Blythe woke up early to work out again.

  The aching in her muscles was already beginning to subside, a fact that she rejoiced in as she took her shower and got ready for school. Her body was getting used to this.

  The first three periods passed by uneventfully, and then it was time for lunch. She left her classroom with Sophie, heading for the dining hall together.

  “Since you’re having lunch with His Highness today, will it just be the two of you?” Sophie asked inquisitively, turning to look at her.

  Once class had ended, Blythe had informed her that she was finally having lunch with Magnus again. For some reason, Sophie appeared relieved. Maybe she couldn’t reconcile the Blythe she knew with the Blythe who had a life of her own outside of Magnus.

  Blythe waved back at a smiling girl who was passing by them in the hallway. Thanks to all these small, subtle interactions over the last several days, she’d learned that the original Blythe was acquainted with many girls in the school.

  Most of them were, according to their profile information windows, daughters of aristocrats. People who didn’t have aristocratic parents or who didn’t hold a title in this world simply had the word ‘commoner’ attached to their status. Since they were in this school, she assumed those ‘commoner’ girls were daughters of wealthy merchants. It wasn’t like she could ask them directly.

  “Possibly?” she replied, belatedly realizing she sounded too uncertain.

  Sophie eyebrows and mouth scrunched into a confused expression.

  “I mean! Spending quality time with Magnus is great,” Blythe said hastily. “But I was thinking that maybe we could all eat together. The more the merrier, right?”

  What was she supposed to do alone with him—sit there wordlessly while eating as fast as possible? Even though he’d talked about being on good terms again, she just knew that awkward silences would abound if they were alone together. She had no idea how to talk to him, and the negative favorability points were daunting.

  Sophie smiled through her startled expression. “Well, if His Highness is open to it, I would definitely love to! I’m sure Jess would, too.”

  Reaching into her bag, Blythe pulled out her VocAvis scroll. “I’ll ask her to meet us outside the dining hall.”

  She’d just sent off her VocAvis when Magnus’ eagle came flying to her and perched on her shoulder. In Magnus’ voice, it said, “I just left my classroom. I’ll see you outside the dining hall.”

  Then it flew off.

  On their way there, Blythe cast her mind around for a low-pressure conversation topic and ended up asking Sophie about her greenhouse project.

  “You’ve been visiting the greenhouse almost every day after school. How’s it going?”

  Nodding, Sophie said, “I think it’s growing nicely. I’ll probably get an A for this assignment.”

  Blythe was curious about the assignment, but she couldn’t risk asking in case she was already supposed to know about it. She also wanted to know if it was common for Sophie to get As for her practical assignments like this, but it was once again something she couldn’t ask.

  So much for a low-pressure subject …

  “Nice job,” Blythe said, grinning at her while searching her brain for other things to add on.

  Her friend beamed.

  "Oh, I saw Callum in the greenhouse yesterday," Sophie added, rolling her eyes. "His fillyeve seems to be growing well."

  Not for the first time, Blythe inwardly lamented her lack of in-world context for all these unknown names and references. At least she could guess at Sophie's feelings towards this Callum guy.

  She was going to assume he had the same botany project as Sophie.

  Blythe took a stab at giving a reasonable response. "You're going to do so much better than him."

  “He’ll never be in second place while I’m taking advanced botany,” Sophie said, jerking her chin up with a soft harrumph.

  Who in the world was Callum to pull a reaction from Sophie like that? Apart from Daisy, Sophie never seemed to harbour distaste for anyone in school. By the sound of it, he was likely her school rival or something.

  And why did Sophie say ‘second place’ rather than ’first place’? It seemed like an odd goal to aspire to. She threw the idea around in her head for a bit before it hit her—Giovanni was the top student in all things botany-related in the game. It made sense that Sophie wasn’t ambitious enough to take down the prodigious talent who impressed even the professors.

  Jessica was already waiting outside the dining hall by the time they arrived. Upon seeing them approach, she perked up and waved at them.

  “Hey,” Blythe said, smiling at her. “Let’s wait for Magnus. I’m meeting him here.”

  “Are we having lunch with him today?” Jessica retracted her hand from the dining hall’s door access control panel.

  She was actually glad Jessica knew that she wasn’t infatuated with Magnus. Otherwise, she would probably be like Sophie and ask if she wanted alone time with him.

  “I’m going to ask him about it,” she said, turning around to face the building entrance. “It’s nicer to eat with more people, isn’t it?”

  With a knowing smile, Jessica said, “It certainly is.”

  Before long, Magnus showed up with Cole in tow. The two boys strode up, Cole’s gait more of a saunter, and exchanged greetings with them.

  “Thanks for waiting for me,” Magnus said to Blythe after acknowledging her friends. “Shall we go in now?”

  Taken aback by his expression of thanks, Blythe leaned back and stared. Ever since she’d come into this world, she’d been faced with his overt and unrelenting suspicion and aversion. Being treated normally by him felt weird.

  “Would you mind if my friends had lunch with us too?” she asked, stepping forward to block him from the door access panel. “I was thinking it would be nice for us to all eat together.”

  Making this request in front of her aforementioned friends would make it harder for him to turn the request down, she hoped.

  He stared at her for a couple of seconds, appearing speechless. “Uh, that’s fine. Sure.”

  “Whoa, I never thought I’d hear you say that!” Cole cut in excitedly, sticking his head in between them. “Hey, if you’d rather eat in a group, why don’t we all eat at my table with our friends? How about that?”

  Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

  “If everyone else is fine with it, I don’t have any objections,” Magnus said, glancing back at Blythe with a questioning look.

  The sudden invitation was a great idea, actually. If they were at a table full of his friends, Magnus’ focus would be spread thin, and he wouldn’t be able to pay too much attention to her. He was established as a popular guy with lots of acquaintances and friends in Waiting for Fireflies after all.

  “That sounds fantastic,” she gushed, turning to Jessica and Sophie with a bright grin. “I’d love that. Jess, Soph, what do you think?”

  She received a purple and then green light for it, the system windows popping up one after another.

  Just like with Noel, her favorability points with Cole started off at zero. It was probably the same for the rest of the love interests.

  “I agree,” Jessica responded promptly, smiling at Blythe and scooting closer. “It sounds like a wonderful time.”

  “Me too,” Sophie chimed in, not to be outdone despite the lingering confusion in her eyes.

  “Well, that’s settled, then,” Blythe declared. “Let’s go.”

  Cole gaped at her. “I can’t believe you agreed. But I trust my own ears, so I suppose that did happen.”

  She stared flatly at him. What was his problem? Although she did what he wanted, he still had something to say about it.

  They went into the dining hall, and Blythe was introduced to Cole’s usual lunch table. A couple of guys were already seated there with their trays of food. They looked familiar, so she pulled up their profile information: Leopold Woodward and Albert Irwin, both sons of earls.

  Their last names provided her a clue: these were the same guys who’d been called out by their mathematics professor for chatting in class on her first day as Blythe. When she thought back hard enough, she could recall Leopold being the one who got rejected by a girl.

  Leopold had an air of carefree confidence about him, grinning at Blythe and the other girls as they approached, whereas Albert’s eyes had a wary look in them. Albert seemed to hunch into himself even more as Magnus and Cole explained that the girls would be joining them for lunch today.

  “Welcome to our table, ladies,” Leopold said graciously, gesturing at all the unoccupied chairs at the table. “We’re delighted to have you here. Please, feel free to take any seat you like.”

  Cole knocked his shoulder with an elbow. “Stop that. This is why you can’t find a girl to court.”

  Leopold looked up helplessly at him. “Hey, don’t say that in front of the girls …”

  It took all of Blythe’s willpower to hold back her snort. The twitching corners of her friends’ lips told her they felt the same way. Even Magnus was shaking his head.

  “Welcome,” Albert mumbled, barely making eye contact with them.

  Blythe would ask if there was anyone else in their group, but she feared the original Blythe already knew the answer.

  Instead, she said, “Thanks for the kind welcome. Jess, Soph, let’s get food.”

  All the boys swerved their heads to stare at her. Her heart stopped for that millisecond.

  Her lower lip trembled as she swallowed the instinctive urge to demand, ‘What? What is it now?!’

  Just as she managed to steady her expression, a flash of green light flooded her sight.

  The panic receded. She needed to calm down. Like that mob character classmate she’d thanked in botany class, they were obviously just freaked out because she thanked them.

  She went with Jessica to join the line for sushi. The others were in the mood for something else, so they parted ways there.

  The selection was generous—there were maki sushi, nigiri sushi, hand roll sushi, and sashimi to pick from. This particular stall also offered grilled fish or another battered fish protein main served with rice, pickles and miso soup on the side.

  “What are you getting?” Jessica asked, looking over Blythe’s shoulder at the laminated menu that had been handed down from the person before her in the line.

  “Probably some of the nigiri sushi,” Blythe said, already salivating at some of the options. “The bluefin fatty tuna belly looks good. What about you?”

  Jessica pulled back a little, her eyebrows rising. “Even your tastes have changed. You used to only eat the sushi choices that didn’t contain fish.”

  Blythe suddenly recalled the conversation she’d had with Magnus, with her claiming that she decided to expand her palate for the sake of being more mature. She doubted Jessica would accept that explanation after their conversation about her ‘amnesia’ the other day.

  Plus, she didn’t want to give up fish just because of the original Blythe’s preferences.

  She faked a laugh. “Really? It’s a little odd, but I find that I don’t mind fish now. I guess that’s just how it is.”

  “Either way, I’m glad!” Jessica chirped, looping her arm around Blythe’s. ”Now we have one more thing in common.”

  Blythe suppressed a sigh of relief. Jessica was just making conversation. She wasn’t trying to make things hard for her.

  ???

  Magnus felt that Blythe’s actions were becoming more and more incomprehensible with each passing day.

  This all started since last Thursday, when her entire demeanor changed. She didn’t cling to him at every given opportunity—or at all, even—and instead kept a respectable distance while walking beside him. She didn’t chatter on about inane things while disregarding his lack of interest in the conversation.

  After proclaiming to have done some self-reflection on her past actions, she declared that she wanted to grow as a person.

  He’d taken it as a lie when she’d bullied Daisy yet again in the dining hall in front of everyone.

  He couldn’t see any of her so-called growth at all.

  But then the changes became more evident.

  Blythe called off their morning meetings—‘breakfast dates’, as she liked to call them—and rides to and from school together. She stopped requesting that he walk her to her classes whenever possible. She no longer insisted that they had lunch ‘as a couple’. She ceased asking to chat with him at night. Over the weekend, she didn’t ask to visit him or send him a single VocAvis.

  In fact, she seemed to be avoiding him entirely. She spoke more calmly and less like the excitable and affectionate Blythe he knew. The strangest thing was that she became much politer to everyone around her.

  During their talk yesterday, it became apparent that she’d started avoiding him because she sensed his frustration towards her. Steering clear of someone who disliked you made sense—that was something he could concede to.

  The problem was that he’d expected her behavior towards him to return to normal after he’d reassured her he wanted to rebuild their relationship. It would be foolish to keep their relationship strained out of obstinacy. If his father refused to annul their engagement, Magnus would have to marry her one day.

  It didn’t return to normal. She even offered to give him more space on the weekends instead of visiting him at the royal palace after he implied he liked having space.

  It left him wondering if she had stopped liking him. Whether she did or not mattered little to him, since marriage was, at its core, a political tool, but then the direct establishment of their engagement was pointless if she did.

  Infatuation truly was fleeting.

  What struck him as odd was her change in preferences. Those were things she didn’t need to change in order to mature as a person. She didn’t like fish, yet she ordered it. When asked, she explained that she wanted to become a mature person who tried different kinds of things. Fine, that was sort of understandable.

  Another bizarre moment was when she said she liked the rain, despite years of decrying the sudden drizzles or downpours that ruined her afternoon garden tea parties. Liking or disliking the rain had no impact on her maturity.

  Why had that changed?

  Now, Leopold did what he always did in front of girls; he tried to act charming.

  But then Blythe did the opposite of what Magnus expected—rolling her eyes and ignoring him—by thanking Leopold. She hardly ever acknowledged any of the boys in school, especially when Magnus was in the vicinity, much less express gratitude to them for anything.

  He did appreciate her dropping that haughty attitude, however. Perhaps this was the personal growth she was working on. Judging from Leopold’s dropped jaw, he’d noticed her drastic change as well.

  As he joined the line for the noodles stall, Magnus found himself mulling over Blythe’s recent actions.

  He simply could not understand what was going on.