Lucifia wakes up from her sleep, and the first thing she does is shift her position in bed from lying sideways to lying on her back. She considers sleeping all day but, as she closes her eyes, her mind recounts the night before. It's enough to change her mind and get out of bed.
Leaving the guestroom she slept in, Lu notices the odd amount of rooms in Aranea's house. 4 guestrooms, a master bedroom, and a single bathroom all on just the second floor. The she-devil asked herself why someone like Aranea needs so many guestrooms, and why all of them have this sterile odor to them that she picked up.
Not wanting to dig too deep into something she has no business prying into as she already has her plate full with Melissa, Lucifia decides to ignore whatever mysteries lie in secret in this house and in Aranea.
While heading to the staircase though, she hears Aranea talking to Andrew about him wanting to use her workshop, and for some strange reason that Lu herself doesn't understand, she stopped dead in her tracks and kept herself out of view from the two.
Even though she wants to ask Andrew about last night, even though they clearly have something important to discuss, Lu waits until Aranea and Andrew are finished talking before walking down the staircase.
"Mornin'. Did you make breakfast?" Lu asks, wondering who's responsible for the bacon and eggs on the table. She's especially eyeing the thick slices of sourdough bread next to the protein.
"Ah- no. It was Drew who made them, and morning as well," Aranea replies while waiting with a cup in her hand for the kettle to whistle.
"And where is the dunce?" Even though she knows where Andrew is, Lu still asks while she takes a seat and starts putting food on her plate.
"In my workshop. Said he needs to use it, why?" It was Aranea's turn to ask a question. While waiting for a reply she brews herself a cup of coffee.
She does so by pouring the warm water from the kettle to a flask through a funnel on its lip and a filter in the funnel. The result is a fresh earthy smell of sweetness and acidity that laces the air in the kitchen, enough to attract a certain redhead to the kitchen.
A beaming smile that Lu squints at is on Melissa's face as she enters the kitchen.
"That's too bright in the morning," Lu says to Melissa.
"You sound like you woke up in the wrong side of the bed," Melissa replies taking a seat in front of Lu.
"More like I woke up in the wrong world entirely. I want a do-over." Lu says while putting more food on her plate, and then getting up from the table.
"Where are you going with all that?" Melissa asks while having a coffee served to her by Aranea with a smile. "Ah, thanks."
"Knowing that dumbass, he probably hasn't eaten so I'm going to go there to share. See you."
Melissa's already beaming grin grows as she watches Lu leave to go to where Andrew is. She now believes what Andrew says is true about her, that Lucifia isn't the antagonistic person she tries to make herself up to be. Now the question in Melissa's mind is why Lu is putting up a front like that in the first place.
Going inside the workshop hoping to continue their discussion from last night, Lu instead finds herself staring Drew down and the same could be said with him staring back at her.
Andrew has a paintbrush in his right hand that he's using to draw runes on his left arm. At first glance, Lu thinks that he isn't taking their situation seriously and that he just hauled himself in the workshop to do body art on himself.
"What're you doing? Has the lack of nutrition finally reached up to your brain?"
"It's not what you think-" Drew tries to save himself.
"Yeah," Lu simply mutters.
"So-"
"It's probably worse than I think," She cuts him off.
Somehow in someway Andrew manages to convince Lu that he isn't touched in the head and that what he's doing is part of his preparation. Lu is convinced and puts the plate of food down on the table next to the worktable he's using.
"Here, you're welcome." Lu huffs.
"… I made this though," Andrew retorts.
As the two of them share breakfast while continuing where they left off from last night, their conversation begins to center around three certain people, Leiger, Sigmund, and Adela.
Adela, as Andrew knows, claims to be the Cerulean Witch. He has no counterargument against that, and the blue flames that she possesses match what he already knows from Melissa. Her strange similarities to Lu made him ask if Lu knows who Adela is.
"Does she have these?" Lu points at her cross-shaped pupils.
"No. Her pupils were completely round," Drew answers.
"Then she's no relative of mine. Now drop the topic." Lu gets Andrew to focus on something different by scowling at him.
Changing the topic to the strange Dr. Leiger, Lu describes what she knows about him from Melissa's experience. He's a traveling doctor that drew the magic circles that lets his soul move from one body to the other so long as it has the circle drawn on them. The two of them know nothing about why a doctor would need to do such a thing nor do they have proof outside of what Adela said to Drew, which Lu refuses to take at face value.
Before Lu starts a tirade about Drew being incompetent, Drew starts talking about Sigmund in full detail like a true admirer. With a beaming grin on his face that Lu found disgusting, Andrew describes how the Cereneian Sigmund rose through the ranks with strong determination and power in each of his steps, becoming the vice-captain of the Capital Knights in under 3 years.
Even though Sigmund only knows how to use runes and incantations as his method of spellcasting, it did not hinder him nor dissuade him to reach the level where Andrew sees him now. The only reason he's the second-best is simply that there's someone equally determined as him, his Captain Fafnir.
Andrew who had turned around the chair he was sitting on, finds himself putting his arms on top of its backrest and continuing to remember his childhood after recounting stories about Sigmund. Lu finds his disgusting smile growing more tender that she puts her hand against his face.
"Guh- Why?" Drew asks while not doing anything about the demon's hand.
"Too bright," Lu straightly replies. She keeps her hand against Drew's face to hide his optimistic smile that she finds so repulsive. "Dunce, if you respect that guy as your hero, then why are you in this situation where you might fight him? What did you do?"
Lu's curiosity made her want to know why Drew is in the situation he is now, and how she can try to help him.
Andrew prepares to answer Lu, he does this by sighing loudly before slumping his head against the top of the backrest along with his arms.
He starts telling everything to Lu, what he's experienced in the past few days, his concern for his family and friends, and how he's felt throughout.
"I wanted to give Melissa another chance to start a normal life as my way of redeeming myself for what I've done. I believe it's what Sigmund would've done too if he was in my situation."
"You didn't do anything wrong. You protected the ones you love from a threat. Regardless if she's misunderstood, that misconception is her mistake, not yours. You have nothing to redeem yourself for." Lucifia argues with a clear bitterness in her voice after hearing the story.
"Is it stupid to say that I could've hypothetically helped her to her senses if I had reached out to her that day?" Andrew asks causing the she-devil's bitterness to show in the form of a piercing scowl.
"It is stupid. Why would you even shoulder the issues of other people if it meant giving yourself a problem? I don't understand." Lu's anger doesn't stem from Melissa nor will she begin to blame Melissa for Drew's situation. Like how Melissa got into the mess she's in, Andrew did the same to get her out. Lu's anger is coming from her inability to understand why Andrew would carry the burdens of other people onto him.
That kind of self-destructive personality is familiar to her that she couldn't help but shudder in anger. While biting the corner of her lower lip in frustration, Lu moves her hand up to Drew's scalp and begins combing it.
"W, -What're you doing?" Drew's shocked to feel such gentleness from Lu, something she's already displayed once to Melissa.
Lu's frustrated expression recedes, leaving only a kind smile and a gentle look in her eyes instead of her usual scowl.
"Because I don't understand why you're doing this to yourself, I'm going to shoulder all the burdens you carry with you."
"Lu, I-" Drew is cut off by a knocking on the wall that causes both him and Lu to turn to where it came from, Lu glowering at the interruption.
"Ho ho? What do I see here? Cheating on your wife?" Hagurd says with an impish grin on his face as he stands at the entrance of the workshop.
"M, -Morning Hagurd," Andrew says as Lu finally pulls her hand away from him.
"Morning indeed. Did you know that five people were found dead in an alley? Three of them were city guards and the rest were civilians." Drew's blood runs cold as ice as he's reminded of last night, and Hagurd sees the panic building up in him.
The tension's high in the room and it looks like Lu is about ready to cut open Hagurd's throat.
"Relax, kid. I don't suspect you for anything. I doubt your demon friend here did it either."
"Why not?" Andrew's curiosity is piqued at Hagurd's claim.
"The bodies only have one fatal wound inflicted onto them, and strangely the skin on their backs were torn off. So unless your demon friend here has a fetish for backs, I can't suspect her either."
Things seem to ease in the workshop that Hagurd is longingly staring at with a small smile on his face. It's been a while since he's seen this room.
"Anyways, I think I'm going to be busy throughout today, so can I ask you to babysit Aranea for me? The murders caused quite a stir from a doctor in the capital, so he's here with an anti-mage escort. It's such a- eh, what's with those thousand-yard stares? Did I say something wrong?"
The tension in the room is back up, but only for both Drew and Lu as the two of them now realize what the murders were really for. To draw Leiger out in the open, Adela and her accomplice made themselves a big enough threat to the doctor.
Andrew would be fine if it was Leiger alone, but Hagurd mentioned an escort.
"D, -Did you get the escort's name?" Drew asks.
"Yeah. Her name's Cecilia Slyphine. I just talked to her in the barracks, why?"