He instantly pasted a friendly, harmless smile onto his face. "Lady Aria! A pleasure to see you again."
Aria did not return the smile. Her eyes were chips of ice.
"I heard everything."
Cane laughed nervously, a high, squeaky sound. "Just some friendly banter! Boys being boys, you know!" He shot a desperate, furious look at Cassius. Do something, you idiot!
To his shock, Cassius recovered instantly. He stepped forward, placing himself slightly in front of Cane.
"He’s right, Lady Aria. In fact, it was my fault. I was being a bad influence on him."
A perfect gentlemanly expression adorned Cassius’s face.
Cane stared at Cassius’s back, his eyes shining with newfound gratitude.
Cassius, you magnificent bastard. Your large and pure heart must be a blessing from the gods themselves.
Aria hummed, her arms crossed over her impressive chest. She didn’t look convinced. Then she rolled her eyes.
"Thank god. I almost thought the rumors I heard about you were true."
Before Cane could even process that, Cassius was talking again, his voice full of righteous indignation.
"Absolutely not! Any rumors you may have heard about Cane being a perverted freak who sniffs his step-sister’s panties are completely and utterly untrue!"
Aria’s eyes widened. A flicker of confusion crossed her face.
"I... I must admit, I’ve never heard that rumor."
Cane’s internal vision of Cassius as a pure-hearted hero shattered into a million pieces.
No, this was no hero with a heart too big for his body. This was a pathetic, blundering fool. A chud. A fat fucking chud.
Cassius’s eyes went wide with panic as he realized his colossal slip-up. He looked at Cane, his face a mask of horror, and shook his head frantically. No no no, I didn’t mean it!
Cane just looked back at him, his expression as cold and dead as a winter grave.
Then, a sound broke the tension. A giggle. Aria covered her mouth, her shoulders shaking with suppressed laughter.
"I was just jesting," she said, her eyes sparkling with mirth. "I’d never believe rumors anyway. I always try to judge people for myself after I meet them."
She then let her hand drop and adopted an exaggerated pout, her lower lip pushing out adorably.
"But even so. You have to promise to forget what colour my panties were."
Cassius looked at him like he was a completely different species.
However, before Cassius, or even Cane, could speak, another voice echoed through the room.
"So you did see her panties!"
Vinny was next to the now, pointing at Cane with a furious expression.
Vincent’s shout echoed in the cavernous hall. Every head within fifty feet snapped in their direction. A hundred pairs of eyes fixed on them. Aria’s face, which had been a playful pink, turned a shade of genuine, mortified crimson.
Cane didn’t miss a beat. Fuck it. Offence was the best defence.
"You know, Vinny," he said, his voice carrying just enough to be heard by the surrounding crowd, "most men prefer not to broadcast their most private humiliations to the entire academy. Some of us have a shred of dignity."
A ripple of laughter went through the onlookers. The focus, sharp and uncomfortable, shifted squarely onto the hero. Vincent stammered, his righteous anger melting into flustered embarrassment.
"That’s—I didn’t—he’s the one who—"
Cassius, bless his big, dumb, loyal heart, stepped forward to help. "He’s right! Cane would never do such a thing!" he boomed, his voice a bastion of misplaced confidence. "He would never, ever be caught peeking at a lady’s undergarments!"
He said it in exactly the way that reminded everyone what "such a thing" was. Another laugh erupted, this one aimed squarely back at Cane. He jabbed an elbow into Cassius’s ribs.
"Shut the hell up before you ruin this."
But Aria wasn’t laughing. Her face was a mask of fury, her cheeks still burning with shame under the weight of so many stares.
"Just stop!" she snapped, her voice cracking. "Both of you, just... stop!"
She pushed past Vincent’s half-hearted attempt to call her name, her arms crossed tightly over her impressive chest, and stormed away without a backward glance. Cane watched her go, the sway of her hips an angry metronome. Well, that backfired. Deflection bought him the room, but it lost him the girl. Not that she was ever the assignment.
That evening, he sat alone on a cold stone bench in one of the academy’s deserted courtyards. A faint blue flicker had been nagging at the edge of his vision all day. He finally pulled it up.
Quest Issued: Steal Aria Vale’s First Kiss.
He read it once. Then again. He looked up at the star-dusted sky, his face completely deadpan.
"Was ’Bitch Stealer’ just a warm-up name?" he muttered. "Apparently, subtlety died with the original Cane."
He pressed for details. The system obliged. The kiss had to land before the primary romance flag triggered on its own. The flag was tied to an upcoming mandatory field exercise the students were calling the Wildwood Trial.
It took a second for the words to land. Wildwood Trial. His memory caught up, and his stomach dropped. He remembered this exact event from the novel. He remembered dreading it even as a throwaway detail back when it was just something happening to fictional people. Vincent and Aria, paired off, sent into the woods to clear some low-tier monster nuisance. An ambush. A near-miss. Adrenaline and relief pushing them together until they ended up closer than either intended, a classic, textbook romance flag. And now he had to physically stand in the way of it.
He asked, half-joking, "How exactly am I supposed to out-charm the hero with a face people already associate with crime scenes?"
The system didn’t offer comfort. That’s your problem.
He sighed. "Can I just skip this one?"
The system’s reply was flat, almost bored. Failure will not result in termination. Your survival probability will continue to drain regardless.
Somehow, that was worse than a threat. A threat would at least sound like it cared. This was just a statement of fact, a slow, inevitable decline into whatever pathetic end awaited him. He needed a plan. And, God help him, he needed help.