novelraw Chapter 263
Chapter 263
Chapter 263
A relatively young man clad in a ragged gray robe, wearing an irritated expression, was striding through the dense bookshelves: it was Ranolf, a senior wizard in charge of supervising the apprentice wizards. He stomped his feet as he stopped in front of her, ignoring the librarian’s disapproving glare at him.
“Good thing I saw you here. Now there’s no need for me to go looking for you in classrooms.”
Max asked him in a quiet voice, conscious of the librarian’s piercing glare. “W-what’s the matter?”
“You’re asking me what’s the matter?”
The man placed his hands on his waist and gave her an intimidating look. She could feel the wizards who were sitting and reading by the window glancing, curious of what was going on. However, Ranolf seemed to have no intentions of keeping his manners polite. He pulled out a bunch of thick parchments from his arm and shook it in front of Max. She blinked in confusion with her eyes wide open, then she realized that the wads of parchment were the letters she had written for several nights.
The wizard massaged his temple and exhaled loudly. “I have told you over and over again to keep the letters as concise as possible because they are all to be inspected! Have you not learned from having your letters rejected twice?”
“But I made it as co-concise as possible!” Max retorted, her voice reaching a note higher, frustrated that her letter might have been marked as return to sender again.
The apprentice wizards were allowed to send letters outside of Nornui for only twice a year. And unfortunately for her, her letters had already been rejected twice in the inspection process. Max glared at him bitterly
“I did keep... the letter under t-ten pages as you said...”
“Oh, now you’re saying this is under ten pages?”
Ranolf’s face was trembling with irritation as he unfolded the twice-folded parchments. Max squeaked and flapped her arms, trying to cover the contents of the letter. The man disregarded her and shook the parchment that was wide as a tablecloth.
“You wrote it without a single space on a parchment used for huge magic tools with a handwriting as small as a millet grain! I thought my eyes were going to burst while reading it! I was going to let you slide this time but despite my several attempts at reading it, I ultimately ran out of temper!” He growled and pointed to his blood-shot eyes. “Are you deliberately finding a way to torture me every time? Last time, you terrified me with a bundle of bible-thick parchments, and this time, this absurd...!”
Ranolf grunted as if he couldn’t find the right words to describe it. “Please, put yourself in the shoes of those who will read and inspect your letters! Do you know how laborious it is to inspect a love letter as long and thick as a book?”
“It’s not a lo-lo-love letter! I was just trying to tell my well-being to my h-husband! We can only send letters twice in a span of 1 year, it’s only... n-n-natural... that there is a lot to write about!”
Max bit her lips. Thoughts that she had driven to the corner of her mind began to hover inside her like ghosts. ‘What if he meant what he said back then? Even if I go back, if he says there’s no longer a place for me by his side, if he doesn’t need me anymore, what should I do?’
Max pulled out a new parchment as the thoughts suffocated her. Then, she started writing again as if she was pushed by something. Although it was strictly forbidden to write in detail about life in Nornui and there wasn’t much for her to tell, once she began to write, it felt like her pen wouldn’t stop. She couldn’t even dare express in words, much less a letter, how much she thought of him, how much she missed the times she spent in Anatol, and how much her heart ached every time she thought of the day she left him. Letters that would reach floor to ceiling won’t ever capture how much her longing was, much less five pages of it. It was difficult for Max to write down her emotions on those five pieces of parchment. At the same time, she tried not to beg so servilely for him not to forget her. However, as she read the sentences she wrote, she deemed that she failed desperately to achieve those.
Gazing down at the yellow parchment with feelings of hopelessness, Max slowly crashed her face against her palms. Suddenly, she started to wonder what was the use of all that. Riftan could not even feel joy from a letter she wrote, maybe by then he had completely forgotten her. Her heart felt like breaking as she thought of such, she wrapped her hands around her face and desperately tried to hold back her tears. A sudden sigh came out of her lips. She had this terrible habit of imagining only the worst of the worst things that could happen and it seemed irreparable. While living in Nornui, she tried so desperately to become a new person, but she couldn’t change her fundamentals that easily.
She stared at the setting sun with an exhausted expression and dipped her quill in ink again. Even if Riftan no longer needed her, she needed him. She would do anything to win his heart back if she was given the chance. Max then began to write down her current life as briefly as possible as she battled clearing her tumultuous mind. Then, she added that she was going to do everything it took to get back to Anatol as soon as possible. After hesitating for some time, she added one last line.
‘I miss you so much that I think I’ll die from longing.’
As she stared down at that sentence, tears that she had long held back began to stream down. She hurriedly wiped the tears away from her cheeks and sealed the letter inside a leather envelope. Caught by the sniffles coming from her, Roy crept over to her feet and snuggled against the hem of her robe. Max grabbed the cat and buried her face against his soft fur.
“You... want to go home too, don’t you?” The cat purred and licked Max’s cheek with its prickly tongue, as she sniffled. “Me too.”
At that moment, a sudden knock was heard against the door. Max then raised her head. “Did you... cause some trouble again?”
As she looked down suspiciously at Roy, the cat immediately slipped out of her arms and hid under the bed. Max squinted at the cat, then sighed and walked towards the door.
“Wh-who is it?”
“It’s me.”
As she pulled on the doorknob, she saw Annette standing by the door holding a lamp in one hand. Max’s expression turned into confusion. Annette lived in the Umli village, so it was rare for her to come to the dormitories.
“What brings you h-here... at this time?”
“I came here at Professor Landon’s request. He asked me to tell you to the Gnome Hall laboratory as he has something to discuss with you about the magic spell you asked him to review.”
Note – LF: MAX WROTE ON A TABLECLOTH-SIZED PARCHMENT. I CAN’T- WHY IS THIS SO FUNNY I’M WHEEZING