*
Her foot lay atop Long Yi's body. They were still on a dark yellow root, Long Yi had long kept her guard up and has activated her invulnerability skill at all times. In a moment, she would free herself in some way. Then the best step, was to continue attacking while coming up with a plan. If Amelia's attacks were simply absorbed or turned useless, that would be another story, but right now she has for certain understood that invulnerability is not the true effect of [tears shed unseen], it sends her attacks into anywhere in the future, the fact that she hasn't felt any of her attacks return... Meant that Long Yi was steadily stockpiling them.
Since their stats are infinite, their attacks are constantly growing stronger. The next attack would always eclipse the previous one, so she didn't understand why they were being stockpiled. If they were actually used, she would only feel the most recent attack, even then being lethally damaged was out of the question. Her body's magic would be dense enough to repel it without effort.
She jumps back immediately, the dark blue emblems in the air glowed a pale sky blue before an expansive wall the size of the sky crashes down. It shatters like glass, its fragments splinter into the roots, breaking most apart and stabbing into others like a knife, eroding them from a dark yellow shade to blood red. The environment around them was chaotic, it no longer had any distinction for either side as they were so filled with the other's magic. She didn't only fire the emblem attack once, she repeated sent a barrage of it, as if to rain glass. It was a sheet of holy magic characteristic of [Blessing].
She could choose however it looked, but white always seemed to be the best to draw in followers into her faith. White is the image that people have always held onto when thinking of the pristine and cleaness of divinity. Ah, that's right... It reminds Amelia of her...
What was it again...? What were the words her heart whispered? Way back when, Amelia... Was a normal person, an ordinary girl born in the contemporary era. She lived through life like a fish flowing through water, she allowed herself to be swept by the current, at the same time she retained some bit of her childish Selfishness.
***(21st century, before The Great Disaster)
" Hey! You can't just laze around all day again! Didn't you promise you would do your homework if I was here to do it with you?
... It's already a day late from the submission date..." (Albara Camellie)
Camellie made a little look of resignation, her tears almost visible. Her eyes creased together and her lips form an upside down crescent with the ends a little open.
" That might be a little bad huh... Alright, 15 more minutes! Then we'll start!" (Vinette Amelia)
"You've said that 3 times already!" (Camellie)
Encamped in Amelia's home for the foreseeable future, beads of sweat dripped down Camellie's youthful visage. They were in their 3rd year of middle school, and while Amelia gets a lot of flak from the teacher for not finishing on time, she has survived every test with a pass thus far. It was a mystery Camellie couldn't solve for her whole life, even more so because she personally knew how Amelia was when it came to revising for tests.
Camellie exhaled a soft sigh as she let her head collapse onto the table with a thud. Her mental energy had been drained due to how long she had spent in Amelia's room, the sun was beginning to set outside, dyeing the sky in a mellow gold. She knew her best friend would take the setting sun as the most convenient excuse in the world to avoid finishing up, she had to strike now with all of her guts!
"Lia! No more excuses! We've rested enough already, we'll begin now, no questions asked." (Camellie)
"Uuuu..." (Amelia)
She groaned cutely in disapproval, her face was filled with a wide frown that really seemed to hate the idea of doing work. Her room felt like it was dimly lit now that the sun was at the edge of the horizon, the lights have not turned on in her 2 storey home. Rows upon rows of homes rested in front of the eventual horizon hiding half the sun, only remnants of its rays reach her window frames. Usually, she would have turned her lights on about now... Camellie that is. Amelia would have let her room go dark as she remained stuck to her phone or computer.
Time past by within a blink of an eye,before they noticed, they had already reached the last question of the last page, filling the last few words, Amelia kept her pen into her pencil case and raised both her arms for a little stretch. "mmmh~", it felt like her back fatigue was escaping through her throat as she strained her muscles. Camellie was similarly done, having been somewhat guided by Amelia, it felt a little conflicting that she finished her homework faster than usual with Amelia's help.
"Haa~if only you put in this much effort... About 5 more times, you might score the highest in class..." (Camellie)
She has long held the belief that Amelia had an extremely high potential to do well, but was only restrained by her own laziness to put in any work.
"... No, I'll only do it when it's time for the entrance exams... " (Amelia)
She spoke with a slightly low but sluggish register while looking down, a consequence of being too lazy to even speak. Camellie was only able to hear her due to being in super close proximity, sitting across her on a small coffee table in her own enclosed room. In class, Amelia mostly kept to herself unless she was approached, that left the sole person to persistently approach her, Camellie, to become the closest to her personally. No one knew Amelia to be this sloppy figure, as their interactions were just that limited. No one aside from Camellie had a well constructed grasp of Amelia's personality.
Eventually, she was left alone entirely, which she didn't really mind. It was troublesome, but being placed in the front and middle portion of the class kept her under the teacher's immediate supervision. She was frequently asked questions, to which she mostly replied with high accuracy, to the point that the teachers found it more productive to search for the weaker students behind her. Even if that much of a display of her mastery over the curriculum, at the end of the day her results were still average, allowing her to fall out of the purview of her peers.
Keeping such a low profile had become second nature to her, even if Camellie tried to convince anyone else of her friend's greatness, no one would believe her. They met in the first year of middle school and stuck together tightly since, Camellie was akin to a crashing bolt of thunder that impacted her Amelia's life like a storm. It was something Amelia had no control over, sometimes Camellie would fuss over it, but every now and then... She would feel relief that Amelia didn't seem to mind her boisterous presence...
Why did Camellie stuck to her so stubbornly? It felt like it was only yesterday when they had just met... She entered the class, watching most of her classmates fall into cliques on the first day, mostly with people they knew in their elementary school. To put it lightly, they were in a school in the middle of nowhere, it had no name or recognition to speak off. The people who came here simply did so out of the convenience of travel distance, the intake of the cohort was almost entirely from the few elementary schools in the vicinity.
"Lonely." (Camellie)
She let slip a soliloquy, she hadn't mean to say it in front of Amelia who had looked up from her seat in confusion. But it was an undeniable impression of Camellie's, that gave her a subtle yearning to be there for Amelia. Camellie had other friends here, but they were in the other classes. She had desired to make some new friends in this class of hers, so that she wouldn't have to bother the others and find time to meet them so often, if she could simply spent time with others instead. One could say it was selfish laziness of hers that goaded her into making friends with Amelia, though this was the natural process of getting into a completely new class of strangers.
'Why was she lonely? Why is there no one approaching her? Was it the gloomy expression on her face? Or the way she only stares at the table without making eye contact?' (Camellie)
Was she insulting Amelia? Why were her thoughts also getting gloomy? She wanted to be someone to Amelia, she wanted to be important and irreplaceable. Even if it was only a chance meeting, a willful decision by fate to put them in the same class... She watched how isolated Amelia was... And desired to break through the walls Amelia put up around herself. Maybe she was destructive, maybe she was sadistic... Camellie wouldn't know herself, she simply had an urge to dig herself into Amelia's life. Would Amelia let her? Would she be allowed to stay?
"Hey... Hey! You've been staring for quite a while... You got something to say?" (Amelia)
"Uhh... Ahh!!? Uhmm.. I just wanted to say, I'm Camellie. I'm looking forward to being in your care for the rest of our school life." (Camellie)
She tumbled over her own words a little, squeezing out a reply with her dry and panicked throat. In her long tirade of thoughts, she had forgotten that she was staring really intently at the girl in front of her. Was there really any meaning to all these considerations of hers? Wouldn't it be the best to just move forward and see what happens? She wouldn't want a relationship where she had to step on eggshells around her. As much as she wanted to infringe into Amelia's comfort zone, she wasn't planning to accommodate or mollify the other side in the least. A relationship where both sides can be as honest and unforgiving as they wanted...
She wonders if it was too fast for that sort of thing. Perhaps they needed to take some time to adjust to each other's faults first...
"Ahh? I'm Amelia, if you don't mind... Stop bothering me..." (Amelia)
She felt a blood vessel twitch on her temples and arbitrarily threw out any reservation she had.
"How about I keep bothering you? Say, when's your birthday? What's your favourite colour? Where do you live?" (Camellie)
Subconsciously, she began to speak like a scammed looking for hints to bypass people's social media account passwords. She was unapologetic and crude, she no longer held back her thoughts with Amelia even though it was only the first day. Gradually, they got used to each other's presence, with no holes barred they continued to banter.
Camellie would then come to learn and then hate to admit it, that Amelia was talented in studying without much effort. It seemed that Camellie was the only one who paid serious attention to Amelia when she answered any question in class... There was never any difficulty and hiccups were exceedingly rare... Everyone else had dismissed Amelia's capabilities as sheer luck, ultimately taking her rest results as the definitive measure of her ability.
Camellie wants to surpass Amelia, and she technically already has in all of their tests... But she understood Amelia was scoring low on purpose. She wasn't sure of Amelia's motive, but it didn't really matter considering Amelia was never receptive towards putting in more effort. Occasionally, she would 'accidentally' score far higher, when she forgets to hold back. Was there any meaning to fighting Amelia when she's not at her full strength.
Soon, the days went by and it was the season to prepare for entrance exams. She had ostensibly given up on getting Amelia to put in more effort... But to be honest, she wasn't really sure that effort was what kept Amelia from scoring any higher. Amelia might have been keeping her scores low on purpose.
"Why...? Are you planning to continue with this facade? How long are you going to hide it!?" (Camellie)
They were both wearing their uniforms, they were within school compound after all. They stood upon the rooftop, Camellie having invited Amelia here for a talk. Why did she draw her out? Why had she confronted Amelia? What had she hoped to gain with this? She could lose their entire years of friendship... But... It was meant to be a no holes barred relationship where she could be as truthful as she wanted about her own feelings.
"I don't know what y-" (Amelia)
"Don't give me that!" (Camellie)
She swiped her right arm to the side in anger, her fingers were drawn out and separate from each other.