Michelle and I sat at the kitchen table face-to-face. Neither of us knew where to begin, so we continued to sit in silence for a while. I decided I wanted to sort out the situation for now, so I took the initiative.
“What made you want to tell me that you’re the witch Michelle?” I asked. If she’d wanted to deceive me, she could’ve, yet Michelle had revealed herself to me despite the potential danger it could bring her.
“When I was in the bathtub and you saw my real face, I was startled, but I thought it was a good opportunity. I had wanted you to see the real me eventually.”
“Why?” I kind of knew the answer already. Meryl and the others had brought it up before. Still, I wanted to confirm it for myself here and now.
“It’s because I love you.”
For the first time in my life, a girl had confessed to me. Yeah, this is what happiness feels like... Though it was kind of a problem that she was a wanted criminal.
“Um...yeah, that does make me happy.”
Michelle’s face immediately lit up with an expression that I’d seen neither on her wanted poster nor on the Menko.
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
“So you’ll be my boyfriend?!”
“Hold your horses.”
Are you a hunting dog ready to pounce on your prey or something? I thought to myself, dismayed. You’re getting way ahead of yourself...
“I want you to tell me what happened between you and the king,” I said.
Michelle’s face clouded over, and her slightly sulky expression reappeared. Yeah, that was the face I’d seen on the wanted poster.
“Nothing really,” she said. “I don’t want to talk about it, but if you really wanna know...”
“I want to know you better.”
“You want to...know me better...” she echoed. “Yeah, I want you to know all about me too!” Michelle adjusted herself in her seat and looked like she was gathering her thoughts for a second before she started.
“I was a teacher at a magical academy when talk of marriage with the king arose.”
“You were a teacher?”
“I graduated at the age of eighteen and immediately became a teacher at the magical academy,” she told me. “I’ve loved studying since I was little and immersed myself in studies of magic, so I thought becoming a teacher was my life’s calling.”
“And that’s when the marriage talks happened.”
Her face became even gloomier.
“Word really got around about the thesis I’d presented, the Infinite Type Möbius Circulation Theory. People were praising me all around, calling me a genius. It seems I piqued the king’s interest because of that.”
“So, that’s how your engagement to him happened?”
“Thinking back on it, he was probably motivated by the possibility that there’d be some magical benefit for him from making me his wife. But at the time, I was over the moon with excitement that the king had proposed to me.”
“Did you love him?”
Michelle looked surprised by my question and shook her head so vigorously I was worried it’d fall off.
“No!” she said. “It’s just that ever since I was little, I’ve always been deep in my studies, so I had never fallen in love before. Guys would always bully me because of my reserved personality and how gloomy I was. On top of that, I’d use the magic I was so adept with to get back at them, so eventually no one wanted anything to do with me... For someone to turn up wanting to marry me despite all of that caused me to lose sight of myself.”
So, that’s how it was. But she had said something that concerned me a little.
“Can you tell me exactly what you mean when you say, ‘get back at them’?” I asked.
“I’d give them nightmares and make them wet the bed. Or I’d use my Water Magic to make their toilet overflow while they were using it, or my Spacial Magic to hang just one of their shoes from the very tip of one of the Great Temple’s spires.”
Hmm... That’s some impressive magic!
“So, you cast a curse on the king just like you would’ve done to those other boys?”
“I mean, he was just horrible!” she said, defending herself. “He broke off our engagement to marry Chichi instead!”
“Chichi’s the current queen, right?”
“That’s right, and she’s my twin sister.”
Talk about a surprise!
“The queen is your sister?!”
“Yeah, although we don’t look like each other at all.”
Michelle then explained the situation to me with a look of disgust on her face.
“My sister Chichi has always had a cheerful spirit and has never gone without a lover. She completely neglected her studies to fool around instead. I have no idea how many men she’s stolen by now.” From the way she talked about her, Michelle appeared to really hate her sister.
“I’d been summoned to the royal palace that day. I was such a fool. I stayed up all night making him a special potion as a gift, and I truly believed that he’d be happy. Yet when I got to the royal palace, Chichi was standing there by his side. The king told me he’d be marrying Chichi instead, so he wanted me to act like our engagement had never happened!”
“That’s awful.”
“Chichi was wearing a vulgar dress that showed off her breasts like she always does, and she was smirking like I was beneath her. I got so upset, I cursed the king on the spot.”
“What kind of curse was it?”
“He’d be afflicted by poor physical health for three years. He humiliated me, so I felt it served him right.”
Ah, so that’s why she said that the curse would probably go away soon.
“I honestly wanted to curse Chichi as well,” she admitted as tears began to roll down her cheeks, “but she put up a resistance right before I could. She’s always been a slacker, and yet she’s somehow really good at choosing the right magic at the right time.”
“It seems it still hurts to talk about,” I said, feeling for her.
“It’s not that. I don’t care about the king anymore. I never loved him in the first place.”
“Then why are you crying?” She might’ve still had some lingering affection for him without realizing it.
“Because I couldn’t curse Chichi.”
Huh?
“It frustrates me!”
It’s not some lingering affection for the king, but hatred for her sister?! So, to sum things up, the two had been compared to each other ever since they were little and had grown to hate each other because of it.
“So, um...” Michelle started, fidgeting.
“What’s the matter?”
“Will you love me?”
Just like that?!
“I mean, I was good friends with you when you were Minerva,” I said, “but asking me out of the blue if I can love you as Michelle because of that makes me too flustered to reply. Let’s see... Can’t we start out as friends first?”
“But we’re already friends, right?” she asked, gazing at me with eyes that glistened with tears. That is kind of cute...
What she said was true. Though I’d learned that Minerva was really Michelle, we were already friends. But I also had the caution that came with age. They say that you fall in love with people in an instant, but I couldn’t say that I loved Michelle without knowing who she was as a woman. Still, I did have a suggestion.
“Th-Then how about we start dating first?”
“Dating...”
“We were interacting as friends up until this point,” I said, explaining myself, “so we can consider this a time for getting to know each other on an even deeper level.”
“Is that okay? I’m a wanted criminal, but you’d still date me?!”
Oh, I’d forgotten about that... Well, I couldn’t take back what I’d already said. Also, I did like Michelle. It was possible I’d already fallen under love’s spell.
“Well, y’know, let’s give it a shot.”
“Yeah! I’ll be careful not to get caught so I can stay with you forever!” She beamed at me. So I’d be dating a wanted criminal... I was happy and anxious at the same time, but I felt it’d work out somehow. If push came to shove, maybe we could just flee the country? Coming to this world had kind of toughened me up. Dying once had probably made it so that I no longer sweated the small stuff.
Rather than worrying about the fact that she was a wanted criminal, I was a little more concerned about the weight of her love. It was just my guess, but she’d probably be pretty controlling. Thinking back on it, she tended to get really pouty just seeing me talking to Meryl and Mira.
A faint flash of anxiety passed through my chest, but I told myself we could just start dating for now and get to know each other bit by bit.