Chapter 18 – Counter

Her charm, which she had reined in so far, was now released for all to see. A few heads turned her way from the rest of the students.

"I'm Reve Iblis. Nice to meet you all. Oh, no need to introduce yourselves, I was listening to your conversation. Sorry about this, hehe."

She didn't look sorry in the least and her smile only deepened. The first to react was Kit, once again.

"Reve, I feel like we're a match made in heaven. Would you be interested in starting a relationship with me?"

"No thanks."

There was no hesitation in her answer, and the poor boy dropped his head in dejection. Dukun took over.

"You're welcome to join our conversation, of course. We were talking about hobbies. What are yours?"

("Increasing my sexual knowledge through the study of videos and books. Intercourse self-practice. Preparing my body for my first mate. But I can't really say this now, can I?")

"I like watching movies and reading books."

"Any specific genre you're into?"

"Well… Romance, I guess?"

We nodded at her answer and she continued, looking at me and Aginaci.

"There's also something I'm curious about. How do you two know each other? Especially since you were absent most of yesterday, Wren."

This was my chance! While Aginaci wondered how to answer, I swiftly blurted out.

"She's staying at my home for the moment."

"What!?"

Even though everyone looked surprised, Reve was very shocked.

("No way! Did she get her hands on him already? How sneaky! I can't believe she beat me to him. Argh! …Whatever. I can just steal him. That's what we do in these cases. No one can hope to compete with us in the game of seduction.")

Aginaci and I living together wasn't something I would normally reveal but it allowed me to give a hard strike on Reve's plans and confidence. She might antagonize Aginaci a little but that wasn't a problem. From start to finish, I would always be the one in danger.

Reve stared at Aginaci, upset, but soon focused back on me.

("Nice trick, Wren. But you're not going to escape so easily.")

After she calmed down, she forced herself to grin once more and opened her mouth to say something. Unfortunately, she was interrupted by the teacher entering the room for the last lesson in the morning.

At lunch, our group moved together. The school cafeteria was situated on the ground floor and a large flow of students headed there as soon as the bell rang. We did the same and went into the line while discussing this and that. Reve was trying to make friends with Aginaci, to "learn her tricks", while her target was just happy to have a girl the same age to talk to. She observed her and used her as a reference for what a normal modern girl should be like.

'Please don't. She's terrible reference material.'

Everyone thought lunch was acceptable except Aginaci, who loved everything. After that, we went to one of the school's rest areas. Because the school consisted only of one large building, they had decided to dedicate some space to resting and relaxing. Some schools had an interior courtyard, some had some greeneries in between separate buildings, and some were even built close to a park or a forest. But this wasn't the case here; they had no choice but to implement something for that purpose. If they didn't, hordes of students would roam the streets during breaks, and incidents were bound to happen.

The rest area was both nice and comfortable. It had a lot of space, was painted in relaxing light colors, and was furnished with comfortable sofas and armchairs. There were a few vending machines in a corner and a water dispenser for the poorer students. This school had the best students in the area and one could feel it trusted the teenagers quite a lot by creating such facilities for them.

Teachers also had access to nice amenities in the teacher's room to avoid them having to come to the normal rest areas and create an awkward mood for the students.

We spent our time relaxing and chatting. Kit was interrogating me about games, the two girls were monitoring each other's moves, and the duo of Dukun and Jeon were talking about nature's impact on martial arts, a topic that went far over my head.

The rest of the day went similarly and it was soon time to go back home. We all said goodbye to the others and went our way. Aginaci, Reve, and I ended up going in the same direction. Aginaci asked the other girl innocently.

"Your home is also this way?"

"Yes."

"That's good, let's talk some more while we walk."

'What a lie. You're living in the opposite direction. You stalker.'

There wasn't much I could do about it, unfortunately. She normally wasn't violent or harmful, but that didn't mean she couldn't overpower us if she wanted to. It was better to let her have her way instead of making an enemy out of her.

The problem was that I also wanted her to stay as far as possible from me, which was a contradiction to the previous statement. Such was life. The strong could do whatever they wanted and the weak could only shut up.

We arrived in front of our building and said goodbye to her.

("I know where you live, now. You cannot escape.")

"See you tomorrow!"

The contrast between her waving while smiling brightly and her thoughts was refreshing in a way. Aginaci waved back and we entered the building. We were the first people to reach home today. My parents would still be at work and my sister was probably either on her way or doing something with her friends.

"Can I use your computer?"

"Go ahead."

Aginaci eagerly booted the computer. She had already learned how to do it after seeing it twice. I hoped her learning speed would follow the same pace too. She was my most precious ally and the better established she was, the more chances we had to handle what was in front of us.