Beast Gacha System: All Mine-Chapter 155: Of Why

The polished mahogany of the refectory table was cool under her elbows. Cecilia had claimed a relatively quiet corner, guessing it was her usual spot for lunchtime anyway knowing this world was a mirror of the real one.

Clattering trays, shrieking gossip, blah, blah, blah. It wasn’t all that quiet, in the end...

She was midway through dismantling a roast beef and horseradish sandwich when the shadow fell over her.

"Now, tell me what the fuck was that."

Cecilia paused, a bite of sandwich halfway to her mouth. She blinked slowly, her mind cycling through a dozen potential ’that’s. The hallway spectacle? The new transfer student? The morning’s classroom drama?

All that, before settling on the most likely culprit. She closed her mouth, set the sandwich down, and leveled a flat glare at the woman now thudding into the seat opposite her.

Princess Angela’s black hair was a touch wilder than usual since she’d been raking her hands through it.

"How about you tell me what the fuck was that?" Cecilia shot back. She didn’t use words for the rest. Instead, her eyes cut sharply to the side, her eyebrows arched, directing all attention to the adjacent table.

There, trying and failing to look inconspicuous over a bowl of soup, sat Stevan. The class representative, currently the subject of the most delicious scandal to hit the Athenaeum since... well, since Cecilia’s own hallway meltdown. His ears were faintly pink.

Angela followed her gaze, her own furious expression flickering for a nanosecond. But a princess did not back down. She scoffed, "You already know I have a thing for him for the longest time."

"Yeah?" Cecilia rolled her eyes. Obviously. She picked up her sandwich and took a large bite.

"You, on the other hand," Angela pressed, leaning forward, "when we were away for the empire’s magic initiation, on the other hand?"

Cecilia chewed thoughtfully, swallowed. "Eastiel?"

"I thought you liked Arzhen!" she exasperated, the words a hushed shout. She threw her hands up slightly. "And now, everyone I know told me words for words that you—you—"

She couldn’t even finish the sentence, gesturing vaguely in the air as if to conjure the images of public clinginess, shouted propositions, and territorial declarations.

A slow smile spread across Cecilia’s lips. She took another bite, chewed, and swallowed, savoring the moment. "Mm." She nodded. "Didn’t you tell me all the time to get over him?"

Angela’s righteous fury faltered. Her mouth opened, then closed. "YeAh?" she managed, the syllable wavering. She leaned in again, this time her voice a true whisper. "But... Eastiel?"

Cecilia’s patience finally snapped. "What’s wrong with Eastiel?!" she groaned, the sound muffled by the last of her sandwich. "Ah!"

Angela leaned back, a complex series of emotions warring on her face. Loyalty to her friend, deep-seated social programming, and a healthy dose of fear. She sighed and stabbed her fork into her spaghetti, eating a mouthful.

"He’s..." She waved her fork vaguely, then pointed it at the man at the next table. "Tell her, Stevan. Tell her."

Stevan, who had been doing an admirable impression of a statue trying to enjoy minestrone, jolted. He was suddenly equipped like a side pistol. He blinked and narrowed his eyes at his princess. "What? What do I tell her, Your Highness?"

Angela didn’t speak. She just leveled The Glare.

Stevan swallowed. He cleared his throat, setting his spoon down with exaggerated care. He turned to Cecilia, his expression shifting into one of polite, diplomatic concern.

"Miss Araceli," he began. "We all know Mr. Edengold’s reputation, yes?"

He paused. The tales of explosive tempers, of factions formed and rivals quietly sidelined, of a natural, predatory charisma that drew followers like moths to a dangerous flame.

Cecilia raised her eyebrows. And?

"He’s... dangerous," Stevan concluded. It wasn’t ’evil’. It wasn’t ’cruel’. It was ’dangerous’. A force of nature. Unpredictable. Potentially devastating.

"How?" Cecilia asked.

Stevan seemed momentarily thrown by her lack of awe. He regrouped. "All the rumors about him gathering followers to his factions, and how he had fully taken over the army under his family name under him."

"Hm," she nodded, acknowledging the data point. Then, again, "And?"

And? So what?

Stevan opened his mouth, then closed it. He had no further ’and’. He glanced helplessly at Angela.

"Oh, God, wait," Angela breathed. She reached across the table, her hand closing over Cecilia’s suddenly, intensely. "Yes. Yes, I agree. You go and marry Eastiel. Nice. This way, I have someone on that side."

The sheer, bald-faced political opportunism of it.

Cecilia flinched back and then the laughter burst out of her.

"Pffftt—hahahahahahh!"

When her laughter finally subsided, Cecilia’s gaze swept the bustling refectory out of habit. It was then she caught a glimpse of a familiar silhouette moving past the wide, arched entrance of the hall.

A flash of stark white hair, a straight, scholarly back, moving with that same purposeful grace.

Oathran?

He didn’t enter. Didn’t glance inside. He was simply passing from one point to another.

Cecilia’s curiosity flared instantly. Where was he going? What did a transfer student do during his free period? She wanted to find out.

But she didn’t.

She forced her eyes closed for a brief second. No. The plan demanded restraint. In Eastiel’s scenario, she had been the active force, the provocateur.

With Oathran, it would be different. Storming the gates would get her nowhere. She had to let the drawbridge lower on its own. She had to be the still water that reflected the sky.

She opened her eyes, her expression smoothing back into one of mild, pleasant interest as she tuned back into the conversation at her own table.

"Ah, come to think of it, this morning, there’s a new transfer student, right?" Angela was saying, having moved on from matrimonial alliances and back to her favorite pastime that was intelligence gathering.

She twirled a strand of spaghetti around her fork, her brow furrowed in annoyance. "Do you know something about him? I tried to find everything about everyone as usual, but I can’t find shit about him, it’s kinda annoying."

Cecilia blinked. "Really?"

Her tone was perfectly pitched between curiosity and disinterest.

"All we know is that he entered the school via the headmaster’s personal recommendation, and he didn’t even go through any of the standard placement tests," Stevan supplied. He had clearly been tasked with this reconnaissance as well. "Also, his name. Just that."

Interesting.

So, to enter this elite bastion of Scholomance Athenaeum, be it via the brutal entrance exams or a rare transfer, one needed to pass some sort of test.

And Oathran... had simply entered.

As expected of the trope. The Mysterious Transfer Student. The narrative shorthand was almost lazy.

In stories like this, the plot usually chugged forward because the heroine accidentally stumbled upon the secret. Overheard a conversation, perhaps. Found a hidden object, perhaps. Witnessed a strange occurrence, perhaps. Her own passivity might stall the entire narrative engine.

But... was the secret she was supposed to accidentally discover the secret that would give her the reward... or would it be a different, deeper secret?

The System’s task was to "Uncover his secret!"

But what kind of secret? The secrets he kept not as ’Transfer!Oathran,’? She... wanted the secrets he kept as Oathran.

The reasons behind his cosmic weariness. The true nature of his pact with the real world. The origin of his death-wish. The things he guarded because they were the load-bearing walls of his soul.

She... wanted to find all of it.

Of why.

In the real world, Oathran was on guard because he loved her. His affection was an impenetrable barrier meant to protect her from the darker truths of his existence and his purpose. His love served as a prison for certain truths.

Now, they were strangers.

The shields were down. The barriers erected by intimacy were gone. He had no reason to hide the mundane secrets of ’Oathran Alicei, Transfer Student’ from a curious classmate.

She had more chances to find out about those secrets now that they didn’t ’love’ each other.

Oathran was the one who made her a saintess. Not the Temple, not the gods. Him. Walking out of that sun-drenched temple on her coronation day, his face etched with a satisfaction so deep it was like watching a mountain finally decide to rest.

He had been satisfied with the oath she made, to take the burden from him, to take his life by her hands...

That moment was the crucible. That was the reason she became the saintess she was today, after all.

The belief people put in him, their faith in his judgment, had been seamlessly transferred to her when he endorsed her solution.

They saw his satisfaction and assumed it was divine approval. Their belief in him was how people were able to put their belief in her, a fake saintess whose only magic was deduction, intelligence, and knowledge.

And now, here, in this mirrored world...

Even if in this world too, they have some kind of history...

It didn’t matter.

The only thing that mattered was, as long as they don’t ’love’ each other... she would find out.

In the real world too—

She would’ve been able to found out if they didn’t bond with each other.

Because she would’ve been just the fake Saintess he trusted...

...and he would’ve just been the Dragon Lord who wanted to die by her hands.