Anything But Study - Chapter 9

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About 14 years ago.

The Empire was in turmoil from civil war.

The noble faction hostile to the Imperial Family had raised a rebellion, claiming they would crown a new emperor.

The nobles’ rebellion did not succeed immediately.

But the emperor also failed to suppress the rebellion at once.

In the end, the Empire was thrown into chaos.

The war between the Imperial faction and the noble faction.

Whether involved or not, people sought whatever means they could to survive.

Some chose to fight by joining one side, others chose to flee.

As a result, countless people were scattered, and it was common to lose their families.

Melia was one of them. She had been only eight years old at the time.

It was not an age where she could do anything on her own or make proper judgments.

The nanny who had fled with Melia and her younger brother died, and the two of them were left as good as orphans.

She didn’t even remember how they ended up in the orphanage.

It had been sheer luck, nothing less.

And so Melia continued life in the orphanage, not knowing what status she had been born to.

The civil war dragged on for two years before it ended.

The Imperial Family regained power, and all nobles who had rebelled were purged.

But for people like Melia, it didn’t matter who had won. All they wished was for the cold and hungry days to pass quickly.

Each day was filled only with worries of how to quench their thirst and fill their bellies.

Even so, life at the orphanage was not entirely unhappy.

Aside from the fact that her only younger brother had fallen ill.

Melia could never forget that day.

About a year after the civil war ended, the orphanage had caught fire.

Melia had survived because she was outside looking for work. But her younger brother Ervan had been struck by the disaster, and from then on lived with weak lungs for the rest of his life.

He couldn’t run like other children. Naturally, physical labor was impossible for him as well.

From that point on, Melia shouldered the work for both of them. It was the only way to remain at the orphanage.

That had happened when Melia was only eleven.

Even then, she didn’t complain. When she sometimes ate good food and laughed together with Ervan, those moments were happiness itself.

Someday, once she became an adult and could truly earn a living, she would buy Ervan all the delicious food he wanted.

She would become a sister who could even buy him the expensive fruit he once said he wanted to taste.

With that hope, Melia endured her days until she turned eighteen.

That was when someone came looking for her at the orphanage.

“Uncle?”

She had never known. That she had any family besides her brother.

Sometimes parents came to the orphanage searching for children they had lost in the civil war, but that had been long ago.

Fourteen years had already passed since the war ended.

Those children who had been found had long since left the orphanage. By now, no one came looking for family.

But suddenly, an uncle?

Confusion crossed Melia’s face.

“At last, I’ve found you. Melia.”

But the man claiming to be her uncle knew her name precisely. He even knew she had a younger brother, and knew Ervan’s name.

She remembered being called by her name and her brother’s name when she was little, but she had never known her surname.

Melia Anderson.

It was the moment she regained the surname she herself had never known.

And naturally, it was also the first time she learned what had happened to her parents.

“They already passed away.”

A powerless voice spilled from Melia’s lips.

Whenever people had come to the orphanage searching for children, she had felt a flutter of hope that perhaps she too would be taken away.

But to hear that they no longer lived in this world.

She felt bitter, realizing she had lived all those years clinging to a baseless hope.

“Yes, yes. Let’s go at once!”

Melia showed a subdued reaction, but her uncle beamed with joy, overcome with emotion at finally finding her.

He immediately tried to take Melia and Ervan away from the orphanage.

The director congratulated them, and the friends she had grown up with envied that at last Melia and Ervan had found family.

In that moment, Melia too felt a bit of excitement. She was glad.

It was good to know she had family she never knew about, and that they had come to find her.

‘So… I was a noble.’

House of Baron Ervan.[1]

It was also the first time she learned that her status hadn’t been commoner.

Having harbored fantasies about nobility, Melia thought her life would now change.

Especially with the hope that she might be able to treat Ervan, her heart swelled with expectation.

On the way as she left the orphanage following her uncle.

Melia was happy.

But now, four years later.

Melia felt only self-mockery at how naïve she had been then.

‘How foolish I was.’

Even among nobles, there were those whose lives were worse than commoners, mere nobles in title alone. That was the reality she came to know.

Her uncle hadn’t come for her because she was family.

He had needed someone to repay the debt, nothing more.

And the fact that he hadn’t come for her until she turned eighteen, it was also all for money.

By Imperial law, promissory notes held no legal effect for anyone under eighteen.

The cunning of her uncle, waiting until she became legally liable at eighteen, made her skin crawl.

Still, Melia endured.

She carried the debt of her parents, cared for her sick younger brother, and hid the shadow from her face as she persevered.

Thanks to her noble status, she was at least able to enter the academy she had dreamed of since childhood.

That much was happiness.

By earning the highest grades as top student within the academy, she could picture a slightly better future.

The fact that she could cling to a thread of hope was what allowed Melia to endure.

Even while living so busily, Melia often recalled her days at the orphanage.

Among the many connections whose whereabouts she could no longer know, there was one in particular she could never forget.

‘I wonder how he’s living now.’

A boy named Calix. He had left the orphanage long before Melia, when his family came for him.

In truth, his face had already faded in her blurred memory. All she could remember was that he had black eyes and black hair.

But it had been more than ten years since then, and there was no way she would ever meet someone again with only such common features left in her memory.

“Melia, what are you doing today?”

Her brief reminiscence of the past was broken by the question of her friend, Rosha.

She was finishing tidying up after today’s classes.

“I’m going to the library.”

“To work as an assistant? It takes about an hour, right? Then I’ll wait, let’s have dinner together afterward!”

“Ah, today I…”

Melia hesitated for a moment.

Rosha was her only close friend.

She was the daughter of the Viscount of Bailin. In terms of academy hierarchy, she too couldn’t be called upper class.

But to Melia, who stood at the very bottom, Rosha had been the one to approach first without reservation. She was a friend Melia was thankful for.

She too was always sincere toward Rosha.

But.

“I think I’ll be a little late finishing in the library. Something came up to organize suddenly.”

In the end, Melia lied to Rosha.

‘I’m sorry, Rosha.’

She couldn’t bring herself to say she was tutoring Hailon Alfred.

It wasn’t that she didn’t trust Rosha, but the thought of saying it aloud at all was difficult for her.

“That’s too bad. It can’t be helped.”

“I’m sorry. Next time, I promise I’ll bring it up first.”

Parting ways with Rosha, Melia soon arrived at the library. Though the familiar smell of books greeted her, perhaps because she had thought yesterday would be her last, the atmosphere felt especially welcoming.

‘Truly, I’m relieved.’

It was the same daily routine, yet she was thankful for the day.

Humming to herself, she finished her work, and before she knew it, it was already 4:50.

Her assistant shift ended at 5 p.m. After that was the promised tutoring with Hailon.

The location was here, in the closed library that no one visited after 5.

Melia glanced at the clock.

Thinking he would arrive in ten minutes made her nervous for no reason.

‘Will I be able to teach well?’

Her only experience teaching had been giving her sick younger brother Ervan basic lessons at home.

Fortunately, Ervan had learned well from her, but she had no idea how others might be.

Even if she was the top student, raising her own grades through hard work and teaching others were two different things.

But the thought that if she did this well, she could finally be free of her uncle pressed on her shoulders with the weight of responsibility.

As she glanced again at the clock, a male student approached her.

“Uh, excuse me.”

[1] I’m not sure if this is a typo from the editorial team, but I believe it should be “House of Baron Anderson,” since Ervan is her brother’s first name.