"Even if you're a dragon, let's be polite and be wary of floor noise, okay? If you keep doing that while I'm working, I'm going to feed the rest of your heart to slimes."
Swanhaden ducked his head again and disappeared again. A candy stick suddenly burst out of the hole he had disappeared into and shot towards her. Not too long after, a chocolate wrapper also burst out of the hole and was thrown towards her.
Noirelle stared at Swan's laughable reaction.
She put her hand in her pocket before taking out a magically printed photo. I couldn't see what kind of photo it was too clearly, but it looked like there was an orange-haired girl in it. She put her hand, photo still in it, into the hole. When she gently shook the hand as she took it out of the hole, Swanhaden, who had disappeared, appeared once again.
"What are you doing, ma'am?"
Half of his face popped back up. He stared at the photo in Noirelle's hand with an uncaring gaze.
"When are you going to be finished?"
"Wow, you're so pushy. Don't worry, I'll definitely make sure not to finish everything before that egg rots."
"So you're almost done. Great."
I listened to their conversation to try and figure out what Swanhaden was doing here. There was no way that giant pillar of white magic had just popped out of thin air–she had someone helping her. I didn't know how, but Swan was incredibly obedient towards her. How interesting.
When I asked Noirelle, she explained that the two of them had a kind of deal.
"But why is he underground?"
"If he arrived at the cave first, I thought he'd walk straight onto the path of destruction so I made him work on the pillar underground."
When I asked if Swanhaden understood all of this, Noirelle explained that this cycle's Swan was incredibly easy to control with a few pictures, and that she was sorry for selling me.
When I raised my voice to ask more questions, Swan's gaze soon landed on me. Swanhaden's expression didn't seem to change, but his pupils seemed to be shaking.
When he wordlessly went back underground, Noirelle grabbed him by his shirt and dragged him back out.
Swanhaden covered his face with both of his hands when he was back on ground. His ears were incredibly red.
Last time, when he had tried to taunt me by asking me about how to heal lips, I gave him an incredibly detailed explanation. Was that why?
Noirelle watched the embarrassed Swanhaden with a bright but creepy smile on her face.
"Maybe it's because I'm so used to the other cycle's Swanhaden? You're seriously disgusting!"
"That's such high praise. I'll aspire to become even more like you."
Swan said behind his hands.
Noirelle didn't seem angry at his taunting tone. Instead, she looked surprised as she explained that he had never been polite to her in every single cycle before this. She seemed touched that she was being given so much respect from him.
"Finish your work later. Help Shushu."
Before Noirelle could even finish her sentence, Swanhaden cleaned his clothes and hair and stood in front of me, as if he had been waiting.
When I just stared at how quickly he had done all of this, he covered the side of his face with his hand and avoided my gaze.
At my customer, Noirelle's, request for me to take Swan and move, I moved quickly. She said that she needed to prepare the principal's body. If I prepped simply and stood in front of the school's dragon fountain, Noirelle would wear the principal's body and transport me to the central palace. She said she would guide me to the circle.
Swan told me that the road down the mountain was treacherous, and that I could use him as a buffer if I thought I was going to fall as he stretched out his hand towards mine. I wasn't really going to fall in the first place, but I just held his hand because I wanted to. He immediately linked fingers with me when my hand met his.
Then, my legs suddenly seemed to lose strength after we left the lair. When I almost tripped on a rock, Swanhaden became frightened and just held me on his back. My ankle and feet were totally fine, but I just quietly put my arms around his neck and let myself be placed on his back. I raised my arm and played with his silver hair. I could smell the academy soap on his hair.
"Are you going to listen to the dragon's request right away?"
He asked as we headed down the mountain. I nodded.
"Mhm. It's finals week next week. Right after that, I need to train for the knighthood qualification. I like to finish my requests as soon as I can, too."
The reason why I wanted to get this over with was because everything was already prepared.
Before, when I had been deep asleep thanks to Noirelle's magic, Yves had infiltrated the royal palace before. Yves had given me a lot of details about the royal palace after his return.
That was when my magic had been unstable and when I had been searching for high-quality, pure black magic.
As soon as I heard that the royal family's heirloom was the heart of a black dragon, I began to think about how I could take some of the infinite black magic from within the heirloom. I had prepared a lot because of it.
I had a magical device in my room that would emulate the shape of the heirloom, a magic potion that would help me change my appearance, and I had asked Hestia to get me a blueprint of the royal palace….
Sorry. I'd almost sold my soul once.
I didn't know why, but Swanhaden kept staring at me. I piped up. I coughed a few times to assuage the guilt in me.
"It's okay. I'm well aware of palace security, so it's pretty easy."
Swanhaden turned his head to face the front at my words. He nodded.
"As easy as Hylli?"
"Mhm."
Oops, I'd just said anything and had said something wrong. I tried to tell him that wasn't true and piped up again.
"Mhm."
I was busy explaining how much Hylli had grown to Swan as we headed down the mountain together, me on his back.
I couldn't see anything below us because of the dense trees when we suddenly arrived at a barren place–no trees or grass in sight.
The wind blew the tree branches back, and the entirety of the academy was easy to see with a single glance. There was a bit of mist, so the dark red of the academy was slightly foggy. Regardless, however, it was still eyecatching.
I stretched my hand towards the dark red building as I chatted with Swanhaden. The academy seemed small–my hand covered it all instantly. When I covered it with my hand, I suddenly remembered how Noirelle said that the academy was the starting point of her planned destruction of the empire.
The academy's dark red reminded me of the dark red circles in a dartboard. I ruminated over the facts that Noirelle had told me.
She had given a pretty emotionless explanation of her dark, wine-colored memories. She had omitted a lot of the long, lengthy times of pain and misery and had summarized everything with a few sentences.
The academy soon hid behind the trees once more.
I had a sudden idea–I thought it would be nice if everyone who had gone mad because of her want for destruction all banded together to help her.
I explained the plan to steal the royal heirloom to Swanhaden. Swanhaden listened solemnly as he nodded.
"But just in case, do you want to take Hylli and Cory with you? Let's take Yves too. Hylli will know where to go, and if they added some more magical security, Cory might be needed. Yves can help concoct a plan."
Swanhaden frowned when I mentioned adding the others into the plan.
"….that would make it safer."
Swanhaden muttered, disgruntled. He nodded a few beats too late.
He began to walk faster down the mountain.
When I thought that we needed to hurry to explain the situation, I must've shown my feelings to him. Swan knowingly speeded up our descent.
How long had we been running down like this? I started to feel guilty. When I told him that I could head down on my own, he began to run even faster. He tilted his direction slightly and headed to the boys' dorm. I could see the academy dorm building between the trees during our descent.
I clenched one of my own magic stones in my hand and cast a flying spell on him. Even with the sudden addition of magic, Swanhaden moved swiftly and without a hitch.
I used a cliff that had a clear view of the academy to float off of. It was easy to work with Swan because of how quick he was to the catch.
Swan added his own magic to the flying spell and provided more speed. I drew another spell behind him to lower wind resistance.
"But would it be kind of rude to just wake them and ask for help out of nowhere….?"
I suddenly remembered an issue while we were flying towards the dorms. I frowned as we floated over the boys' dorm. Swanhaden seemed to have heard my muttering. He turned his head to look at me.
He nodded his head slightly.
"Mhm, the books said that's rude."
And with that, he created a small magic stone in his palm and threw it at Hylli and Cory's dorm window.
There was a loud shattering sound. Hylli's dorm room window, which had been haphazardly repaired with tape, shattered into pieces once again.
I was so taken aback that I didn't know what to say. I could hear Hylli's voice.
"Swanhaden! Don't do anything weird and take your pile of orange alien drawings and cards!"
As soon as the window broke, Cory's magic circle began to repair the window. I could see Hylli through the window. He was holding an entire roll of tape and taping the window, which was staying put through magic, one by one.
I was just watching at how nonchalant he was about the window breaking when Swan pointed at Hylli's dorm room.
"Both of them are delinquents, so they don't sleep until it's really late. Especially Cory."
Swanhaden pointed at himself with a thumb. He was being completely serious.
"Just so you know, I sleep at ten, exactly when it's light's out. I'm a model student."
And with that, Swanhaden came down a bit and shattered the window that Hylli had barely taped back up.
The sound of glass shattering rang loudly once again, and Swanhaden went through the window as if it was something he did often. When I thought that the glass was going to fly my way, he already had measures to prevent the glass from coming towards me. Swanhaden entered the room through the window as if it was an everyday occurence.
When I checked the room, I was relieved to see that nobody was sleeping just yet.
Hylli was sitting at his desk working on an assignment while Cory was flopped on the ground with his legs resting on the bed. He had a toothbrush in his mouth as he flipped through a magazine about magic.
Nobody seemed outraged even as Swan appeared with loud fanfare. Cory kept his attention on the magazine and huddled tighter into his blanket at the gust of wind while Hylli stilled, sighed, and went back to focusing on his work.
As soon as we entered the room, Cory's magic circle shone and began to attach the window back together, except all of the tape had fallen off again. When the circle shone brightly, Hylli lowered the pen he was writing with and grabbed the roll of tape again.
"Shushu? Are you here to play?"
Hylli frowned at Swan's appearance but soon brightened as he found me.