Chapter 228
Is it right for you to live your life and for me to live mine, separately like this?
Even while knowing the approaching end, without telling them anything or giving them even a chance to choose?
My father and brother… I do not think they ever once asked for help.
There must have been circumstances I did not know.
Perhaps shame. Perhaps lingering hurt. Or maybe they knew that asking for help would not change anything.
They must have thought it was simply a “family matter.”
‘But this is not just my and Solen’s matter.’
This was for the city my great-grandfather protected, even while turning his back on his own family.
Then at least once, I should be able to propose it.
Cooperation, as long as it did not break the rules.
‘If they refuse, then that is that.’
One way or another, I had nothing to lose.
If we had given it our all in previous lives and still failed, then adding more variables might not be a bad idea.
“What shall we do until midnight?”
“Is there anywhere you wish to go or anything you wish to do?”
So many!
I wanted to see the classrooms, the practice rooms, snack at the student cafeteria or the campus shop.
But if I had to choose only one…
“I want to see the dormitory you used to stay in.”
“Hmm… I am not sure if that room is still vacant. Let’s go and see. We can ask the dormitory matron.”
Excited, I looped my arm through his and we walked together.
As for the existence of a relative I never knew, I quickly pushed that thought to a corner of my mind.
* * *
Something was definitely wrong, Dantère thought.
After parting with Lionel’s group and wandering across the campus, students who had kept a cautious distance earlier were now swarming toward him.
Having attended the academy in the same era as Lionel, Dantère had a remarkable reputation of a very different sort.
He was known as an upperclassman who had mastered every method of having fun.
Strict school rules?
Such things were never an obstacle. As long as you avoided getting caught with the right tricks, it was fine.
Of course, since there were so many rules he broke, he inevitably got caught for some of them, but although people frowned at his debauchery, the Imperial Family, which had no desire to actually reform him, smoothed it over every time.
What the students crowding around Dantère expected from him now was no different.
They wanted to learn how to have more fun, how to play better, how to skirt every rule imaginable.
Flooded with admiring eyes he had not received in a long time, Dantère cheerfully shared his exploits and pointed out a few remaining crawl-holes and back-alley shops in the city for them to explore.
As a result, most of the gathered students rushed off to personally try out the fresh information they had just learned, and only those who had a different purpose remained at his side.
The second reputation of Dantère Ortatum that was still whispered among students.
He was unbelievably good at “that.”
If one had never experienced ecstasy in a relationship with a lover?
Then they said one should visit Dantère at least once for advice. He could tell whether the problem was with one’s own body or with the partner’s lack of skill.
If one did not want to date but was curious about the pleasure a woman could feel?
Dantère could provide the answer then too.
He never turned away a woman who came to him.
There was no fear of rejection. For that one night, any woman could be the partner of this exceptional man.
Unlike Lionel, who graduated quickly, Dantère repeated years and stayed at the academy for a long time.
Thus his reputation still circulated among upperclassmen until recently, and a handful of students who had heard the rumors stayed behind to experience it for themselves.
Dantère shooed away those he felt were not yet prepared to enjoy themselves.
No matter what students did with each other, the academy would cover it somehow, but an outsider coercing a student could cause trouble of a far greater scale.
After filtering and filtering, he finally caught one who loved playing around just as much as he did and who was not much younger, a young lady from another country.
He asked her what her most boring required class was and went straight to that lecture room. Then he sat her at the desk right in front of the platform and told her to lift her skirt.
So she could remember this every time she grew bored during that class.
