I Need the True Ending to Graduate - Chapter 73

“Haa.”

At my affirmative silence, Evan Bell let out a sigh that sounded like a hollow laugh. Then he swept his hair back, which had been neatly arranged without a strand out of place. It seemed his head was heating up.

It was the first time I’d seen his face this hardened, and my body shrank back without my realizing it, but I couldn’t back down here.

There were three characters I had to capture. The moment he started interfering in my private life, the true ending would be as good as gone.

‘I have to be shameless right now. What matters here isn’t logic, it’s momentum.’

Thinking that, I steeled my resolve.

After seeming to calm his anger, Evan Bell continued, “Miss Lucia. I think you’re misunderstanding what I just said. I didn’t ask you that because I was hoping for that kind of thing. Do you think I grabbed an innocent person and said all this because I don’t know that wounds heal with time?”

“….”

“What exactly do you think a private life is? Is ignoring it and pretending not to know whether you come back injured from being beaten by someone what you want?”

I wanted to say yes, exactly that, but I couldn’t pour cold water on the serious atmosphere, so I continued to keep silent.

“I just asked who did this to you. Don’t avoid answering by muddying the point with useless talk about private life or whatever. You’d also be better off giving up on trying to hide where you got these bruises from.”

“….”

“And I don’t know what you’ve been doing privately that you’re keeping your mouth shut and trying to keep secret, but just as I have no right to interfere in your private life, you also have no right to interfere in my emotions and actions.”

“….”

“So tell me. Who hurt you?”

Evan Bell pressed me with a stern face, his eyes blazing blue.

I quietly looked up at him. It felt like I had snuck out to play without my mother knowing and was being scolded after coming home late at night.

When I didn’t answer, Evan Bell seemed unable to wait any longer and spoke first.

“Is it your advisor you said you met last week?”

“….”

“Was it him? Are you telling me he hit you?”

“….”

“Say something, Lucia! Anything!”

The moment Evan Bell grabbed my shoulders, shook me, and shouted my name, a switch inside me that I hadn’t even known existed clicked on with a sharp, pleasant sound.

And regardless of my will, the expression drained from my face, and my tongue began to move on its own.

“Yes. My advisor hit me.”

“…!”

‘…!’

At the confession that came out of my mouth in a dry voice, Evan Bell and I were both startled.

‘Oh my god. How could you say that to his face!’

I was inwardly horrified and desperately tried to rein in my body, but it refused to listen.

Staring straight into Evan Bell’s violently shaking blue eyes, I calmly continued the shocking confession.

“I guess I didn’t tighten well enough down there. So he scolded me, saying I should tighten it properly, asking how I was supposed to properly take a cock like this, and hit my ass. He said it was only usable if he did it like this. So the whole time, I was getting my ass hit.”

“….”

Evan Bell stared at me, speechless.

I was no different, but that was because Jeran had never done such a thing. I was calmly telling lies without batting an eye.

While both Evan Bell and I were shocked, only the expression reflected in his eyes looked as though nothing had happened, utterly indifferent.

“I guess the bruises didn’t fully heal after getting hit for hours. I thought they’d be gone by today, but maybe I got hit pretty badly.”

“….”

“That’s why, Boss. It’s nothing serious, right?”

Then I moved my facial muscles and showed Evan Bell, who wore a vacant expression, a gentle smile. It was a dry smile with not a hint of vitality.

Evan Bell couldn’t continue speaking. He only quietly examined my face with a dazed look, as if trying to find traces of lies left somewhere on it.

But I was simply calm. I was so excessively unfazed that, on the contrary, I maintained an eerie composure as I met his gaze.

“Just when exactly… just when did it start…? When did it begin?”

That was the first question that came out of Evan Bell’s mouth after he moved his lips for a long time, choosing his words.

The person who had harshly pressed me with a stern face just moments ago was nowhere to be found.

Like someone whose entire foundation of common sense and thinking had collapsed, he opened his mouth with difficulty amid crossing emotions.

The me that wasn’t me looked at Evan Bell like that and spoke with a faint smile.

“From the beginning.”

“When you say the beginning, when exactly are you talking about? When you ran away from the village? The moment you entered the academy? Or when a new advisor came in after Karl Evenhart?”

“Why does that matter?”

“It matters to me!”

Startled by the sudden loud voice, I flinched in fear, but the body that had slipped beyond my control didn’t even blink.

With his face miserably contorted, Evan Bell clutched at me desperately and spoke as if wailing. Even though there wasn’t a single tear in his eyes, for some reason, I felt as though he was crying.

“It matters to me, Lucia. It matters….”

“….”

“Why on earth are you spreading your legs and getting beaten by a professor while listening to that kind of talk. Why on earth….”

Evan Bell’s upper body gradually collapsed, and soon his head touched my chest. The hand gripping my arm as if it would crush it trembled violently. The breath touching my chest was rough.

I looked down at his pitch-black crown wordlessly and spoke in an emotionless tone, as if stating a fact that was so obvious it was embarrassing to even put into words.

“Because if I don’t do that, I’ll get expelled from the academy.”

“….”

“The professor wanted me. I couldn’t refuse.”

‘No, he didn’t want me. I was the one who insisted on doing it even when he said he wouldn’t.’

As the incorrect facts continued to spread and I stood there unable to do anything, watching the two of them sit restlessly, Evan Bell lifted his head and looked at me. Then, as if he couldn’t believe what he was hearing even after listening with his own ears, he asked with trembling eyes.

“Just for a reason like that, you gave up your body?”

“Yes, Evan. Just like how I accepted your offer for fifteen million gold.”

“….”

At that moment, Evan Bell stared at me like someone who had lost all language.

Of course, I too was horrified by the words that pierced his chest like a dagger, even as I listened beside him.

‘Wasn’t spreading false information enough, that I had to gouge his chest like this too?’

It wasn’t that Evan Bell had done well. No matter how rigid the class system was, and no matter how common such proposals were, it was certain that it wasn’t something upright or lawful.

Even so, there was no need to drag in things that weren’t true just to condemn the other person.

As the atmosphere gradually grew more serious and I didn’t know what to do, my mouth wouldn’t stop, continuously stabbing daggers into Evan Bell’s chest.

“You bought me with money because you wanted to torment me like that too, didn’t you?”

“….”

“Then why are you angry, Evan? You should be happy when you see me living while getting beaten badly enough to leave bruises on my body just to cater to a professor’s whims.”

The more I spoke, the more the color drained from Evan Bell’s face. I’d never seen Evan Bell this pale in my life.

I didn’t care in the slightest whether he was shocked or not, whether his face had turned deathly white without a trace of blood. I continued speaking without restraint.

“Or are you angry because you couldn’t ruin me with your own hands? If that’s the case, then it makes sense for you to be angry. You haven’t even laid a hand on me yet. You only tormented me down below. You just made me do a few things that were humiliating enough.”

“….”

“If you want to ruin me, you can. I agreed to obey whatever you say on the bed. You can hit me on the bed, Evan. Then that act is lawful. It’s clearly stated that way in the contract.”

“…Lucia.”

Evan Bell called my name as if telling me to stop, his face horribly twisted. But I didn’t stop. I acted like someone who had made up their mind. Perfectly calm, without the slightest wavering.

“Hit me, Evan. You said you hate me more than anyone in the world, and that you want to see me feel humiliated and suffer.”

“….”

“Enjoy it, Evan. Enjoy hitting me. Take delight in watching me hurt.”

With the calmest face in the world, I soothed him with the strangest words in the world. They were sentences I’d never heard even once in my life. Sentences no sane person could ever utter.

And in truth, I wasn’t sane.

I wasn’t the one speaking, and it had nothing to do with my will. The words were spilling out on their own. There was no way this could be called sane.

I had clearly possessed Lucia’s body, yet this absurd situation where I was suddenly being driven out of the possessed body left me dumbfounded and flustered.

And Evan Bell, who must have been the most bewildered person in the world at that moment, couldn’t say a word. Like someone who had lost his voice, he barely moved his lips. Even those were trembling.

He looked at me with a face that had been washed clean of all emotion and everything else by an enormous shock, a blank, bleached face.

Silence fell. It was a quiet yet uncomfortable silence. It felt suffocating, like sinking deep underwater.

The only one who was calm here was the me that wasn’t me, Lucia.