Unedited
Eventually, a magic doll appeared and began tidying up the surroundings with skillful finesse. The old wooden door was as it had been yesterday in a matter of hours.
The magic doll, which had scraped up every piece of colored paper, even those smaller than her little fingernail, and placed it in a basket, stretched out its arms toward Lady Edwards. I knew that I was going to be in a terrible situation if I let the basket fall into Lady Edwards’ hands, the overzealous fake journalist’s roommate and mother. So, I quickly tried to attack it, only to get my forehead hit painfully due to its strong self-defense mechanism.
While rubbing my slightly protruding forehead, Lady Edwards had obtained all the evidence of the promiscuous private life of a girl whose future hopes involved being trash. My eyes darkened as I imagined what kind of damning article would be published in the Fitzsimmons Times the day after tomorrow.
***
On Sunday evening, I refused several invitations and locked myself in my room. For example, my nerdy friend Brianna Mosley firmly believed that I would feel better if we organized together a common-language spelling bee to be held at the Harvest Month banquet.
But even if there hadn’t been a placard referring to me as a prostitute at my door, I wouldn’t have participated in a spelling contest. I sent her off with a vague smile as she left for the Common Language Debate Room, licking her lips in excitement.
Kelly Ramirez, the theater department’s only sound effects manager, and Milua’s emerging mining magnate Elizabeth McCarthy were very busy. It would probably be Monday morning before they realized the situation I was in. By now, Christa Edwards is probably writing an article about her delusions that is worse than third-rate gossip.
Anais’ offer was, frankly, tempting. She was scheduled to meet with a shaman who specializes in curses today and receive a package of curses specifically designed for Viscount Donnelly.
It contained a variety of items, from an ordinary cursed doll to an incense stick that, if burned with a portrait, would cause bad luck for a day, to a quill that would cause lactose intolerance to the person whose name was written using it.
It seemed like a great idea to acquire one for Adam Walsh. This time too, there was a very high possibility that that son of a bitch was the one who pushed me into the swamp of dirty rumors. As I recall, after attending Fitzsimmons, I never revealed my middle name to anyone except Walsh.
Yet when I was ready to go out, a thought suddenly occurred to me. Are Walsh’s claims really absurd?
Even if it was a misunderstanding with Bolton and Nadon, could I claim absolute innocence with Keran, Kyle, Jaden, and even Edgar? Moreover, in the second semester, I was ready to become a full-fledged piece of trash in order to break the cursed cycle of time loop.
According to Kyle, unlike Blossom, who earned the title “The Princess of the Student Council,” there are people who find my behavior uncomfortable—even though I haven’t done much with anyone yet except Keran—partly because I had an asshole for an ex-boyfriend, but mostly because I was a background character. It is naturally accepted that the main character has multiple love interests because it is predetermined in the world, that is, by the system, but since that is not the case for background characters, there is resistance.
Even though it was a difficult concept to understand, I felt like I had a rough understanding of it. Honestly, if someone as beautiful as Blossom, with a voice as melodious as a lark, went around with a bunch of guys, I’d probably accept it.
But a girl with messy brown hair and generic blue eyes? That didn’t seem believable. I recalled Blossom dancing arm in arm with Bolton and Nadon on the deck of the magic ship. I tried to put my face into her face in my imagination. I felt a sense of foreignness.
So I ended up merely seeing Anaïs and Faulkner off as well. Walsh deserves to die, but it’s not hard to accept that students who get caught up in his instigation are now discussing Ariel Dalton’s inexplicable charms. The fact that it upset me was a separate matter.
Luckily for me, I had plans for a great Sunday evening. Professor Conley, who taught barrier techniques, was the most boring person at Fitzsimmons after Professor Houston. I had to start working on assignments from the first week of the semester.
According to my friend Kelly, who got an A in Barrier Arts class in the first semester, Professor Conley was strict about spelling, so I needed not only time to complete the assignment but also time to cast spelling-correction spells. Looking back on my wizarding career so far, it was clear that the latter would probably take longer than the former.
Uneasy premonitions always became reality. Spell correction spells were learned during auxiliary magic practice classes in lower grades. In other words, the difficulty level was not that high. Nevertheless, the magic circles I drew continued to produce unexpected effects.
At first, all the ‘mana’ in my assignments became ‘lots'(Mani). To correct this, I slightly modified the structure of the magic circle, and lots’ was changed to ‘manner’. I giggled to myself because the sentence that says you can only use a barrier magic if you have sufficient manners made strange sense.
The laughter didn’t last long. The moment ‘manner’ changed from ‘octopus'(Muneo) to ‘croaker'(Mineo), then ‘push'(Mireo), and finally to ‘secret love'(Mirae), I decided I couldn’t keep gambling on such slim odds. That was a very ‘sorry'(Mian) thing to do to the assignment I had worked so hard to write.
Then my concentration completely evaporated. I went to the window and pulled back the curtains. Like the pristine Ariel from before her studies in astronomy, I planned to pray to the moon for Adam Walsh to fall on his backwards and break his nose tomorrow.
Opening the window wide, the wind wildly tousled my hair. There was no way I could be a pristine Ariel with my hair smacking my cheeks. I leaned out depressingly to close the window. It was then that I discovered a man climbing the outer wall of the dormitory.
“Didn’t we just see each other yesterday? What are you doing here?”
I shook my head in exasperation, and instead of greeting me leisurely, he widened his eyes.
“We’re together yesterday?”
“Sorry, but I don’t have time to play along with you. Do you know how complex a spelling correction spell is—Wait, are you Edgar?”
“Did you meet Bryce yesterday?”
“Does it matter now? How did you… Aren’t you hurt? Are you okay now?”
As I spoke, I pulled Edgar Ramos up to the windowsill. As I looked at him stumbling due to teleportation motion sickness, a chronic condition of his, I saw a tightly wrapped bandage under his shirt.
“I was able to come this far because I’m well. Thank you for asking though.”
He gave a cursory answer and then became interested in my assignment full of ‘secret love’ affairs.
“Pretty racy content, don’t you think? Isn’t this a bit provocative for Professor Conley? He probably never even held a woman’s hand.”
Edgar managed to gag and laugh at the same time.
“Don’t make fun of me.”
Only after lifting my heel as much as possible and extending my arms as far as they would go was I able to protect my assignment from the ‘Longbean'(Muldae) and ‘Mean'(Mudin) Edgar.
“How creative your magic must be to turn a description of the five principles of barrier magic into a popular cliche novel?”
Eddie, a genius wizard, took pity on Miss Dalton, who unintentionally sexually harassed Professor Conley, and cast a correct spelling correction spell on my assignment. Under the blue glowing palms, all the ‘secret love’ returned to ‘mana’.
“Why did you meet Bryce?”
“Why would I meet with him? To talk behind your back, of course.”
That was true to some extent. Nadon and I were not close, and we had a mutual dislike for each other, so we had little to talk about. The only thing we had in common was that we were close to Edgar.
So whenever there was a hint of silence, I would quickly bring up Edgar’s name. Nadon laughed at or ignored most of what I said, but whenever I brought up his younger brother, he always gave me a decent response.
‘What? Really?’ Edgar was astonished.
“What did Bryce say?”
Now he seemed a little restless. I suppressed my laughter and cleared my throat in an exaggerated manner.
“Oh, bad Eddie. I heard you completely ruin someone else’s portrait.”
When I was too young to even remember it anymore, probably more than 10 years ago, there was a major epidemic on the continent. It was not life-threatening, but it was highly contagious, and it was a disease that made many parents nervous because it could cause complications or leave aftereffects in some children.
Illness was not something that was especially avoided by nobles, so I had suffered from it too. Both the Count Villard family and Viscount Dalton family, who frequently interacted with the Count family, were extremely cautious when that happened. This is because the count’s second son was the weakest of weaklings and spent most of his days in bed, even without an epidemic. Unfortunately, since I was closest to him, my getting sick created quite a dilemma.
It seemed like a similar situation had happened to Nadon. Four-year-old Eddie desperately hoped that his brother would recover quickly so they could play together again.
He also did not understand that although a portrait made with magic ink would look perfectly like the real thing, it was just a painting, and that the disease could not be cured with the same herbs he would place on his torn knee. So one day, the portrait of the prince hanging in Queen Rosemary’s palace was completely stained with crushed and watered herbs.
“You were so cute as a baby. What happened?”
“I still think I’m pretty cute.”
Edgar said, rubbing the back of his neck sheepishly. I wanted to tell more about four-year-old Eddie’s adventures, but he was too embarrassed, and I also didn’t know when the future champion of the common language spelling bee would return.
Although he tried to act as normal as possible, Edgar’s expression occasionally twisted in pain. It was clear he hadn’t fully recovered yet. So, there must have been a serious reason for him to repeatedly cast teleportation spells in his unhealed state, then hang onto the girls’ dormitory wall. It was true that his actions were mostly impulsive, but he was not as reckless as many people believed.
“Why are you here?”
So when I asked this, Edgar put his hand in the back pocket of his pants and smiled mischievously. Soon, the shirt he was wearing opened up to reveal the bandages covering his chest—along with a dark red stain slowly spreading. I was so shocked that I ran towards Edgar and grabbed him by the collar.
You can now sponsor an extra chapter by buying me a Ko-fi! 2 Ko-fi= 1extra chapter.
