“You no longer make any sense to me, Your Highness.”
“It’s like I told you, Alicia. I’m just speaking my mind.”
“Ah yes…so you did. But you’re pushing an agenda, are you not?”
“What agenda is that?”
“You say things that will make my heart nearly explode, and then—”
I only get that far, then immediately regret it.
Alicia, you’re basically just admitting he works you up.
Duke’s eyes widen for a moment, but his devilish grin quickly returns. “Ohhh. So I make your heart explode, do I?”
“What’s with the smug grin?”
I glare at him, feeling my own face grow hotter by the second. That soul-penetrating gaze of Duke’s…it’s one of my biggest weaknesses.
“It’s better than turning my thoughts into action, isn’t it?” he murmurs earnestly.
Um…I think you’re totally putting them into action, my guy.
“Duke, what you just wrote on the blackboard…,” Gill suddenly interjects. “You can’t lop the enemy’s head off that way.”
Gill is considering Duke’s war strategy without so much as a distracted glance away. I join his examination of the blackboard.
“He’s right. With your strategy, the enemy platoon leader will escape.”
“No platoon leader worth his salt would abandon his men,” Duke answers in earnest…a smirk quickly following. This guy is really good at smiling in a way that gives you chills. Duke elaborates, “Instead of crushing them in one fell swoop, wouldn’t it be better to crush them in a way that earns us a prize?”
“Ah, I see your point. We spare their leader and make him serve us.”
“That’s a strategy Liz would hate,” I remark.
“And what’s mooore, if his entire army was wiped out before his very eyes, the poor platoon leader would lose his marrrbles.”
A sweet scent and a high-pitched giggle suddenly reveal that someone else is in the room.
Wow…she really does pop out everywhere, doesn’t she?
“What are you doing here, Mel?” Gill frowns.
“Hey, youuu! Wipe that frown off your face,” Mel sings, holding up a pink candy to his mouth. “Driving the platoon leader insane? Why, that’s the perfect match for Ali-Ali’s plan to make the enemy suffer!”
Mel’s eyes sparkle with glee. Meanwhile, Gill’s face is somewhat tense. I smirk at Mel and the consistently nasty words that always come out of her cute mouth.
“But Alicia meant to hurt them physically,” Gill argues, as if he is my advocate.
“Okay, okay, why not wreck the platoon leader’s psyche, then beat him up?” Mel licks her pink candy as she utters the morbid suggestion.
It truly astounds me that a fun character like this never made it into the game.
“Well, that is actually a good idea.” Gill puts a hand on his chin. He sounds serious now.
You know…I’ve got a lot of malicious, scheming people in my sphere, don’t I?
“Okay, Gill, let’s think about a contingency plan for if the platoon leader runs away,” I say.
“But, Alicia, Duke said that’d never happen,” Gill argues.
“In war, one must always consider every possibility and plan accordingly.”
“She’s right, Gill. You can never have too many contingency plans.” Duke smiles in agreement.
“Oooh, what funnnn! I love this game!” Mel croons with glee.
And the four of us lose track of time, chatting in the old library.
“Hey, Ali, we’ve got another annoying problem to deal with,” Henri says, running over to us and appearing flustered.
“Did something happen?” I ask.
Henri looks gravely into my eyes. “Ali…were you bad-mouthing Liz somewhere on campus?”
Bad-mouthing her? I have no such memory.
“Wasn’t it them?”
The sparkle in Gill’s eyes is quickly replaced with darkness. I immediately realize what happened.
Aha. Another setup.
With a little sigh, I look at Henri and say, “I didn’t bad-mouth her, but I did come across a group of girls who were.”
When I say this, everyone immediately understands what I mean.
“Okay, why don’t we go see Liz first?” Duke suggests.
We all nod in agreement.
“Where is Liz right now?” I ask.
“In the classroom.”
“Mellie’s coming, tooooo!”
Mel’s tone is bright and cheerful, but the look in her eyes is killer.
We roughly erase everything on the blackboard and head to the classroom to find Liz.
It truly is astounding how it’s just one problem after another without a moment’s peace in between. It sometimes makes me think I’m the heroine of this story.
As these thoughts run through my head, we enter the classroom where Liz is.
“Aha! There she is,” a girl shouts, as if she has been expecting me.
“You’re welcome,” I reply with a smile.
“What’s with the attitude?!”
The girl screeches at the sight of my smile, but I ignore her and make my way to Liz. And surprise, surprise, the girls who spoke to me earlier that morning are around her.
Naturally, the usual suspects—my brother and his friends—are also there (though Curtis and Finn are MIA).
When you’re stared at with such contempt day in and day out, you certainly get used to it. Personally, I’d prefer they throw a little rage into their gazes. I mean, a villainess must trigger rage in people just by her very existence.
“What in the world happened this time?” I ask Liz, a big smile on my face.
“These girls claim you said horrible things about me, Alicia dear,” Liz answers me without a hint of animosity.
There’s a saint for you. Most girls would look at me with scorn right now, but she’s remaining calm.
“So what’s your take on the situation, Liz?” I ask.
“Well, I only had their testimony with no proof, so I asked Henri to tell you so I could speak with you directly. Alicia dear…did you bad-mouth me?”
I can see myself reflecting clearly in her emerald-green eyes.
“……I did not.”
“I see. Well, I believe you.” Liz smiles at me.
Oh my… Haven’t seen her angelic smile in quite some time.
“Miss Liz?! Why do you believe what that witch says?”
“She cursed you, Miss Liz—she reviled you!”
“That’s right! She called you a slut, said you were full of yourself—it was horrible!”
The girls around Liz raise their voices one after another.
“That witch”…there’s a cutting insult. You don’t suppose they could tweak it and call me “that villainess” instead?
Little by little, a shadow falls over Liz’s face. If you got caught up in drama like this every day, you certainly would lose your faith in humanity.
The gazes of the other students cut deeper and deeper into me. And they have my sympathy—it is only natural for them to believe I’m lying after all my villainess antics they’ve witnessed.
“So pardon my asking…but weren’t you girls the ones who bad-mouthed her?”
A boy’s cute voice suddenly chimes in from somewhere. All eyes shoot toward the door.
And there is Finn, standing with a serious look on his face. Curtis is behind him.
“Where have you been?” Henri asks.
Without flinching, Finn quietly glares at the girls surrounding Liz.
“See, when Finn and I were playing catch, we broke a window…,” Curtis explains cheerfully. Either he can’t read the room, or he can and is being cheerful as an act of defiance—we’ll never know which.
Finn ignores Curtis’s cheery demeanor and walks over to us. God, no matter how many years pass, Finn looks the same. To look exactly the same as the day I first met him—that’s an incredible feat. Now I see why all the baby-face lovers of the world go so gaga over him. The boy you admire never changing is the best thing ever.
“Lord Finn? Whatever are you talking about?”
The girl with pale orange hair beside Liz looks a bit uncomfortable.
“I’d like to ask the same to you.”
His voice is sweet and a bit high-pitched. Finn really has an effortlessly beautiful voice.
“You know, you and Finn are kind of the same character,” I whisper to Gill.
“Huh? Come on, I’m not that pretty, and my hair’s not that shiny, either,” Gill denies quickly, a look of scorn on his face. “Besides, he’s seven years older than me.”
I suppose he didn’t enjoy being compared to Finn? Well, I agree, characters resembling each other too much is quite a serious problem.
“Finn, could you please speak in a way that I can understand?” Liz asks Finn gently, a look of bewilderment on her face.
“Well, let me see… Put in extremely simple terms, these girls bad-mouthed you in front of Alicia, and Alicia ignored them. Those are the facts as far I know them. Now, the rest is just my conjecture, but Alicia said something back to them that hit a little too close to home. So they got angry and got closer to you, Liz, so they could put the blame on Alicia. Now, I don’t want to upset you…but I’m pretty sure they meant the bad things they said about you. And I think they were just using you to get Alicia in trouble.”
Finn doesn’t even flinch as he reads them to filth.
Now, this may sound strange coming from a baddie such as myself, but I am starting to feel sorry for Liz. For somebody with such a cute little face, Finn sure has a ruthless tongue—he and Mel are similar in that way.
Then a shrill laugh pierces my eardrums.
“These stupid bitches are rotten to the core!” Mel cackles with glee, pointing to the girls around Liz.
“Don’t point fingers,” I chide her.
It sure feels strange mothering Mel when she is older than me.
“Yes, ma’aaam,” Mel sings, obediently tucking her finger away.
She even moves like a child. If you ignored the words that came out of her mouth, she’d be such a sweet, cute girl… Could this discrepancy in character fall into “gap moe” territory?
Mel smiles sweetly at the girls. “Wow, self-sabotage, much? Ali-Ali already has you all clearly beat both in looks and abilities—I don’t have the heart to tell y’all that you’ve got the worst personalities, too!”
The girls shudder at the sight of her smile. What’s more, giant tears are spilling out of their eyes. Mel takes a breath to taunt them some more, but that was too far even for Duke, who lightly slaps her head.
“They’ve had enough,” he mutters tiredly.
“It’s like he’s her father,” Gill whispers.
I nod quietly back. Indeed, nothing about their rapport implies they are master and servant.
Liz still hasn’t completely processed the situation. It is as if her brain can’t keep up with what her eyes are seeing. Denseness is a requirement for heroines, but it is annoying how that leads to plot-advancement gridlock. I suppose this moment calls for a villainess to let her hair down a little.