Please Leave Emily Alone

Chapter 2

A breeze blew and Emily’s brown hair fluttered lightly.

“I must have turned the tree signpost…”

Emily sighed, her hair tangled. It was a mistake that she didn’t pay attention to the old wooden signboard as she worried about the magic ball on the street.

It was suspicious to see Astina’s group, who returned early, looking at her way while giggling.

“No wonder the road is getting tougher the further I go by.”

As the forest grew thicker, she panicked and went back to the way she had come from, but it was no longer a road. When she realized that she had lost her way and entered the deeper forest, dense tree branches were blocking her everywhere.

As everyone may have already noticed, Emily was wandering through a deserted forest by taking the wrong path while taking the magic test.

“Haa…”

Since the incident at the entrance ceremony two months ago, people around her have been whispering about Astina and Kira.

Some said that the second prince abandoned Astina because he fell in love with the beauty of Kira, a commoner, while others said that he approached Kira for political use.

And whatever the reason was, frankly, Emily wasn’t interested.

Her interest was solely to get an academy certificate.

With only one year of tuition, Emily had given up on getting a diploma in the first place.

Recently, she could get a job as a mage if she had a certificate of completion, so unless she wanted to go home and get married, she had to get a certificate of completion no matter what.

– Rustle.

As she trudged along with a sigh, the bushes in front of her suddenly shook slightly.

Surprised, Emily stopped as a ball of cotton popped out of the bushes.

“Hmm?”

Emily made a bewildered noise, and the white cotton ball that heard it twirled back and blinked its big eyes. It was a rabbit, an animal called Ranchit.

Seeing this, Emily hurriedly reached out and calculated the formula. Unlike ordinary rabbits, Ranchit were carnivorous, and they usually travel by group because of their weak strength. If a person ran into a group and got bit by them, one could have been seriously injured.

– Kree.

But before Emily could finish calculating the formula, the bushes shook here and there, and numerous Ranchit popped out.

“A, Aah!”

Eventually, she gave up casting the spell, turned around and ran frantically. The bouncing Ranchits followed behind her and opened their little mouths to bite her.

“Wind, Wind-!”

At that moment, she tried to deflect the Ranchits with incomplete wind magic, but the magic was so weak that the Ranchits jumped back on the road without flying much, so she just gave up and ran forward.

Then, there was a broken tombstone in front of her, so she quickly used her remaining mana and flew upward. The wind blew under her feet, and with the recoil, she climbed up the tombstone.

– Kree, Kree!

The tombstone was quite high. When she looked down, the Ranchits were bouncing around the tombstone, but they couldn’t come up.

“W, Wah. That was close.”

Emily relaxed and sat down. Since she used magic without calculating the proper formula, she felt dizzy as a large amount of her mana was drained in an instant.

Emily sat down and her hair, which became loose in the process of being chased in a hurry, fell over her shoulders.

– Rustle.

And before she could catch her breath, the bushes shook again. Surprised, Emily raised her head to see if something would pop out again, but after a long time, nothing came out.

Relieved, Emily washed her face dry to shake off her fatigue.

“You… Are you a freshman of the Magic Department?”

Just then, suddenly, at Emily’s feet, a low voice spoke cautiously.

Emily looked down in surprise at the sudden voice.

Then, there was a black-haired male student looking up at Emily, who was driving away the swarming Ranchits with his scabbard.

And their eyes met.

A solid shoulder line wrapped in a black training suit, a serious-looking face, transparent gray eyes and dark, black hair. As she stared down at him blankly, distracted by his handsome appearance, Emily suddenly came to her senses.

Perhaps it was the same with the other party. He looked up for a moment without saying a word, came to his senses, and then made a subtle expression.

The next moment, the thought that came to both of their minds at the same time was, ‘Why are you here…’

“Oh…”

“Oh, it’s Miss Emily.”

He was Ethan Valenti, who always accompanied the Second Prince.

Emily didn’t expect to meet him, a third year swordsman, in the forest, so Emily was stunned for a moment before coming back to her senses at his words.

“Oh, yes… Hello, Sir Valenti.”

“Yes, how are you? Well… I didn’t recognize you because your hairstyle was a little different than usual.”

“Yes? Oh… Yes, I see.”

Emily answered hastily because she didn’t understand what Sir Valenti said immediately. Then, she remembered that she usually tied her long hair into a ponytail or braid.

Only then, did she fully understand her words that he did not recognize her because of her different hairstyle and nodded her head again.

At the end of the conversation, there was a moment of silence between the two.

From Emily’s point of view, Ethan Valenti, one of the students following the Second Prince, was a very difficult opponent.

As the second son of a Marquis, he had been formally trained to become a knight from an early age. Upon graduating from the academy, he was an elite among the elite who was appointed to guard the second prince.

In addition, he was very famous for his beautiful appearance and excellent swordsmanship, and to Emily, he was like a mirage she had only heard from afar.

As he moved with the second prince, she often encountered him, but he always stood behind the second prince without saying a word.

In addition, it was the first time that the two had met face-to-face since Emily couldn’t even raise her head behind Kira before out of nervousness because of the second prince’s presence.

“I was looking around when a request came in to find freshmen who went off course during class… Could it be that Miss Emily is the student who deviated from the course?”

When Valenti looked up at Emily, who hesitated, and asked her to confirm, Emily’s face flushed with embarrassment.

“Oh… Yes, that’s me.”

“Oh, ahem. Yes.”

He turned his head and coughed to pretend not seeing Emily’s red face.

Then he looked at Emily, who still stayed on the tombstone.

“Miss Emily, are you not coming down from there?”

“Oh… Yes.”

In fact, she was in a hurry to run away a while ago, so she forced herself to use magic even before the formula was completed and used much more mana than needed, so she needed time to collect it again.

Sir Valenti nodded as Emily also nodded with an embarrassed look.

“Alright. Then, I’ll catch you from below. I won’t miss, so can you jump lightly?”

She couldn’t say she couldn’t do it here, so Emily answered with a smile by pulling her trembling lips together and agreed.

Embarrassed, she wanted to disappear from this spot immediately, but Emily tried to think positively.

“Well, I look forward to your kind cooperation, Sir Valenti.”

Emily rose from her seat and straightened her shaky legs. Looking at the figure, Valenti spread his legs slightly and held his ground firmly before reaching up to catch her.

“Yes, leave it to me.”

As she was about to jump, her heart thumped with tension.

Emily, who tried to jump down while closing her eyes tightly, realized that it was way scarier, so she opened her eyes, clenched her teeth, took a step away, and threw herself lightly into the air.

– Thud.

Before she could scream at the creepy sensation of her feet falling at a frightening speed, Sir Valenti’s large hands held Emily’s waist and back firmly and lifted her over his shoulders.

Emily’s body was perfectly attached to his shoulder, and with a desire to live, she reached out to grab the nape of his neck, bringing him closer. The two students, who had become closer, looked at each other.

Emily’s bright green eyes met Sir Valenti’s pale gray eyes.

Emily’s long brown hair, which had been floating in the sky, fluttered down and wrapped around Emily and Valenti’s cheeks.

And the next moment, the smell of Valenti’s body wafted to the tip of Emily’s nose. She felt her face burn like a flame before she could even recognize the firm shoulders under her palms, his thick nape, and the slick feel and smell of his sweat-drenched skin.

On the other hand, Valenti, who was facing Emily, felt his face burning at the same time. Bewildered, he relaxed his hands around her body to quickly lower her to the ground.

“Oh, wait! S, Skirt, my skirt!”

“What? Oh, yes!”

However, perhaps because of his haste, he put Emily down from his shoulder, and when their clothes rubbed against each other and the skirt of her school uniform went up, Emily screamed in embarrassment.

Valenti looked up in surprise at Emily’s scream, then looked away in surprise when he saw Emily’s skirt on her belly.

As she almost fell, Emily went down and staggered and hurriedly pulled down her school uniform skirt.

After straightening her clothes, she looked up at Sir Valenti, who still held his head up at almost a right angle, making his scruff stand out.

Seeing the sweat-drenched short black hair clinging to the nape of his reddish neck, Emily could not bear it any longer and turned her head to the side.

On her trembling fingertips, the texture of the moist skin she had touched a moment ago remained.

“T, Thank you, Sir Valenti. I’m fine now.”

“Oh, yes, Miss Emily.”

While thanking him, she bit the tip of her tongue and stuttered, but Valenti did not notice it as he kept stroking the back of his neck while looking down at her with his head still tilted upward.

The two looked at each other hesitantly and due to the awkwardness, they didn’t know what to do.

“…The road is this way. Would you like to follow me?”

“Yes, sir.”

After a while, Sir Valenti, who had shaken off his embarrassment, spoke again to guide the way.

Then Emily also nodded, pretending as if nothing was wrong with her blushing face.

Following Sir Valenti, who walked ahead through the thick bushes and branches, the two were soon able to reach the gathering place of the Magic Department’s teachers and students.

“Miss Emily!”

When Emily looked at Kira from afar, running with her blonde hair flying, Sir Valenti excused himself and turned towards the magic teacher.

In addition to Sir Valenti, there were also students in the Swordsmanship Department in black training suits, who approached the teacher, bowed, and went back together.

Emily glanced at Valenti’s back, then nodded when Kira, who approached her, held Emily’s hand and asked if she was okay. As Kira explained, her first class went on like this.

Kira, who took the test after Emily, saw that there were hardly any traces of people on the path indicated by the signpost and thought it was strange. So Kira informed the teacher, and the teacher, who realized that three students had disappeared, asked for help from the students of the Swordsmanship Department, who were training nearby.

Sir Valenti must have been among the students in the Swordsmanship Department.

“Are you very tired? You’d better go home early today, Miss Emily.”

At Kira’s words, Emily sighed and nodded. It’s been a long day.

“Yes, I really should.”

Emily, who went down the road with all the Magic Department’s students as a group, suddenly remembered Sir Valenti’s pale gray eyes.

As she recalled the sweat-drenched black hair and the smell of his body when she was in his arms, Emily closed her eyes tightly and shook her head vigorously to come to her senses.

“Come in, Miss Emily.”

As Emily lags slightly behind, Kira, who walked ahead, turned around and called her.

“Yes, I’m on my way.”

Emily answered Kira and ran in a hurry. Emily’s long brown hair fluttered behind her back.

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