"What?"

  They had the audacity to look nonplussed by her reaction.

  "I thought," she said, suddenly remembering they were in the library and lowering her voice, "I asked you to leave her alone."

  "You did?" Sophie looked so genuinely taken aback that Blythe began questioning her own memory.

  Disbelievingly, she asked, "Didn't I say that last week when you tried to trip Daisy in the classroom?"

  "Oh, actually, I was the one who tripped her," Jessica said without a shred of shame or remorse. "It wasn't Sophie."

  Blythe couldn't believe these were the same people who showed her so much compassion and empathy on a regular basis.

  "Okay," she said, "but that's not the point! The point is that I asked you to leave her alone, so why are you harassing her now?"

  "I didn't think you meant forever," Jessica said, her eyes widening like Blythe had just shared some earth-shaking news. "Besides, she's so insufferable. I can't even stand looking at her."

  The whole time she was talking, Sophie was nodding her head in full agreement.

  Blythe finally understood. Even though they'd stopped badmouthing and bothering Daisy in the moment that she had requested it of them, it had only been a temporary change in behavior. Their mindset and perception of Daisy remained the same.

  "And we're not 'harassing' her," Sophie said, turning puppy-dog eyes onto her. "You said it best, Blythe—we're helping her by teaching her to know her place, right?"

  Blythe recovered from her speechlessness just enough to say, "Anyway, put that ink bottle away, please. You shouldn't pour ink onto Daisy's belongings just because you don't like her. How did you even get her bag?"

  Wearing a disappointed pout, Sophie capped the ink bottle again. She tossed it into her own bag.

  Jessica closed the tote bag she'd been holding open with both hands before dumping it onto the chair behind her.

  Unexpectedly, Blythe received a blue light notification.

  What?

  "She went to browse the shelves and left it here." Jessica waved a hand in the general direction of the shelves.

  Now that Blythe had thwarted their plan to ruin Daisy's things, Sophie and Jessica began walking away from the wooden table in a slow, casual stride. Blythe followed along, her mounting frustration with her friends wrestling with the astonishment at her stat increase to produce a conflicted outcome.

  While she wanted to ruminate on what had just happened to her wisdom stat, she first needed to address the issue of her friends' tendency to bully Daisy.

  "Could you two please stop bothering Daisy from now on? She hasn't done anything to you."

  They began climbing up the stairs.

  "But Blythe, I don't understand why you've changed your mind about Daisy. Did something happen?" Sophie hastily covered her mouth. "I'm not implying that she might have influenced you in any way! We know you could never be manipulated by the likes of her."

  The look in Jessica's eyes was one of pure concern. "Yes, did something happen?"

  "I already told you—I want to be more mature, and that involves leaving someone who's just minding her own business alone. Daisy hasn't done anything to us."

  It was true. In Waiting for Fireflies, all of the interactions between Daisy and the mean girls were initiated by the latter.

  "But she's always talking to His Highness Prince Magnus," Sophie said. "Isn't that doing something? It's like she's trying to steal him away—not that he would ever choose her over you, of course!"

  All of a sudden, Blythe felt very lethargic.

  Maybe if she'd never complained about that tropey web novel, she wouldn't even be here now.

  These two girls were surprisingly adamant about hating on Daisy despite having no real reason. It was one thing to dislike someone at first sight, but it was entirely another to actively harass them for it.

  "I'm asking you, as a friend, to ignore her for me," she said, not bothering to hide her exasperation. "Is that so hard?"

  "I suppose not," Sophie said reluctantly.

  Jessica turned her head away. "If you insist."

  When it came to leaving Daisy alone, they sounded so begrudging, but when it came to literally any other requests Blythe made, they would agree with haste. To stop bothering Daisy, all they had to do was nothing. Why was it so hard for them to just sit back and do nothing?

  They spent their free period time quietly, with Jessica grabbing tabloid newspapers to read and Sophie poring over her advanced botany textbook.

  Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

  Blythe read ahead in her textbooks, noting down what she didn't understand to look up later. Some passages or sections seemed to expect prior knowledge of a certain concept, which was presumably taught in the previous years. She resolved to try to fill in the gaps of missing knowledge wherever she could.

  ???

  Blythe was in between classes when she saw it.

  A lone thick book lay on the floor in the middle of the hallway she was passing through. She reached down to pick it up.

  Its title, Nurturing the Pleosive to Fruition, gave her an idea of what it was about, and flipping through the pages to see diagrams of plant growth amidst long, heavy paragraphs confirmed it. She checked the title page to see Giovanni's full name written on the top right-hand corner.

  How did he even lose this without realizing it? This thing's heavy.

  Intending to bring it to the lost and found, she put it into her school bag and continued down the hallway. She'd noticed the small office for lost items beside the dining hall earlier.

  As she turned the corner, the memory of the importance of that book came rushing back to her. She stood there with a silly gaping expression, distantly glad that nobody was in the vicinity to see it.

  It was a half-event that took place shortly after the first half-event that was Daisy's first encounter with Giovanni in the game. The first time she saw him, he was in the school garden taking care of some flowering plants he was in charge of. After she complimented him on his efforts to spruce up the school garden out of his passion for plants, he blushed furiously and stormed out of the place while shouting at her that it was none of her business.

  She'd caught him at a bad time, because he was sensitive about his soft spot for flowers and was paranoid about getting teased thanks to his older brothers.

  A few days later, Daisy found his lost book on the floor and returned it to him. Giovanni was so overcome with gratitude (on the inside) that he apologized for his gruff attitude the other day.

  Armed with this piece of information, Blythe frantically dug the book out of her bag and held it as though it were a ticking bomb. There was no way she could take this to the lost and found.

  She'd seen this take place far too many times in web novels and web comics: the protagonist would stumble upon an event that was meant for the original heroine to deepen her connections with a love interest and unwittingly end up taking the original heroine's spot in the event. The love interest would then become fascinated or infatuated with the protagonist instead of the original heroine.

  At first, it was refreshing, and then it became a frustrating cliché that wore out its welcome with her as she read more and more stories.

  It wouldn't have been so bad if the protagonist realized the impact of interfering with a scene meant for the original heroine and the love interest. As a matter of fact, it would have piqued Blythe's interest even more if she hijacked it on purpose to derail the storyline or to win his affections.

  Instead, without fail, she would question why the original heroine and love interests were acting so differently from how they did in the game every single time—as if the changes in their behavior hadn't been entirely of her own making.

  Since Blythe knew that Daisy would come along soon enough to pick it up and return it to its rightful owner, there was no good reason for her to hand it in to the lost and found.

  At least Blythe hadn't idiotically set off to find Giovanni herself. She didn't know the guy outside of the game, and she had no intention of drawing his attention by personally delivering it to him.

  She strode back and left the book where she'd found it.

  Upon taking a step back, she noticed Daisy's conspicuous ash-blonde hair emerging from the turn that led into this hallway.

  Blythe couldn't resist—she was weak for watching the game's events play out.

  After all, Waiting for Fireflies was one of her all-time favorite otome games. It had transported her into a completely different world where she could be someone who stood out in a crowd and could live out the exciting opportunities her choices led her to from the safety of her own room. If not for suddenly losing her control over her body that day, Blythe would probably have tried befriending Daisy so she could witness more of these events by her side.

  She ducked behind a nearby pillar, waiting for Daisy to approach the book.

  Daisy walked normally until she noticed the book just a few inches away from her feet. Then she bent down and grabbed it. Exactly as she did in the game, she flipped open the cover with a thoughtful frown on her face.

  Blythe knew she was recalling Giovanni's huffy response to her compliment back in the school garden. Daisy hadn't liked that he'd responded so aggressively to an innocent remark made out of genuine admiration.

  After several seconds, she closed the cover and carefully placed it into her tote bag. She'd just decided to hand it to Giovanni when she next saw him in a shared class. Daisy didn't think there was a point in using the lost and found facility when she knew the face of the person who'd lost their item.

  When Daisy lifted her head again, Blythe jerked her head back behind the pillar where she couldn't be seen. It was a shame she couldn't get to personally watch all the events between Daisy and the love interests.

  ???

  Her last class of the day ended with Jessica and Sophie standing in front of her desk, waiting for her to finish putting her things away. Blythe flipped her bag's flap over the opening and buttoned it up.

  "I'm done," she said, standing up.

  They left the classroom together, trailing behind the many other students who were also trudging out of the doorway. The low, steady buzz of their background chatter was comforting, and she spaced out while walking.

  "You're going to the library, right?" Jessica asked, jolting her back to reality. "I'll come with you."

  "Aww, I can't come," Sophie said, looking genuinely disappointed. "I have to check on my project."

  "We'll be able to spend plenty of time together once I move into the dorms," Blythe reassured her. "Are you sure you want to come with me, Jess? I'm just going to be doing some reading."

  The truth was, she wanted to return the beast-taming book and browse through more things for general knowledge without Jessica breathing down her neck. While her friends weren't constantly trying to catch her out for doing something suspicious like Magnus was, they still raised questions whenever they were confused by something she did.

  She could already predict what was coming. The original Blythe seemed to only care about Magnus and tea parties, not once indicating any fondness for reading in her journal. She didn't need Jessica asking her why she'd borrowed it.

  Merely thinking about the excuses she'd have to spin up in order to justify her actions made Blythe want to lie down.

  Jessica's smile was bright. "Definitely! I'll do some reading too. It's nice to have a change of environment since I don't visit the library much on my own."

  Thus, Blythe found herself being followed by an eager Jessica, talking her ear off about her parents' promise of a wonderful birthday gift this year, on her way to the library. She speculated all kinds of things ranging from one of those exorbitant imported pet cats to an experience at one of the luxury resorts in Beucia. At Jessica's prompting, Blythe tried to chip in with her own inane suggestions.

  She considered pretending to forget something in a classroom and asking Jessica to get it for her—the original Blythe seemed to make her lackeys do things for her all the time—so she could return the library book in peace.

  Before she could put that plan into action, she noticed the restroom sign before the library and decided to go in first. She'd been needing to go anyway.

  Naturally, Jessica followed her in. Nobody else was inside, so she continued chattering about what she thought her birthday gift might be.

  When Blythe was finished, she came out and washed her hands in the sink beside Jessica.

  As she pumped soap onto her hands, Jessica suddenly stopped talking and stared at her through the mirror's reflection. The abrupt shift from her airy attitude to a serious, unyielding gaze was unsettling.

  Blythe's stomach flipped.

  Then Jessica said, "I know your secret."