There was a twenty-minute break after the public display of merit and shame.
Lance was outside before Paige and waited for her.
Finally seeing her, he said, "How?"
Paige was unsure if he asked her how she was or how she fell flat on her face in front of everyone.
"Well..."
"Forget it. Let's go to the infirmary." He took her elbow and dragged her there.
They were welcomed by the male school nurse, whom Lance had the privilege of going peeing with for the drug test.
"You again!" He recognized the duo.
"Oh, sit down, sit down." Seeing Paige's face with dried blood, he checked her nose.
The bleeding had already stopped naturally, so she just washed her face and sleeve.
Back in class, she sat down and waited for the day to end.
Shortly after returning to his desk, Lance was in for a surprise.
When the female lead sat beside him, he glanced at her and was stunned. She looked much better without being fully painted.
And her bare skin was already good; she hadn't needed that stuff in the first place.
A stunning young girl indeed under all that powder.
Not appearing that fake anymore.
And...she was in no way like Paige, whose skin was ghostly with red patches and chicken hair.
Her hair stood out in places not only in the morning but anytime since she didn't tie it anymore because it was not that hot outside anymore.
As a girl with a good sense of aesthetics, Natasha naturally knew that she looked strange with makeup, especially at her age and with that amount.
But her lovely little brother had demanded that, since she had hit puberty, to do her make up every day, and that personally.
She did not want this, but she was scared of his mother, so she gave in. Between the situations when she saw herself in the mirror, like going to the bathroom, she even forgot about it.
Lance surely thought poorly of her because of that. Seeing how stunned he looked, she felt thankful for Paige's reminder.
Maybe she now had a better chance.
She felt giddy but saw him drifting off, smiling tenderly as he thought of something else.
Her heart clenched, and she leaned near him, whispering
"My lovely little brother is somewhat strange; he wants to do my makeup every morning... I just gave in, but I don't like it... so I will stop him and go around the way I am."
Again, she was overly familiar—she should not have told him. But she wanted his full attention, even when it warranted lying.
Natasha would never say 'no' to her lovely little brother, but she could remove her makeup after leaving the house.
"M-..mmh?" Lance wanted to ask if she meant Meier, but the system screeched that he should not know her brother's name, so he corrected himself.
"Yes, I didn't want you to misunderstand." She looked at him and smiled shyly.
"That-you can go around the way you want to. But like this, it suits you more." He responded while asking himself how much of a psycho this 'Meier' was to have this kind of hobby.
That reminded him.
Lance took his phone out and searched for the three-M murderer.
There were many more results than he thought he would get.
The M city matricide murderer.
The press gave this catchy and inaccurate name. The murders happened around 25 years ago and lasted for a few years before miraculously stopping.
The police thought that the murderer died or went to prison for another crime.
Case closed.
'Then how the fuck is he running around in the future?'
Getting named like this was natural for him being a murderer and that in city M. He was first called the 'three M,' but that was not memorable enough without the' murderer,' so there was an extra M in the name 'Three M murderer.' Still, no one cared about that as long as it sounded good.
'It does not sound good either way. Why did he feel that the author unintentionally added an 'M' and then wrote his way around this?'
The 'Matricide' was the most inaccurate part.
He did not kill his own mother- or they would at least know who he was, but he killed women who were about to become mothers. As to say, heavily pregnant women, killing them and their unborn child.
They speculated that it was a middle-aged guy, white, with impotence and having problems with women, as well as with 'Mothers,' maybe still living together with his own.
'That's... a crappy profile. No wonder they never caught him.'
Middle aged was definitely wrong, it should have been someone young at that time, not middle aged until now. Or he had been too old to murder again in a few years.
But still, maybe there was more than one person or someone copying his way of killing.
Wait....
[Paige was pregnant when she was killed??] He asked in his head, much more urgently than he intended to while snapping a pen.
The sound made Natasha flinch after playing dolls with Meier recently. She could manage it better the first time, but this time, she could not bring herself to praise him for destroying his pens.
[She was set up for a rape before being killed. If she would be pregnant because of being raped- that I don't know.]
Lance relaxed a bit when he heard that answer before clenching his teeth again.
[Then why did that guy murder Paige? And also required Natasha and me to defeat him?]
[This information can only be received in the system space.]
A few curses rang out in his head before he concentrated back on the teacher again.
Since the system had abandoned Paige, no longer impersonating the role of the lovestruck villainess, and instead suddenly promoted her to being his cousin-cannon fodder as a late patch-up for them being too 'close' to each other, there was no storyline regarding her lusting after Lance, which made her relax much more.
Coming after a high school boy was no joke at her age.
In part two, they had no contact with each other except for the first school day anyway, so her being the villainess was only in part one.
Although, it seemed that the system had tried to merge the two parts by letting her act like a villainess in the beginning, and even now, having her bully the female lead without reason.
She sighed heavily.
'What is this...'