The morning light leaked through the curtains, scratching thin scars of brightness across the walls as Yuzuki slowly opened his eyes. His body was slow to admit that the day had started.
The early hours were cold, the mattress sagged beneath him, pressing around his body, convincing him to stay put under the blanket.
Yet beneath that familiar heaviness, something felt different. The air in the room gave away a crispness that felt suspiciously invigorating, unlike what should have been his apartment.
That should have raised more questions than it did, but his brain was still waiting for the rest of him to clock in.
Knock. Knock.
The knock came again, politely drumming against his half-conscious thoughts.
'Ugh. Who the hell knocks at this hour? And why is it so cold today?'
Yet the door creaked open before he could process anything further.
He could hear some graceful footsteps followed, echoed in his room. And still, he stayed wrapped in the blanket, its warmth bribed him with enough comfort.
When the sound of the footsteps settled, he felt someone sat next to him and combed gently through his hair.
The touch wasn't harsh, but he felt a false familiarity in it. An affection that wasn't supposed to belong to him.
Yuzuki was about to question it, his curiosity rose, but immediately faded.
"Wake up, sleepyhead."
"And enough staying in bed."
What?!
That was when he realised… something was definitely wrong.
It should only be him in the apartment, and yet there is another strange, dangerously kind voice accompanying him!
'Whose voice was that?'
His eyes opened with urgency and met the morning sunlight at first sight.
'Fahhhh!'
'Where did this sunlight come from?'
Yuzuki found it weird. Sunlight was not supposed to reach him like this; he remembered the layout of his room far too clearly for that. Hence, the window should not have been this close to his bed.
'Ugh. What the hell?'
Yuzuki flinched a bit before turning his head slowly towards the owner of the voice.
Seated beside him on the edge of the bed was a woman. Dressed in deep green wool, embroidered vines curled along her cuffs and hem.
Her hair, dark and pinned, framed her face slightly. Her eyes were blue like deep sapphire. And her face bore the serene, beautiful expression that one might expect from a goddess in a children's book.
Anyway, she was drop-dead gorgeous!
The sort of beauty that made him think of rare, poisonous flowers—exquisite to behold, delicately luminous… and absolutely not meant to be touched!
Yuzuki's brain, functioning with remarkable speed for this hour, reacted before his emotions could catch up.
She was dangerous.
Deadly even!
Because, according to his dictionary, beautiful women are equal danger.
But that was not the urgent discussion topic in his head. For now, Yuzuki had a very important question on his mind.
'Why the hell is there a beautiful woman in my god damn room?'
His body moved before his thought could catch up, throwing itself instinctively toward the headboard.
"Ow!" He groaned in pain.
Somehow, that slight wince alone told him how real everything was.
'No shit. That actually hurt.'
The woman blinked; her composure didn't crack. Instead, it was immediately replaced by a smile that hinted she had seen this exact scenario a thousand times before.
"Oh my, you're alright?" She gently asked, along with her gentle laugh.
"Don't tell me you have another nightmare, dear?"
'Dear? Huh? Don't you 'dear' me. Who the hell are you?'
Slowly, his eyes swept across the room with cautious disorientation. Everything around him felt arranged, too neat to belong to his messy life. His confusion ate him up as he sat there in disbelief.
Where was he? Who was she?
But instead of voicing them out, he simply continued to observe and let the details float by without any effort.
As he took it all in, he suddenly felt that his weight and his proportions none of it matched the person he remembered being.
He felt… smaller.
Then, just as he opened his mouth to say something logical or accusatory, his voice betrayed him.
"Mom…?"
But before he could finish the word, his smaller hand immediately lurched upward, pressing hard against his mouth.
'Why the hell did I say that?'
Yuzuki didn't have a mother like her, even if he dug far enough through his memories. He would have known that better. This woman… none of it belonged to any fragment of that person he could claim.
He doesn't have a mother. Or to be exact, he shouldn't.
'What kind of sadistic dream is this?'
Anger suddenly bubbled inside him.
The woman's smile deepened as she brushed a strand of dark hair from his forehead again. With that small action from her, Yuzuki felt the unease stronger now.
Whatever affection she offered, it felt belonged. And it managed to trick him into accepting it.
It was then that Yuzuki felt the urge to push away her hand, but her sudden next words stopped him from doing so.
"Anyway, if you're awake enough to be surprised by your beautiful mother, then you're certainly awake enough to get moving."
The woman stood as she spoke.
"Wash up now, Ruvian. Breakfast is getting cold, and you know how dramatic Ciela becomes when she has to wait for you."
With a warm, nurturing smile softening her face, she turned and quietly left the room. The door clicked shut behind her. And the silence returned, undisturbed.
The boy on the bed, whom she had called Ruvian just now, remained silent in his sheets. His expression had changed from mild confusion to disbelief.
'Ruvian?'
'Who's that?'
After glancing around for a few minutes, he finally came to accept that this was not his room and his bed.
Obviously, it's not.
His eyes moved again, scanning the room, trying to locate some kind of anchor, something familiar or foolish enough to make this entire dream sequence collapse.
Yet, in the end, nothing changed.
The room struck him with its rustic order; everything seemed to be in place.
An oak wardrobe stood in the corner, half-open to reveal rows of clothes. The whole place looked staged, as if he'd woken on the set of some medieval drama.
It was all painfully real and felt rightfully for him.
His jaw tensed.
'Did I get transmigrated into another world?'
As soon as that absurd thought disappeared, another disastrous one emerged.
'Did I die…?'
A soft sigh escaped him before he suddenly felt his head spinning.
'...my… ugh.'
As his head was spinning, foreign yet familiar memories began to reshape themselves inside his head.
Those memories did not belong to him.
They just gradually threaded itself into his head as it had always been there, and as if they were always his.
'Ruvian Castelor? Is that my name?'
No. Of course, not. There was no absolute way that name was his. He was almost certain of that, but the way it rang in his mind felt disturbingly true nevertheless.
His lips parted.
"Ruvian," he said quietly, testing it like a foreign magic word.
"Ruvian, Ruvian, Ruvian…."
He frowned.
"Shit…"
"That's not my name."
But then why, with every repetition, did it start to sound more natural than his actual name? Why did it feel like the syllables had lived somewhere in him long before he ever spoke them aloud?
Panic began to creep in.
His name was Yuzuki Nozomi.
Not Ruvian, that was for sure. Then, another flood came. More memories surged through him with a sharp, unpredictable rhythm.
Flash after flash, images of unfamiliar people, buildings that didn't exist, and voices that spoke his name like they had always known him.
His chest constricted as the blitz of two lives clashed inside his skull, fighting over space that wasn't built to contain both!
'Fuck, my head….'
Later, he decided to sit perfectly still on the edge of the bed for several minutes. His eyes shut, forcing his breathing to slow as he held to the fragments of his real identity.
Eventually, the static quieted.
He felt conflicted with himself… his true self!
But once everything settled down, unknowingly, the words Velthia Academy suddenly rose to the forefront of his mind.
The familiarity of it caused him to be in shock.
"Velthia Academy…"
"H-hold on…''
Yuzuki frantically stumbled back, nearly sent him crashing onto the wooden floor from the edge of the bed.
His eyes widened in surprise, as his entire equilibrium faltered under the weight of a single, horrific truth…
'The name… that academy name, I heard it before…'
No, he had read it before.
Velthia Academy.
One of the top three magical institutions in the kingdom of Averenthia.
A nation that gave birth to heroes, scholars, tyrants, and monsters alike. The name alone carried respect and fear across the entire continent.
This world, that treacherous academy, and the storm of events that is about to unfold… he knew them.
'But that can't be… impossible.'
'H-how? How did I end up inside that damnable novel?!'
[The Hero That Left The Academy]
He had read it, proofread it, actually—skimming through late-night chapters, begrudgingly enduring the protagonist's infuriatingly righteous ideals and the endless tragedies that piled up around him.
It had all been just fiction for him!
Words on a screen and stories to pass the time.
The polished wood creaked under his bare feet as he shifted.
'This is bad... no, it's even worse!'
He stood still, utterly still, as though any kind of movement might make things even worse. His name wasn't Yuzuki anymore, not in this world.
It was Ruvian Castelor now.
His mind raced as he tried to comprehend the weight pressing down on him. He was inside the damnable novel, and if the fragmented timeline in these foreign memories held any truth—
"The 472nd Year of the Nescra Calendar. So it's mid winter, just a few weeks left before the start of Nescra's first month, which is the equivalent of January in this world."
He recalled the details calmly, thanks to the foreign memory of this body.
'And in 2 weeks, this good-for-nothing Ruvian Castelor will enter Velthia Academy.'
Lowering his view to the floor, he dejectedly sighed, but he wasn't seeing the worn planks. No, his thoughts had pulled him far away into the distant future.
"Calm down. You're just overreacting. This could still be a dream. Some twisted lucid nightmare your brain cooked up to punish you for whatever damn sins you had committed."
He said, trying to console the panic he felt.
He clenched his jaw.
"However, if this is my reality now…"
If this truly wasn't just a foolish dream but the story he once flipped through…
"Then…"
An inevitable thought came to his mind.
"Then, I'm fated to die."
If the plot followed its course, death would come swiftly to anyone unlucky enough to be nothing more than a background figure in this world.
And judging from both of his memories, Ruvian Castelor was probably one of the nameless extras who didn't get big, tragic deaths.
One that just stopped existing somewhere off-page, swept into the gutters of the story without so much as a paragraph.
The floor groaned under his weight, then fell still. A shadow stretched across the doorway, and when he looked up, she was there, his so-called mother, framed in the battered wood.
Her blue eyes shone with a warmth that only made him more uneasy.
"Still in bed?" She asked, her voice kind.
"Aren't you coming down for breakfast?"
Ruvian rubbed his forehead.
'Now, what was the damn thing that 'Ruvian' usually said to his mother at such a moment?'
Ruvian's face flushed a bit before he spoke.
'Well, let's just play along for now.'
"Ah yes, I'll get ready soon… mom."
Just as he pushed himself up from the bed, he suddenly heard a sharp ringing echo inside his head.
[Ding!]
[You have received a gift!]
'Huh?'
[You have received a title!]
'Huh!!?'
Then, before his very eyes, a huge grimoire made of sapphire light appeared, levitating before him. The spine glowed faintly, attracting his attention.
A single message echoed inside his head.
[Welcome to this humble, damnable world!]
The moment his gaze landed on the page, the text unfurled on its own.
〔 Editorial Access: Interface 〕
◇ Name: Ruvian Castelor
◇ Titles: [Bearer of the Fable]
◇ Relevance Tier: [Stage I – Footnote of Fate]
◇ Plot Points: [000 PPs]
◇ Current Arc: [Arc 1 – The Prologue]
◇ Editorial Skills [!] <<< tap here for more info
──────── ✦ ────────
[Chapter 2: Wasn't His Name]