‘Everything will be okay.’

‘This is the start of my new adventure.’

Pfft. Yeah, right.

I cut my hair and Alessa is yelling at me for it now!

She said I ruined my hair and that it was much prettier the way it was. Honestly, maybe she’s right, but I wanted to commemorate my new life!

“It’s ugly!” She said.

“No, mom, it’s symbolic!” I fired back. “The start of my new adventure!”

“What does that even mean?! What new adventure?! We’re going to bring a monster to justice, not roam aimlessly!”

“Ugh, you just don’t get it! You and your interrobangs!”

While she stared at me, touching her bangs, brows furrowed and mouth agape, I almost bolted out of our home and into the forest to explore. I can’t stay put at home any longer!

However, Rose was waiting outside. Finally!

“Rose!”

“Alex! Your hair!”

“I cut it. Looks good, huh?”

“Yeah, it looks cute!”

“Of course it does.” I said as I turned to smirk at Alessa, who simply shook her head and returned to her cooking.

It had been a few days since the start of our conspiracy, during which she gathered some information for us. Since she was considered one of Dahlia’s 'loyal followers,’ the staff that had remained at her estate allowed her to come and go as she pleased. To complete the tasks that ‘the young miss, Dahlia’ gave her, of course. They even engaged in small talk together, about the young miss, and Rose learned some important things.

Dahlia had left town to visit her family in the nearby city of Arreti, shortly after my ‘accident.’ She had told the villagers that she was heartbroken and needed time to cope, but what she really wanted was some help or advice from her grandfather. I only knew him as some sort of big-time government official. Big enough that, if he decided to flex on us and help Dahlia, we’d need a LOT of support from the town as a whole. Maybe even two-thirds of the town would need to support punishing Dahlia.

When I asked who that grandfather was, Rose just shrugged. Not even Alessa knew.

At first, I was surprised that hardly anybody here knew the politics in the local province, let alone the kingdom as a whole, but then I realized I was pretty much the same back on Earth.

Sad, but true.

Regardless, Rose had also found out that she would be staying in Arreti for the remainder of Spring. A little over two months of time to prepare! I really needed some good news, especially after my little outburst about Paige. I’m over that now, though. Hopefully.

Even better, Rose spoke to Dahlia’s staff, the only people in the village that would ever consider sending Dahlia any sort of letter, and asked them for a special favor: to let her be the one to message Dahlia about my recovery. After all, the three of us are friends and she wants to be the one to surprise her with the good news. However, no letters will be sent. It’s just a ruse to maximize the time we have before Dahlia returns!

The question now is, how would we spend those two months? I already wasted the past few days doing almost nothing, because Alessa was worried about my condition worsening!

“Rose, do you have some free time?” I asked. “I want to start planning things out. Two months is a decent amount of time, but it’s still finite.”

“I have only free time, because I’ve managed to finish up all the tasks Dahlia asked me to do.”

“That’s great!”

Alessa then called out to us.

“If we’re going to discuss anything, it’s going to be after we eat breakfast. It’s the most important meal of the day!”

“Smells delicious, I would love to join you all!” Rose said with a sweet smile.

“Heeeeeeyyyyyyy, you all having a party without me?”

It was Narses, descending from the sky.

“Narses! What are you doing here?” I asked.

“I’m here to check up on your condition. What else?”

“You have a condition?” Rose said.

“He means he's checking up on me, because I woke up from a short coma.”

“A short what?”

Narses snorted as he closely followed Rose into the house.

“She had coma. She had big sleep.”

“Oh, I supposed I should have known that from context alone.” Rose said with a laugh.

When Alessa saw Narses take a seat at our dining table, she looked at the food she had prepared. There was only ever enough food prepared for me and Alessa, but not only had Rose been invited to eat with us, Narses had assumed his place at our table.

Apparently, this was normal behavior for him, because he had been such good friends with Lionel, Alex’s father. ‘My’ father. I try not to think about things that relate to him. I’ll probably dig up some of Alex’s buried feelings again and I’m not sure I can handle such a thing so soon after the last time it happened. It sucks, but it is what it is.

Instead, I gorged myself on my small portion of food. While I was eating, however, Narses had already finished his even smaller portion of food and begun asking me various questions.

How are you feeling? Does head hurt? Do you remember to wipe your ass? The usual line of questioning for people with head injuries, I think, until he asked me what I had been doing while I was stuck at home.

“Practicing magic and-” I tried to tell him, but Rose almost jumped from her seat.

“Woah! You can use magic now?” She asked, excitedly.

“Yeah, I guess I forgot to tell you.”

“Alex.” Alessa said, grumpily. “I told you to rest in bed!”

“I was in a coma. I think that’s enough resting for a while.”

“Foul language and now sass. What has gotten into you? Surely a little bump can’t change you this much.”

“I mean, she’s not wrong.” Narses said as he spun his utensils around his fingers. “The living can’t sleep forever.”

“You must have done something to her with your potions. She’s become crass, like you.”

“Really? Because she’s a lot like you when you were younger!”

“H-Huh? What are you even doing, bringing that up?” Alessa stuttered. Why did she stutter?

She glanced at me and I looked back at her with a brow raised.

“I mean, she seems to have some talent with mana flows.” Narses said as he tried to swipe some of my food. “She already had your personality when you were young. Leaving how she uses mana aside, with her ability to manipulate mana flows, she's almost like an exact copy.”

“Ha! Of course! She’s my daughter after all!” Alessa said, smiling proudly.

“I say almost, because she’s much, much stronger than you were. It might even be true for you, right now.”

“Oh, I’m sure we’re not that different.”

“You saw what she did at the stream.”

“Yes, but...” Alessa furrowed her brows and put a finger between them.

“Well, that calls for a demonstration. Alex?”

“What’s up?”

“What kind of practice have you been doing with magic? Can you show us?”

“Don’t push yourself too much.”

“I think we’re already beyond that. So, Alex, will you please?”

Well, shit. The old drunkard said please.

I held out my hand, palm side up, and I focused on collecting the mana around and inside me at a single point over my hand.

First, there was a tiny ring spinning in the air.

“Such a tiny ring spinning uniformly around an axis. See that? That’s excellent control, right there.” Narses said as he nodded his head in approval.

Then, a second ring appeared. Then a third, then a fourth and fifth.

Dozens of tiny rings, each slightly larger in diameter than the last, spun quickly around the same axis in such a way that it became a pulsating ball of light.

Rose was impressed, but was confused at everyone else’s reactions. Alessa looked at it with a grave concern that I didn’t understand either. Narses, on the other hand, was awestruck. His mouth was wide open, but he wasn’t saying a word.

I couldn’t help but lean towards Narses and show off a little.

“THE POWER OF THE SUN IN THE PALM OF MY HAND! MUAHAHAHAHA!”

Then, I crushed that ball of light into my palm and continued eating. The trade off to all that effort might be hunger, but I might’ve just been hungry in the first place. All my practicing was mostly right before it was time to eat, while Alessa cooked, so I’ll have to add that to my list of future experiments.

“Why would you even need to learn something like that?” Alessa said.

“It’s not like I could do anything else. I imagine you wouldn’t approve of me casting arc lightning or railgun inside the house, so I kept things small.”

“Arc lightning? Railgun?”

“It's what I named my spells.”

“BWAHAHAHAHA!” Narses began laughing and slapping the table. “You NAMED your SPELLS!”

“Huh? What’s so funny?”

“Narses, stop. Let her- PFFT HAHAHHA!” Alessa couldn’t contain her own laughter, either.

Even Rose was holding back laughter!

“It’s because I might have to fight Dahlia again! I need help organizing the things that I know already work!”

Rose looked at me and Narses, no longer on the brink of laughter. She was wide eyed and nervous.

“Calm yourself, girly. I already know Dahlia tried to kill Alex.” He said as he wiped the tears from his eyes.

“All of you need to tell me more stuff.” Rose pouted as she poked her food with her fork.

“So, Alex, are you going to try and get Dahlia before she gets you?”

“I might, but these two don’t want to help me with that.”

“If you need my help to kill the bitch, you can have it.”

Rose and Alessa choked on their food as soon as he said the words.

“Narses! We’re NOT going to kill ANYONE!” Alessa shouted angrily.

Narses looked at Alessa, then looked back at me, then back to Alessa, then back to me.

“Really?” He asked, but I just shrugged.

“Eh.”

Honestly, I haven’t given up on the idea, even if Alessa and Rose won’t even consider it.

“Alex. No, we’re just going expose her for what she’s done.”

“Ugh, imagine relying on the justice system. How pedestrian.”

“Drinking a lot of wine doesn’t make you classy, you a drunkard.”

“Hey! What does that have to do with anything? Also, I was classy before I even started drinking wine!”

“AHEM!” I cleared my throat to get their attention, before their argument devolved any further. “I have something to say.”

“Then say it.”

Dammit, Narses. Just shut the fuck up.

I had to take a moment for myself. Deep breath in, deep breath out. Thankfully, everyone remained silent.

“I think exposing Dahlia is the best choice for us.” I said and Alessa breathed a sigh of relief. “If I think about it a bit more, killing Dahlia outright will be more difficult to get away with. Her family might send over people to investigate and things probably won’t end easily.”

“That’s not the reason I was thinking of...” Alessa sighed again, but with more exasperation than usual.

“However,” I continued, “by exposing her crimes and having the town support the idea that she should be punished, which is an idea that they might incidentally think up on their own, the threat to us, personally, is significantly reduced. We will be a small part of a bigger whole and the blame will be shared among us all.”

“Surprisingly good thinking.” Narses nodded in approval as he poured some of the contents of his crystal flask into his milk. “Alessa, you should be proud of your daughter. She’s really matured.”

“I suppose our intentions are the same and that’s good enough for now, even if our reasoning isn’t.” Alessa shook her head and sighed. Again.

“With the intention of exposing Dahlia, I think I might know how to do that.”

“Alex, we’re not doing anything illegal.”

“Woah, come on. Who said anything about breaking the law?”

“You did. Murder is illegal.”

“I mean, yeah, but I already agreed with you that we shouldn’t do it.”

“Just a reminder.”

Rose then cleared her throat. “Ahem! I would like to hear the plan. It’s best to at least have one.”

Everyone looked at me, expectantly, and I was thankful for Rose’s intervention once again.

“First and foremost, we need to expand our list of collaborators.”