Royal Academy, Headmistress’ Office (Mari POV)

“Urgh.” (Mari)

The sound of a short groan left my mouth as I leaned backward a bit in my chair before slumping on top of my desk face first. I sat there for a minute, taking in this rare moment of silence as I rolled around slightly. The sound of pages being flipped had been a constant in this room for the last few days, but right now, the only thing I could hear was the sound of the birds chirping peacefully outside. It seemed that everything good was destined for an end though because as much as I wished I was one of those birds outside singing their songs without a single care in the world, unfortunately, I was an adult with way too much work and responsibility. And after a few more moments of my much needed break, I finally lifted my head again with a sigh to see the disappointing reality around me again.

The gentle morning sunlight shone in through the windows, illuminating the piles of papers scattered around my office as I blankly stared off into space. The will to work that I had so painstakingly built up over the past few minutes of rest immediately poured out of me like water being squeezed out of a sponge. And after a few moments, I was back to feeling lazy as I turned to stare at the clock on my wall before banging my head against the table again.

“... Where the hell is Zane?... He was supposed to show up an hour ago…” (Mari)

It was quite a nice day today, which only made it feel that much worse that I was stuck in my office doing paperwork alone. It wasn’t even like I could just finish the paperwork up quick and go relax either. The annual academy tournament was already a big event for the academy, but with the influx of so many talented students this year, the amount of requests from the teaching staff has grown exponentially. I mean, with the level of talent our first-year students have shown so far, I can at least understand the increase in requests for the first-year tournament, but even the second-year and third-year tournaments have been riddled with pleas for more resources.

Well, I guess this was bound to happen with the increase in budget thanks to our current golden generation of first-years, but I didn’t expect to have to rush everything so much because of Zane.

Another sigh left my mouth again as I tilted my head upwards a bit to stare at my office while still laying on my desk.

In a way, I’ve already committed myself to this kind of work with the hiring campaign last summer, haven’t I? But back then I at least had Ky to help me finish a lot of it. His sarcastic remarks were a little annoying at times, but I’ll admit, he’s definitely reliable when it comes to getting paperwork done… and well… I guess it was nice having him around to keep me company too.

A slight feeling of lethargy was starting to spread through me as I continued to procrastinate when suddenly, I saw someone slam open the door.

“Ah.” (Mari)

I immediately jolted up again before I saw Zane walk in with bags under his eyes.

“Oi! You’re an hour late! How are we going to finish in time for your training like this?” (Mari)

I yelled at Zane, but he just stared into space for a bit before walking towards me slowly like a zombie.

“Hey, are you even listening!?” (Mari)

I was about to continue chastising him when suddenly, he held out his hand and started to chant in a low voice.

“Wind of eternity, break free and spiral beyond this endless sky.【Zephyr Gyre】.” (Zane)

As soon as he finished his chant, three magic circles formed in his palm and began to spin in unison as gusts of wind began to gather from every corner of the room, scattering piles of paperwork everywhere before converging into a vortex in the palm of Zane’s hand. And after a moment, he compressed it all into a sphere about the size of his hand as I stood up in shock.

“What!?” (Mari)

Unfortunately, it seemed like Zane was out of mana though since the sphere of wind dissipated as soon as I got out of my seat, but even if he was only able to hold it for a moment, what I just saw was undoubtedly a third-circle【Zephyr Gyre】.

Yesterday he was still struggling with the second-circle! Did the hint about rotation I gave him yesterday push him that far already!?

I was about to ask Zane about how he went from first to third-circle seemingly overnight, but the moment I opened my mouth again, Zane’s voice rang out.

“... Heh, I told you I’d get it to third-circle, Master Sylfey...” (Zane)

Then, he dropped his arm, fell backward, and collapsed on the floor behind my desk.

“Zane, what happened!?” (Mari)

I immediately ran behind my desk to check up on him in a panic, but after checking his breathing and vital signs, it seemed like he just passed out. I let out a short sigh of relief before sitting there as the sound of fluttering papers finally died down.

Well, from the looks of it, he just passed out from exhaustion. But judging from the bags under his eyes, he probably practiced【Zephyr Gyre】all night instead of sleeping!

After deducing how Zane raised his【Zephyr Gyre】to third-circle, silence filled the room again and I started to mumble to myself about what to do next.

“Urgh. Even if he got to third-circle, we’re gonna be behind with the tournament preparations at this rate… And since he passed out, I’ll have to make up for his portion of today’s work too...” (Mari)

After a moment, I stood up again and resigned myself to my fate as I let out an exhausted sigh, but when I raised my head and finally looked around the room again, it was then that I finally realized.

“Ah. Wait!” (Mari)

Zane’s【Zephyr Gyre】had made a mess of my office and scattered paperwork everywhere, which meant…

… I had to reorganize everything too…

I fell to my knees with tears in my eyes as I thought about how much extra work I would have to do now.

“... Where are you Ky? I won’t mind a few more sarcastic remarks if you help dig me out of this bottomless pit of paperwork…” (Mari)

Solria, Middle District, Irisveil Mansion (Aria POV)

The sound of birds chirping was the first thing I heard when I woke up, and I slowly opened my eyes to see the sunlight shining in through my window. After a moment though, I finally sat up in bed. The sunlight was still blinding me a bit as I rubbed my eyes and let out a yawn, but all in all, it was another peaceful morning. Although, there was something, no, someone missing from this typical morning in the Irisveil household.

It was like I was waiting for him to open the door and call me down for breakfast, to hear his voice again and have him gently wake me up, but the reality is... that Ky isn’t here today. And I’ll admit, I never realized just how empty it was without Ky here.

It wasn’t like I had never lived by myself before, in fact, I lived by myself for a long time after my father passed, and even after I left the capital, I lived alone for another year in Delhurst before I met Ky. Living alone never really bothered me back then, so... I wonder why it’s so lonely right now. The only thing that’s changed is that my house is bigger.

My eyes drifted from the window revealing the sight of the beautiful blue sky outside down to the blanket covering me as I hugged my knees for a moment before letting out a quiet sigh. There was a strange silence to the house, and I could feel my heart beating as a sense of loneliness slowly overcame my lethargy.

I guess after living together with Ky for so long, I’ve forgotten just how it was to be all by myself again...

A few minutes passed as I sat in bed contemplating what to do next, but eventually, I decided to just get ready for work. I let go of my knees and turned to sit on my bedside before getting out of bed and standing up. Looking around my room, I could see the morning sunlight illuminating everything as I walked over to my desk to pick up something very important to me. Sitting on my desk was a hair clip that looked like a small white flower. I picked it up and held it in my hand before staring at it for a moment. The sunlight reflecting off of it made it gleam as I held it, and admittedly, it felt a little cold in the palm of my hand, but still, to me, it was warm in a different way.

The edges of my mouth couldn’t help but curve upwards into a small smile as I gripped the hair clip and closed my eyes before taking a deep breath. After a moment, I exhaled and opened my eyes again as I felt the cold loneliness in my heart subside a bit.

Well, Ky will be back this weekend, won’t he? It’s only three more days until he’s back. That’s not too long, right? He’ll be back before I know it. Besides, I have other things to worry about right now. Everyone will probably be waiting for me at the barracks if I’m late, and I still need to help Halbert get stronger, so I should probably go warm up something for breakfast, then pack my lunch instead of sitting in bed and feeling lonely.

I made my way over to the door and took one last look at my room before closing it and walking to the bathroom to fix my hair before getting ready for work.

Solria, Edge of Middle District, 7th Squad Barracks (Lillian POV)

“Hmm…” (Lillian)

I peeked my head around the corner of the wall as I stared curiously at the scene in front of me. Arrows flew and flashes of blue lightning crackled through the training field behind the barracks as the rookie was sparring with Charlotte, but despite the flashiness of the battle before me, my focus wasn’t on them. Instead, I was spying on Captain Aria who was observing the spar between them.

I wasn’t sure what was wrong with her, but for some reason, it seems like she’s been a little depressed over the last few days. At first, I thought it was just my imagination since her stone-cold demeanor was the same as always, but over the last three days, my intuition was screaming at me that there was something wrong. And after looking a little deeper into it, there was definitely something off about her.

Ever since Alain and I found out about her real personality, she’s been slowly trying to interact more with everyone in the squad little by little, but the last few days, it felt like she’s pulled back again. She hasn’t been talking as much and I even spotted her eating lunch outside by herself yesterday while silently staring into the sky, which coincidentally also brought me to the biggest clue, her lunch box itself.

For the last few days, her lunch box has been different. The way it’s packed was different from her usual lunch box, which immediately tipped me off to my first suspect, Ky. I haven’t seen him since he delivered Captain Aria’s lunch last week, and unfortunately, the only person who knows about what he’s been up to recently is Captain Aria herself. My current hypothesis was that something happened with her relationship with Ky, but with no way to contact him directly, my only option right now was to keep observing Captain Aria.

I continued to stare at Captain Aria from behind the wall as I held a small notepad in my hands and thought about any leads that her behavior could give me. A few more moments passed as I watched her before I suddenly heard Alain’s voice ring out behind me.

“Hey, Lillian, what are you doing?” (Alain)

“Kyah!” (Lillian)

I let out a surprised shriek before immediately covering my mouth in a panic to not blow my cover. After pulling Alain back behind the wall, I glanced over at Captain Aria again, but luckily she didn’t seem to hear my shriek over the noise from the spar. After watching her for a few more moments to reassure myself that I was still unnoticed, I signaled to Alain to be quiet before whispering to him as he stared at me with a confused face.

“Alain, be quiet. Don’t let Captain Aria notice us.” (Lillian)

“Eh? Why? What happened?” (Alain)

Should I tell him? Well I guess he already knows about Captain Aria’s true personality too, so it wouldn’t hurt, and to be honest, any help at all would be nice… Now the question is, will he believe me?

“Well, it’s mostly my intuition for now, but I think something happened between Captain Aria and Ky. It’s a little hard to tell, but she seemed to be bothered by something these last few days, and it doesn’t look like Ky has been making her lunch like he normally does.” (Lillian)

After a few more moments of explaining the situation and my suspicions to Alain, he took a second to think about it before reorienting himself to hide behind the wall too.

“I’ll help you out then, Lillian. After all, how could I face my little angel, Lucy if I don’t even help out when my friends are in trouble. And anyway, we can’t let Captain Aria crawl back into her shell like before. Now, what do we do?” (Alain)

“Hmm…” (Lillian)

I closed my eyes as I stood there for a moment going through all the options we had at our disposal.

Well, one option is to tell everyone else, but Charlotte, Edward, and the rookie don’t know about Captain Aria’s real personality since she still mostly keeps up the act in front of them, and I don’t think Captain Aria would like us telling them all the truth... I don’t think just spying on her the whole day would actually help much either since I've already watched her for the last few days and her schedule seems to be full with training the rookie for now... I guess our only option is some sort of confrontation, huh? But we can’t just do it at any random time, she won’t open up for real unless she’s alone like she was at lunch yesterday, which means one of us will need to keep everyone else busy somehow while the other talks to her to weasel out some more information.

After thinking through our limited options, I explained the plan to Alain.

“I think our best option is to try and get some more clues by talking to her, but since only we know about her real personality, I don’t think she’ll let up her act unless she’s talking to one of us. Which means we’ll need to keep everyone else busy while we talk to her. My plan for now is that one of us will keep everyone else away while the other person tries to talk with her.” (Lillian)

“Sounds good to me. I’ll be honest though, I don’t think I’m the best person to talk to her when it comes to delicate emotional matters like this. You would probably be better at that, Lillian, so let me try and take care of everyone else.” (Alain)

“No problem. Anyway, Edward and Charlotte shouldn’t be too hard to keep away, but it seems like Captain Aria has been mostly training the rookie these last few days though, so he’ll be the biggest problem. We need some way to separate them for at least a few minutes so I can talk to her. Any ideas?” (Lillian)

Alain stood back and took a few moments to think before turning back to me with a confident look in his eyes.

“I think we can try it in a little bit. I heard from Edward that he was going to head out to the shopping district in about an hour or two, so I’ll just tag along with him and drag Charlotte and the rookie with me too while you stay behind and talk to Captain Aria.” (Alain)

“Perfect.” (Lillian)

“Alright, I’ll give you the signal later then. I swear by my little angel, Lucy, that we’ll save Captain Aria if it’s the last thing we do.” (Alain)

Alain pumped his fist with determination and I couldn’t help but smile a bit as a sense of camaraderie bubbled up in my heart.

“Yeah. Let’s split up for now. You go work on convincing Charlotte to go, and I’ll keep an eye on Captain Aria until then.” (Lillian)

“I’m on it.” (Alain)

***

This is your chance, Lillian!

I walked down the hallway before stopping in front of the door to Captain Aria’s office. A moment passed by as I took a deep breath before gathering my resolve and putting a smile on my face.

It was just past noon, and Alain made sure everyone else set off for the shopping district a few minutes ago. The whole building was silent except for the faint sound of the birds chirping outside, which was subsequently drowned out by the sound of me knocking on the door a second later.

“Captain Aria, are you there?” (Lillian)

“Yeah. What happened, Lillian?” (Aria)

After I heard Captain Aria respond, I slowly opened the door to find her sitting at her desk with her lunch box on top of the table. It seemed like she was about to eat lunch by herself again.

Looks like Ky didn’t make her lunch today either…

After glancing at her lunchbox, I closed the door behind me and walked over to Captain Aria’s desk.

“Were you about to have lunch, Captain Aria?” (Lillian)

“Yeah. Halbert went out to the shopping district with everyone else earlier, so I thought that I would be efficient with my time and eat now instead of later when I could be training Halbert. Actually, I thought you went with them too.” (Aria)

The moment Captain Aria answered, my eyes sharpened a bit as countless possible responses ran through my head before I finally decided on being a little more direct.

I can’t waste this golden opportunity that Alain gave me. Even at this very moment, the clock is ticking down. It’s now or never!

“Umm, well, I decided to stay behind this time. Heh heh.” (Lillian)

I let out a light chuckle and scratched my head sheepishly before continuing.

“Oh, speaking of which, your lunchbox looks a little different than usual today.” (Lillian)

“Eh?... Err, well, I had to pack it myself today. I guess it’s not the same as Ky’s after all, huh?” (Aria)

Captain Aria finally dropped her act a bit as she answered in a slightly forlorn tone.

I knew it!

I plastered a surprised expression on my face as I reignited my determination before continuing.

“Did something happen with Ky? I thought he made you lunch every day.” (Lillian)

Here we go! This is it!

“Well, he’s out of the city until this weekend, so I’ve been packing my own lunch recently.” (Aria)

Eh? Out of the city?... That’s it!? I thought it was something way more serious! Wait, could it be?

After hearing the truth, I couldn’t help but let my actual surprise show on my face as I lost all restraint and let my true thoughts slip.

“Wait, so you mean you were just lonely!? I thought something terrible happened between you and Ky, and that’s why you looked so sad these last few days!” (Lillian)

“E-Eh?” (Aria)

Captain Aria stared blankly at me for a moment before an embarrassed blush rocketed through her face.

“W-W-Was it that obvious!?” (Aria)

Captain Aria immediately slammed her head onto the table in embarrassment to hide her face as I stood there for a moment before going into a panic after realizing what I just said.

“Ah. Umm, c-calm down, Captain Aria! It wasn’t that obvious! I-In fact, the only reason I even noticed was because my intuition told me you seemed a little down! I don’t think anyone else realized anything at all!” (Lillian)

A few more minutes passed as I tried my best to console Captain Aria and it was only after a while that we both calmed down and it seemed like Captain Aria was finally willing to at least face me again, albeit still with a bit of an embarrassed blush on her face. She slowly raised her head again as I stared at her with a wry smile before I couldn’t help but burst out laughing.

“What? What is it? Do I really seem that lonely!?” (Aria)

Captain Aria barked at me with an aggrieved tone in her voice like a sad puppy as I took a moment to get some control over myself again and managed to stop laughing.

“No, it’s just that… I couldn’t help but laugh after seeing you so flustered.” (Lillian)

A few more giggles leaked out of my mouth before my voice rang out with a gentle tone.

“But, you know what?... I’m glad that you’re ok, Captain Aria.” (Lillian)

The sides of my mouth couldn’t help but curve upwards into a beaming smile thinking about the situation, and I continued to talk with Captain Aria until everyone else returned from the shopping district.

Solria, Edge of Middle District, 7th Squad Barracks (Aria POV)

A sigh left my mouth as I stared at the purple sunset outside my window. A few hours had passed since everyone came back from the shopping district, and now, it was about time to head home for dinner. I finished training with Halbert a few minutes ago, and another day had gone by in a flash, but judging from the silence permeating throughout the barracks, it seemed like everyone had already set off for home.

A few more moments passed by before I left my office and walked around the barracks to check that everything was ok. After making sure everything was locked up properly, the only thing left to lock was the front door. The sound of my footsteps echoed as I walked through the empty hallways, and a slight sense of loneliness crept up on me again as I finally entered the front lobby. But when I opened the front door and stepped outside, I saw something unexpected.

“Ah, finally! There you are, Captain Aria, we were all waiting for you!” (Lillian)

“Yeah, hurry up, Captain Aria. At this rate, we’ll be late for our reservation.” (Charlotte)

“I don’t think we need to rush Captain Aria too much… After all, the reservation is for eight o'clock, right?” (Halbert)

“Yeah. Don’t worry, Captain Aria, we still have plenty of time.” (Edward)

“Hmm, well, I think we should still try to get there before it gets dark.” (Alain)

Lillian was standing on the path leading to the barracks and waving at me with a smile as Charlotte stood behind her while Alain, Edward, and Halbert were gathered near the front gate.

“Wait, didn’t you all go home?” (Aria)

“Nope. Sorry about the short notice, Captain Aria, but tonight we’ll all be having dinner together, including you.” (Lillian)

A gentle breeze blew by as I stared back at everyone smiling at me, but for some reason... it felt more like it was a warmth melting away the loneliness that had just crept up on me. A moment passed by before I turned around, and despite my best efforts to keep up my blank face… I couldn’t help but smile as I locked the front door.

Sorry, Ky… I know you worked hard cooking all that food for me, but... it looks like I’ll be having something else for dinner tonight.