CH 102

He rubbed his eyes and took out a communication device from his pocket, and, after making it float midair, laid back down on the desk. He turned his head towards the window, obviously irritated, as he turned it on.

Cory seemed to be receiving a call. The device was shining brightly and ringing quietly. Cory began speaking, eyes closed.

[What again?]

[I have something I need to ask of you again.]

I could hear Yves’ voice through the communication device.

It was Yves’ fake voice–the one that I hadn’t heard in a long time. I was curious about their conversation, so I placed my ear near the device. I didn’t like eavesdropping, but this was my dream anyway.

I tried to focus on Yves’ voice when the darkness that surrounded me before began to overtake me.

The darkness surrounded me only for a brief moment. A new wave of light overtook me.

And in that moment, my eyes blinked open.

I saw the familiar ceiling of my dorm room, and my magic alarm clock was ringing loudly next to me. I was peeved off by it so I broke it right then.

I was awake, but I didn’t feel awake. It felt like I had travelled briefly and had just returned. I felt blank and exhausted so I caught my breath. Suddenly, the circle on the back of my hand flashed brightly and the magic inside of me strengthened. I could feel some strength coming back to me.

I didn’t have a clue what was happening. The dream I woke up from was clear in my head but I felt dazed.

I decided to stand up and head to my dresser to wake up completely. My eyes were dim from sleep so I fished around for the handle for a few moments before I caught it.

When I opened my dresser, I saw that it was full of dresses, accessories, and shoes. Just until my junior year, it was filled with my uniform, the neon dress, and that orange dress. Now, it was filled with a ton of different dresses and ornaments. This was everything that Yves had given to me at the junior end party.

Ugh, it’s too bright.

My mind flashed awake as I stared at the expensive looking ornaments. The shine of the ornaments were so bright that they even reached Hazel, who was still asleep. Hazel frowned as she pulled up her blankets and went back to sleep.

I hurriedly closed it back in case Hazel woke up and headed to the restroom. It was then.

I was passing by Hazel’s desk when I saw something strange.

“A magic recording device…..?”

There was a ton of recording devices and cameras on the desk.

I knew it wasn’t right, but I was nervous about the amount of devices that were on the desk so I decided to take a peek.

[Eu, eu…………Uhhhh…………..Euh…………]

In the device was a video of me, laying down on the bed and doggy paddling as hard as I could.

I could hear Hazel stifling her laughter from within the recording. She tried to hold in her laughter as she held on to the device, then gave up and put the device on the desk to keep recording me.

In the video, I could see Hazel slamming her fist on her desk as she laughed and me, doggy paddling in my sleep. In the other devices were clips of my backstrokes, my breaststrokes, and butterfly strokes.

“……..”

I tangled up all of the magic circles in her devices so they would all have errors.

“……”

Damn it.

After the strangely realistic dream, I stayed dazed the entire time.

Yesterday’s dream felt more like a memory of sorts than a dream. Usually, sleeping meant that I was resting but because yesterday’s dream was so vivid, I felt like I hadn’t had a bit of proper rest.

But whenever my body felt like it was losing strength, the circle on my hand reacted and increased the amount of magic in my body to make up for my strength. It was really strange.

After my bout with black magic, the people around me observed me with more care than before. They made a complete fuss if I did something that was even slightly out of the norm, so I put in a lot more thought into my every actions.

I felt like I was exactly the same, but the people around me said that I felt different. That the air around me was slightly heavier or darker than before? I checked the mirror and saw that my dark circles were slightly bigger. Seeing how much of a fuss they were making about this made me sure that they were just picking on me.

I pressed my temples as I walked across the hall, then briefly closed my eyes to give them a break.

Because of that, I missed the person walking in front of me and ended up bumping into them.

“Oh, I’m sorry.”

I apologized and held up my hands slightly to show them I was sorry.

“Damn, maybe you should see where you’re going?”

The person who bumped into me was a girl with long blonde hair. The girl glared at me briefly with sharp green eyes after bumping into me.

Her slightly upturned eye shape and green eyes were familiar. I knew this girl.

Viedielle Dubois. She was Cory’s little sister, one that I had seen from a distance.

Cory spoke up about his little sister ever so often. Just like her sharp features, she had a strong sense of pride and tried to act tough, but she was such a softie that he worried about her.

Viedielle was the baby of the family so she was a bit immature, and she was used to pushing people around. Cory was worried that if she entered a boarding school and didn’t fit in, that she would get hurt.

I had thought that I would have to greet her, but seeing her like this made me very happy.

“Okay, I’ll be careful.”

I picked up the things that Viedielle had dropped on the floor. When I apologized immediately, she looked stunned and scratched the back of her head.

“Shuraina? Oh my god, Shuraina unni? Wow, I found you!”

Viedielle had the same casual way of speaking as Cory. Not every noble spoke formally like Hylli, but a lot of them tended to speak in a more serious tone.

Just like Swan and Cory, she was also quite interesting. Even if it was less fashionable to act uppity, it was still, hmm…

Viedielle clapped in surprise.

“Unni, you’re the famous older sister of Karim? You’re not much, are you?”

Viedielle snorted as she mocked me before asking for a handshake.

Her hands seemed to be sweaty. She wiped her hand from her dress before raising her hand towards me.

But her hand was shaking for some reason. What, did she have some kind of hand tremor?

“B, but it’s good to finally meet you. Please take care of me. When you marry into my family, I’m going to marry into yours.”

“……..?”

“When you marry my older brother, I’m going to marry Karim.”

“……..?”

Why would I marry Cory? And why would you marry my brother Karim?

When I stared back at her with a confused expression, her expression turned strange as well.

“….wh, why. Why do you have that kind of expression on your face?”

Viedielle asked me, nervous. Sure, Viedielle marrying Karim could be attributed to her having a crush on my adorable Karim, but why would I marry Cory?

When I asked Viedielle why I would marry Cory, her face relaxed into a small grin.

“Wow. I almost feel bad for my brother right now.”

“…….?”

“You two spend club time alone and you’re still just friends? I told him that if he just kept being friends and didn’t do anything, he’d lose you.”

Viedielle muttered to herself before she turned to look at me. She handed me a huge sheet of paper.

In the paper she had handed me, there was a letter that many people had written on. It seemed like Viedielle had handed me a rolling paper.

In the center of the rolling paper, there was a heart that said ‘Reserved for Shuraina’. What the heck.

“Here, write this please. To be honest, I came all the way to the senior building for you, unni.”

Viedielle handed me a pen and told me to write a letter in the heart labelled ‘Reserved for Shuraina’.

“To be honest, it’s my brother’s birthday in a few days. My parents were busy until now so they couldn’t take care of him too well, but this birthday, I’m having a surprise party for him with my mother and father.”

Thinking back, it really was Cory’s birthday soon. Until now, only Hylli and I had celebrated Cory’s birthday. It was normal for students to leave the school to celebrate at home with their friends, but Cory didn’t do that.

He seemed annoyed about caring for his birthday. In his words, he ate the things he liked every day, so he didn’t really feel the need for a birthday.

When nobody else cared for him, I felt bad for it either. He wasn’t too active of a person either, so he was either sleeping in the corner of a room or researching magic. He didn’t have many friends. To make things worse, his scary looking features didn’t help–there were a lot of kids who wanted to approach Cory but couldn’t because they were scared of him.

Thankfully, his lazy, relaxed image helped improve his image recently, but people still found it hard to strike up a conversation with him.

As I was writing the letter, Viedielle kept asking me weird questions like why my letter wasn’t sweet so I ignored everything she said. Instead, I couldn’t help but poke at Viedielle’s cute puffy cheeks.

“I hope that my brother is so touched that he cries.”

Viedielle muttered to herself, voice tinged with guilt. She hugged the letter to herself and, as she headed back to the junior building, bumped into Swanhaden.

Viedielle was in awe of Swan’s beauty and handed him a pen to add something to Cory’s letter.

Swan read the letter and, after seeing something, scowled and sneezed onto the letter that Viedielle handed him. It looked forced.

“Oh, sorry. I got some spit on it. What do I do?”

Swanhaden’s eyes were narrowed as wiped his tongue with his thumb and rubbed his thumb on the letter that I just wrote. The ink smudged and you couldn’t read the contents of the letter.

“Ohhh, I’m so sorry. I tried to just wipe it off but this keeps on smudging.”

Swan said monotonously as he apologized without meaning it.

“I’m so sorry. What do I do? I’ll draw a unicorn because Cory likes that instead…..”

I’ve never heard about Cory liking unicorns before. Swan began to babble on.

Swan had promised to draw a unicorn but drew an ugly pig instead. I was sure that it was supposed to be a pig, but the horn and wings showed that he earnestly tried to draw a unicorn.

The pig-like unicorn drawing was placed in the center of the letter, inside of the heart. Then, he didn’t stop there. He added a few more ugly drawings.

Swan threw the pen towards Viedielle as he told her that Cory would love it so much that he would make a huge deal about it.

Viedielle’s childhood dreams were completely shattered.