"Aria, have you not slept at all last night?" One of her friends asked, eyeing the shadows under Aria's eyes that clearly indicated she had been awake the entire night.
"Ugh, shut up," Aria instinctively retorted, her words slipping out before she even registered what she was saying, or perhaps she simply didn't care. She had spent the night grappling with a bewildering thought: how could someone possibly travel back in time? It took her three hours to shove that thought aside.
Then, for another three hours, she pondered what she would do first if she found herself in a similar situation, regressing into the past.
Ultimately, to make sense of the actions of that regressed villain, she needed to understand his thought process.
To grasp his motivations, she thought about what she would have done had she been in his position. If given such an opportunity, she realized she would most likely have prevented Amrita from getting into the same school, thereby avoiding losing the only man she ever loved—or at least, she would have remained friends with him.
Thus, Aria concluded that if she had been in his shoes, her top priority would have been love. Perhaps the same could be true for him.
Suddenly, her focus was interrupted. "Did Aria just tell you to shut up?" One of her friends gasped theatrically, clearly amused and eager to poke fun at her, which quickly ignited a small banter between the two friends. Meanwhile, Aria could only shoot her friend a glare before continuing on her way down the corridor leading to their classroom.
With a sigh, Aria felt the fatigue wash over her. All night she had wrestled with the idea of time travel, wondering what someone would do if they could return to the past. Now, she had even reached a conclusion regarding her second dilemma: she had figured out that the professor was likely trying to save the love of his life.
But that led to another vexing question: which love was he trying to save? The name that immediately sprang to mind, especially in light of the professor's final actions, was Amrita.
'Ugh....Damn it!' Aria exclaimed in frustration, rubbing her forehead, which throbbed with the remnants of her sleepless night. It was irritating that her own theory contradicted the information she had.
He was supposedly here to save Amrita, yet he was also the villain, and she was the heroine.
Everything felt like a chaotic mess, causing Aria to sigh deeply as she realized she needed to set aside these tangled thoughts and concentrate on the class ahead.
"Amrita, wait."
While moving and rubbing her forehead, Aria suddenly heard a familiar voice—Lin's—as she halted in her tracks, feeling a woman pass beside her.
At that fleeting moment, everything seemed to stop. Her eyes caught the fluttering hair and the figure of the woman who had snatched everything from her. Though she didn't harbor ill will, as they were all tied together by fate, she still felt disheartened as Amrita passed her and entered the classroom. Shortly after, Lin also followed behind her.
All of Aria's friends yelled, seeing how Lin, without thinking, had just lifted his hand to slap Aria in front of everyone.
Making them exclaim, but it was already too late as he had arrived, just a short distance from the woman whose gaze was downward, not looking at him, but the voices and actions seemed to close her world.
Smack.
A loud sound echoed inside the corridor, causing everyone who looked to take a step back. Aria's friends clasped their mouths, witnessing the scene as Aria, who kept her gaze downward, found two shoes falling into her line of sight, causing her to slowly lift her eyes in defeat, since she knew they had just tried to slap her.
But she still couldn't accept the reality. As she did, she found herself behind the back of a man, firmly standing.
"Lin Diego..."
Standing behind, while looking towards the firm back, Aria heard a familiar voice, causing her to slowly lift her eyes upward, following the trail of the white shirt with silver hair visible before moving slightly upward. She saw the same title—now the man had turned his back towards her, but his title still simmered, reflecting in her eyes.
━─━───────༺༻───────━─━
ᅠᅠᅠᅠREGRESSED VILLAIN .net
━─━───────༺༻───────━─━
While blinking to make sense of everything, not understanding, Aria kept looking towards the title. Then, she visibly saw a sight and heard another loud voice.
"HOW DARE YOU TOUCH MY ARIA!—BAM!"
With the loud voice accompanied by a sharp punch that landed directly on Lin's gut, aimed at his solar plexus, causing his body to arch back with his eyes widened and mouth spilling a little amount of saliva.
"P-professor Aven!?"
All the students who witnessed this event could only exclaim in shock as they saw Professor Aven just punch Lin while yelling those words.