CHAPTER 78— Morality(3)
Time bled away as the deep hours of the night dragged on, but Rowan remained wide awake, staring blankly at the dark ceiling from his mattress.
'Why can't I sleep?' he wondered, a creeping panic setting in.
He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to force his mind into submission. One minute passed. Then two. Then three. He had been repeating this exhausting ritual for the last three hours, but no matter how hard he tried, sleep stubbornly refused to claim him.
"Ahh... What is actually happening to me..."
Rowan sat up abruptly, gripping his hair and scratching at his scalp in sheer frustration.
"Why won't my brain just shut off..." he muttered, burying his face deep between his knees and tightly crossing his arms.
"Why...? I just want to sleep."
His voice dropped to a ragged, pathetic whisper. "Why can't I close my eyes? Just sleep, damn it. What is wrong with me... Ahh..."
"SHUT UP, YOU FUCK!!"
Rowan's eyes flew wide open at the sudden, explosive roar. He froze, looking down from his upper bunk. Directly below him, Ritvik was dead to the world, snoring softly.
'Huh? He's completely out cold... so who yelled just now?'
"It's me, you absolute bastard! I can't get a wink of sleep because you've been whining and talking to yourself for the last hour!"
Rowan snapped his head toward the source. The voice wasn't coming from inside the room; it was echoing directly from the wall right beside his bed.
'Oh... right. There are other dorm rooms connected to this block,' Rowan realized, pressing a hand against the cold stone partition.
"I-I'm really sorry!" Rowan called out, wincing.
"I don't give a damn about your sorry! Fuck! You've completely ruined my sleep cycle!"
The guy on the other side yelled back, his voice thick with sleep-deprived rage.
"I'm sorry, I'll keep it down," Rowan
apologized again, shrinking back.
"What the hell were you even shouting about all this time anyway?" the neighbor demanded, banging once against the stone.
"Oh... about that."
Rowan slumped forward, resting his chin on his knees. Taking a deep, shuddering breath, he found himself pouring his heart out to the invisible stranger through the barrier, spilling everything that had been tearing him apart—the horror of Rune Island, the chaotic battle, and the heavy, sickening guilt of taking a human life.
Silence stretched across the room for a few seconds.
Then...
"Hahahahaha! Hahahaha!"
The guy on the other side burst into sudden, howling laughter.
Rowan rested his forehead back against his knees, a bitter weight settling in his chest.
'Yeah. Go ahead. Laugh at me. Everyone thinks it's a joke.'
"So you actually killed a dark mage?" the neighbor shouted over his own chuckles.
Rowan nodded miserably into the dark.
"Yes."
"Hahaha! Ha! Oh, man..." Another wave of laughter echoed, even louder this time.
Rowan buried his face deeper into his arms and hands.
'Right, keep laughing. Mock me all you want. I don't even care anymore.' Rowan thought bitterly.
"That's fucking awesome."
Rowan's head snapped up. His eyes widened as he stared blindly at the wall.
"Awesome?"
"Yeah, are you deaf? You're fucking cool, Man."
'He thinks I'm... Cool?' Rowan blinked, caught completely off guard.
"What happened? Cat got your tongue? Why aren't you saying anything?" the guy called out.
"Oh... uhh."
"Wait! Don't tell me you were sitting in there feeling guilty about it?!"
Rowan flinched, taken aback by the bluntness of the question.
"I-I mean... I took someone's life, so obviously—"
"Seriously? Who the fuck gives a damn about morals?"
Rowan's eyes widened further. The exact same sentiment echoed in his mind, flashing back to the harsh words Ashwin had thrown at him this morning:
"Who do you think you are? Some kind of saint wandering down from the mountains to teach us ethics and morality?"
The neighbor continued his rant through the stone wall.
"Think about it. Out in the wild, do you think a woglin or a tiger feels a shred of guilt after ripping apart a deer?"
"Look at the sky! There are always predatory birds hunting down smaller ones."
"In the ocean, a massive fish devours a smaller one without a second thought. Not to mention, there are monster species that hunt and eat their own kin!"
"It's just how nature operates. Even us humans—do you feel a single pang of guilt when you sit down and eat a woglin steak or a plate of mount chicken? Aren't those living beings, too?"
"Haven't you watched the students here beating the crap out of each other every single day in the name of training?"
"In this world, it's all about survival. Every single creature in nature is fighting tooth and nail just to see tomorrow. Do you honestly think someone would feel guilty if they killed you? Hell no. They'd just keep walking. To them, you'd be nothing more than a statistic, Just another person that they happen to kill.
'It's a fight. It's survival."
"You fought. And you survived."
"YOU WON."
Rowan's breath hitched.
'I... I won.'
"Yeah."
"But others—"
"What about others?"
Rowan fell silent.
"Did any of your friends or instructors ever tell you that you did something wrong?"
Rowan's mind raced back. He remembered Sarina and Ritvik.
"To them, things that look monstrous to us are probably just another Tuesday walk in the park."
"I don't know what kind of peaceful place you came from, Rowan. But this new environment might feel cruel... it might break you down, But eventually... you'll adapt."
"Because that is human nature. We always bend to fit the shape of whatever world we're handed."
Even the way the others treated him—none of them had accused him of being a monster. None of them had told him he was evil.
"No," the voice through the wall answered firmly, "because they know it's natural. This is simply how the world works."
"I... didn't do anything wrong."
Rowan started muttering the words under his breath, testing them like a newly discovered spell.
'That's right. I didn't do anything wrong. This is just how things are here.'
Rowan thought, a strange, settling warmth finally pushing back the freezing anxiety in his chest. He slowly let his eyelids drift shut.
'That's right... I survived.'
---
Morning broke, spilling pale golden sunlight across the academy dormitories.
"Umm..."
Rowan slowly blinked awake. He stretched his arms lazily while still sprawled across his mattress, feeling a deep, undisturbed wave of physical and mental exhaustion finally lifting from his bones.
He let out a long, satisfying yawn.
He sat up on the edge of his bed. For the first time in over a week, he had actually slept—a real, uninterrupted, heavy sleep.
Rowan turned his head and stared affectionately at the stone wall beside his bed—the very partition through which his mysterious neighbor had talked him down last night.
'I should go over and thank him properly.'
Rowan thought, climbing down the wooden ladder with a renewed spring in his step.
"Yaaawn..."
Still half-asleep, rubbing the sleep from his eyes, Rowan twisted the brass knob and stepped out into the hallway.
'That guy must be staying in Room 31.'
Rowan reasoned, turning immediately toward the door right next to his own.
He stopped dead in his tracks.
Instead of a neighboring wooden door, what greeted him right beside his room was not another dorm, but the massive, open iron entry gate leading out into the central courtyard of Dorm Block B.
Rowan stared at the empty space with a profoundly puzzled expression. There was no Room 31-B beside his door.
Frowning, he pushed his own door back open and checked the interior layout.
The beds are built directly against the left interior wall... which means Room 31-B has to be right here on the left side of the hallway.
Rowan stepped back out into the hall, grabbing his head in absolute confusion.
"What the hell?"
He spun around in circles, his eyes darting frantically across the corridor.
"Where is Room 31? There has to be a Room 31 right next to mine!"
His head whipped left and right, his eyes rolling in disbelief as he searched the entire wing. Finally, he spotted a plaque in the hall.
Room 31-B.
Rowan froze, his legs locking up completely. His jaw dropped so low it nearly hit the floor. He stared at the distant room, utterly unable to process what his eyes were telling him.
He whipped his head back, looking at his own doorway, then whipped it back to Room 31-B.
Room 31-B wasn't beside his room at all. No, It was located directly infront of him.
'The room isn't beside me... it's straight in the front.'
Rowan slowly turned his gaze back to the interior wall of his bedroom—the exact wall he had pressed his ear against, the exact wall through which a voice had spoken to him in the pitch-black hours of the night.
"The interior wall of my bed is on the left."
"Room 31-B is at the front."
'There is physically no adjacent room on the left side of my bed... it's just the outer perimeter wall of the entire building.'
Rowan stood frozen in the empty hallway, a cold, unnatural shiver running straight down his spine.
"What the hell is actually going on with me?"
'If there was no room next to mine...
...who the hell was I talking to all last night?'
---
CHAPTER ENDS