Unedited
“Oh my god, that dress looks perfect for Blossom.”
Bree was so excited that she didn’t even look my way, even though she realized I was coming. I was a little disappointed, but she was still my favourite friend. Next to her, Kelly Ramirez muttered as if she were shocked.
“Those earrings were made with that expensive phoenix crystal. Our prince is robbing the national treasury again.”
In the centre of the deck, boxes were stacked as tall as I was. They were gifts for the birthday girl. Blossom checked them one by one, with movements as light as a pixie’s flapping wings. The smile that showed her teeth evenly and the gently curved corners of her eyes were lovely.
A crudely cut gemstone dangled from her earlobe that looked as if they emitted purple smoke from within. As Kelly said, it was a gift from Bryce Nadon.
Perhaps because his brother had robbed their Treasury, Edgar Ramos’ gift was not very grand. However, the pale gloves reaching up to the elbows suited Blossom perfectly.
The Holy Knight of Illestia presented a set of sparkling hairpins. As they were placed throughout Blossom’s intricately braided hair, they resembled a daytime galaxy. It was a choice fitting Bolton’s good fashion sense.
Jaden didn’t have that kind of sense. In fact, he had sought my advice to prepare a gift. If I had known it was for Blossom, I wouldn’t have thought so hard about it.
Anyway, she seemed to like the magic tool I chose and Jaden gave her. It was a ring that changed shape every time you twisted it around your finger.
When the box wrapped with a blue silk ribbon was opened, gasps erupted from the surrounding area. It was a gift from Keran. A necklace so gorgeous that it made all the other jewellery hanging on her delicate fingers seem dull.
Keran personally placed it around Blossom’s neck. The beautiful couple looked as if they were in a painting, radiating happiness. I forced my eyes away from them and looked somewhere else. The moon was bright. The stars were shining.
After a short while, music began to play from somewhere. It was a light dance song with bagpipes and piano playing the main and counter melody, respectively. Nadon and Bolton escorted Blossom in place of Keran, who had disappeared after the gift presentation ceremony.
Blossom, linked arm-in-arm with the two men, danced around the pile of gifts. Anyone could see that she looked like the main character, so my confidence instantly plummet to zero. It seemed I, a girl with brown hair who had nothing special, was not meant to covet such a place.
“Ariel, did you spike the punch?”
While I was lost in depressing thoughts, Elizabeth McCarthy appeared with her boyfriend on her back. Brennan’s complexion was like a sweet potato freshly dug from the dirt.
“Mine’s still here, so it looks like Kyle succeeded. Is he dead?”
“Unfortunately, he’s alive. He threw up properly earlier.”
There were half-conscious kids hanging on the railing where Liz’s chin was pointing. Was the dwarven liquor too much after all? I clicked my tongue and looked at Professor Humphreys and Professor Houston. Professor Humphreys was lifting students who were swaying precariously on the railing, as if collecting laundry. Professor Houston, on the other hand was… .
Coming closer?
“Damn it, I’m screwed! See you later! Be sure to give Brennan the stomach medicine!”
Even if the culprit was Kyle, I couldn’t be free from the charges as I was holding a bottle of alcohol in my hand right now. I ran towards the cabin. Narrow hallways and dark corners would provide a good hiding place for pranksters.
“Dalton! Stop right there!”
The petrification spell fired from Professor Houston’s hand bounced off the wall a few times before returning to him. Serves him right! I laughed loudly and ran down the corridor. Prince Nadon’s pride had made the magic ship’s size ridiculously large, so I thought it was surely possible to get lost here after wandering around a bit.
“Senior Ariel, please give up.”
Of course, I meant Professor Houston, not me!
“I didn’t know you were the ambitious type, Kendra.”
If my intelligence was 3, I would have been able to distinguish between the path I had taken and the path I had not taken, but it was only 2. So at one point, I found myself in a confrontation with Kendra Bradley. Kendra was one of the fourth graders who helped Professor Houston chase after me.
“Why do you think I’ve been desperate for volunteer points?”
Professor Houston was in charge of fourth-grade discipline and managed the rewards and punishments of all fourth-grade students. He could also compile a list of recommended candidates for the next student council president based on that. Keran Ilestia had been elected student council president after receiving the highest praise from Professor Houston for having the most points and fewest demerits in history.
Maybe that’s what Kendra Bradley wanted. After the Duke and Duchess of Bradley passed away in an unexpected accident, Kendra was at odds with his guardian, the Marquess of Wilkinson. Certainly, with her approaching adulthood, being president of the Fitzsimmons Student Council would not be a bad position for her to solidify her position as the head of the family.
“Come on, senior. I’ll go easy on you…”
One of Kendra’s fingers, which she was beckoning me with, was stiff. It seemed to be a side effect of the petrification spell. The shape it formed was oddly reminiscent of an obscene gesture, making me feel a bit strange.
“You’re not doing that on purpose, are you?”
“No way, I wouldn’t dare to a senior as esteemed as you.”
Contrary to her words, her attitude was not polite at all. I just laughed and immediately ran away. Kendra was more agile and had longer legs than me, so I really had to run hard to shake her off.
Eventually, a hallway with doors lined up on both sides appeared. There were no forks in the road, and it was straight, so it was the perfect place for Kendra to catch up. I didn’t want to decorate the sails like the second grade kids did. So I grabbed any doorknob I could find and turned it.
“Please help! An ogre is chasing me!”
Then, as if in response to my earnest plea, the thick iron door grazed the floor and opened. The next moment, an arm wrapped in navy blue satin fabric wrapped around my waist and pulled me inside. ‘An ogre? That’s harsh!’ Kendra’s angry shout slowly receded through the closing door.
A fresh scent hit me. It’s like something you would smell when walking through a forest with dense trees. I knew only one person who could smell like this, rubbing eucalyptus oil on their wrists.
“Keran?”
“The ogre is still in the hallway.”
It was a whisper with barely suppressed laughter. Just as he said, Kendra Bradley was still prowling nearby, searching for me.
“You’ll wish you had just let yourself be caught!”
After waiting a little while, the presence of Kendra, who had uttered lines befitting a third-rate villain, completely disappeared. I let out the long breath I have been holding.
“What kind of prank did you pull to cause such a ruckus outside?”
Only then did Keran let me go. His hand that let go of my waist was clutching some sort of document. Was it something important enough to skip Blossom’s birthday party for? My gaze traveled from the document upward. Unlike on the deck, the collar of his satin shirt was slightly undone, and I found myself staring blankly at it, so I didn’t really hear Keran’s question.
“Uh… what?”
“You don’t want to get close to me, but you like my body?”
“Huh, what, hey, what are you talking about?”
Keran asked, sounding genuinely curious, which made me feel even more embarrassed. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to be close to Keran; it was that I didn’t want Blossom to see me getting close to him. Also, I didn’t really like his body; I liked his face more. What Keran said was half right and half wrong, but I couldn’t explain it in detail.
I absentmindedly took a sip of what I had in my hand, feeling unnecessarily hot. The watery and slightly tangy potato potage was one of the easiest to swallow among the various potato pottages I’ve had so far.
Brianna Mosley’s hair growth potion was a modified version of the potion she had submitted for her potions assignment that made whatever you eat taste like potato potage. So, in addition to becoming hairy, I suffered the side effect of falling back into the potato hell I thought I had narrowly escaped.
My chin recovered quickly, but my tongue did not. I was still unable to fully pursue one of my life’s purposes, food.
The spacious cabin, probably reserved for Keran, had a sofa large enough to be used as a bed. It was so soft that when I sat down, it felt like my butt was being sucked in. I snuggled up on the sofa and chatted with Keran. As is usually the case whenever Fitzsimmons students meet each other recently, exams and vacation have been the topic of conversation.
Keran didn’t seem to have much to say about the exam. Well, I would be surprised if he asked what the answer to question 4 in Herbalism was.
As for vacation, no. Keran casually mentioned that since Blossom had been invited to the Imperial City by his mother, they would probably spend the vacation together.
Suddenly, the scene I had seen earlier replayed in my mind. Fingers sliding across the white nape of her neck, a brilliantly shining necklace, a flawless smile… It looks like something straight out of a romance novel.
Suddenly everything felt so pointless. I managed to come up with a suitably sociable answer. And then I got up to say a suitably sociable goodbye.
But the world spun around me.
“Ariel?”
Keran’s body, sitting on the sofa across from me, leaned sharply to the right. Thinking back, it was me who was leaning, not Keran. The ground beneath my feet seemed to suddenly disappeared and my vision spun. My mind was a complete mess. Its as if a small creature was grabbing my brain and shaking it wildly.
I had experienced a similar feeling a long time ago… . At the graduation banquet, where I, Kyle, and Blossom experienced our own failures. And also before that, when my lifelong nemesis, Maverick Villard, poured wine into my glass, pretending it was grape juice.
So to speak, I was drunk. Extremely drunk. The watery and slightly tangy potato potage was actually the dwarven-made liquor, the same one that had turned Brennan into a potato-like state.
I was so weak that I couldn’t hold onto anything. The bottle rolled off the couch’s gentle slope and fell to the floor. The liquid that leaked out from there soaked the carpet. As a noxious smell assaulted his nose, Keran finally realized what had happened to me.
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