CH extra 18

Cory DuBois.

Six years deep into his one-sided crush. Moreover, this was his first love. He had a tendency to dig deep and hard in only one interest. He gave up on literature after falling in love with magic, didn’t even spare a single glance after falling for Shunivalen, and didn’t see anyone else except for Shuraina after he realized his feelings for her.

He had difficulty getting over something once he fell in love with it, but it took a while for him to get to that state to begin with. He didn’t have any feelings towards her when they first met, but the more he liked her the longer he spent time with her, and he looked at her with eyes full of respect when he learned that she was Shunivalen. He began to genuinely have feelings for her as more time passed and more positive feelings piled up on his previous feelings for her, and he began to care and treasure her even more when he became indebted to her. His positive feelings, friendship, his gratefulness, guilt, debt, and more all mixed together to become love.

Cory, who was slow when it came to his own feelings, didn’t realize that he had fallen in love with Shuraina even after he did. Although he occasionally thought about wanting to hug her, how her lips would feel on his, and other things that friends wouldn’t think of, he just brushed them off as thoughts without any realization.

No, he didn’t want to. He was scared that his greed would take away the relationship that he already had with her.

Cory had a gentle personality. He didn’t want too much. He was content with snacks, magic, and somewhere to lay down on. Because of that, he was disappointed when he thought of how he couldn’t get closer to Shuraina, but he was still content. He had club time, and he was able to stay with Shuraina as much as he wanted within those times. He became complacent because of that.

But when she suddenly brought over Eric and introduced him as her boyfriend, and when she distanced herself away from him because of it, when they began cleaning up the club room right before graduation. Cory suddenly became desperate.

So from senior year onwards, he thought that he had been pretty obvious about his feelings. He tried to express his feelings to her as best as he could.

He didn’t even hesitate to say things that he couldn’t dare to say out loud in front of others. And whenever that happened, Shuraina responded without an ounce of awkwardness.

“Okay. I’ll tell you the details of my next product first. How cute.”

No, you’re wrong! That’s not it! Whenever Shuraina responded like that, Cory’s heart felt like it was burning into ashes. Even when he was trying to be obvious, his feelings didn’t get through to her. At all. Shuraina’s image of him was a raging fan (she wasn’t wrong) but she put every single flirtatious action of his under the umbrella of fan behavior.

He felt like his feelings weren’t being delivered well enough to her because of his fan behavior, so he hid his love for Shunivalen in front of her. As much as he could. He had hoped that if he showed that he was genuinely interested in her, she would be interested in him.

He probably did everything else in the world except confessing his feelings to her. He could do anything but that. He knew how Shuraina looked when she was in love or liked someone. He would’ve confessed if she seemed to have any sort of feelings for him, but she only saw him as a friend. He was pretty content with everything right now, so he didn’t want to rock the proverbial boat. He hesitated even more.

And then, one day, he remembered the expression on Shuraina’s face as she looked at Swanhaden.

She had shown him the ‘I like them’ face, the one that she had never shown after Eric, to Swan. She smiled more when she looked at Swan and her ears and eyes were tinged with red more often. She had a softer expression on her face. And he’d seen moments when she’d even seemed embarrassed in front of Swan. That Shuraina.

‘It’s over.’

Cory stretched Swanhaden’s cheeks as far as he could as he cried inside. Eric had approached Shuraina with incredibly horrible intentions, so that was why it had ended horribly. But Swanhaden was different. If Shushu had begun to have feelings for Swanhaden, then.

Swan was already pretty quick to the catch, so he wouldn’t just let her feelings simmer and fade away. He’d try to make sure that her feelings would stay.

‘It’s over.’

Cory resigned himself once more and yanked Swan’s hand from under his chin while he was too focused on watching Shuraina practicing her sword.

He couldn’t even talk bad about Swan–he knew how hard he had worked to look good in front of her and how hard he had tried to appeal himself to her. He could only curse himself for not being more bold. He should’ve confessed when Shuraina didn’t like anybody else yet. If he had just realized his feelings for her during junior year. If he had captured her heart before Swanhaden arrived.

Swanhaden’s personality was pretty horrible and on the bad side, but he was the most forgiving, kind, responsible person in the world in front of Shuraina who also pretended to respect the elderly, rules, and morals. Swanhaden was twisted somewhere and had a dark side to himself, but he was someone who would take the literal sun and shove it into his eyes to rid himself of that darkness for Shuraina. He was a different kind of trash compared to Shuraina, but he cared deeply for Shuraina, so. Cory wished for the two to be happy before wishing only Shuraina to be happy. Swanhaden, you disgustingly lucky bastard.

Meanwhile, one positive that came out from this was that Viedielle was singing about how she wanted to marry Shuraina’s younger brother, Karim, so they would become family–just not in the way that he wanted. Anyway, he was comforted by the fact that he would be connected to Shushu.

He would just draw a line in the sand like he did before, stare at her, and help her when she needed. He would support her as her follower and support her every action. That was going to be his position. Cory surmised.

“I wanna see Shushu…….”

Cory, who had grown sad and despondent from being unable to see Shuraina after graduation, muttered as he stared at the snack he had dropped on the ground. He laid on his bed like a corpse and stretched out one hand to touch the fallen snack with his fingertips. He rolled around in his bed for days, regretting his decision. But he should’ve confessed. He just lifelessly hung around his bed after everything was over.

And then, he remembered how Shuraina really disliked his lifeless self and tried to live life energetically. He resumed his Shunivalen stanning activities and planned the festival with the organization he worked with.

Then he met someone named Michol.

Unlike what he had assumed, Swanhaden wasn’t by Shuraina’s side and he heard that someone named Michol, who had seemingly popped out of nowhere, was doing well with Shuraina. Michol, who reminded him of Eric. Someone who was trying to elevate himself by using Shunivalen’s information and technology.

The regret that he had buried deep within himself bolted to the surface.

“So I’m going to confess my love for her. Again and again, no matter how much it takes. Until I can’t do it anymore.”

And he had somehow ended up confession. Not in front of Michol, but in front of her. Michol was Shuraina.

He screamed internally as he hurried home. Cory buried his face into a pillow and stayed there.

He didn’t even think about the fact that Shuraina had lied to him and had embarrassed him. Instead, he was confused as to how she had gotten so much prettier. Shuraina had grown more beautiful in the time he hadn’t seen her. She had become more mature, and had a dreamy air around her. She had always had a complex when it came to her appearance, but it seemed like her beauty was just a late bloomer. No, maybe it was just his rose-tinted glasses again.

He could remember Shuraina’s face, which had shaken his mind and body, but he couldn’t remember the most important part of this whole ordeal–her expression. The expression on her face after she heard his confession. What was it?

Cory blinked slowly as he tried to forget about what happened earlier. His head was blank.

“……so embarrassing.”

He touched his bushy blond hair. His voice was muffled beneath the blanket. His ears were red as he occasionally let out moans of despair.

He hugged his pillow tight and rolled around his bed until he fell onto the ground with a thud. He rolled off his bed so often that he already had pillows on the ground, so it didn’t hurt that much. Cory closed his eyes, still on the ground. He soon fell asleep.

He dreamed of Shuraina. Her daily meal of tuna sandwiches and milk had helped her grow 8 meters high with her shoulders being 2 meters wide. Shuraina hugged him with a joyous expression on her face, telling him that she had finally accomplished her goal. He was just as happy, seeing her face, and hugged her back. Dream Shuraina looked extremely healthy with her bulky muscles. Her body should’ve been painfully hard because of her muscles, but she was strangely soft.

It was because Cory was hugging his pillow in real life.

Shuraina was so excited by the variety of magic circles and equations that she skipped sleeping. She laid down all of the circles she had bought on her desk and analyzed each and every one.

Her love of magic, which had simmered down a while ago, had completely returned after she shared and discussed her knowledge with others in the festival.

Now, she wanted to share the knowledge that she had of magic.

Doing what she liked as much as she wanted made her excited. She was so excited that she felt like heat was rolling off of her body. Shuraina lit a light on her work table and grabbed a pen to draw a large circle. She filled it up with equations. She was motivated–people were waiting for her future product.

“….Shuval Stan Group?”

She had been scribbling down equation after equation for hours when an alarm rang from her contact orb, stating that a new message had arrived. It had arrived for Shunivalen, and the sender was the Shuval Stan Group organization. They had sent her a personal invitation. It seemed that all of them had written the message in succession–the writing style kept changing by the sentence.

[We don’t expect you to visit, but we just hope you come to the Shunivalen-exclusive marketing booth to see. We beg you. We really want to see you in person.]

Shuraina burst into laughter at the invitation. She grabbed her robe and, without hesitation, stood from her spot.