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5

“Eugh……. Ugh……”

“Shushu! Shushu! Wake up! Are you okay?!”

I blearily opened my eyes to see my older brother, Harun. Where was this? I held onto my consciousness as soon as my brain turned back on. Oh, right, I was heading to the academy in a carriage. It seemed that I had fallen asleep.

It felt like I dreamt a chilling dream. Although I couldn’t really remember the original plotline of the story I’d seen in my dream, I felt like I was going to throw up.

My older brother looked at me with a worried gaze.

“Did you have a nightmare? Your face was pale while you were asleep.”

Hestia sat next to me, looking at me with a worried gaze. She brushed her fingers across my arm and opened her mouth to speak.

“Look, you even have goosebumps. It must’ve been a really scary dream….”

“….It was seriously scary.”

My hands shook as I took the hand of older brother Harun, who was sitting right across from me. Surprised and touched by my sudden physical contact, he held onto my hand and didn’t let go. I looked at his expression and snatched my hands back from him. It felt like my goosebumps were going to come back if I didn’t.

“Shushu, we arrived at the academy while you were asleep.”

Hestia smiled as she opened the window of the carriage. My hair was tousled from sleep, so I ran my fingers through it to calm it down. I hurriedly washed my face with a stone that had a magic circle for water drawn on it.

“We’re not late, right?”

Hestia tilted her head and asked me. I shook my head. I haphazardly got Hestia’s belongings off the carriage, and came down from the carriage without an escort.

“Have you ever seen me be late? We have plenty of time, so don’t worry.”

The coachman stood to help me with my belongings, but looked confused when he saw everything already on the ground.

Hestia waited for my older brother to lend her a hand and escort her off the carriage to come down.

I waited as she slowly came down, and handed our lightweight-charmed belongings to the school groundskeeper.

“The groundskeeper’s going to tell us everything we need, just follow them around.”

Harun, who had already attended the academy for two years, just told us that and headed to the boys dormitory.

Before I followed the groundskeeper into the school, I stepped back for a moment. I took in the view of the entire campus. I could see the school’s name written on a sign far away. It was a elegant sign that said ‘Augran Academy’. Next to it stood a fountain with a bronze statue of a dignified black dragon. The eyes of the statue held jewels that changed colors based on the angle of the light.

Augran Academy, with even the entrance being so grandiose, was located in the center of the country and was a school for the rich.

Considering that there was a concentrated population of rich families living in the cities, even if the student population was fairly chosen, it was only natural that the majority of the students were rich. Hestia and I lived near the capital, and we were assigned this school because of it as well.

Because the academy’s students were generally rich, we had that many sponsors. It naturally followed that even the academy groundskeeper was highly educated and was paid handsomely.