The day before.
Leith returned to Liyn's class after school ended. He was holding a book that he had brought during recess.
However, when he opened the classroom door, only Myra and Nico were there. They were sitting in the back row, chatting casually and laughing softly from time to time.
"Is Liyn here?" Leith asked, his voice flat as usual, his eyes staring straight ahead, showing his simple intention—to return the book.
Nico shook his head slowly. Myra turned her head.
"Oh, she already went back to the dorm. She must be tired," she replied briefly with a smile.
Leith paused for a moment.
"Still sick?" he thought. But his face showed no expression.
"Alright. Thanks for the info. If you see her, tell her I'm looking for her."
Without waiting for a reply, Leith quickly left the classroom. His steps led him to the teachers' room. He opened the attendance system and searched for Liyn's profile. His eyes scanned the screen, looking for one thing: the dormitory location.
However, one line in the document stopped his fingers.
"Unaris Saria."
A familiar name. Liyn's mother's name.
Leith's eyebrows raised slightly.
"Unaris? Isn't that clan extinct... along with Safina?"
His mind began to race, but his face remained cold.
He continued to search the data and found the room number: 017.
The eastern dormitory.
Too close to the teacher's area.
"Strange. A lower-tier clan like Yurei wouldn't be placed there. Is the school hiding something?"
Leith closed the terminal and took his coat. On his way back to his room, he decided to check Liyn's room.
But one thing he couldn't ignore.
"Unaris Saria..." he murmured again.
That name shouldn't have appeared.
The Unaris clan should have been extinct—along with Safina in the incident two decades ago. But if Liyn was indeed a direct descendant of Unaris, that meant something had been hidden.
"Or deliberately hidden," he thought, this time with a more certain tone of suspicion.
And the dormitory in the eastern section—too close to the teachers' area. Not a place for students of a minor clan.
Pieces of the puzzle began to fall into place: Liyn's unusual magical abilities, the principal's expression when he heard her name, and now—the dormitory's illogical location.
As if the entire school was protecting her.
Or... watching her.
His steps echoed through the increasingly empty corridor. The hanging lamps on the ceiling swayed gently, casting faint shadows that followed his every movement. In front of room 017, he noticed the door was slightly ajar.
Without entering immediately, Leith knocked.
"Liyn? It's Senpai… Are you inside?"
Silence.
He pushed the door open slowly.
"Sorry for coming in—"
Leith fell silent.
The dim light from the window illuminated the partially empty room. In the center, Liyn was asleep. Still wearing her shoes. Her face was pale, sweat trickling down her temples. Her breathing was heavy. Restless.
Leith approached quietly and lightly. He knelt beside the bed, took out a handkerchief, and gently wiped the sweat from Liyn's face.
His hand moved to her forehead, checking her temperature. Normal. He exhaled briefly.
Slowly, he undid Liyn's hair tie, adjusted its position, then removed her shoes one by one.
His gaze was unusual. Gentle, calm—almost attentive.
Not out of empathy.
Not out of responsibility.
But because... he didn't know why.
"You must be very tired..." he muttered, more to himself than to anyone else.
He stood up. His eyes scanned the room—books scattered, bags open, a half-empty water bottle.
Quickly but neatly, Leith tidied up the items. One by one.
Among those small movements, something within him shifted.
This wasn't just a habit. Not just casual attention.
And when he stood by the bed again, gazing at Liyn's sleeping face that had grown calm, he couldn't ignore one thing:
He had never done this for anyone else.
Even for himself.
His left hand gently stroked the girl's hair.
Then he turned around. He closed the door slowly so as not to make a sound. From inside his coat, he took out two thin wires and locked the door from the outside. Neatly, almost without a trace. A little technique he kept for unexpected situations.
Leith's steps slowly receded, leaving the dormitory hallway silent once more. There was no sound except for the rustling of wind through the window cracks and the tapping of shoes on the marble floor.
Upon reaching his room, Leith immediately hung his coat on the hook. He opened the window, letting the night air in before beginning to tidy up the room and his belongings. He carefully placed Liyn's book on the table, directly under the warm light of the study lamp, near the window.
Without pausing, Leith entered the bathroom. Water flowed over his body, washing away the remnants of fatigue and lingering thoughts from earlier that day. Soon after, he emerged, wearing simple pajamas.
He sat on a wooden chair, took a deep breath before opening the book he had been eager to read. The old book with its brown leather cover contained an ancient tale—a story that had long piqued his curiosity.
It told of seven knights, each with extraordinary powers, led by a figure named Athena—the Greek Goddess of Light. Athena was always reborn as a woman whenever the world was on the brink of destruction.
Each birth of Athena and the knights marked the arrival of a great disaster. But they did not come to save the world in the usual way. Their task was to guide humanity through the crisis—to face it, endure it, and eventually grow into a more mature civilization.
Yet in one part of the legend, something is different.
Athena is not reborn as a woman.
But as a man.
The only one in the long history of the goddesses' reincarnations.
In the ancient text, she is called: The Strongest Athena.
"This is all I can understand… there are too many ancient Syntara characters that haven't been deciphered yet," Leith murmured softly.
He leaned back in his chair, letting his back touch the cold wood. His gaze turned to the window, where the moon shone softly, hanging in the clear night sky.
For some reason, the image of Liyn slowly entered his mind—as if summoned by something invisible.
"Why am I starting to think about her?"
A strange feeling crept in slowly, stirring a part of him that had always remained cold and distant.
He touched the cover of Liyn's book. His fingers traced the delicate engravings along the edge.
"Maybe because this is... Liyn's book."
But he knew it wasn't the only reason.
Objects could be returned. But thoughts of a person—that was a different story.
And that night, his thoughts kept returning to one name.
Liyn.
Without realizing it, his eyes slowly began to close. Leith fell asleep still leaning against the chair, surrounded by the silence of the night and the soft moonlight falling on his desk.
A few hours later, Leith awoke. The clock on the wall showed four in the morning—a time that had become his routine since his academy days. His routine was simple: walking through the academy grounds, observing the sunlight slowly filtering through the classroom windows, enveloping the empty desks in the soft warmth of the morning.
For Leith, it wasn't just a scene. The morning light gave him energy, like the starry sky that accompanied the night. There was a calmness in the silence before the day truly began.
He took his thin black jacket and Liyn's book, then moved toward the door. As he locked his room, his eyes caught a faint figure in the distance—someone else leaving early in the morning. Leith squinted, studying the silhouette carefully.
"...Liyn?"
His mind was immediately filled with questions. 'What is she doing this early...?' But he quickly dismissed the thought. 'Maybe she's just looking for breakfast,' he muttered, trying to calm himself. He let Liyn walk ahead first, waiting until her figure disappeared at the end of the hallway before deciding to leave.
Leith climbed a few stairs, heading to the upper floor of the academy building. His favorite spot: a vantage point that overlooked the entire campus area and the vast sky, now beginning to turn a soft orange.
He stood there for a moment, inhaling the morning air deeply and exhaling slowly. Cold. Fresh. Quiet. Perfect.
Leith then sat down, opening the book belonging to Liyn that he had brought with him. Between the pages were folded small pieces of paper containing notes and ancient symbols he was studying. His fingers traced the ink strokes one by one, while his gaze occasionally drifted toward the field.
Sekali. Dua kali.
Pada tatapan ketiga, ia mendadak terdiam.
Once. Twice.
On the third glance, he suddenly fell silent.
There, in the middle of the empty field, Liyn could be seen running around the track. Her breathing was steady, her steps firm.
"...Is she training?" Leith asked himself again, staring at her a little longer.
But as before, he shifted his gaze back to the book. Ignoring the question that might not even need an answer.