Beast Gacha System: All Mine-Chapter 282: Befuddled

In the teacher’s meeting room, long wooden tables had been arranged in a square, the senior professors and staff of the Athenaeum seated along its edges like jurors awaiting a verdict.

Magelights hummed overhead, casting sharp shadows across grave faces. At the far end, near the head of the table, Ruby Vaiva sat in a high-backed chair, her hands wrapped around a cup of tea that had long gone cold.

Two female professors flanked her. One had a hand on her shoulder, rubbing slow, soothing circles. The other had pulled her chair close, her body angled protectively toward the girl, her expression one of fierce maternal concern.

Ruby’s face was pale. Her throat was wrapped in white bandages, stark against her skin. Her eyes were red-rimmed, her lashes clumped with the residue of tears, and every few moments she would lift her free hand to touch the bandages, as if checking that they were still there.

Around the table, professors exchanged glances. Papers rustled. Someone coughed.

The door opened.

Hargrave entered first.

His face was the color of old ash. His beard seemed to have lost its bristle, hanging limp and defeated. He moved like a man walking to his own execution, his massive frame somehow smaller than it had been an hour ago.

Suna followed. Her usual sharpness had been blunted, her eyes fixed on a point somewhere in the middle distance, her lips pressed together so tightly they had disappeared entirely.

Lazuardi came last.

He closed the door behind him and stood there for a moment, his hand still on the handle, his face turned toward the floor. When he looked up, his expression was that of a man who had seen something that could never be unseen.

A man who had looked into the abyss and found it pink.

No. Blush.

The room went very, very still.

The professor beside Ruby leaned forward, her eyes bright with anticipation. "Well? Where is she? Did she confess? Do we have enough to—"

"She has an alibi."

Hargrave’s voice was strange. Hoarse. Empty.

The professor blinked. "An alibi? At three in the morning? If she’s just saying she never left her dor—"

Hargrave cleared his throat. The sound was violent, desperate, as if he were trying to dislodge something that had lodged itself in his windpipe.

"The three of us will vouch for it."

The silence that followed was different from before. It was not the silence of anticipation. It was the silence of wrongness. Of pieces that did not fit.

Ruby’s hand stopped mid-reach toward her bandages. Her fingers hovered in the air, trembling slightly.

"...vouch...?" Ruby whispered.

Suna made a sound. It might have been a laugh. It might have been a sob. It might have been the noise a person makes when their soul has left their body and they are simply waiting for it to return.

"For the sake of Miss Araceli’s privacy, we will not disclose it," she said.

Her eyes were still fixed on that middle distance. Her voice was distant, floating, as if it came from somewhere very far away.

"She was simply... occupied."

As an educator... to imagine something like that happening in the dorm of the Athenaeum... no. Suna knew things filthier than that had happened in the Athenaeum before but... to witness the aftermath herself... and shamelessly!

The professor beside Ruby leaned forward again, her brow furrowed. "Occupied? Doing what?"

Hargrave closed his eyes. His beard trembled.

"Meeting dismissed." Lazuardi was calm, but his voice cut through the murmuring room.

The professors who had been leaning forward, hungry for answers, slowly sat back. Their faces confused, some indignant, some curious, some simply exhausted by the hour and the strangeness of the night.

"Miss Vaiva." Lazuardi turned to her. His expression was not unkind, but there was steel beneath it, the absolute certainty of a man who had made up his mind.

"You will be suspended indefinitely for accusing an innocent person of such a horrible thing. A psychologist and a therapist will also be assigned to you, to assess your mental and cognitive health."

Ruby’s face went from pale to white. Her hands, still wrapped around the cold teacup, began to tremble.

"Wh—" The sound escaped her like a wounded thing. "Professor! What do you mean?!" Her voice cracked, rose, broke. "She almost killed me! She—she strangled me with a tie, she left me there, and now—now you just let it go?!"

Her face was red now, splotched and ugly, tears streaming down her cheeks in crystalline rivulets. The bandages around her throat seemed whiter against the flush of her skin.

"You didn’t even bring her here!" Her voice climbed higher. "You didn’t even let her say it herself!"

"Bring her here?" Suna’s voice was strange. High. Wild. Her eyes had gone wide, her usual composure cracking at the edges. "No. No, no, no, no, no."

She shook her head, the movement jerky, emphatic.

"For the Athenaeum’s sake—" She pressed a hand to her chest, as if to steady her heartbeat. "Hell no."

Hargrave made a sound that might have been agreement or might have been the death rattle of his dignity. His beard had not stopped trembling since he entered the room.

Ruby stared at them. Her tears continued to fall, but her face was shifting, from grief to confusion, from confusion to something sharper, something calculating.

"You’re protecting her." Her voice was quieter now. "All of you. You’re protecting the girl who tried to kill me."

"We’re protecting ourselves from ever having to see what we saw tonight." Lazuardi’s voice was flat. "And we’re protecting you from the consequences of what you’ve done."

"I haven’t—"

"You made a false accusation against a student who was, at the time of the alleged attack, demonstrably occupied elsewhere." Lazuardi’s voice didn’t change. "By witnesses who are willing to swear to it. In a room that, I assure you, no one in this building will ever willingly enter again."

Lazuardi swore he would hire professionals to clean, purify and exorcise that room once Cecilia graduated...

The professor beside Ruby had withdrawn her hand from the girl’s shoulder. She was looking at her now with something that might have been pity or might have been the beginning of understanding.

Ruby’s hands clenched around the empty cup. Her knuckles were white.

"You don’t believe me." Lazuardi’s expression softened, just for a moment. "I believe someone hurt you, Miss Vaiva. I believe you were frightened and in pain and that you needed someone to blame." He paused. "I also believe that the person you chose to blame was not the person who put those marks on your throat."

Ruby’s breath caught. Her eyes darted to the faces around the table—searching, searching.

"I need to know who did this to you," Lazuardi said quietly. "But that conversation will happen with the therapists. Not with a tribunal."

Ruby’s shoulders began to shake. Her hands came up to cover her face, the empty cup forgotten, rolling across the table, leaving a trail of cold tea like tears.

Around her, the professors began to gather their things. Papers were stacked. Chairs scraped against the floor. The magelights dimmed as the first grey light of dawn began to seep through the windows.

Hargrave sighed, his hand braced against the table for support. Suna was already at the door, her hand on the handle, her eyes fixed on the wood as if she could burn the memory of the past hour from her mind by sheer force of will.

Lazuardi watched Ruby for a moment longer. Then he stood, and walked toward the door.

At the threshold, he paused.

"Therapists will be assigned by the end of the week," he said. "Until then, you will remain in your family’s estate. The suspension will be reviewed after your first evaluation."

He opened the door.

"Someone will contact you with the details."

The door closed behind him. The room emptied, the professors filing out in ones and twos, their faces a mixture of relief and exhaustion and the particular blankness of people who had been asked to understand something they could not comprehend.

Ruby sat alone at the table, now completely befuddled.

What even... how?!

Her plan was flawless!

The sun rose over the Athenaeum, and in a small pink room at the end of a long corridor, four people who had nothing to do with the night’s events were laughing at something no one else would ever know about.