9th Grade Civil Servant In Another World Chapter 20 - White Raven Order — Erika (1)

Brilliant afternoon sunlight poured through the large window.

While the professor’s voice echoed as he scribbled something densely on the blackboard, students were nodding off with spring drowsiness.

The black-haired female student sitting by the window flipped through her book pages with an expressionless face, though her fingertips betrayed traces of boredom.

‘Strange.’

As she underlined passages in her book and organized her thoughts, the professor turned around and continued his lecture.

“His Excellency the Great Supreme Leader has taught us thus. The progress of history consists of three struggles. First is class struggle, second is ethnic struggle, and third is cultural struggle…”

The old professor’s voice was insufferably boring. After reading his book for quite some time, he suddenly looked up.

A student who was particularly renowned for studying hard, but whose cold atmosphere prevented classmates and seniors from easily approaching her.

She was looking at the professor with her hand raised.

“Ah, if you have questions, come visit my research office.”

The professor soon buried his face in his book again and continued lecturing in a mumble.

As the sun was setting, the female student was heading home, crossing through the bustling campus.

But just as she entered the corridor of the arts building, she saw people murmuring behind the large beech tree famous as the school’s landmark.

“Hey, be careful! Don’t touch it!”

“Just call the police, don’t try to read it.”

“Aah!”

Suddenly a strong wind blew, and something fluttery slapped against her cheek.

As she peeled it off her face and glanced at it, it was a very thin, poor-quality piece of paper.

Kruger is a mad dictator!

Below the provocative phrase, tiny letters lined up denouncing the dictator’s atrocities.

Feeling a chill down her spine, she quickly threw it away.

It was undoubtedly a flyer from the underground rebel organization that had been gaining momentum lately.

Though everyone hushed about it due to rumors that even touching one would get you dragged away by hidden Ossel agents, she had seen police angrily tearing down flyers several times.

While the surrounding students hesitated, a police officer who had received a report approached and picked up the paper.

“Where did you find this?”

He asked. Though his tone was polite, his entire body radiated an intimidating pressure that was hard to deal with.

Before the female student could even part her lips to say something, other students stepped forward on her behalf.

“It was stuck in a hollow of the beech tree. It’s not a place anyone would look into, so we don’t know how long it’s been there.”

As the police officer’s attention turned away, she hurriedly quickened her steps.

Her heart was pounding heavily.

The day before summer vacation, on a leisurely afternoon when everyone had left the campus.

The black-haired female student was pacing in the corridor of the humanities building, where the political science professors’ research offices were gathered.

In her hand, she clutched a tattered textbook.

<Struggle>, one of the dictator’s autobiographies, was covered in fingerprints and filled with marks from pens and pencils everywhere, making it look like an ancient book despite being only three months old.

After looking into the old, dirty book several times, she finally seemed to make up her mind, took a small deep breath, and carefully knocked on the research office door.

“Come in.”

“Long live His Excellency the Great Supreme Leader. Good day, Professor.”

“Long live His Excellency the Supreme Leader! Ah, Brightner.”

The middle-aged professor broke into a broad smile as soon as he saw her face.

“I heard you took first place this time? You’re still a freshman, but the professors have high expectations for you.”

“Thank you.”

She bowed her head expressionlessly.

“I came to ask about something I was curious about while studying.”

“Hmm? Your answer sheet was perfect though. What is it?”

Stroking the worn book cover with her fingertips, she calmly opened her mouth.

“It’s about this textbook…”

Suddenly, the professor’s expression hardened despite his beaming smile.

“I believe His Excellency the Supreme Leader’s teachings are not perfect.”

“Stop.”

But she did not stop.

“You said the progress of history consists of three struggles. I know class struggle is correct because it was proven through revolution. But struggle between ethnicities does not advance humanity. Cultural struggle is the same. There is no superiority or inferiority in culture—”

“Stop it!”

The professor shouted angrily. His face was completely contorted. The female student closed her mouth expressionlessly.

“Enough, Brightner. I’ll overlook it just this once. Don’t come visit me like this again.”

The professor hurriedly sent her away.

The female student quietly turned her back on the closed door.

She could have forcibly stood her ground and poured out the doubts that filled her heart, the frustration that seemed ready to burst.

But she knew it would be useless.

In the professor’s eyes, she had read concern for a cherished student, guilt for being unable to agree with the right words, and self-loathing for such feelings.

She wandered the campus like a ghost for several days.

The school during vacation was utterly desolate, empty except for the occasional patrolling guards and graduate students coming and going to prepare their theses.

When no one was around, she would habitually go to the large beech tree and peer into the hollow that had contained the flyer.

She herself didn’t know why she acted that way.

How many days had passed?

As she sat blankly on a bench, spending time with a withdrawal form tucked in her bag, someone approached and sat beside her.

When she looked up absently, there was a young man with thick auburn hair and slightly drooping brown eyes that shone calmly.

“The beech tree is magnificent, isn’t it? I heard it’s the students’ pride.”

“Excuse me? What…”

“People sometimes hide treasures inside the hollow.”

He chuckled softly and politely offered a handshake.

“I’m Daniel Hartmann.”

A few days later, she became the first member of the White Raven Order.

***

Erika Brightner groggily opened her eyes to the sound of rain from outside the window.

A cool dawn.

Raindrops were falling heavily from the dusky sky.

“It was a dream.”

She muttered while massaging her stiff neck.

Having fallen asleep while leaning on her desk, the papers she had been copying all night were crumpled against her cheek.

A short piece written in calm prose but making radical claims.

‘Usually Daniel did this kind of thing.’

She recalled the leader of the White Raven Order from her dream.

He had struggled alone, posting flyers here and there and searching for people who could become comrades.

Pretending to be a student, he frequented Lüdelheim Comprehensive University and happened to learn of Erika’s existence, secretly watching her come to school even during vacation.

While conducting this surveillance-like observation, he approached her on a hunch.

He said he had agonized over it tremendously, laughing sheepishly. That sight had been brilliant.

Erika stretched and got up, hiding the bundle of papers in her bag. As the sun rose, a maid soon knocked carefully on the door.

“Miss, are you awake?”

“Yes, I’ll be out shortly.”

Bright sunlight was streaming into the mansion’s corridor, but for a moment Erika thought she saw a ghost hiding in the corner shadows.

No, it wasn’t a mistake.

A woman dried up like withered deadwood was approaching, wrapped in a gray shawl and swaying as she walked.

“Did you sleep well, Mother?”

She looked at Erika with hazy eyes, then silently walked away. Erika also passed by her mother familiarly and went down to the dining room.

As always, she was alone in the vast and luxurious dining room.

This had been the same scene for several years now, so she wasn’t particularly sad about it anymore. Ever since she had come of age, this damn household had been like this.

By the time she became a university student, it had gotten worse, and the mansion where only three people lived, excluding the servants, was always filled with silence.

‘It doesn’t matter.’

Erika thought as she cut her omelet. It didn’t matter if she lived like this forever.

Her father—that father who had tried to silence her—it didn’t matter if she never faced him again for the rest of her life. In fact, she welcomed it.

When she was young, she had admired her father without knowing better, as he was a successful businessman, but as she grew older, she became increasingly convinced that something was wrong.

Killing people, and killing, and killing again.

Rooting out reactionaries, torturing them, hanging them and displaying them in the square.

That her father respected the dictator who committed such insane acts.

That he had grown his factories by flattering and bribing the dictator’s subordinates.

After learning this, she was first confused, then ashamed, and now she hated him.

After several loud arguments during her adolescence, an irreparable rift had formed between father and daughter.

She had no lingering attachment to him now.

But her mother—her mother who had tried to mediate their fights but gradually spoke less and less until she completely closed her mouth a few years ago—just thinking of her inevitably made her heart ache.

“But Mother, I’m going to take the right path.”

Erika muttered while watching the woman wandering blankly through the garden.

The right path, or at least what she believed to be right, because that was the only way she could breathe even a little.

The time when she met Daniel and formed the White Raven Order, established rules, and secretly put their heads together to debate world affairs—that was the only time she felt truly alive.

***

Attending university lectures was now nothing more or less than a formality. However, Erika, rushing toward the end of her fourth year, had never once lost her position as valedictorian.

The professor who had covered up her transgression during her freshman year seemed satisfied that Erika had “come to her senses” and returned to being a well-behaved student, offering no more interference.

She mechanically took notes on the professor’s words and recited Kruger’s assertions.

After the terrifyingly boring lecture ended, Erika left through the school’s main gate and took a streetcar.

She wasn’t going home. She hated the air that pressed down on her entire body like the deep sea, so she always returned home late at night.

She found a shop on the shopping street of the District 8’s affluent area where the Brightner family lived, with a modest sign hanging on a neatly white-painted wall.

It was a private clinic run by the Erika family’s physician.

Ring ring ring!

When she pressed the doorbell, a frivolous sound came from the magical device. A large nurse opened the door from inside.

“Miss Brightner! What brings you here? Are you feeling unwell?”

“I sprained my ankle.”

Erika slightly showed her bandaged ankle.

Guided to the director’s office, Erika approached the doctor with large strides as soon as the nurse closed the door.

“…Erika?”

“Richard.”

Momentarily flustered, he soon smiled his usual gentle smile.

“You hurt your ankle? Here, please put your leg up.”

“I came to see you.”

She took out the bundle of flyers she had copied all night from her bag.

“Erika.”

Richard’s smile faded.

“As I told you last time, I’m no longer part of the White Raven Order.”

“Neither am I. But we’re still friends, aren’t we?”

“That’s right. Friends. Who can comfortably share trivial stories.”

“Is that your true feeling?”

Erika shot back sharply.

“Are you going to erase all those times from your life? That easily?”

Richard looked at her with eyes that worried about a child.

“I’ve already erased them. Erika, is that so difficult?”

Erika felt breathless.

She had left the White Raven Order. And on her own feet, no less. She didn’t know how to live now.

So she wanted to meet someone who shared the same memories. She wanted to work together, even if forced. No, she thought just talking would be good.

She knew it was childish, but her precarious heart that seemed ready to collapse at any moment wanted to do so.

But it wasn’t so. Richard had become not a comrade but worse than an enemy—a stranger.

An enormous wave of betrayal crashed over Erika.

Richard, who was a target she had personally recruited and a friend she had known for a long time, had cut her and the others off without a moment’s hesitation.

‘Ah, right. That’s the kind of person he was.’

Suddenly she had a realization.

The Richard she had experienced was a man who kept a step away from everything.

Always ready to leave, building solid walls so no one could come close.

Erika glared at the young surgeon who seemed utterly peaceful.

“You were always like that. You’ll continue to be. Even if someone you truly love appears, you’ll abandon them in an instant when things go wrong.”

Richard still spoke softly with his benevolent smile, as if soothing her.

“I will. Forever.”

He scrawled complex letters on a medical certificate and pressed the call bell.

“Please help Miss Brightner. And prepare a week’s worth of painkillers too.”

Erika had to be helplessly dragged out.

Clutching the bottle of painkillers the nurse had given her, she couldn’t leave the front of the sign with Richard’s name on it for a long time.