(Luna Ebonveil — hours earlier.)
Lying flat on the top bunk, I stared at the door where Rex had disappeared out of the room, my knees pulled up against my chest, arms wrapped around them.
He kissed me.
I pressed my fingers lightly against my own lips, like I could still feel it there if I pressed hard enough.
I groaned into my knees, loud enough that the sound bounced faintly off the ceiling, and grabbed the hotdog pillow to strangle.
"Stupid," I muttered into the fabric. "Stupid, stupid, FUCK."
The worst part was I still hadn’t decided if I was mad about the kiss, or mad that he hadn’t done it again since.
I kicked the blanket away and sat upright, the mattress springs squeaking loudly in the quiet room.
"No."
I grabbed a pillow, clutching it tightly against my chest like a shield. "No, no, no. Absolutely not."
Well. Okay. Fine. Technically, I had been about two seconds away from destroying half the dormitory with an unsanctioned mana discharge, and technically, Rex had just been trying to stop that from happening. My expression flattened slowly against the pillow.
...He was just trying to stop me from blowing up the building.
Pause.
That doesn’t make it any less embarrassing!
I buried my face straight into the pillow, muffled screams escaping me. "AHHH, WAAHHHH! Aghhhhh...!!!"
...
...
It took an embarrassingly long while before I finally managed to gather enough dignity to actually stand up, climb down from the bunk. I stood in the center of the bedroom, hands on my hips, taking a look at the disaster zone.
The desk lamp had taken a fall, the heavy velvet curtains were completely disheveled, and my desk looked like a hurricane had swept through it.
Fine. I’d clean.
I got to work fast, because if there was one thing my mother had drilled into me before shipping me off to this academy, it was that a noble’s room reflects a noble’s discipline, regardless of how thoroughly that noble had just nearly detonated it.
One time in the middle of cleaning the Destroyed vase looked at me and asked: If you actually have used Mana surged, would you win? (Would you clean?)
I stared at it: "nah, I’d win." (I’d clean)
Well, boom! I finished.
I slowly opened the living room door.
The living room wasn’t quite as bad— a few scattered cooking tools, some broken glass from what I assumed used to be a vase, the television knocked clean off its stand.
I lifted the television back into place with a lazy telekinetic pull, swept up the glass, and somewhere in the middle of all that cleaning, made the fatal mistake of getting hungry enough to try whatever Rex had left covered on the counter.
It was, super, very good. Very very good, honestly, for someone who claimed to have zero mana and even less talent. I ate more of it than I meant to, then went straight back to cleaning like nothing had happened, pretending I hadn’t just inhaled half of my supposed husband cooking in one sitting.
An hour later, I stood in the middle of the now-spotless living room, hands on my hips, and let out a deeply satisfied sigh. "Wew. I really am good at this."
And... well, I finished Rex food! Yey! ಡ ͜ ʖ ಡ.
Alright, the bathroom should be checked too...
The bathroom, when I checked it, needed nothing at all.
So I took the opportunity to actually look at myself properly in the mirror for the first time all day.
Hair falling in a clean, glossy sheet of brown, not a strand out of place despite the morning’s chaos.
Oversized, comfortable shirt hanging just right. Posture perfect, because a noble’s posture was never allowed to slip, not even during a private nervous breakdown in a shared dormitory bathroom.
My expression settled into something appropriately dignified.
Good.
Man... I really should’ve gone to class today. Skipping lectures in the very first week of the Vahard Academy is a bold move, even for me. But then again, I’m an Ebonveil. I was a noble, so realistically, who was actually going to say anything to my face about it.
Lol (⌐■-■).
Now that the dorm was spotless and my stomach was full with Rex, boredom immediately set in. I am not the type of woman to spend her afternoon doom-scrolling through the internet, so I paused, staring back at my reflection.
Right. There was a park somewhere on the academy grounds. I’d hear some of the upperclassmen mention it in passing, tucked away behind the mountain trail nobody bothered walking unless they had a reason to.
Well. Why not.
...
I went back to the bedroom, and dressed in a tailored, pale-violet walking dress complete with silver embroidery along the cuffs.
The walk took a solid half hour, mostly because the park sat well behind the academy proper, accessible only by a narrow dirt path that wound its way up toward the base of the mountain.
By the time I actually reached it, though, I understood immediately why people bothered making the trip.
The whole place opened up into a wide, lantern-strung clearing dotted with dozens of food stalls, small game booths, and a steady flow of students wandering between them, laughing, eating, generally enjoying an afternoon I’d spent, in comparison, sobbing into a hotdog pillow.
I began walking mindlessly through the crowd, my hands folded gracefully behind my back. It didn’t take long for the quiet murmur of the crowd to shift focus.
"Look... isn’t that Lady Ebonveil?"
"She’s even prettier up close, holy shit..."
"Isn’t she one of the academy’s top first-years? The one who shattered the mana-testing stone during orientation?"
Maybe.
"I heard her family’s shadow-marches command three entir—"
And bla, bla, bla. The usual glazing.
I turned slightly toward a pair of swooning second-years and offered a faint, perfectly practiced, elegant nod. "Good morning."
The guy on the left immediately lost his footing, his knees going out as his friend barely caught him by his collar.
Wow. Dramatic... and... I smell a Yaoi. (⌐■-■) agh~ young ma— oh, they’re older than me.
Anyways, I kept walking, and the whispers kept following, because apparently that was simply the tax I paid for existing in public.
"Holy shit, she’s so pretty—"
Yes. Yes, I’m aware, thank you.
Another cluster of students glanced my way, and I resisted the urge to sigh directly at them.
Stop staring, though I supposed I couldn’t really blame them.
Another student offered a compliment as I passed, and I accepted it with the grace befitting my station, because naturally, that’s simply how these interactions were supposed to go.
Passing by a grand stained-glass storefront, I caught a quick glance at my reflection in the dark glass.
Flawless.
With a quiet sigh, I spotted a secluded wooden bench tucked beneath a blooming wisteria tree and sat down. The moment I was out of the direct line of sight, my pristine posture collapsed. I leaned forward, dropping my face into both hands, staring down at the cobblestones through the gaps in my fingers.
"That Rex... That idiot... Why did it have to be a kiss anyway?!" I muttered under my breath, my cheeks flushing crimson all over again.
"Why couldn’t he have just— tackled me, or, I don’t know, thrown a blanket over my head, or literally anything else..." I dug my fingers into my own hair. "Why am I still thinking about it?! And why did he look so calm afterward?!"
HE DIDN’T EVEN POUNCED ON ME AFTER THAT!!!!! AHHH HE JUST LEFT!!! I... I SWEAR I THOUGHT SOMETHING SPICY WOULD HAPPEN!
A passing student slowed down near my bench, bowing politely. "Lady Ebonveil, you look exceptionally lovely this evening."
I instantly snapped upright, giving her a serene, flawless smile. "Thank you."
The moment she walked off, I slumped right back down, groaning into my hands.
And that fucker had the audacity to claim he panicked!!!!
Ugh!
With nothing better to do— and completely unwilling to go back to the dorm anytime soon —I let myself sit there stewing for a good while, then eventually gave up trying to make sense of any of it and just let the evening happen around me instead.
Wandering between stalls without really buying anything, half-listening to a street musician somewhere off to the side playing something slow on an instrument I didn’t recognize, watching a group of younger students chase each other around the fountain until one of them tripped face-first into it to everyone’s delight, including mine.
By the time the sky finally shifted fully into night, strung lanterns glowing warm gold against the dark and stars scattered thick overhead now that we were far enough from the main campus lights to actually see them properly, I’d more or less stopped thinking about Rex entirely.
Mostly.
Eventually, even I had to admit the walk back would take just as long as the walk out, and there was a certain amount of dignity in not being caught wandering the mountain path alone after dark, noble bloodline or not.
I pushed myself up off the bench, smoothed down my dress out of habit, and started the long trek back toward the dorms, half-dreading and half-curious about whatever state I’d find the place in when I got there...
Pft, I don’t give a fuck, I’m gonna go back to the dorm.
***
(Rex Knox)
"Welcome to my—" I started, stepping through the door with Aveline right behind me, and then stopped completely, staring at the living room in front of me.
Spotless. Not a single broken vase shard in sight, the television sitting perfectly upright back on its stand like it had never been anywhere else, curtains hanging straight, not one thing out of place.
"Did... did the academy send a specialized restoration crew...?"
"Erm... something like that doesn’t exist..." Aveline responded. (´∩｡• ᵕ •｡∩`)