Athanasia: My Hacker System

Chapter 396: Cissel’s Deep Trauma of What John Did!

Finally, the weight on John’s shoulders eased. Out of all the headaches the Headmaster brought him, there was still one shining spot: his reaction to signing the magical contract.

John provided the contract since he returned from the city. Despite his age and wisdom, the Headmaster’s reaction to the contract had been almost comical.

As he watched the small golden scroll ignite and dissolve into specks of glittering dust, the most powerful man in the academy looked less like a seasoned warrior and more like a wide-eyed child witnessing his first magic trick.

John’s final, and perhaps most agonising, source of worry was Cissel. While the students’ attention shifted away from him, forgetting the rumours as any typical short-memory youths would, and the Headmaster’s interrogations stopped, her recovery was the only thing that truly mattered.

Physically, she was doing better. Her condition improved with each passing day, her vitals stabilising, and the medical teachers reassured him further, telling him her face started to look rosier than the ashen white state she was brought in. And yet, she remained behind a locked door, stubbornly refusing to see him.

John tried to rationalise it. He told himself she was simply exhausted, or perhaps she was rightfully angry that he hadn’t protected her better. He assumed she was sad, frustrated, and needed space to process the trauma of the incident.

But John underestimated the depth of the rift that had opened between them thanks to that incident.

Cissel was housed in a private recovery room located just a short distance from the heavy outer doors of the infirmary. Because of the quiet of the medical wing, she could hear everything.

Every few hours, she would hear the familiar rhythm of John’s footsteps approaching. She heard his muffled voice as he spoke to the teachers, pleading for just five minutes to check on her, to see her face.

Every single time, she sent them back with a cold rejection. From her bed, she could hear the heavy silence that followed, the sad, lingering tone in his voice as he thanked the staff and turned away.

But she didn’t feel pity for him. Her heart didn’t ache at his sadness. Instead, it was hardening into something cold and unrecognisable. She wasn’t just mad, she was shattered. Her soul had been scorched by a trauma she couldn’t properly fathom, and in the darkness of her isolation, her mind had begun to warp the truth.

Something from far memories of past life echoed with this incident, painting what happened with what she perceived in her last regression.

"All men are the same... Untrustworthy," she muttered into the empty room, her voice a ghost of its former self, looking a bit different and alien.

In the silence, her mind played the events of that day on a loop, but the playback was distorted. She didn’t know about the illusions Mark had woven or the mind control he imposed on her.

To her, the memory was stark and terrifyingly simple: she had been standing in the middle of a suffocating darkness, and John, the man she trusted above all others, had launched a lethal attack, intended to kill her.

It was a cruel reflection of her past regression. Her mind involuntarily linked this incident to the moment Ricky had betrayed her in the last life she lived, weaving the two separate tragedies into a single, cohesive narrative of masculine betrayal.

To her, she fell in love with two men. To her, she ended up getting backstabbed in frighteningly similar situations.

To Cissel, John hadn’t been a victim of a setup; he had finally shown his true nature in a fleeting moment of losing control over his mask. She convinced herself that he had decided to backstab her the moment she tried to pry into his secret affairs.

Because her mind was still clouded by the lingering effects of the psychic trauma and something else she wasn’t aware of, she began to build elaborate, faulty theories upon this foundation of misjudgment.

She didn’t just shut down John; she didn’t meet with anyone else, lacking the strength to argue or listen to their explanations. That left her in the darkness of what truly happened, never even hearing of Mark’s presence back there.

In her eyes, John was transforming from her closest confidant into a poisonous snake. Everything she thought she knew about him, his kindness, his protection, his care, now looked like a well-fabricated lie. It was a cover-up for something far more dangerous, far more deadly, far more sinister.

John was completely oblivious to the rot spreading through her about him. He mistook her rejection for a temporary bout of rage, never imagining that his most trusted ally, the closest person to his heart, now viewed him as a monster and an enemy.

Every time he came to the infirmary and was turned away, he would leave with his head down. But today was different. Today was supposed to be a milestone.

"You know..." John began, his voice soft but clear enough to carry through the door. He knew from the doctors exactly where her bed was positioned.

He slid down the wall in the reception hall, sitting on the cold floor with his back against the stone, separated from her only by a few inches of wood and a world of misunderstanding.

"Today, our RBM club, the little thing we started building the moment we got back, is finally going to be completed. It took way longer than I expected, mostly thanks to the endless trouble we’ve all been through these past few days. But the construction is officially done. I was on my way to the grand opening, but I felt like I had to pass by here first..."

He paused, taking a deep, shaky breath. The memories of the incident, the flashing lights of his attack, and the sight of Cissel collapsing came back to him with vivid, painful clarity.

"I don’t know exactly how you’re feeling right now. I don’t know if you can even hear me. But I can promise you one thing... That bastard Mark, the one who set us both up, the one who tried to get Ricky killed just hours later... I’m going to make sure he pays the debt fully in blood. I’ll return the favour tenfold, with interest. He won’t get away with what he did to you, to us."

Inside the room, Cissel froze. She couldn’t see him, but his words hit her like a lightning blow. The words crushed all the fake scenarios and reasons she had been lost in for the past few days. She hadn’t heard a single detail about any of this before now.

Hearing Mark’s name mentioned, and hearing a brief mention of the life-and-death struggle Ricky had encountered later that same day, caused her mental gears to grind to a halt.

’Is he... Is he really not the one behind what happened to me?’ The question flickered in her mind like a dying candle.