"Huh? What's with that face of yours? You're going to make people misunderstand what's happening here–they're going to think I'm bullying you. Hylli, am I bullying him right now?"
"It's a tear-jerking scene of you guys sharing fruit with each other."
Hylli stared as Swanhaden shamelessly asked him. With a disbelieving sigh, Hylli played along.
During the debacle, Swanhaden had used up all of the fruits that he had brought along. Eric thought that he didn't do anything to Swan, but was overpowered by his fear of him as he sat on his knees, shaking on the ground. Even if Swan had a higher status, they were both in the same year. Eric had an incredibly high level of pride, so he was feeling incredibly ashamed.
But even still, fear overpowered his pride. He was on his knees apologizing to Swan, begging on his knees. The rumors about how Swanhaden was good-looking son of a bitch really wasn't fake.
Swan watched Eric beg on his knees, various thoughts passing through his mind. Considering that this was just a light threat at most, he wondered if he should make him wriggle back to the dorms naked, or if he should tamper with his mind and make him act like a chicken for the rest of the day.
For now, unlike the other boys who tried to approach Shushu with impure reasons, he couldn't properly educate him. The teachers had caught him one too many times, and now Swanhaden had more than twenty magic restraint bracelets on his arm. Mind manipulation would be a bit difficult.
He couldn't pick on him with his own hands. Shuraina had said not to, after all. The situation from before was using fruits that Hylli had picked himself, and all he did was swing his sword a few times.
As Swanhaden worried about what to do next, Eric's savior appeared.
"What's all this noise over there!"
It was the loud ringing voice of a teacher.
"Swanhaden, a teacher's here!"
"Damn, this is exhausting."
Swanhaden stared at the jingling magic restraint bracelets on his wrist. If he was caught now, the amount of bracelets would multiply.
He needed to save some magic to heal Shuraina of her muscle aches during swordsmanship classes. Swanhaden was in a bit of a conundrum. He frowned. Moreover, he needed to use the sparkly residue of white magic to add some sparkle to his Shuraina drawings. He needed to save some magic to do that.
Swanhaden had been prepared, just in case a teacher burst in. He had a pocket full of items that Cory had made for situations like this. It was a simple time-related device that reversed time to right before this incident. He had swapped it for medicine that would allow Cory to lose his sense of taste for when he ate vegetables.
Swan used that device to clean the scene of the incident immediately. Eric was sparkly clean again, and his clothes were back to normal. Even his hair wax was perfectly placed, just as it had been.
Eric's eyes were wide in shock at the scene that had unfolded in front of him. When the teacher arrived at the scene, the situation was completely reversed.
Eric was stepping on Swanhaden with his foot, and Swanhaden looked seriously injured on the floor.
Swanhaden coughed, and a bit of blood came out. Swanhaden clung onto the teacher, who had just arrived on the scene, with tears in his eyes.
"W, what is going on?!"
"Teacher..... Cough, cough."
The teacher was glaring at Eric hatefully as he tried to prop the heavily injured Swan upright, but Swan crumpled onto the ground.
"I was trying to be nice to the transfer student because he didn't seem to be settling well, but he said that I was pissing him off and just... Sob."
Swanhaden couldn't act to save his life, unlike Yves, so his words sounded like he was reading off of a textbook. But thanks to white magic, tears were dripping down his face.
"I don't think you're the type to just let yourself get hit like this? Swanhaden! Are you okay?! Blood, you're bleeding! Hurry, heal your-! Oh, you can't do that because of the restraints….."
"T, Teach…..er. I tried to change, but why is it so hard? I tried not to hit back because I was scared I'd go, back to my ways, ugh. It hurts so much….. I'm so angry….."
At Swanhaden's words, the teacher gently hugged him and told him that he did well and that he bore through it well. Truthfully, Swanhaden had been trying to get along with the other students. Obviously, however, this was because of Shuraina.
Swanhaden gazed at the teacher who was carrying him on his back and quietly spoke in a scratchy voice.
"Te, tell Shushu that I love her a lot......"
Then, Swan flicked his finger once and put a spell on himself to fall asleep on the teacher's back. The teacher thought that Swan had passed out and was so surprised that they began hurriedly walking to the nurse's office.
Eric had a dumfounded expression on his face at the teacher's angry words for him to go to the teachers' office later, and,
"Swanhaden liked Shuraina?!"
Hylli listened to Swan's mutter and finally figured it out.
The festival was coming up, so Shuraina had been studying sword dancing recently. It wasn't too high quality because it was just a performance for recruitment, but she had been able to gain the swordsmanship teacher's old sword for herself.
It wasn't something that she really wanted, but she had been assigned the task and she always tried her best. She wracked her brain to choreograph the dance.
There had been a reason for why the other students had thrust the idea of a sword dance upon Shuraina for festival preparations.
When you practiced swordsmanship, there were certain steps and patterns that you had to memorize in order to get the correct stance, form, and posture. But there were so just so many different, complicated poses that many students found it difficult.
But Shuraina had split the postures into small movements based on music, almost like a dance, and had helped other students memorize them as well.
A big part of the reason why the students wanted Shuraina to do it was because they were lazy and didn't want to do it, but they also wanted to see Shuraina do a sword dance themselves. Hylli and Swanhaden didn't show it, but they were also pretty supportive of the whole thing.
Shuraina, donning a long pajama dress that came all the way down to her ankles, pulled her hair up tight in a ponytail as she practiced lightly.
It was just a short practice so she was practicing in her room as she used a broom instead of a sword to practice. She moved in gentle yet sharp movements as she checked her form in the mirror.
Shushu stopped moving, wiped the sweat off her forehead, then caught her breath.
"...does he have a hobby of avoiding me these days?"
The 'he' Shuraina was talking about was Eric.
Shuraina, at the thought of Eric, had a complicated expression on her face.
She tapped her cheek, still with a bit of baby fat on it, as she thought about something intensely. She soon brightened as she clapped.
"Hestia, she probably has a few of her homemade cookies left over, right?"
Gotta go snatch some from her.
Shuraina, using her light, casual tone from before, shoved her hands into her pajama pockets and headed out of her room.
Hazel was busy with the opening of her own shop and was out of the dorms often. She had created a beauty label with her name and was busy planning for it–she was planning on launching her label in two years. She thought that once Hazel was gone, their room would grow quiet, but Hestia came over often to stay with Shuraina.
Hestia came over so often that they were basically roommates.
But Hestia checked Shuraina's mood and gave her excessive amounts of affection and, at times, avoided her. But when Shuraina began speaking to her, Hestia would immediately go back to pouring her with affection, as if she had never avoided her in the first place.
Shuraina found that kind of Hestia a bit confusing, but she didn't put much thought behind it. She wondered if Hestia had done something to her, but she couldn't point out anything that Hestia had done to hurt her. But all that aside, she wanted to eat some cookies. She placed her thoughts on the back burner.
With a jaw-cracking yawn, Shuraina walked into Hestia's room and rummaged through her drawers to take out a cookie.
"Shu, Shushu! Are you here to eat some cookies?"
"Mm, I'm hungry."
Shuraina said, rubbing her stomach with her hands.
Shuraina sat on the edge of the bed, eyes widening at the assortment of snacks that Hestia took out.
She was worried that she would get crumbs on the bed, so she laid down on the ground as she put various cookies and snacks in her mouth before her arms got tired. She just patiently stared at Hestia with her mouth open wide.
Hestia, who just blankly stared at Shushu for a while, burst into quiet laughter before moving next to her to put the snacks into her mouth. Shuraina just stayed there, flopped on the floor, mechanically moving to chew and swallow the snacks.
She seemed pleased with Hestia's homemade cookies–she had a satisfied expression on her face as she ate the cookies, eyes closed.
"I'm sleepy but I'm hungry."
"Hmm?"
"I'm too tired to eat but I'm too hungry to sleep."
"Just do both, Shushu."
Shuraina continued chewing as she nodded at Hestia's statement. The only thing that was busily moving on her head was her mouth.
"I'm so pissed....."
Hestia had a pretty loud reaction to Shuraina's sleepy mutter.
"…..why? Did something happen today?"
"No, just. I'm just feeling suffocated. You know, those times when you don't feel like you know yourself."
"Mm. There are times like that."
"I feel like I'm a stranger. Like my head and my body are two separate things."
Hestia carefully asked a question a Shushu's words.
"Is it because of him?"
Shushu's silence was answer enough.
"Sometimes, I swear I can feel the gravity on my body. It feels like the pressure is going to crush me, right then and there."
Shuraina opened her crimson eyes as she just blurted out whatever came up in her mind. She didn't have a filter as she spoke.
"What does that mean?"
"I don't know, it just feels like that when I feel trapped."
Shuraina shifted around a bit, eyes still open.
"On the other hand, I want the pressure to become so massive that it crushes everything else in the world."
"Haha, what does that mean?"
"I wanna grow taller...…"
"Shushu, you're really sleepy, huh."
Shuraina slowly nodded before turning to gaze at Hestia.
"Do I look ugly when I exercise?"
Hestia quietly listened to Shuraina's voice before she straightened up.
"No! Who said that?!"
"Hes, my ears are ringing."
"Is it Eric, that son of a bitch? Am I right? Did he say that?"
At the angry, high pitched voice and the torrent of questions, Shuraina's eyes blinked wide opened as she stared at an angry looking Hestia. She smiled.
"Your cursing really makes me feel better."
Shuraina turned her head to stare at the lightbulb on the ceiling of the room, powered by magic.
"I didn't like his behavior towards me so I said something, but he said that I was talking back."
"Is the 'he' Eric again?"
"My parents don't even complain about me talking back. What's with him?"
Shuraina pouted as she whined as she looked at Hestia, but the expression on Hestia's face looked like she was moments away from murdering someone. Shuraina could suddenly see Swanhaden in Hestia's place, but she decided to just let it be. It wasn't the first time she'd seen it.
"Shushu, I know I don't have the right to say this, but can't you just break up?"
"....I can't, not yet. There's a bit of time left."
Hestia didn't really get what she meant by time left over, but she bit her lips when she heard that the breakup wasn't happening yet. She thought it was just a tiny nibble, but her emotions overcame her as she bit her lips hard enough to bleed. Then, tears began to drip from her large, round eyes.
T/N: swan..................amazing