Swanhaden hid a bunch of stuff behind his back and gave her a thumbs up with an expressionless face.
Shuraina smiled awkwardly at the scene in front of her. She was kind of embarrassed.
Swanhaden headed towards Shuraina and, even though she wasn't hurt much, gave her multiple heals and handed her Cory's snacks.
As soon as Shuraina left the training hall, the air in the area grew heavy. The hall was filled with a feeling of intense pressure.
There was a reason why everyone was low-pressure right now. The entire situation–Shuraina dueling Eric–had been off, and Hylli had gone off to ask one of Eric's friends and asked, and the friend didn't like Eric to begin with and had told them everything that had happened.
About how Eric had used her, and how much he had talked shit about her, his behaviors, his attitude, and how he had treated her. Moreover, he had told them about how the entire confession had been a game.
After listening to all that, they couldn't help but be shocked. They had tried to be nice and respectful because she had been happy about the first confession she had received, and everything they had seen of her just drifted through their memories as their anger grew more and more heated.
The friends that had supported Eric looked at the ominous group standing near the entrance and tried to run away without them realizing.
"Where are you guys going?"
But Swanhaden grabbed all of them by their backs and shoved them to the ground.
"The time has finally come...….."
One person in the group muttered quietly, eyes nervously shifting back and forth.
After shoving all of the boys in a heap in the center of the hall, Swanhaden walked closer to the one person he wanted to make disappear until now.
After his duel with Shuraina, Eric was still sitting on the floor, blank. But when Swanhaden's steps grew closer, Eric's eyes grew wide as he hunched in on himself.
"Now that you don't have anything to do with Shuraina, I can do whatever I want, right?"
Swanhaden smiled as he stretched and warmed up. He hadn't moved a bit while the duel had been ongoing, so his body felt a bit stiff.
Swanhaden casually stretched his arm towards Cory. His arm jangled from the countless magic suppression bracelets on his wrist.
Cory, who was emanating a record amount of murderous intent, glared down at Eric and removed all of the bracelets at once.
The Augran festival happened only once a year. Whenever the festival took place, each class, subject, and club had to prepare something for it. The festival went on for three days, and it was such a big event that it was open to not only students and staff, but for high-ranking, famous individuals from outside as well.
Until now, Shuraina didn't exactly go out of the way to participate in the festival. When she first entered the school, she just opened a tea shop with Cory in the club room and just threw a single snack at the visitors. When she was performing with the swordsmanship students, she just put herself somewhere in the crowd as they showed off their moves. When the yellow class had done a play together, Shuraina was given the job of acting as a rock on the street.
So this was the first time that Shuraina was doing something all on her own. If she didn't count the time when Yves had handed her money to get everyone's attention, this was really the first time she was going to be the center of attention.
Shuraina didn't put too much thought behind standing in front of everyone and doing something, but she couldn't help but get nervous. So she had practiced until she was completely sure it was perfect. Just so she wouldn't be embarrassed, she had even prepared a mask that covered half of her face.
The only reward she got for going up on stage by herself and doing a sword dance was just the teacher's old sword, but she had promised to do it. She would do her best.
She had broken up with Eric a week before the festival, so she was too busy with preparations to even think about Eric. The closer and closer the festival became, the more chocolate Shuraina ate, and the faster Cory's snack locker depleted. Yves was worried for Shuraina and filled her locker with so much snacks that she couldn't put her books in.
Shuraina had never really obsessed over food, but she was more stressed than usual, which meant she was eating more. Because of that, it now became possible to tempt her with food.
Yves laid down a bunch of delicious foods in front of her and sat Shuraina on his knees. Recently, Shuraina had become a lot more accepting and welcome when it came to food, so she was busy eating the snacks, one by one.
"Is it good?"
Shuraina glanced at Yves as she ate before she nodded slightly.
"Then eat up."
While Shuraina was busy eating, puppy Shushu also had a tower of puppy jerky that she was biting at.
Yves was just about to poke at Shuraina's busily moving cheeks, but just put his hand on her hair instead. Yves, who felt a bit strange, looked away to read a document that was filled with information about the people around Eric.
"Shuraina, eat the jelly too."
Even before Yves had told her to, Shuraina was already eating the jelly.
Chapter 17. The Festival
When festival season began, unfamiliar faces began to come on our campus, one by one. The Augran festival was a massive event that took place for three days, but this was the fourth time I'd witnessed this festival, so I didn't feel too much excitement about it.
When I looked up, crimson lamps were floating in the sky. As the darkness of the night set in, soft, reddish lights illuminated the space above us. I felt calm as I blankly stared at the sky–it was nice to listen to the soft music coming from the festival. They played melodious classical songs throughout the duration of the festival.
Like we'd done throughout the years, Cory and I opened a tea shop booth. Honestly, I didn't want to do anything special this year–I was just planning on putting 'tea shop' on our sign and having our guests to just pour their tea themselves, but it felt like I was pushing the bar too low and decided against it.
I'd put in so much effort during my junior years, too.
There were a lot of famous visitors to our festival, so I tried to prepare things to be as flashy as possible to get their attention. But that became more and more meaningless as time passed. I had been under a lot of pressure because of how renown our club was when I was younger, but I didn't feel any of that pressure now.
Once again, for our presentation, we set up a spell that prepared tea and snacks by itself. The two of us played and relaxed behind our booth.
Anyway, I think it was basically the same last year... Whatever. The spell that prepared our tea and snacks for us was a complicated one that combined a bunch of different spells together, so people were already impressed with the spell as it was.
This year, however, the DuBois marquis and marquess visited our club booth.
Cory looked a bit stunned at seeing his parents because they had never come to the festival before. But it wasn't like he was completely taken aback.
"So you've only had two members from the start?"
The marquis had the marquess' arm linked in his as he received the snacks from our booth. Cory had been reading a magic magazine before he glanced at me, then nodded.
"Yup. Jealous, right?"
The marquis stared as Cory focused back on the magazine, took a sip of his milk tea, then smiled.
The marquis gave me an awed look for a very long time. Then, he said, "I'm completely for it." in a meaningful tone as he patted my shoulder lightly.
The marquis couple didn't stay for long. The marquess' eyes glinted brightly as she looked at me as she handed me a bunch of fruit candy before she headed to where Viedielle was.
Cory and I received more visitors for a while after that. But we were so bored that we decided to take a peek at what the others were doing.
"It's cheap, it's an incredibly great price! We're giving you the opportunity to release your pent up stress for an incredibly low price!"
The loudest group of all were the swordsmanship kids. They were already rowdy compared to other clubs to begin with, but they were even rowdier than usual because of the festival. Most swordsmanship club members also happened to be swordsmanship class students, so all of the students at the booth were familiar.
Gwen was famous in the green swordsmanship members for being the best with words and the loudest of the group. He put his hands to his mouth as he advertised the swordsmanship club booth.
I could see someone resting on a rock in the middle of the crowd of students emanating an incredible aura. The person was wearing a rabbit costume. Even from far away, it was obvious that this was Hylli.
Hylli's expression was covered by the bunny costume mask, but it was obvious that it was pulled into a scowl. They had just done fruit slicing last year to keep it basic last year, but it seemed like it was going to be a pretty loud event this year.
Cory and I walked towards the pitiful-looking bunny Hylli as we laughed.
"D-don't laugh!"
When we approached Hylli as we snickered, the other swordsmanship students also seemed to find it funny as they burst into laughter. It turned out that Hylli had lost a bet, and this was his punishment.
"Shuraina, I'll let you take care of your stress for just one bronze. You have a lot pent up, right?"
I looked over at Gwen, who was currently trying to sell, and shook my head. I had dueled with Hylli so often that it didn't really excite me.
"Cory, do you want to instead?"
Gwen asked Cory, but Cory was too busy looking at Hylli and laughing to respond.
We comforted Hylli, who would be wearing the bunny costume until the class performances that happened at night, and headed somewhere else.
After just walking around aimlessly, we were able to find where Yves was without difficulty. Yves was currently giving the higher-ups a school tour.
He had his uniform on perfectly with a necklace that indicated that he was a guide. He was pointing at the Augran Academy bronze statue as he was explaining. Because of how close the academy was to the royal family, our school's symbol was also a black dragon.
The dragon depicted in the statue depicted the moment right before it used the strongest type of magic, Brace.
His smile wasn't fake like it used to be. Seeing Yves wearing his school uniform as he spoke in a calm voice with a serene smile on his face made me feel touched.
We briefly stopped walking to watch Yves. Yves' silver eyes glanced at mine.
When Yves' and my eyes met, he gave me a light grin.
As he was leaving to another part of the campus with the guests, he mouthed, 'I can't wait for tonight.' as he left. Because of that, I was suddenly reminded of something I wanted to forget.
I had a performance tonight, didn't I.