Even as she gave this answer, Ivy drew a careful line.

She wouldn’t avoid Fabian.
It might be the only way his deep wounds could ever heal.
And it was necessary.
It wasn’t merely a matter of guilt she’d carried for so long.
The deeper his resentment ran, the more certain she was that people would seek to use it against him. Expulsion or not, Royal Family blood still flowed through his veins.
Ivy had to take his outstretched hand.
If only so the Royal Family would no longer be shaken by chaos.
And then it came to her.
Not refusing him meant the Latin Group Assignment the teacher had proposed was included in that promise too.
And that—no matter how small it seemed—mattered.
Ivy tightened her grip on the book in her hands.
Cyrus still waited silently for her answer.
……
She started to hold out the book, but paused as the spine of it brushed against her fingertips.
Still, after a moment, she carefully extended her arm.
He didn’t take the book right away. He didn’t even ask if she’d finished it.
Perhaps he’d understood what it meant to return this book to him.
“……You know.”
Ivy opened her mouth in a voice that felt almost strangled.
She had to explain. About this unfairness. It was her obligation.
But the instant she spoke, Cyrus reached for the other end of the book and pulled it away in one motion.
Ivy’s empty hand hung in the air for a long moment before she drew it back.
Slowly, she hid it behind her.
“It doesn’t matter.”
His answer was brief. It was subtly different from his usual indifference.
There was a faint tension in his jaw.
She needed to say something. Something he could understand.
“No, I……”
But just then, the Nocturne rang out.
The signal that Lights Out Time had arrived.
“It’s late. Go.”
The gap in the doorway narrowed. His arm disappeared, then his shoulder, then finally his face.
Click.
The door closed.
Wait, Cyrus—just a moment.
Her raised hand froze before the door. Her lips moved soundlessly.
Ivy felt her heart plummet.
‘What have I……’
What have I just done?
Well, Ivy had done what was right.
She had to face her past mistakes and correct them.
‘But that doesn’t mean……’
Ivy clasped her two hands together behind her back.
The sensation of being held by him that morning still lingered.

It was unlike anything Cyrus would normally say.
And the expression he’d worn then, the teal eyes that had shimmered with something deep—they too were profoundly different from his usual self.
She hadn’t noticed it at the time.
‘……Perhaps……’
There was something else she hadn’t yet understood.
* * *
Ivy returned to her room.
In the darkened room, lit only by a dimmed lamp, Joy was writing something.
“Did you hear about the fight in the Laundry Room today over the dryer schedule?”
She seemed to be documenting the incident.
The Golden Fountain Pen in her hand glided across the paper without hesitation.
“I can’t believe I have to mediate even over something like that. They’re like children, really—Ivy?”
Perhaps she’d noticed something was off.
Joy set down her pen and looked up.
Ivy quickly offered a familiar smile as she approached Joy’s desk.
“That sounds exhausting. So how did it end up?”
“How did it end up?”
Joy let out a heavy sigh.
“Both of them are cleaning the Laundry Room for a week. And here I am, drafting a ‘Proposal for Sequential Washing Machine and Dryer Usage.’ Maybe I should ask Cyrus to make a laundry reservation app.”
The moment Cyrus’s name was mentioned, Ivy’s smile vanished—but only for an instant.
“……Can he even do something like that?”
“Why not? He seems like the type. If he doesn’t know, he’d study it and do it anyway.”
Well, it was easy to imagine. Now that she thought about it, she’d seen him reading books on software development.
“But if you really need it, it’d be better to ask the Programming Club. They need to build up credentials these days anyway.”
“That’s true. But where have you been?”
“Oh, just……”
Ivy looked down at her empty hands.
“Returning a book.”
Joy’s gaze shifted to Ivy’s desk, then back to her empty hands.
She asked nothing more.
“Sit here for a moment.”
Joy patted her own bed.
“I got a new Stone in the mail yesterday. Remember you asked me to pick one out?”
When she opened the case, it held a small emerald-colored Stone for attaching to nails.
“Let me put it on. Give me your hand.”
Joy gently held Ivy’s hand steady.
A small brush lightly swept across her ring fingernail.
“Dust prevents adhesion.”
Then she tapped a tiny drop of clear gel onto the nail.
“Don’t move, Ivy.”
Joy picked up a Stone with the fine-tipped tweezers and, with surprising delicacy, set it gently onto the gel.
Ivy watched the entire process silently.
Her hand held in Joy’s grasp.
This morning, by contrast, her hand had been held by a different warmth.
A warmth she had just returned to him and walked away from.
“Ivy.”
Joy spoke quietly, her gaze fixed on the Stone.
“Mm.”
“I won’t pry or force you to tell me anything. I don’t tell you everything either.”
Tap, tap.
Joy’s tweezers made minute adjustments to the Stone’s position.
“But I’m here.”
“……Yes.”
She managed to answer, feeling heat rise up her throat.
“You’ve always been there for me. I know that.”
When she’d first enrolled, this Dormitory room had felt foreign, but now it had become another kind of home.
A result of the small honesty they’d offered each other.
Weakness and foolishness included.
“Thank you.”
“Of course you should thank me.”
Joy inserted the nailed finger beneath the Gel Lamp.
Blue light came on, filling the space between them with only a quiet humming sound.
30 seconds.
In the darkness, the blue glow illuminated the tips of Ivy’s fingers.
As she gazed at that small light, she found herself thinking suddenly of honesty.
That precious thing which had made Ivy and Joy’s relationship what it was.
……And something she found so difficult to show Cyrus.
Ivy swept away the noise in her head, one piece at a time. Even her confusion about why she was here at all.
And focused on only one thing.
A single scene that had remained in her heart all along.

Those words he’d offered her while holding her hand tightly.
In that moment, Ivy……
Had felt relief.
And joy.
That it was Cyrus, of all people, who had said those words.
“……Joy.”
“Mm.”
“I think I might have made a mistake just now. No—I did make one.”
“Ivy, everyone makes mistakes.”
Joy withdrew Ivy’s hand from the lamp and checked that the Stone was properly secured. The small emerald glow on her nail was firmly in place.
“But whether you end it there or not—that’s your choice.”

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