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Fates Parallel Chapter 35 - Fate
🕑 Added 2021-02-25 19:19:32 +0000 UTCAs soon as she saw Tae In-Su, Lee Jia immediately hid herself behind Rika.
“Oh shit! Ancestor's ashes! That’s the administrator from my old city.”
Rika looked back over her shoulder at Lee Jia and chuckled.
“Why does that matter? Also, should I be mad that I’m the one you chose to hide behind?”
“You’re the tallest one here, ok!? And it matters because I stole his token to get into the academy!”
“Stole it? I thought you were scouted out and given a special invitation because you’re so talented.”
Eui raised a hand and interjected.
“By the way, Rika, mine was also stolen. I don’t think I have to worry about meeting the former owner again, though, hehehe.”
Jia and Rika both paused to stare at Eui’s dark grin—that girl had a nasty sense of humor sometimes. Rika shook her head and turned back to Jia.
“So what, are you just gonna try to hide from him forever? Change your appearance and pretend you’ve never met him?”
“Yes! Rika, you’re a genius! Eui, let’s go buy some hair dye—you can help me make a dis—”
“No. I don’t care if you want to hide your identity, you’re not messing with that hair.”
Jia cursed internally—she should have known better than to blunder into one of Eui’s sore spots. She felt a tap on her shoulder and looked up to see a concerned expression on Eunae’s face.
“Jia, I don’t think it’s a good idea to try to hide from him forever.”
“Why not?”
“Well, for one thing he’s headed in this direction as we speak.”
“What!?”
Jia peeked out from behind Rika. Sure enough, she saw Dae leading Tae In-Su towards them, and she suddenly regretted not having told Dae her whole story.
“Shit, I have to go! Keep him busy for me, please!”
As Jia ducked back into the crowd to make her getaway, she heard Eui’s voice in her head.
“Jia, wait!”
“Sorry, Eui! Just distract them please? I’ll make it up to you later!”
“You damn well better!”
Lee Jia fled through the crowd with all haste. She had already been skilled at weaving through a crowd, but with her enhanced senses, ki-empowered physique, and her newfound domain, it was almost too easy to sprint through the crowd unnoticed.
She ran straight for the west wing of the campus, keeping up her sprint until she was safely in the confines of the girls’ dormitory area—Tae In-Su couldn’t possibly find her here. Now all she had to do is become a recluse and never leave the house again.
Stopping to catch her breath in a small park—mostly out of habit, since she could run forever without getting tired these days—she noticed an unfamiliar figure sitting on a bench and gazing at the flowers.
The girl was a half-spirit that Lee Jia didn’t recognize, which was odd because there weren’t very many in the academy. She didn’t know them all by name, but she would expect to at least recognize them by now. She approached for a better look and the girl looked up as she noticed Lee Jia’s approach.
“Oh, hello. I didn’t expect to run into anyone out here. You don’t like crowds either?”
“Hi! Um, I guess not. Sorry if I’m disturbing you.”
The girl shook her head and smiled.
“Not at all, please have a seat.”
Lee Jia accepted the offer and took a seat on the bench next to the girl. Up close, Lee Jia got a better look at her features. She had platinum blonde hair—though not quite as light as Lee Jia’s own—and a voluptuous build that made Lee Jia feel a bit self-conscious about how skinny she was. Her spiritual ancestry expressed itself in the form of a pair of rabbit ears that made the girl look much taller than she actually was.
There was something oddly familiar about the girl that Lee Jia couldn’t quite place. She’d never met her before—she was sure of that—but she couldn’t shake the feeling that she knew her, somehow.
“Are you...one of the new students? I don’t think I’ve seen you around before.”
“I am. We just arrived this morning, and we spent most of the day getting oriented. The magus that introduced us was a bit eccentric, so I chose to slip away rather than attend the initiation.”
Lee Jia thought back to Grand Magus Do Hye’s ridiculous entrance and nodded her head. She could see why someone would want to get away from that. She should have listened to Dae’s warning—
That thought set off a spark in Lee Jia’s mind, as she remembered what Dae had said about his master. He liked to cause chaos—which she’d already seen demonstrated—and he liked to move people around like pieces in a game. She glanced sidelong at the girl next to her—if she had arrived with Do Hye, then...
“Is something wrong?”
The girl looked askance at Lee Jia and she realized she’d been staring.
“U-um, no. Sorry, I just realized I’d never introduced myself. My name is Lee Jia, I apologize for my rudeness.”
To her surprise, the girl just laughed.
“Ahaha, no need to apologize. I was actually enjoying the opportunity to talk to someone who didn’t know who I was. My name is Sun Jaehwa. It’s nice to meet you, Lee Jia.”
Lee Jia’s eyes widened and she nearly choked when she heard the name. Sun Jaehwa!? She had really underestimated Dae’s master. How had he managed to find Eui’s former friend? Why had he done it?
Sun Jaehwa’s face fell as she misunderstood Lee Jia’s shock.
“So you’ve heard of me, after all.”
“Uh, n-no, not really! I was just surprised, that’s all. Um, Sun! That’s not a common name, right?”
Lee Jia was grasping at straws as she tried to explain away her surprise. Ancestors, how was Eui going to react? Maybe they’d both just retire to the mountains and live out the rest of their lives as cave hermits.
“Oh, you’ve never heard of the Sun family? We’re rather famous among nobles.”
“No, I haven’t. I’d never even spoken to a noble before coming here! I was such a mess the first time I met Eunae, hahaha!”
Lee Jia realized she’d said too much when Sun gave her an odd look.
“Eunae? Who’s that?”
“Uh...one of my friends, Eunae, she’s a—a noble too.”
“Oh, what’s her surname? The noble families are fairly tightly knit, I might have met her before.”
Ancestors damn it! Lee Jia had been trying to avoid that. She averted her gaze awkwardly and scratched the back of her head as she answered.
“S-Seong...it’s Seong Eunae.”
To her surprise, rather than the shock or outrage she was expecting, Sun Jaehwa merely looked thoughtful for a moment before coming to a realization.
“Oh! I know of Seong Eunae. The nobles call her the ‘forgotten princess’, which is almost as cruel as my own moniker.”
Lee Jia had a very bad feeling about this, but she couldn’t help but feel like Sun Jaehwa wanted her to ask.
“What do they call you?”
Sun Jaehwa smiled sadly.
“They call me the ‘sweeping star’. Like a comet sweeping through the heavens—a beautiful harbinger of doom. All because some lunatic murdered my betrothed. So now I am here, with all the other disgraced nobles.”
Oh. Oh no. Lee Jia tried desperately not to show her nerves as she broke into a cold sweat. She latched onto the only thing she could in an attempt to change the subject.
“Disgraced? I thought the entire point of this place was to collect the most talented—”
“On the surface, yes. And some—like Magus Hwang—take it more seriously than others. Most of the Great Houses boycotted the place entirely because they think it’s a plot to steal our shield formation techniques. The rest are using it as a dumping ground for their black sheep, a last chance at redemption for those of us who aren’t worth anything to our families except for our talent.”
Lee Jia’s brows knitted together in consternation. How had she not heard of this before?
“Eunae has mentioned that her family doesn’t like her, but she doesn’t talk about why. I thought she was a unique case, but you’re saying there are others like her?”
Sun Jaehwa nodded and leaned back against the bench with a sigh.
“Most of the nobles here are in a situation like hers or mine, I would suspect. The forgotten princess is out of favor with her family because of her bloodline. The Seong are very particular about emulating their ancestor, and Seong Eunae’s bloodline is exceptionally weak for their family. There’s a nasty rumor that she would have been culled without the Queen’s intervention.”
“Culled!?”
Lee Jia was horrified, but Sun Jaehwa simply shrugged.
“It’s only a rumor. The Seong family vehemently denies that they have ever engaged in such practices, but it is rather suspicious that their family produces such consistently strong bloodlines. Princess Seong’s is the weakest the family has recorded in a hundred years, and even hers is quite strong by normal standards.”
Lee Jia winced a bit when she heard Eunae’s title.
“Don’t call her that if you meet her—she doesn’t like the title. Anyway, I think I’d better get going. It was nice meeting you, Miss Sun.”
“Likewise, Miss Lee. Before you go, do you mind if I ask you a question?”
Sun Jaehwa’s eyes narrowed slightly as she tilted her head.
“You’re her, aren’t you?”
Lee Jia felt as if her throat was tightening up as she weakly shook her head.
“I-I’m not sure what you’re—”
“You’ve been so nervous this whole time. At first I thought it was as you said, you were unaccustomed to speaking with nobility, but the way you refer to Seong Eunae—that doesn’t seem to be the case.”
Lee Jia held up her hands to try to protest, but Sun Jaehwa pressed on.
“It’s not me you’re worried about, is it? It’s the people I came here with. You fled the assembly because you saw him, didn’t you? Tae In-Su.”
That was true, but also not. Still, Lee Jia was happy for the opportunity to place all of her troubles in one place for now.
“Ahaha, Tae In-Su? Who’s that? I’ve never heard of him, so you must have mistaken me for someone else. Well then, if you’ll excuse me—”
“I won’t tell him, though you probably can’t hide from him forever. It was my family that backed him, you know. The token was supposed to go to me, but someone pressured my family to send it to Nayeong instead. My parents were furious to learn that Tae had lost it, but then the Grand Magus himself promised to get us both into the academy as compensation.”
“That’s—interesting, but I don’t see what it has to do with me.”
Sun Jaehwa giggled lightly, and her green eyes seemed to almost sparkle in the light as she spoke.
“Doesn’t it feel like fate? The token you stole was originally meant for me, and now we encounter each other like this. I think we were destined to meet here.”
Lee Jia shook her head. That might sound auspicious, but there were more fated connections between them than Sun Jaehwa realized, and they were definitely not auspicious.
“Even if I was who you think I am, it’s probably just a coincidence, ok? I really do have to go.”
“Actually, you remind me of an old friend I knew once. Before she betrayed me, we were the best of friends—I miss that.”
That was the last straw. She was definitely talking about Eui and something about this conversation was seriously weirding Lee Jia out. She bowed at a ninety degree angle and shook her head.
“I apologize for my rudeness, but I have to leave now.”
Lee Jia practically shouted her farewell before she turned and fled. How in the ancestor’s names was she going to explain this to Eui?
Sun Jaehwa watched the girl flee and sighed forlornly before clicking her tongue in irritation.
“I came on too strongly, didn’t I? Hah, what am I thinking, going back to my old habits? I should have learned the first time.”
---
When Jia returned home, she was met by a very concerned looking Eui waiting for her in their living room.
“Jia! Where were you?”
“U-um, that’s a long story. Listen, Eui, we have a problem.”
“We have a problem.”
Jia and Eui were briefly startled that they had both spoken at the same time, but Eui recovered quickly and continued.
“Jia, Tae In-Su knows you’re here. Not here specifically, but in the academy. During his introduction he brought up ‘some worthless vagrant’ who had caused him trouble back home. Rika couldn’t stop laughing and then your idiot boyfriend chose that exact moment to ask where you were, by name.”
Jia buried her face in her palms and groaned, too distressed to even bother objecting to Eui’s use of the word ‘boyfriend’.
“Yeah, so he knows you’re here. He stormed off after that, and Hyeong went chasing after him. I came straight back here to find you, but you weren’t home.”
Jia bit her thumbnail nervously before sighing.
“Right, um...Eui you might want to sit down.”
“I’m already sitting, Jia. You’re the only one standing.”
Jia blushed and sat down across from Eui, feeling more than a little bit flustered by the situation.
“Right, um, on the way back home I ran into someone. We had a brief conversation—that’s what caused my delay.”
Eui raised an eyebrow at Jia curiously.
“That’s it?”
“Well, no. It turns out that this person is someone who knows you.”
“Aw, fuck. I guess it was bound to happen eventually. Did you get a name?”
“It was, um—it was Sun Jaehwa...”
Eui stared at Jia for a beat before blinking.
“Oh...”
Jia watched the color drain from Eui’s already pale face as the realization sank in. Then, her face twisted into a vicious scowl.
“FUCK!”
