Then I smile at her. The dining hall falls silent, not even an ambient sound in the air.
It is Gill’s laughter that finally breaks it.
“Alicia, you always act beyond my wildest dreams.”
“Oooh, should I take that as a compliment?”
“Of course,” Gill replies happily.
Gill really does smile a lot more than he used to.
……I’ll have to trim my ends straight with magic later.
I walk over to Carol and hold out a hand. “Good to meet you, Carol.”
But she just continues to stand there, her eyes brimming with tears.
Huh? What? Did I say something wrong?
“You…said my name…,” she murmurs shakily, her eyes fixed on mine.
“All you did was say her name to get that reaction… Somebody sure loves you, Alicia.” Gill smirks.
He is right. She really does seem infatuated with me.
“But you love me, too, don’t you, Gill?”
I meant it as a quip. Gill has been getting me really good lately, so I want to pay him back with an uncomfortable question.
Gill looks sucker punched for a moment. Then he smiles softly. “That question is torture.”
From that line alone, I know Gill’s answer. And how flattering it is, to have a boy in his rebellious phase give me such an earnest answer.
I shift my gaze from Gill back to Carol. “We’re done here. Let’s go.”
“Yes, milady!” she answers energetically. The tremor is gone from her voice. She looks at me with animated joy.
And as expected, everyone clears a path for us as we exit the dining hall.
Oooh, I really do feel like a queen…an evil queen. I’m at the top of the world.
Right after we leave the dining hall, we bump into Mel. As soon as she spots me, she comes running with a ridiculous amount of excitement in her voice.
“Ali-Aliiii, are you—? Whoa! Did you just cut your hair?”
“Yes. There were…circumstances.”
“It’s so cute! Too cute! This is the first time I’ve seen a girl rock a bob cut so well!”
Mel nearly bowls me over in her excitement. As I watch her overreaction, I can’t exactly enjoy the praise she is giving me.
“You’re drooling,” Gill says, tiredly eyeing Mel, but Mel doesn’t seem to hear him.
“You’ve got such a doll-like face, Ali-Ali. Everything is in such perfect proportion, too! Oooh, beautiful girls with short hair rock my world!”
Mel calling me “doll-like” feels wrong… She looks much more doll-like than me.
“Mel, don’t carry on like that in front of Lady Alicia—it’s rude.” Unable to stand the sight anymore, Carol chides and glares at Mel.
……Oh my, do they know each other?
Mel’s gaze shifts to Carol, her tone dropping down an octave. “What—what—what? Hey, Carol. What’s with the gruesome haircut? And how do you know Ali-Ali?”
“How do you two know each other?” I demand.
“She’s a distant relative,” Carol promptly replies.
Mel glares back at Carol. “Don’t get all cocky just because you’re a year older.”
Carol’s a year older…? If I recall correctly, Mel is eighteen. Which means Carol is nineteen? Four whole years older than me? I give Carol a surprised glance. She and Mel are still exchanging epic death glares. They are clearly Best Frenemies Forever.
Never mind that—I’m itching to fix that horrid hair of hers. While the girls continue their death-glaring match, I snap my fingers. And in a flash, both of our hairstyles are fixed. Magic sure is handy. We don’t have to go to a salon.
“There, I gave it a quick fix.”
“Lady Alicia…oh, thank you with all my heart! I’m elated beyond words.”
“Just don’t get cocky,” Mel snaps, bursting Carol’s bubble of joy.
“Aren’t you jealous that Lady Alicia fixed my hair for me?”
“Huh? Um, nooo? Besides, I’ve spent waaay more time with Ali-Ali than you. I even kidnapped her once.”
“Right, that did happen, didn’t it?” I chime in.
Carol watches the exchange with a look of disbelief on her face.
“By the way, Mel, what brought you here in the first place?” Gill asks.
Mel looks at me, suddenly remembering. “Right, right, Duke said there was a ruckus in the dining hall, but he was busy, so he wanted me to check on you for him…but it looks like the ruckus resolved itself!” Mel explains in a bubbly tone.
I’m not exactly certain if we can say the ruckus has been resolved…but with all my heart, I am grateful Mel didn’t witness the scene.
“Oh, look! It’s Duke!” Mel cries, pointing in the distance.
……What a crazy aura around that student council. They’re like idols. Duke stands in the middle with Liz directly beside him, and the usual faces surround them. Gleeful feminine sighs start to fill the air.
……Duke has been letting his dark side show a lot lately, yet he’s still so popular. Handsome faces really do rule the world, don’t they?
Mel shouts to Duke and his entourage. “Hey, Duke! Ali-Ali just got super cute!”
Duke meets my gaze. And as soon as he sees me, he comes barreling toward me.
……Should I bail? But I’ve never heard of a villainess making a hasty retreat.
Duke stands before me, scrutinizing my face. And I stare defiantly back at him. All I did was cut my hair. That’s hardly grounds for a lecture. I’ll be okay……right? Just when I recoil a little in fear, Duke’s hands gently cover his eyes.
……Does it really look that bad?
“You’re so pretty, I’m angry.”
I hear a whisper.
……Huh?! That’s your take?
“I wish I were the first to see it.”
“Excuse me?” I yelp without thinking.
……That was an unexpected reaction. I thought Duke would be much more mature about it. Perhaps it was a big failure on my part to demand that he speak his mind.
“Huh? Ali, you cut your hair? Oooh, you look pretty!”
That means very little, coming from Curtis the F-boy…
“Of course Lady Alicia is pretty,” Carol huffs.
“Ali’s a beauty—she looks good in anything,” Henri follows, patting my head.
Liz and her posse say nothing, keeping their distance from me.
“Your short hair is a big hit, huh?” Gill murmurs beside me.
And it isn’t a bad feeling, getting all this praise just by cutting my hair.
“But since she had such a big audience in the dining hall…I’ll bet you were one of the last people to see it, Duke!” Mel teases.
Seriously. Mel has the best personality ever.
……What sort of reaction should a villainess give in a moment like this? If I get in my head, I seem to understand less and less how a man-bewitching villainess should act. Well, I’m still in training to be a villainess after all. I’ll figure that out later.
As these carefree thoughts fill my head, I don’t notice the look of jealousy and envy in Liz’s eyes as she stares at me.
“Alicia.”
I return to my cottage to find my father standing in front of it. The surprise reunion freezes me in my tracks.
Oh my, he aged a bit. But he’s still my handsome father, of course…
“Umm…long time no see, Father. What brings you here?”
“I hear you made it past level ninety. Congratulations.” My father’s nostalgic deep voice echoes in my ears.
“Thank you, Father.”
I give him a formal curtsy. He gives me a perplexed look back. Slowly, and with great care, he touches the eye patch over my left eye.
Aha, the eye patch. Hey, it was my choice to give my eye up. Get that guilty gaze off me. It was my plan all along that once I learned the personal transference spell, I would give my eye to Will.
“Father, I am very happy right now. I was confined for two years so that I may continue my task as monitor…but I believe I gained so much more.” I soften my tone and smile. “So please do not apologize to me.”
“I see…so are you coming back home, then?”
“Back home?”
“I hope you weren’t planning on staying in this cottage forever.”
He’s……right. It’s so after the fact that I completely forgot.
……I suppose I should go back to the mansion.
“Get locked in a cottage, come back home—grown-ups sure are headstrong, aren’t they?” Gill murmurs.
He sounds quite bitter. But I know my father made the suggestion only out of worry for me…
“Well, you know, the mansion has a library. It would be much more convenient to do our research there…,” Gill concedes, softening his own rebuke. “Besides, a girl like you shouldn’t hole herself up in a cottage forever, Alicia.”
“Fair point…… Let’s go home.”