Time Healer Ceres - Chapter 79

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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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“I just… wanted to come.”
“Your father said that?”
“Yeah.”
…He really is a hopeless doting parent when it comes to his son.
“Let’s go, Grace.”
“Not that way, this way, you absolute ice block!”
“I know.”
“Know what? You can’t even navigate! You’re hopeless with directions!”
“Knowing the route doesn’t matter much. At least I don’t cause accidents everywhere I go like you do.”
“What did you just say!”
“Both of you, be quiet. I’m going ahead.”
“Wait! Come with us, Grace!”
‘…Now I’m alone.’
Seres felt something strange as she stepped into the Academy.
Old memories surfaced.
‘Back then, the three of us were always together.’
Who could have foreseen that she would walk these halls alone again like this.
‘Going back to school at my age.’
Where had Antonian learned to blackmail people like that?
When he pressed her, demanding to know what she’d do if he quit the Academy, she’d had no choice but to give in.
There was no way she could stand by and watch her brother abandon his studies.
‘He said Class 2-C, right?’
Second-year Class C. The class Seres now belonged to.
The Academy was divided into three zones.
The elementary building where Yulia studied.
The middle school building where Antonian studied.
And the high school building she was entering now.

Seres paused before the classroom door and let out a short sigh.
The chatter from inside suggested most students had already arrived.
Click.
“Huh?”
“Hey, look there…”
….
The noisy classroom fell silent as if by magic.
Every eye turned toward Seres as she opened the door and stepped inside.
Seres surveyed the room coolly, taking in the stares.
Could she just sit anywhere that was empty?
‘The atmosphere here is…’
As Seres chose a seat and sat down, not a single student spoke.
Seres clicked her tongue softly to herself.
She felt like an actress who’d just taken the stage.
They were all staring like she was some fascinating creature, as if wondering what she’d do next.
‘Not my problem.’
Seres ignored the children whose eyes never left her and laid her head down on the desk.
She hadn’t come here to study hard, after all.
‘I didn’t sleep at all yesterday.’
She was exhausted.
‘Yawn.’
Some things never changed—sleeping in class was always the best way to rest.
“…What’s she doing right now?”
“Don’t tell me she’s sleeping?”
“Wow…”
The peculiar tension that had filled the classroom dissolved into a flurry of whispers. Everyone was stunned by the sight of Seres drifting off to sleep.
Bang.
A moment later, the classroom door swung open forcefully and several students entered.
Their arrival brought another hush to the room.
“She really came?”
“Told you. I said I’d come to school today.”
“Ha!”
Those who recognized Seres sprawled across a desk in the center of the classroom rushed toward her without hesitation.
“Hey, what are you doing right now?”
“Wake up, Seres. We’re here. We’re here, I’m telling you?”
“Are you seriously ignoring us right now?”
“Seriously.”
The students gathered in a circle around Seres stared at her with exasperation — she remained slumped across her desk, utterly unresponsive.
Had she gone deaf since they last saw her?
…….
The boy standing at the front of the group regarded her in silent bewilderment for a moment, then snatched up a pen that lay on the adjacent desk.
Without hesitation, he brought it down hard against her with all his strength.
Aimed directly at her arm, resting on the desk!
Whoosh!
“Wh—?”
But moments later, the boy could only gape in confusion. The pen he’d been holding had vanished in an instant.
“What—”
……!
Impossibly, it was Seres who now held the pen.
He hadn’t even seen her rise from her seat — when had she moved?
“Hah…….”
Seres exhaled a small breath — whether a sigh or a laugh, it was unclear — and gazed intently at the pen in her hand.
“A pen…….”
Seres lifted her head and took a step toward the boy who’d just tried to strike her.
Flinch.
The boy — Fake — reflexively recoiled from an inexplicable aura of pressure, his composure shaken despite himself.
‘No, wait, why?’
Why was he flinching at the sight of her, Seres of all people?
“You were trying to stab me with this pen just now? No, you weren’t, right?”
“You……!”
“Answer.”
Flinch.
At Seres’s quiet voice, Fake flinched again, his face flushing crimson as his teeth ground together.
Fake raised his hand.
It’d been a while since he’d seen her — had he lost his nerve?
“This crazy…….”
Whoosh!
……!
But Fake found himself frozen mid-strike, his raised hand locked in place.
The pen’s tip had stopped an inch from his face.
“My hobby is collecting eyeballs.”
“Wh— what, what?!”
The hand holding the pen didn’t tremble even slightly.
Fake was the one trembling, holding his breath for fear that his own movement might drive the pen tip into his eye.
“There’s no better tool than a pen for gouging them out.”
“Th……!”
The utter flatness of Seres’s tone made his skin crawl all the more.
For a moment longer.
“Consider yourself lucky that your eyes aren’t pretty.”
Seres clicked her tongue lightly at Fake’s bloodless face and took a step back.
Thump.
His legs giving out, Fake simply collapsed to the floor.
But no one around him spared him a second glance. They all stood with mouths agape, utterly blindsided by the turn of events.
Seres, as though the whole affair was beneath her notice, returned to her seat and lay down again to sleep.
‘Now…….’
‘She’s just going back to sleep?’
‘Huh…….’
The classroom fell silent as a tomb.
Everyone present stood frozen, mouths hanging open, unable to tear their eyes away from Seres.
* * *
“She certainly is something else.”
In a single day, Seres was able to grasp exactly how the original owner of this body had been treated at the Academy all this time.
‘Is this what they call a pushover?’
When she first stepped into the classroom, she’d caught the cold atmosphere immediately. After such a long absence, not a single person greeted her—that alone told her everything she needed to know.
Listening to the whispers passing between the students, the answer was clear: a pushover, pure and simple.
They had her do their homework for them, used her as an outlet for their frustrations—the works.
‘What a world.’
When had kindness become synonymous with being a pushover?
Seres let out a hollow laugh.
‘I didn’t expect to be attacked on the very first day, though.’
When she’d attended the Academy as Grace, the children had been comparatively decent.
‘But isn’t that just a matter of perspective? You were so vicious, Grace—the others probably only seemed kind by comparison.’
‘You weren’t exactly innocent yourself, Artia.’
This time it wasn’t her disciple Enoch’s voice she seemed to hear, but Artia’s bright, tinkling laugh.
A sigh escaped Seres’ lips.
‘And here I’ve spent my whole life being treated like a pushover by someone called Aunt, of all people.’
Things weren’t much different inside the Academy.
Since she’d given no outward sign of this, Antonian seemed oblivious to it all.
‘I suppose that’s why everyone was so insistent about me coming to the Academy.’
In any case, it seemed things would be quiet for a while at least.
Seres turned her head slightly. The moment her eyes met those of a boy named Fake, he flinched and quickly looked away.
‘Is he the one leading the harassment?’
Fake. She didn’t even know his family name.
Apparently he was the son of some noble house of fair repute, and at some point he’d singled Seres out and started tormenting her—or so the story went.
She still didn’t quite understand why she’d become his target.
‘This is why children are such a headache.’
They don’t know fear yet, so they run their mouths without restraint. They’ve lost all sense of caution and do whatever they please.
“Ahem!”
As Seres continued to stare unflinchingly, Fake grew even more flustered, clearly at a loss for what to do.
Watching him struggle to meet her gaze, only to cough nervously, she felt her disgust with the situation deepen.
‘Seres, Seres.’
What kind of life have you led?
Did you really not know that this boy trembles at the sight of a single pen?
‘Well, no—you were the one who terrified him half to death with that pen in the first place.’
‘Be quiet.’
Now that she was at the Academy, she kept hearing Artia’s voice.
‘But Grace, do you remember that?’
That?
‘Our treasure box.’
“Ah……”
At the memory that suddenly surfaced, Seres couldn’t help but let out a small gasp.
‘I wonder if it’s still there.’

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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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