No Such Person

It was still a long time until noon.

Roy left the lower city and quickly returned to the House of Cadell. He hid outside the classroom and peered inside, seeing the students diligently listening to Teacher Cadell lecture on history.

Faywen sat alone in the last row.

He timed it perfectly. Now, everyone in the school, except for him and the stout cook who always stayed in the kitchen, was in the classroom.

Roy quietly snuck up to the principal's office on the second floor. Seeing the door locked, he ran to the far left of the corridor. He leaned out over the railing, half his body extended, to observe the window on the second floor on the side of the building.

The window was wide open, not far from the corridor, and not too high off the ground. Roy took a deep breath, crouched on the railing, and did a few squats to gauge the distance. Then, he released his tensed legs like springs, instantly lunging forward like a great bird, spreading his arms and successfully grabbing onto the windowsill.

With a surge of his waist, he agilely flipped into the room like a cat. For him, whose physical fitness was already on par with an adult's, this maneuver wasn't difficult.

The room was exactly as Roy had found it on his first day. He went straight to the desk behind the bookshelf and pulled at several drawers and cabinets.

Unfortunately, they were all locked. But he wasn't willing to leave just like that, so he searched the room thoroughly – the bookshelf, the sofa, the pen holder...

Half an hour later, Roy, to his surprise, pulled a bronze key from a poetry collection titled The Moon Age in the corner of the bookshelf. He inserted it into the keyhole of the cabinet near the corner of the desk.

With a crisp "click," the rectangular cabinet beneath the desk opened, revealing several neatly stacked piles of paper.

Roy's personal information registration form, left on his first day at school, was among them. According to Teacher Cadell at the time, every new student had to complete a similar registration, which included the specific enrollment date, name, gender, age, home address, family relations, and a simple physical description, such as hair and eye color, or any birthmarks or scars.

In Roy's opinion, if Faywen's brother truly existed and had attended the House of Cadell, such a record would inevitably exist.

Where there's a will, there's a way.

Even if no one remembered "him," the written word would not lie.

The registration forms were already sorted by Teacher Cadell according to the enrollment year. Roy roughly counted thirteen thin stacks, meaning the House of Cadell had existed for at least that many years.

Starting from 1248, the first year had only two or three registration forms, and then they increased annually. In the last three to four years, the numbers had stabilized, with about thirty new students each year.

The majority of new students enrolling and old students graduating from the school occurred around May Day. It was rare for someone like Roy to join mid-term.

He sighed slightly. These unassuming stacks of paper before him were the history of the House of Cadell, recording how a school that served poor children purely on its beliefs had grown to its current scale in a chaotic era, amidst gangs and the Revolutionary Army.

The thin sheets of paper now held an ineffable weight.

Roy carefully flipped through them one by one. He didn't read every word; that would be too slow, and he didn't recognize some words. He only looked at the enrollment year, name, and family relations, focusing on records from the last six or seven years, as the House of Cadell allowed students to stay for a maximum of five years.

"Hille... no."

"Frick... wrong relative."

"Kaltz... wrong home address."

He finished browsing over two hundred registration forms in fifteen minutes. Some stacks even contained blank forms, perhaps used by Teacher Cadell for self-comfort. He checked a second time, then a third.

After the third round, Roy sighed deeply, his expression complex. He neatly restacked the forms and locked them back in the cabinet.

Roy couldn't find the slightest piece of information about Faywen's brother. This conclusion made him feel that more than half of his investigation was complete. The outcome was as he had expected, yet it still made his heart ache.

Could Faywen truly have some kind of psychological disorder?

Among these ten-odd stacks of records were some that Roy found very familiar – children who were still at the school.

Two of them left a deep impression on him. One recorded Mifen, the boy Faywen had fought with in her diary.

The other was the boy with a scar beneath his eye, the outstanding graduate whom Teacher Cadell had painted a portrait of – Harlheim.

Roy glanced at the wall clock. There was still an hour until noon. After lunch, he planned to ask Mifen, to gather a little more evidence.

Before leaving the room, Roy hesitated. Out of curiosity, he used the bronze key to open another drawer.

"Hmm, books, quills, ink..."

"Cosmetics? I wouldn't have thought the stern and serious Teacher Cadell was also vain."

"Hmm, what's this?" To his surprise, in the third drawer from the corner, Roy found a crumpled notice...

"Vernon Raine, the great revolutionary leader of Edessberg, who worked tirelessly for the people's interests, was cruelly captured and imprisoned for three months by Baron Tavik. Righteous individuals who protested were violently suppressed by the Baron! But the revolution will not compromise, and new forces are gathering..."

A flash of light dispelled the fog in his mind.

Roy finally remembered the identity of that outstanding graduate, Harlheim. This boy with the scar beneath his eye wasn't the cloaked figure distributing revolutionary notices when he'd bumped into him after leaving the dwarf manor? A member of the Revolutionary Army?

Teacher Cadell clearly hid such a notice in her drawer, yet she claimed she had sent her outstanding graduates to work elsewhere.

Then, it was obvious that this respected principal must have had some connection to the Revolutionary Army. Thinking bigger, Roy even suspected that Teacher Cadell held a significant position within the Revolutionary Army, and the entire school was founded by her to train elite cadres for the cause.

Right... He remembered the history lesson Teacher Cadell had given incidentally on his first day at school.

Even then, he had felt a strange sense that the principal seemed to lean more towards the Revolutionary Army's stance, criticizing Edessberg and even the upper echelons of the Kingdom of Aedirn.

Then everything made sense. The backer of the House of Cadell was the Revolutionary Army! Based on his performance, if he stayed a few more years, Teacher Cadell might have revealed everything to him.

Roy took a deep breath, his emotions incredibly complex. He had only come to investigate Faywen's brother, and unexpectedly stumbled upon Teacher Cadell's secret.

So, was Faywen's brother related to Teacher Cadell? Was he secretly brought into the revolutionary ranks, like Harlheim?

Roy quickly dismissed the idea. No matter how high Teacher Cadell's position was in the Revolutionary Army, she was still human. It was unlikely she could make Faywen, her family, and their neighbors all lose their memories. Even Harlheim left behind a portrait and a registration form, yet "he" did not.

Old Bob's testimony, coupled with the missing registration form, was enough to prove that the "he" in the diary did not exist. If Mifen from the diary also denied it, then