The Strongest Student of the Weakest Academy-Chapter 450: The Beginning Of The End [CXII]

Her words hung in the air like a cloud of smoke that didn’t want to be cleared out.

Aestrea did not move or speak.

He simply sat there, absorbing every syllable she had just laid bare in front of him, raw and trembling and real. And it hit him harder than any divine strike ever had.

Because she was indeed right.

"...Rose."

Her name came out quietly.

"Hm?" She let out a small, broken sound, still bent close to him, her hand still resting against his cheek. Her fingers were warm. Slightly calloused from years of holding a staff she claimed she never wanted to touch again.

He gently reached up and wrapped his hand around hers. Not pulling it away. Just... holding it there.

Her breath hitched.

"...H-hic—"

A hiccup broke through her composure without warning, and she immediately pressed her free hand over her mouth, squeezing her eyes shut.

Her shoulders shook once, twice.

Drip, drip...

The tears didn’t stop.

They kept falling relentlessly, dripping off her jaw and catching the warm café light as they fell.

"I’m sorry," she whispered behind her hand.

"I told myself I wouldn’t do this. I told myself that if I ever saw you again, I’d just... smile and wave and act like everything was fine."

"...You were never very good at lying," Aestrea said softly.

She laughed... and sobbed at the same time.

"H-hic...! Hah... that’s..." She shook her head, wiping her face roughly with the back of her wrist.

"That’s not fair. Don’t make me laugh right now."

"Rose. Sit down."

She hesitated for just a moment before slowly pulling her knee back and lowering herself into the seat across from him.

She folded both hands in her lap, staring down at them. Her shoulders were drawn inward, as if she were trying to make herself smaller.

As if she were bracing for something.

Aestrea leaned forward slightly, resting his forearms on the table.

"Tell me honestly," he said.

"All nine years... you waited?"

Her jaw tightened.

"...I didn’t wait," she murmured.

"I lived. I built this café. I trained. I made friends." She paused.

"H-hic..."

Another hiccup slipped through, and she pressed her lips together hard to stop more from following.

"I just... couldn’t stop thinking about you. No matter what I did." Her voice cracked on the last word.

"It was so stupid. I knew it was stupid."

"It wasn’t stupid."

"It was," she insisted, finally looking up at him.

Her orange eyes were red-rimmed now, glistening and raw.

"Because you never promised me anything. You never even said anything real to me. You just..." Her voice broke apart completely for a moment.

She swallowed.

"Gulp... You just teased me like I was the only person in the room, and somehow... that was enough to ruin me for nine years."

The room fell into deep silence.

The soft ambiance of the café drifted up faintly from the floors below.

A distant piano.

The murmur of other lives continuing as if the world were not cracking open just a little bit, right here, on the highest floor.

"...I owe you an apology," Aestrea said quietly.

"Don’t."

The word came out sharp as she shook her head quickly.

"Please don’t apologize to me. I don’t want your apology. I never wanted that."

"Then what do you want, Rose?"

She stared at him, biting her lower lip in agony.

"Hk— hic!"

She brought both hands up to cover her face entirely, her scarlet hair falling forward around her like a curtain.

The sound that came from behind her palms was small and devastated and deeply human.

Not exactly a wail, but a suppressed kind of grief that somehow hurt far more because of how hard she was trying to hold it together.

"...I wanted you to choose me," she admitted from behind her hands.

The words were muffled, barely louder than a whisper.

"Not out of guilt. Not because you felt bad. Just... because you wanted to." A shaky exhale.

"Sniff... I wanted to be someone worth choosing."

"You are."

She lowered her hands slowly.

Her eyes found his, searching them desperately for something she wasn’t sure she’d find.

"Then why does it feel like a goodbye?" she whispered.

Aestrea looked at her eyes, but said nothing. Because she already knew the answer. And they both understood that silence carried it better than any words could.

Her face crumpled.

"Hk-hh, ugh, I’m sorry..." She turned her face slightly to the side, pressing the back of her hand hard against her mouth.

Her whole frame shuddered as she fought against herself. "Sniff... I told myself. I really told myself I wouldn’t fall apart in front of you—"

"It’s fine."

"It’s not fine, Aestrea!" Her voice came out broken and wet and frustrated all at once.

"Because if I fall apart, then it becomes real. And if it becomes real, then I have to actually accept that you’re leaving and that I’m going to watch you walk out of that door and I w-won’t... sniff... I w-won’t..."

She stopped and pressed her trembling lips together. Looked up at the ceiling, blinking hard and rapidly, as if gravity could pull the tears back in.

It couldn’t.

They fell anyway.

Slowly, Aestrea reached across the table and placed his hand over both of hers. She stiffened for just a fraction of a second.

Then, gradually, her fingers turned beneath his and held on tightly. The way someone holds onto something they already know they’re about to lose.

"Rose."

"...Hm."

Her humming came out barely audible.

"For what it’s worth," he said carefully.

"You were never just a passing memory to me. You stayed. Even when I didn’t understand why." He paused.

"Maybe I was the stupid one for not saying it sooner."

She let out a sound that broke somewhere between a laugh and a sob.

"H-hic! Hah... now you say it." She shook her head slowly, tears still rolling silently down her scarlet-framed face.

"Now, when you’re about to disappear again..."

"I know."

"...It really isn’t fair," she murmured.

"It isn’t."

For a long moment, neither of them spoke. Her hands stayed wrapped around his.

The warm light of the café fell over them both, soft and golden, and entirely indifferent to the weight of what was being left unsaid.

Finally, Rose exhaled deeply.

"...Will you at least," she began, her voice smaller now, steadier in the way that only total surrender can produce, "finish your blueberry pancakes before you go?"

Aestrea looked at her.

Something in his chest pulled taut.

"Yeah," he said softly.

"I will."

She nodded once.

Then she carefully withdrew her hands from his, folded them neatly back in her lap, and straightened her posture.

She smoothed the front of her dark red vest. She touched the scar on her cheek briefly, the way she always did when she was composing herself.

And she smiled at him.

It was a real smile. Fractured at the edges, still glassy-eyed, still carrying the full weight of nine years in its curve.

But a real one indeed.

"...Good," she whispered.

"I made those myself, you know."

Rose rose from her seat quietly, smoothing the front of her vest with both hands.

She didn’t call for a waitress.

She simply turned and made her way toward the small service corridor herself, her scarlet hair swaying gently behind her with each step.

Aestrea watched her go without a word.

A few minutes passed.

The soft sound of the piano drifted up from the floors below, unhurried and gentle, filling the private room with a sense of almost peace.

He turned his gaze toward the floor-high windows and watched the capital.

Click, clack...

The soft click of heels returned.

Rose came back carrying a tray herself, which was clearly not something the owner of an establishment typically did.

Yet she handled it with practiced ease, setting it down onto the table with careful, deliberate hands.

A fresh Venti, steaming gently in an elegant dark cup.

And a plate of blueberry pancakes, stacked neatly, dusted with powdered sugar, the blueberries glistening as if they’d just been warmed through.

A small pour of cream sat on the side.

"I made a fresh batch," she said simply.

"The ones from before weren’t worth serving anyway."

"You made these yourself again?" Aestrea glanced up at her.

"I always make the ones that go to this floor," she replied.

She pulled her chair back and sat down across from him once more, folding her hands neatly in her lap.

"It started as a personal rule. Now it’s just habit."

He said nothing more and simply picked up the fork.

Rose watched him.

She didn’t pretend not to.

She didn’t busy herself with something else or stare out the window to seem indifferent. She simply rested her chin lightly against her knuckles, elbow on the table, and watched him eat. Her orange eyes were quiet now.

The redness had faded to something softer.

The tears had dried, leaving only the faintest trace along her lower lashes if the light caught them at the right angle.

She watched the way he cut through the stack cleanly. The way he brought the fork to his mouth without hurry.

The way his expression remained composed but carried that subtle shift that good food tends to draw out of even the most guarded people.

She noticed all of it.

Her thumb moved slowly against her knuckle, the only sign that she wasn’t entirely still inside.

’Just a little longer,’ she thought quietly.

’Just let me have this.’

She didn’t speak.

She didn’t want to fill the silence with anything that might shorten it.

Every second he sat here, fork in hand, warm light on his face, was a second she could keep.

And she had learned, over nine years, how to be very careful with the seconds she was given.

The pancakes disappeared slowly.

The Venti followed, sip by quiet sip.

And Rose watched.

She watched until the last forkful was gone. Until the cup was set down with the softest ceramic sound against the saucer.

Until he reached into his breast pocket and produced a clean white handkerchief, unfolding it once with two fingers before pressing it gently to the corner of his lips.

The handkerchief was folded back and then returned to his pocket.

And then he turned toward her.

His crimson eyes met hers fully.

"It was really delicious."

Rose held his gaze for exactly one second before her composure cracked straight down the middle.

Not the way it had been before, with trembling hands and broken hiccups and tears she couldn’t stop.

But just a single tear that rose without permission and slid down her cheek before she could think to stop it, tracing a path along the edge of her scar.

She laughed softly.

"...I know," she whispered.

Her hand came up slowly and pressed flat against her sternum, as if she were steadying something inside her chest that had shifted out of place.

"I know it is..."

"I’ve been perfecting that recipe for three years."

She looked at the empty plate.

"...I think," she began softly.

"I was always hoping that one day you’d walk back in through that door," she exhaled quietly.

"And I’d have something good enough to give you."

Her eyes lifted back to his.

"I’m glad it was enough."