"And I thought that I saw someone then, but it might be a monster that just looks similar to a human. We'd never seen the blue-furred monster before, too, so I think it's in the realm of possibility that a human-shaped monster exists."
Cory was explaining his ideas fervently, but I just blankly stared at him.
"...Shushu?"
I was staring at him so intensely that Cory tilted his head and called my name. His expression seemed to ask if there was something I wanted to say to him.
"Your dark circles seem lighter."
I was happy to see Cory looking exuberant and collected.
I had been a bit sad because it felt like I suddenly felt awkward whenever I was with a close friend.
All of the things that Cory did that I thought were normal had disappeared with such short notice that I was a bit disappointed as well. I understood the situation, but it felt a bit inevitable for me to have felt that way.
"You look less harsh now."
"…."
He turned his head away from my gaze and stared at the ceiling.
Then, he soon responded to my statement. He seemed a bit embarrassed.
He stared at the floor before mussing the back of his head. His ears seemed a bit red, too. His already messy red hair became even messier.
Cory, who seemed to have regained some of his usual personality, and I continued to chat about the monsters in the mountain and the model when I noticed a box in the corner of the club room.
The box had [Cory DuBois] written in messy handwriting and there seemed to be one or two gifts that weren't open in the box. It was definitely his birthday gift.
"You haven't opened your birthday gift yet?"
I asked, pointing at the box. Cory seemed surprised, as if he had just remembered it, and nodded.
"I forgot about it after receiving it. Oh no."
I didn't even properly thank them. Cory muttered quietly to himself. After I had passed out, Cory said that he had been so out of it that he hadn't properly responded to the congratulations.
I felt a bit bad that his birthday had gone awry because of me, but I had prevented his birthday from becoming traumatic so I'd done my duty.
I brought over the birthday gift with his presents when Cory suddenly spoke up.
"Honestly, I didn't put too much meaning into it. This year's birthday, I mean."
"...?"
"Until now, you were the one that celebrated my birthday. So if you don't do anything for me, it doesn't feel like a birthday. It feels lacking."
I couldn't help but smile at his words. Viedielle and the rest of his family had begun to celebrate his birthday properly so he'd gotten a lot of gifts and letters, but before that, I was the only one that cared and prepared for his birthday. Of course, Hylli celebrated his birthday too.
Having just learned that he hadn't celebrated his birthday properly because of everything that had happened recently, I looked at Cory and spoke.
"Then do you want to have a little gift unboxing right now?"
Cory tilted his head at my words before nodding.
Cory dragged the box towards himself, but instead of opening up presents, he wanted to read the letter first.
Cory took out a familiar large piece of paper.
I remembered what Viedielle had said last time about how she wanted me to write in the paper so she could make a rolling paper out of it. Oh. My letter must've been completely erased because of Swan, that bastard. The contents weren't too important, though. It had just been me congratulating him on his birthday and telling him not to be such a picky eater, and just regular things I'd say to him.
My letter was probably buried under Swan's pig unicorn drawing.
I had been thinking about writing Cory a proper letter when Cory suddenly had a serious look on his face as he read through the rolling paper.
"Shushu...….? Did you write this?"
Cory seemed to hold back laughter as he showed me my rolling paper.
His reaction seemed a suspicious, so I frowned as I read through the paper he handed me.
There was the large heart in the middle of the letter just like I had seen, with 'Reserved for Shuraina' written in it. Swanhaden's disturbing drawings had been morphed into cuter versions of themselves thanks to Viedielle's efforts.
But the problem wasn't Swanhaden's drawings or the note.
The letter that I had written, the one that had been destroyed by Swan, was somehow there.
It hadn't just appeared back, too. The contents of it had changed completely, but the handwriting was exactly like mine so I thought for a moment that I had written it.
[Cooory ♥ This is a seeeecret, but I love you! Happy birthday, and again, I love you ♥ My gift to you is a hundred million kisses ♥ -Shuraina West]
I didn't recall writing something like this. Who was it. There was one person in my mind that I could immediately picture. It had to be Viedielle.
"A hundred million kisses?"
Cory asked me after he snatched back his letter.
"Really?"
He seemed to have already figured out what had happened and was still playing jokes. I narrowed my eyes at him.
You asshole.
Chapter 16. Shuraina's Lover
In last night's dream, Hylli appeared and morphed into a firefly, and the night before I dreamed that Hestia appeared riding on a surfboard to eat snacks with me and have fun. I'd dreamt often about my past life or about the original novel before, but I hadn't dreamt of those two things at all these days. They were just silly dreams.
I was just guessing, but I felt like this was happening after the DuBois family incident.
I felt like we had completely strayed from the original novel's plot now. It was just peaceful now–no more dangerous and nerve-wracking situations. Just peace.
I was a bit worried about the principal's plan, but Yves was sticking close to the situation and was cleaning it up as much as he could, too. I wasn't completely sure what was up with that, but after Yves stepped in, the principal's movements had minimized drastically, so it seemed like it was true.
Yves had said something about not paying attention to useless things and just studying like a good student.
I was walking towards the training hall to go to swordsmanship class when I sighed at Yves' words.
We were getting closer and closer to graduation. We'd become actual adults when we graduated from the academy, and becoming adults meant that we'd have to pay taxes and have obligations and follow a bunch of complicated laws that were enforced by the empire. Ugh, I didn't want that.
I liked this period of my life, when I didn't have to pay attention to complicated things and just study. In my past life, I'd died before I'd become a proper adult, so I'd be the same age I died at in my past life in just a few years. I didn't know why, but I was slightly worried and got a bit frightened at the thought of it.
A lot of time had passed, but I still felt like I was still tied to my past life and my past. I didn't dream of it anymore, but I had been dreaming of my past until just recently, so it was hard to distance myself from it.
I felt like it was time for me to let go and forget my past life because I didn't have any more dreams of it, but I was a bit sad and disappointed to let it go. They had been sad memories, but it had been a bit comforting to see people from my past life.
I didn't know why I dreamt of my past life or of the novel, but I wouldn't be amiss to dreaming of it once in a while. I didn't want to go back to those times, but I did have some lingering attachments to it. Kind of like I still had a part of me from those times in me.
I felt melancholy as I walked into the training hall. Chaos reigned when I stepped in.
Swanhaden had become interested in the mental aspects of white magic, and he had begun researching it. His guinea pigs were Hylli and the rest of the swordsmanship students.
"Awooooo!"
"Bark bark! Pant pant pant!"
"Caw caw caw!"
It was an animal farm.
The training hall was filled with the forced mimicking of animals by students. It was bizarre, to say the least. The were actually moving around like the animals as if they had become them, but it was incredibly funny too.
A student pretending to be a dog was scratching his face with his foot, and a student who thought they were a bird was flapping their arms as hard as they could. It was a mess.
Hylli flung away the magic circle flying towards him and was resisting Swanhaden as hard as he could.
"Are you trying to make this place a zoo! Stop it! This is enough!"
Hylli yelled, running as fast as he could. While he ran, he ducked just fast enough to avoid Swan's attack. Swan looked bored as he listened to Hylli's desperate yells as he tilted his head. Unlike Hylli's desperate expression, he just looked peaceful.
"I'm just placing some strengthening magic on you guys to help you….."
"Don't you see the chaos around you!"
"I'm a person too, you know. If I messed up the formula while I was using my magic, then it was an honest mistake."
"But you're doing it on purpose!"
Swanhaden blankly stared at Hylli's running form as he muttered to himself.
"Should I make our royal highness mimic a worm?"
"I can hear you!"
Swanhaden lied and said that he had said something wrong at Hylli's yell. Even though it was obvious that the statement was meant to be heard.
This chaos had become a daily part of my life now.
Hylli, who was busy running away from Swanhaden, met eyes with me. His whole face brightened as if he had met his savior as he turned directions to run towards me. As soon as he started running towards me, Swanhaden's bored expression suddenly stiffened.
"Shuraina! He's! Help m....."
But Hylli couldn't finish his sentence as both him and Swanhaden tripped forwards. Swan had run as fast as he could and had attacked Hylli after he had become unguarded after seeing me. Swan removed his magic from the rest of the class as soon as he saw me.
"Whew, Hylli. That was a good run. Right?"
"...?"
Hylli glared at Swan's hand that was stretched towards him. Then, he shot me a glance, looked back at Swan, then narrowed his eyes further.
"I didn't really see it before, but now I think I figured it out."
Hylli rushed to distance himself from Swanhaden and stuck by my side. I was just sipping on my water, used to the chaos, when Hylli put his lips near my ear and whispered something to me.
"If you have any dirt on Swan, share it with me please."
At Hylli's words, I put my hand in my dimensional pocket and took out a large batch of videos and photos.
"N, no. Put mine back. I'm talking about him."
"Don't have any."
I have a bunch of yours, though.
When I took out one item from his embarrassing past, Hylli shoved one back. Hylli complained that he couldn't trust me either. I stared at Swan, who was pretending that he had nothing to do with the entire situation, even though he was decidedly the culprit.
Swan's "What are you guys doing?" sounded so fake that I couldn't help but laugh. He was even helping clean up the mess. The students' expressions were a sight to see.
After some more time had passed, the school bell rung, signaling the start of swordsmanship class. Like we always did before we practiced on our own, the teacher told us the class schedule and yelled for us to group up. We got points docked off and a separate punishment if we were late, so we all moved quickly.
The teacher's gaze landed on the students, who looked tired, and glanced at Swan before shooting them a pitying look. He coughed once and began speaking.
"All of you are already aware of the fact that there are club presentations in every school festival!"
The students all grew quiet when the teacher's loud voice rang through the hall.
"From this year, it's been decided that afternoon classes will each have their own presentations."
The silence shattered into noise at that sentence. Swordsmanship classes were one of the classes that had a separate club, so students seemed confused as to why there would need to be another presentation for it. The teacher seemed to have thought the same. He stomped his foot on the ground once to silence the class.
"This is to advertise afternoon classes for newcomers who haven't chosen their classes, so I won't be answering any, "Why are we doing one again?" or "What's the point?" kind of questions!"
One of the red class students suddenly raised their hand to ask a question.
"Teacher, why are we presenting?"
It was a student who had recently transferred from the red class–a kid named Eric.
When the Eric kid asked playfully, his friends laughed quietly as they chided him and told him not to. The teacher frowned for a moment before sighing and ignored his question and continued speaking.
"So, we're planning on having a duel performance...…."
"Teacher! The swordsmanship club is doing the same thing!"
"It probably won't be a good idea to reuse the same idea twice, right? Hmm. Then what should we do? We'll take opinions."
A festival performance. Now we're doing one for class, too? For last year, Cory and I decorated our club room and "performed" a magician's tea house concept performance. The swordsmanship club always dressed themselves up and dueled on stage to perform.
At the teacher's call for opinions or ideas, a bunch of students raised their hands to share their ideas.
Swordsmanship club performances were generally showy, so I said to myself that I wouldn't do it. Because of that, I thought that this conversation had nothing to do with me and started to daydream.
Then, when I finished my daydream, my name was suddenly mentioned.
"I feel like it'd be a good idea for Shushu to go up as our representative to do a sword dance!"
I blinked, wide awake and focused.
Me, do what?
T/N: i'm sorry, shushu's WHAT?