The Redo of a Novel's Villain: Moira - Chapter 19: Chapter 19
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The grand clocktower stood over the academy, its stone walls worn with time and firm as the most ancient piece of the academy. The three intricate clock hands moving at different speeds. Huey swung his legs over the ledge by the belfry and leaned against the frame. It was his first time going up the clock tower, his first time being so high up in the academy. Overlooking the vista of the campus while the autumn breeze caressed his face.
Being so high up was fascinating to him. To the him who never stopped and took a quiet moment like this until reincarnation. To the him who never appreciated the things around him, this moment was enlightening and foreignly nostalgic.
Huey breathed in the cool air and looked down, surprisingly not experiencing vertigo. He saw fellow students walk down the well paved path with friends laughing and chattering away but too far to be heard. He looked up. Two birds swooped across the sky, diving into the sea of clouds and surfacing back like sky sprites. The thick fluffy clouds lapping over each other like a pile of fluffy pillows, hospitable and warm, acted as their playground. Inviting you to jump into its embrace.
He closed his eyes, remembering a fact that stuck with him through the years. Where, according to the whispering lullabies of mothers to her children, angels and gods dance across the clouds when the sun is blocked, waltzing in the sunlight isolated for divinity in that brief moment of time.
Simply a children's story, as ludicrous as it comes, but it stayed with him ever since he overhood a parent cradling a baby while singing the lullaby. It was far from familiar, his mother doesn't sing after all, but the scene did invoke some sort of... something.
The wind tousled his hair, making his bangs tickle his face.
It was soothing, but unfortunately ephemeral.
In twenty minutes lunch break will end and if he didn't leave soon the bell behind him would then ring and blast his eardrums to smithereens.
Not very pleasant.
The rational part of him suggested he go now because going down alone should take five minutes excluding the time it takes to get to his classroom, but...
'Just a bit longer..' The other part of him won.
Listening to the birds singing a minute longer, Huey swung himself onto the belfry, picked up his bag, and moved towards the trap door in the corner. Musing to himself while walking down the winding steps.
By the time he arrived at class, he had interrupted the start of the professor's lecture. Good thing he was only a couple minutes late and the teacher easily dismissed him, resuming the speech. Muttering an apology Huey quietly settled into his seat and began focusing on Mr. Clark's words.
"As I've stated before, our class and Mr. Eden's class will be performing the annual play together in the Winter Showcase. I'll distribute the play script at the end of class, so remember to read over the story carefully when class ends. Last class we left off on the tyrant blood emperor Yule the third and his reign over the people and I gave everyone homework to finish section 5.3 of the textbook and finish the guiding questions. Who would like to share their answers?"
The class remained silent.
—*:･ﾟ*✧ —
"So..." Kayson drawled, "What are you doing to that Wolint guy?"
Huey smiled, "You'll see~"
Making a turn in the hall the two came upon a double door that leads to the Combat and Weaponry's club room, the doors which were half blocked out by the students crowding around it. Kayson whistled looking at the collective of students mixed in uniforms of red, black, and white. From beside him Huey glanced at the clock conveniently anchored on the wall and read out the time. If he remembered correctly, the club should start ten minutes after dismissal.
The time was 4:26, so there were four more minutes to spare.
He quickly looked for a less crowded spot devoid of the main characters and dragged Kayson over rather than stand in the middle of the hall in the most conspicuous spot ever. Squeezing through the walls of people, he didn't even want to begin imagining what it'd be like if there wasn't a member limit. Good thing both Kayson and him made it in.
At 4:30 sharp the double doors opened, revealing a girl of average height wearing a red uniform. The third year had grey hair (much duller than Sorin's near-white silver) and olive green eyes. Wearing the red blazer around her waists and pants instead of a skirt, Sadie Madeleine's sudden appearance effectively silenced the excited students.
"Welcome club members new or returners to C&W, my name is Sadie Madeleine, the club's vice captain." Sadie spoke while leading the students down the corridor, her attitude neither overly bearing nor unenthusiastic. She motioned to a room. "This is the general room where any non-combative club sessions happen."
She then pointed at an iron door rather than the common wooden ones seen around the academy.
"And that is the entrance to the joint training room. As its name suggests it's a public training room accessible for all club members, however the private rooms over there need to be booked beforehand." Sadie looked at the students obediently trailing after her, specifically at the first years admire the place in awe.
Sensing their eager impatience, she set her arms onto the iron door handle. The cool temperature of it seeping into her palms. Twisting it, Sadie pushed open the two doors and revealed a large gymnasium. Lights lined horizontally on the ceiling, illuminating the whole place. Many equipment were stationed orderly, from the dummies in one corner, the spare weapons quipped on stands and shelves, targets on the wall, and much more.
"All the things you see here are just the basic layout. There are many other functions but you will need to pay a fee for the more advanced ones. And..." She trailed off and stared at one of the doors leading to the men's change rooms. Her expression unreadable.
Following her gaze, everyone turned to face the door in which a faint muffled sound could be heard once the noise died down. A noise sort of like... arguing?
"...I don...n..pp!"
"Go—rr...m."
"E—"
BANG
The door was abruptly thrusted open and slammed into the wall. A male with ruffled hair with the same features as Sadie stood with one foot raised after having kicked open the door. Head locking a lanky looking guy with glasses.
The guy doing the headlock spoke first. "Stop being a wimp and go out there!"
"Noo!" The person getting headlocked scrambled to secure the thick rimmed glasses that were about to fall off from getting jostled around.
"You #%&*!"
Sadie's eye twitched at the scene and for some reason a foreboding feeling began to descend onto the area. She strode towards the two unsuspectingly, flexing her fingers before they latched onto one of their ears.
"Stop making a fuss and get over there!"
✦ ✧
Needless to say, compared to before, the two were leagues more calm and docile.
Breathing in, Sadie introduced through gritted teeth, "The person yelling is my twin brother, Salem, and the person crying is our club captain, Kevin Millers."
Said people were rubbing their reddened and smarting ears after Sadie had physically pinched and tugged them over. No wonder she's the vice captain.
Salem grumbled something while Kevin looked nervously at the group all staring at him. He adjusted his messy red hair and diverted his eyes, words coming out meekly.
"Hello everyone... I'm Kevin, your club captain for the year.. And um as you can see I'm not really... good with crowds." He smiled stiffly and a collective thought appeared amongst the new members.
'Is he really the club captain?'
—*:･ﾟ*✧ —
Huey sat by one of the benches staring fixedly into nothing particular. The first club meeting wasn't very official, focused more around allowing new members to get used to the space, inform them of details, and answer any questions they might have.
Although—CLANGGG~~
His train of thought was interrupted by an abrupt sharp sound of a blade colliding wrongly with something. The culprit looked a bit embarrassed but continued testing out their bladework at the dummy.
Huey closed his eyes and drowned out all the noises echoing across the gym.
Although he said he'd help Sorin deal with Albert Wolint he couldn't do it immediately as much as he would like. Albert only challenges Sorin to a duel two weeks after the start of the club after Sorin beat Chanelia Czariesh. Until then Huey couldn't make a move.
'I mean, I can't just go up to him and go "Hey don't mess with Sorin it's really annoying" all of a sudden.'
What he needed to do is to wait.
He's too impatient for that.
The Ceylon Wolint rivalry aside, what pushed Albert to make his move was primarily because Chanelia of the 'original' three houses lost so in his own, delusional way of protecting the old blood pact, duelled with Sorin.
Quite honorable if you think about it.
Although he could just make it so Chanelia never spars with Sorin that was merely fixing it with flimsy dollar store tape and glue. A temporary solution and not a very good one. The Wolint and Ceylon family's rivalry will continue as long as neither of them surpass each other, and he doesn't intend to try and fix that.
A little rivalry is good, all that matters is whether or not it's healthy.
Right now the Wolint family's head is an old geezer pushing the conservative viewpoint onto the younger generations. So since he's so caught up about blood supremacy why not suppress him with exactly that?
But he can't exactly pressure Albert without a valid reason. So in order to start the operation, they needed to provoke Albert to challenge Sorin. How? Well going off his original reason, as long as someone of the other knight houses lost to Sorin he would've made a move.
Huey dropped his head to hide a smile.
'Sorry Kayson.'
On cue, the pink haired youth came out of the change rooms wearing a PE strip, a mopey frown on his face.
"Do I really have to do this?" He sighed.
Huey thought the reluctance wasn't unreasonable. Challenging the protagonist with the purpose to lose doesn't sound nor feel very pleasant. Especially when said protagonist was hailed as a generational prodigy.
"Not necessarily," He stood up, dusting imaginary dust off his clothes. "We can wait for the plot to progress normally, but I'm not sure if the plot will progress normally."
He licked his lips. "And I'd much rather focus on the Winter Showcase than this."
Kayson scrunched up his face, groaned, and dropped into a squatting position with his head hung low. He stayed in that position for a second before he sprung up with new found determination. Blue eyes looking dead into red.
"You owe me."
Was all Kayson said before marching straight towards a crowd of people fenced around a court.
'How many times have I owed him now?'
Huey shook his head and quickly followed after. Peering over the small crowd, he could see the outline of two figures lightly sparring. He deduced one of them was Sorin but before he could make out the second person someone's head blocked it.
He felt a brief pang of irritation and moved somewhere else. Slipping through people Huey arrived somewhere near the front where he finally identified both people.
Sorin and his highness Kade.
He can't say he's surprised since they were actual rivals and friends. Grown up together as playmates, the two were like brothers who backed eachother up both politically and in combat.
Sorin swung his blade and Kade successfully parried it and returned a quick blow from the side. Sorin twisted his body to avoid it and—either because of muscle memory or being caught up in the moment—landed a kick straight in Kade's guts a bit too hard. Sending him flying.
Straight away his expression immediately changed into that of a child who just realized he did something extremely stupid and wrong.
Huey's brain barely registered that Kade was in fact flying into his direction before the collision happened. Well, what would've been a much harsher collision.
He was instead pushed to the side.
Huey warily opened his eyes, catching sight of the pusher's head of soft light blonde hair. A subtle grassy aroma exuding from her. Diamond blue eyes crinkled from the big smile plastered on her face, unblemished rosey cheeks with a healthy intake of sunlight, blonde locks framing her face perfectly, and a hearty joyful ambience wafted around her.
Celine's eyes smiled warmly down at Kade who couldn't be any more confused.
Huey was too.
So was Kayson.
Sorin.
And everyone else in the room.
Since the commoner student Celine just caught Prince Kade—got sent back at incredible speed after getting kicked by Sorin—Leonis Caelitus with no effort... in a princess carry.
.
Kade 'spoke' first.
"Wh-w- how- what- Celine? Wha- I-eh??"
A jigsaw puzzle of inconceivable words leaked out of his mouth. Yup, poor dude was gone.
"Are you hurt?" She asked, not so much as budging or struggling with her hold on him at all. And the longer she held him the redder his face became.
"I'm.. fine??"
"I should still get you checked out at the infirmary just in case," She pouted and turned to Sorin. "Be careful next time!"
As the understanding of Celine's words and what it meant sunk in, Kade's psyche quickly came back shamefully.
"Wait, no I'm fine!" He tried to make an effort to break out of the hold, he really did, but instead Celine just made it firmer. Why is she so strong?!?
Kade cried internally.
"It's better to be safe than sorry." Celine grinned. Turning on her heels with the most harmless smile ever, she took a very red, very flustered, and very confused Kade (who was beginning to cover his face with his palms) away from the very confused, and very shocked crowd.
Huey's brain blanked.
It felt like he just saw something he shouldn't have.
Being so high up was fascinating to him. To the him who never stopped and took a quiet moment like this until reincarnation. To the him who never appreciated the things around him, this moment was enlightening and foreignly nostalgic.
Huey breathed in the cool air and looked down, surprisingly not experiencing vertigo. He saw fellow students walk down the well paved path with friends laughing and chattering away but too far to be heard. He looked up. Two birds swooped across the sky, diving into the sea of clouds and surfacing back like sky sprites. The thick fluffy clouds lapping over each other like a pile of fluffy pillows, hospitable and warm, acted as their playground. Inviting you to jump into its embrace.
He closed his eyes, remembering a fact that stuck with him through the years. Where, according to the whispering lullabies of mothers to her children, angels and gods dance across the clouds when the sun is blocked, waltzing in the sunlight isolated for divinity in that brief moment of time.
Simply a children's story, as ludicrous as it comes, but it stayed with him ever since he overhood a parent cradling a baby while singing the lullaby. It was far from familiar, his mother doesn't sing after all, but the scene did invoke some sort of... something.
The wind tousled his hair, making his bangs tickle his face.
It was soothing, but unfortunately ephemeral.
In twenty minutes lunch break will end and if he didn't leave soon the bell behind him would then ring and blast his eardrums to smithereens.
Not very pleasant.
The rational part of him suggested he go now because going down alone should take five minutes excluding the time it takes to get to his classroom, but...
'Just a bit longer..' The other part of him won.
Listening to the birds singing a minute longer, Huey swung himself onto the belfry, picked up his bag, and moved towards the trap door in the corner. Musing to himself while walking down the winding steps.
By the time he arrived at class, he had interrupted the start of the professor's lecture. Good thing he was only a couple minutes late and the teacher easily dismissed him, resuming the speech. Muttering an apology Huey quietly settled into his seat and began focusing on Mr. Clark's words.
"As I've stated before, our class and Mr. Eden's class will be performing the annual play together in the Winter Showcase. I'll distribute the play script at the end of class, so remember to read over the story carefully when class ends. Last class we left off on the tyrant blood emperor Yule the third and his reign over the people and I gave everyone homework to finish section 5.3 of the textbook and finish the guiding questions. Who would like to share their answers?"
The class remained silent.
—*:･ﾟ*✧ —
"So..." Kayson drawled, "What are you doing to that Wolint guy?"
Huey smiled, "You'll see~"
Making a turn in the hall the two came upon a double door that leads to the Combat and Weaponry's club room, the doors which were half blocked out by the students crowding around it. Kayson whistled looking at the collective of students mixed in uniforms of red, black, and white. From beside him Huey glanced at the clock conveniently anchored on the wall and read out the time. If he remembered correctly, the club should start ten minutes after dismissal.
The time was 4:26, so there were four more minutes to spare.
He quickly looked for a less crowded spot devoid of the main characters and dragged Kayson over rather than stand in the middle of the hall in the most conspicuous spot ever. Squeezing through the walls of people, he didn't even want to begin imagining what it'd be like if there wasn't a member limit. Good thing both Kayson and him made it in.
At 4:30 sharp the double doors opened, revealing a girl of average height wearing a red uniform. The third year had grey hair (much duller than Sorin's near-white silver) and olive green eyes. Wearing the red blazer around her waists and pants instead of a skirt, Sadie Madeleine's sudden appearance effectively silenced the excited students.
"Welcome club members new or returners to C&W, my name is Sadie Madeleine, the club's vice captain." Sadie spoke while leading the students down the corridor, her attitude neither overly bearing nor unenthusiastic. She motioned to a room. "This is the general room where any non-combative club sessions happen."
She then pointed at an iron door rather than the common wooden ones seen around the academy.
"And that is the entrance to the joint training room. As its name suggests it's a public training room accessible for all club members, however the private rooms over there need to be booked beforehand." Sadie looked at the students obediently trailing after her, specifically at the first years admire the place in awe.
Sensing their eager impatience, she set her arms onto the iron door handle. The cool temperature of it seeping into her palms. Twisting it, Sadie pushed open the two doors and revealed a large gymnasium. Lights lined horizontally on the ceiling, illuminating the whole place. Many equipment were stationed orderly, from the dummies in one corner, the spare weapons quipped on stands and shelves, targets on the wall, and much more.
"All the things you see here are just the basic layout. There are many other functions but you will need to pay a fee for the more advanced ones. And..." She trailed off and stared at one of the doors leading to the men's change rooms. Her expression unreadable.
Following her gaze, everyone turned to face the door in which a faint muffled sound could be heard once the noise died down. A noise sort of like... arguing?
"...I don...n..pp!"
"Go—rr...m."
"E—"
BANG
The door was abruptly thrusted open and slammed into the wall. A male with ruffled hair with the same features as Sadie stood with one foot raised after having kicked open the door. Head locking a lanky looking guy with glasses.
The guy doing the headlock spoke first. "Stop being a wimp and go out there!"
"Noo!" The person getting headlocked scrambled to secure the thick rimmed glasses that were about to fall off from getting jostled around.
"You #%&*!"
Sadie's eye twitched at the scene and for some reason a foreboding feeling began to descend onto the area. She strode towards the two unsuspectingly, flexing her fingers before they latched onto one of their ears.
"Stop making a fuss and get over there!"
✦ ✧
Needless to say, compared to before, the two were leagues more calm and docile.
Breathing in, Sadie introduced through gritted teeth, "The person yelling is my twin brother, Salem, and the person crying is our club captain, Kevin Millers."
Said people were rubbing their reddened and smarting ears after Sadie had physically pinched and tugged them over. No wonder she's the vice captain.
Salem grumbled something while Kevin looked nervously at the group all staring at him. He adjusted his messy red hair and diverted his eyes, words coming out meekly.
"Hello everyone... I'm Kevin, your club captain for the year.. And um as you can see I'm not really... good with crowds." He smiled stiffly and a collective thought appeared amongst the new members.
'Is he really the club captain?'
—*:･ﾟ*✧ —
Huey sat by one of the benches staring fixedly into nothing particular. The first club meeting wasn't very official, focused more around allowing new members to get used to the space, inform them of details, and answer any questions they might have.
Although—CLANGGG~~
His train of thought was interrupted by an abrupt sharp sound of a blade colliding wrongly with something. The culprit looked a bit embarrassed but continued testing out their bladework at the dummy.
Huey closed his eyes and drowned out all the noises echoing across the gym.
Although he said he'd help Sorin deal with Albert Wolint he couldn't do it immediately as much as he would like. Albert only challenges Sorin to a duel two weeks after the start of the club after Sorin beat Chanelia Czariesh. Until then Huey couldn't make a move.
'I mean, I can't just go up to him and go "Hey don't mess with Sorin it's really annoying" all of a sudden.'
What he needed to do is to wait.
He's too impatient for that.
The Ceylon Wolint rivalry aside, what pushed Albert to make his move was primarily because Chanelia of the 'original' three houses lost so in his own, delusional way of protecting the old blood pact, duelled with Sorin.
Quite honorable if you think about it.
Although he could just make it so Chanelia never spars with Sorin that was merely fixing it with flimsy dollar store tape and glue. A temporary solution and not a very good one. The Wolint and Ceylon family's rivalry will continue as long as neither of them surpass each other, and he doesn't intend to try and fix that.
A little rivalry is good, all that matters is whether or not it's healthy.
Right now the Wolint family's head is an old geezer pushing the conservative viewpoint onto the younger generations. So since he's so caught up about blood supremacy why not suppress him with exactly that?
But he can't exactly pressure Albert without a valid reason. So in order to start the operation, they needed to provoke Albert to challenge Sorin. How? Well going off his original reason, as long as someone of the other knight houses lost to Sorin he would've made a move.
Huey dropped his head to hide a smile.
'Sorry Kayson.'
On cue, the pink haired youth came out of the change rooms wearing a PE strip, a mopey frown on his face.
"Do I really have to do this?" He sighed.
Huey thought the reluctance wasn't unreasonable. Challenging the protagonist with the purpose to lose doesn't sound nor feel very pleasant. Especially when said protagonist was hailed as a generational prodigy.
"Not necessarily," He stood up, dusting imaginary dust off his clothes. "We can wait for the plot to progress normally, but I'm not sure if the plot will progress normally."
He licked his lips. "And I'd much rather focus on the Winter Showcase than this."
Kayson scrunched up his face, groaned, and dropped into a squatting position with his head hung low. He stayed in that position for a second before he sprung up with new found determination. Blue eyes looking dead into red.
"You owe me."
Was all Kayson said before marching straight towards a crowd of people fenced around a court.
'How many times have I owed him now?'
Huey shook his head and quickly followed after. Peering over the small crowd, he could see the outline of two figures lightly sparring. He deduced one of them was Sorin but before he could make out the second person someone's head blocked it.
He felt a brief pang of irritation and moved somewhere else. Slipping through people Huey arrived somewhere near the front where he finally identified both people.
Sorin and his highness Kade.
He can't say he's surprised since they were actual rivals and friends. Grown up together as playmates, the two were like brothers who backed eachother up both politically and in combat.
Sorin swung his blade and Kade successfully parried it and returned a quick blow from the side. Sorin twisted his body to avoid it and—either because of muscle memory or being caught up in the moment—landed a kick straight in Kade's guts a bit too hard. Sending him flying.
Straight away his expression immediately changed into that of a child who just realized he did something extremely stupid and wrong.
Huey's brain barely registered that Kade was in fact flying into his direction before the collision happened. Well, what would've been a much harsher collision.
He was instead pushed to the side.
Huey warily opened his eyes, catching sight of the pusher's head of soft light blonde hair. A subtle grassy aroma exuding from her. Diamond blue eyes crinkled from the big smile plastered on her face, unblemished rosey cheeks with a healthy intake of sunlight, blonde locks framing her face perfectly, and a hearty joyful ambience wafted around her.
Celine's eyes smiled warmly down at Kade who couldn't be any more confused.
Huey was too.
So was Kayson.
Sorin.
And everyone else in the room.
Since the commoner student Celine just caught Prince Kade—got sent back at incredible speed after getting kicked by Sorin—Leonis Caelitus with no effort... in a princess carry.
.
Kade 'spoke' first.
"Wh-w- how- what- Celine? Wha- I-eh??"
A jigsaw puzzle of inconceivable words leaked out of his mouth. Yup, poor dude was gone.
"Are you hurt?" She asked, not so much as budging or struggling with her hold on him at all. And the longer she held him the redder his face became.
"I'm.. fine??"
"I should still get you checked out at the infirmary just in case," She pouted and turned to Sorin. "Be careful next time!"
As the understanding of Celine's words and what it meant sunk in, Kade's psyche quickly came back shamefully.
"Wait, no I'm fine!" He tried to make an effort to break out of the hold, he really did, but instead Celine just made it firmer. Why is she so strong?!?
Kade cried internally.
"It's better to be safe than sorry." Celine grinned. Turning on her heels with the most harmless smile ever, she took a very red, very flustered, and very confused Kade (who was beginning to cover his face with his palms) away from the very confused, and very shocked crowd.
Huey's brain blanked.
It felt like he just saw something he shouldn't have.
End of The Redo of a Novel's Villain: Moira Chapter 19. Continue reading Chapter 20 or return to The Redo of a Novel's Villain: Moira book page.