Beast Gacha System: All Mine-Chapter 283: Repercussion

Cecilia was suspended for a week.

...And also Arkai, Eastiel, and Oathran.

Four students. The President, the dangerous delinquent, the Mystery, and the Top Nerd, all suspended at once. No official reason given. No explanation beyond "conduct unbecoming."

The student body buzzed with theories, each one wilder than the last, each one dying quietly when no one could find any evidence to support them.

Eastiel and Oathran, though, were allowed to return to school grounds after three days to catch up on their exams.

They slipped back into the academic rhythm as if they had never left, though their schedules were a mess of makeup sessions and private tutorials.

Arkai returned even faster, just the next day after the suspension dropped. Frankly, the Student Council and the school needed him more than they needed most of the professors... 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝔀𝓮𝒃𝙣𝓸𝒗𝒆𝒍.𝙘𝒐𝒎

His face when he walked through the gates was the same as always. Composed, professional, stern. But something about the set of his shoulders was different. Something about the way he held his head.

He looked more... assured of himself now. Well, actually, since the first day of school. Like he was way older than he looked.

No one had a clue why the four of them were even suspended. Some even connected it to Ruby’s indefinite suspension.

But whoever had been awake that night... the professors... the staff... whoever had seen the three professors’ faces when they emerged back into the meeting room from the female dormitory... could kind of connect the dots.

The way Hargrave, Suna, and Lazuardi had dismissed the meeting like people who had seen too much and could not, would not, ever speak of it.

But hey. These exemplary students were just hanging out in her room overnight, right?

...Right?

After the suspension ended, the second most shocking news of that year, after Arkai Dawnoro’s engagement, of course, arrived in another announcement.

A second engagement. With the same girl.

Eastiel Edengold and Cecilia Araceli.

The words appeared on the magic world’s official notice board in crisp, formal script, and the Athenaeum stopped.

Pause.

In the past, noblemen could be engaged to one future main wife while simultaneously acquiring future concubines. It was old law, dusty law, law that no one had bothered to update because no one had ever needed to.

But this...

The two of them were heirs to established magic houses. The Dawnoro and the Edengold. The north and the south. Two of the most powerful families on the continent, and they were sharing an engagement.

To the same girl.

The whispers started immediately. Theories, speculations, math, someone actually calculated the political implications and came up with numbers that made no sense...

Because there was no precedent.

Was there even a concept of main husband and... concubine...? And which one was which...?

Speaking of concubines...

The mysterious boy who came from nowhere, the one with the white hair and the grey eyes and the power that made the stones shake, would probably be the concubine here. Since, well. He wasn’t from a prominent magic house. He had no family, no lineage, no political weight to throw around.

But the way the Dawnoro Heir treated him...

"Elder Brother, how’s your day?" Arkai asked warmly as he settled into the seat beside Oathran in the cafeteria. "I brought our lunch for us today."

The trays hit the table. Arkai had carried three trays across the crowded hall. The President of the Student Council, the heir to the Dawnoro name, carried lunch... and no one said a word.

"Elder Brother!" Eastiel’s voice cut across the cafeteria. It was somehow naturally bright and eager on the delinquent. He was running, his golden hair flying, a scroll clutched in his hand. "Look at this elemental combat strategy I made! Please tell me what you think?"

He slid into the seat across from Oathran, shoving the scroll toward him.

And then, the center of all of this, the girl, turned to Oathran with a smile that could melt glaciers.

"Your Majesty." Her voice was soft, coquettish, her head tilted, her fingers trailing along his sleeve. "Are you mad at me? Sorry for tricking you about the exam’s content."

Your Majesty.

Hmmm.

The boy who came from nowhere, who had beaten Arzhen Vasiliev to a pulp and walked away without a scratch. The boy who called two of the most powerful heirs in the continent his brothers.

Your Majesty?

Was he some hidden heir? An ancient magic kingdom, lost to time, its prince walking among them in a school uniform?

It checked out. The way he carried himself. The way his power felt old. The way the professors looked at him when they thought no one was watching.

A prince? A king? Someone who had no need of a family name because his name was older than names?

And in the cafeteria, surrounded by three men who loved her, was Cecilia Araceli, the top nerd, the scholarship student, the girl who had come from nothing, laughed at something Oathran said and let Eastiel steal food off her plate and rested her head on Arkai’s shoulder.

Wild.

Arzhen stood at the edge of the cafeteria, his tray forgotten in his hands, and watched.

She was laughing, head tilted back, golden hair catching the light, her whole body loose and easy in a way he had never seen before.

Eastiel Edengold moved around the table, squeezed himself between Cecilia and the mysterious boy. His chin propped on her shoulder, grinning at something Oathran pointed at in the scroll.

Arkai Dawnoro was beside her, his hand resting on the back of her chair, his thumb fidgeting on her hair like it was the most natural thing in the world.

And Oathran Alicei, the white-haired ghost, the boy who had beaten him into the floor was looking at her with eyes that held centuries that never were.

Arzhen didn’t move.

He just watched, and the more he watched, the less he understood.

This was Cecilia Araceli. The girl who had followed him through the Athenaeum’s corridors with hopeful eyes. The girl who had left notes in his books and waited by his classroom door. The girl who had looked at him like he was the sun, and she had been so, so cold.

He had never looked back.

He had never wanted to look back. She was nothing. A scholarship student, an orphan, a girl with no name and no family and no future beyond the walls of whatever library she happened to be hiding in.

Now she was sitting between two of the most powerful heirs on the continent and a mysterious force beyond comprehension, and they were looking at her like she was the only thing in the room.

Her laughter floated across the cafeteria.

Arzhen’s fingers tightened on his tray.

He had never heard her laugh like that. He had never seen her like this. When she had followed him, she had been careful. She had folded herself smaller, something manageable, something that wouldn’t take up too much space yet holding everything together.

Always controlled. Always perfect. Considerate. Understanding.

He had never wondered what she looked like when she wasn’t trying to please him.

"It’s too late for anything to happen in your brain." His father said from the edge of the bed where he had lain recovering from Oathran’s rage. "If it happens at all."

His father, looking at him like he was a stranger. Like he had always been a stranger, and Arzhen was only now noticing.

How did it come to this?

How had the girl who had always wished he would look her way become this?

How did he never notice that he never knew anything about her at all?

Arzhen Vasiliev felt something that might have been grief.

Because heartbreak felt obnoxious.

He would forever hate that he had to live alongside the fact that Cecilia Araceli would marry three other men, and no one could stop her.

Not even him.