Good, now I should clean the dust in the dorm and go off to bed. Damn Keswick, I couldn't even go to the library today.
The next day, both of us are standing in front of my dorm. "Finally, at this point, I'd be disappointed if I don't see anything bad or embarrassing," I roll my eyes and open the door.
She rushes in and starts looking around. "I don't know what you were complaining about; this dorm looks messy. It's perfectly clean to me."
"That's because I just cleaned it."
She idly hums while searching through my bookshelf, filled with a couple of library books I have yet to return. Fortunately, I remembered to remove Marfonts General from there, or the situation would have gotten really annoying.
After assaulting my bookshelf, she then moved on to my work desk, on which lay the blueprint of the digging tool I just made.
Looking at it, Keswick asked, "What is this?"
"It creates holes in metal surfaces."
"Interesting. Why do you need such a tool? Are you planning to break into somewhere?"
"No, the artificing teacher gave us a task to make a fully-fledged magical tool all by ourselves before the end of the year." I'm not lying; I am planning to show this to the artificing teacher later, although the end of the year is far away, so not anytime soon.
Keswick sighs and continues searching elsewhere, finally snooping around in other places and disregarding her noble manners. She makes it to the closet.
Fortunately, as I expected from someone with such a low number of neurons, she doesn't even acknowledge the bottom of the closet and looks straight through my clothes, and of course, finds nothing.
I look at the closet annoyed. I had to book it straight from soul anatomy class to my dorm to put Ustos to sleep and shove him under the closet. Then I had to run back to artificing class. In the end, I was a couple of minutes late for the artificing lesson, but the teacher didn't really bother me, though; he doesn't really care about much.
After searching all avenues of hiding something interesting, she finally got tired and settled down.
"If you really had nothing to hide, then why did you not let me in here?"
"Because it was messy," I stated calmly.
"That's not a good argument," she states annoyed.
I shrug.
"Well, while you're here, I'll brew some tea for us to enjoy," I offer.
I approach a heating stand that came with this dorm. It has enchantments to warm up and doesn't need mana to activate. It's quite convenient when needed, but I mostly use the cafeteria, so it became quite obsolete.
This dorm also came with some cups and plates along with a free tea kettle, which I suppose speaks loudly for these people's dedication to tea. I don't care much for tea, so I had to buy a couple of leaves while out shopping for the ridiculously priced wood. And I also had to ask Ustos how to prepare the damned mixture.
While making the tea, Keswick starts talking to me. "You know, you've changed over the last year or so. You've become more confident. I remember the first time I met you; you were so shy," she chuckled.
"That's because I had barely interacted with anyone besides the Ustos household's servants."
"Yeah, it seemed like that," she nodded, settling into contemplation.
"So, have you heard any new rumors?" I ask just to change the subject from anything remotely close to Ustos's past.
Keswick starts pondering, and suddenly her face becomes serious. "Yeah, apparently, there is another murdered student."
"What?" I say in mock surprise.
"Yeah, remember Hector, the bastard of the Marfont family? He hasn't appeared since the beginning of the year."
"What! That's ridiculous. What has the academy done about this?"
"Basically nothing. The academy just stated that the soul-bound necklaces of Hector have gone off, and they will continue the search for the murderer with even more determination."
"But if he hasn't been here since the start of the year, that means that he's been gone for 5 months now? Didn't the academy even send anyone to search for him?"
"I don't really know. All I've heard is that the academy just found out about Hector's death."
"Well, that's just weird. Wouldn't this imply that whoever is in charge of managing the soul-bound necklaces is behind the murders? I mean, if they can just smudge all the reports, no wonder no one is able to figure out who is doing the murders," I say while pouring her some tea.
"No, I doubt that. Such positions are constantly being inspected, especially now that the academy is searching for the murderer."
I was about to ask another question, but I heard Keswick drop her cup. Looking at her, she looks shocked, looking just behind me, and then before I can ask her what she's so concerned about, I hear her suddenly yell, "Watch out!"
I look behind me in confusion and see a fireball speeding toward my direction.