Chapter 19

After Julian left, Beatrice lay in bed for about an hour more, trying to calm herself.

She felt pain in places she had never hurt before in her life. For example, her waist. Every time he touched her body, her waist had arched on its own, and now, perhaps from struggling on the hard desk, her back ached.

And then, her chest.

Beatrice slipped her hand inside her blouse. When she touched her chest beneath her underwear, a faint moan escaped her lips.

“Ah……!”

“Hey, what’s going on there? Does your body still hurt? If you need medicine, just let me know.”

The nurse shouted from behind her after hearing Beatrice’s moan. Startled, Beatrice quickly pulled her hand out from inside her blouse.

“I-I’m fine!”

“Really? I heard you fainted. If you feel anything strange with your body, you must tell us. Well, you don’t seem that bad. Just rest a bit more, and when you feel better, you can go.”

“Yes. Thank you for your concern.”

She had fainted, but nothing was actually wrong with her body. It was just that the stimulation had been too much. Beatrice curled up under the blanket, recalling what had just happened.

Just remembering it made Beatrice’s face flush. It was a world she hadn’t known before. Even when she touched every corner of her body while showering, she had never felt anything like this. Was Julian’s touch somehow different? When he touched her chest, her vision blurred, and she struggled in the swamp of pleasure.

According to Julian, the ancient magic was a spatial displacement spell, so what happened there didn’t affect reality. Time hadn’t passed, and the desk in the professor’s office, which had been a mess, was restored—all because of that.

But there was one thing that couldn’t be restored. That was their experience. Even if, when they returned to reality, it was as if nothing had happened, unless their memories were erased, what they went through could never truly be undone.

“Ugh.”

A faint moan escaped Beatrice’s lips again. Just thinking of Julian made her chest stiffen once more, rubbing against her underwear.

“Haa… No. This is, this is just…”

It was just an act to leave the room. But no matter how much she told herself that, Beatrice couldn’t shake the feeling that she had crossed a river she should never have crossed.

After that day, Beatrice and Julian avoided each other. Julian told the professor about Beatrice fainting, saying she wasn’t feeling well and couldn’t participate in experiments for a while.

The professor, worried that Beatrice, as an exchange student, might have overworked herself for her assignments, allowed Julian to stop research for a few weeks until Beatrice recovered.

With the joint assignment gone, Beatrice and Julian had no reason to meet.

Thus, peaceful days continued for a few days. However, the peace was only on the surface. Since the day she stayed in the infirmary, Beatrice had a secret worry she couldn’t share with anyone.

“Hnn…”

***

After the Magic Potion Brewing class ended, Beatrice rushed to the restroom. Although she had been excused from experiments, the class itself continued with group seating, so she still had to sit across from Julian. He was as kind as ever, but there was a sense of invisible distance, as if a line had been drawn between them.

The problem was that, after seeing Julian, Beatrice’s body would malfunction.

In the restroom, Beatrice wiped herself below with tissue, and tears welled up in her eyes. She could feel it just from the sensation of wiping. A slippery, clear fluid stained the tissue.

“What on earth is this?”

On days when she attended the Magic Potion Brewing class, her underwear was always damp, so now wiping herself in the restroom had become part of her routine.

She couldn’t help but worry. Was there something wrong with her health? But this was a change in her body that was too difficult to talk about with anyone, so Beatrice was left fretting alone.

With Julian gone, Beatrice’s daily life became monotonous to the extreme. Other than attending classes and returning to the dormitory, she had nothing else to do. She hadn’t had the chance to become close with other female students, partly because she was always with Julian during the Magic Potion Brewing class, but there was another reason. Suddenly, as Julian—once known as the Academy’s top “Shining Rag”—seemed to have changed as if he were a new person, the female students’ jealousy turned toward Beatrice, his partner.

In the past, Julian would lose interest in a woman after about a month and move on to flirt with someone else. But with Beatrice, he had been close for almost three months now. And that wasn’t all. The fact that the ‘Shining/ Platinum Rag’ didn’t lay a hand on Beatrice also fueled their jealousy. He acted gentlemanly toward her, not even touching her, as if he actually liked Beatrice.

But as the third month approached, Julian’s interest seemed to finally fade. Seeing Beatrice alone, the female students smiled with satisfaction. Though they had been jealous, they now willingly reached out to Beatrice, who had become solitary.

“I knew that guy would be like that.”

“Thanks to Beatrice, we gained the professor’s trust, and now he doesn’t care anymore. That’s how it always is with Julian Sancio.”

They believed that their shared hostility toward a common enemy would bring them closer to Beatrice. However, the more Beatrice heard their criticism of Julian, the heavier her heart became.

The Julian she knew had never approached her for his own benefit. On the contrary, hearing such talk, she remembered how he had tried every possible way to escape the room without harming her, and Beatrice quickly grew depressed.

She shouldn’t have done that. Even if it took time, she should have waited and done as Julian suggested. The reason Julian started avoiding her was all her fault.

‘It’s all my fault.’

She didn’t even understand relationships between men and women, so why had she raised her voice at Julian back then? Unable to withstand the pleasure he gave her, she had struggled and eventually fainted. Julian must have known that would happen. That’s why he had tried so hard to avoid it.

‘I ruined everything.’

When Beatrice first came to the Academy, everything felt unfamiliar. Instead of feeling excited about starting life in a new place, worry and anxiety came first. The one who had looked after Beatrice during her early days at the Academy was none other than Julian.

There’s a saying that when you’re together, you don’t realize the value of what you have. Just as the saying goes, it was only after they had grown apart that Beatrice realized how kindly Julian had always stayed by her side.

Seeing Beatrice’s gloomy reaction, the female students exchanged glances.

After all, gossip only catches fire when someone joins in and agrees. There’s a limit to innocence. Even when they kindly explained that she’d been played with, Beatrice responded like that.

Even if she was a seminary student, keeping her mouth shut as if she was the only good person could only provoke resentment. And from that day on, the female students no longer took care of Beatrice.

***

“Is that exchange student still in the lecture hall?”

While Julian was focused on his thesis in the library, a single phrase reached his ears with unusual clarity.