"Marri!" I jolted up to see my friend holding plates waiting for room to place them on the small table I was napping on.

My head ached as I looked around to see we were still in the restaurant she brought me to. The people littering the fancy restaurant glanced over to us with concern, confusion, or annoyance.

"Ah, sorry. Let me help." I took my plate from her hand and put it down. Two pieces of cake were on my plate, one red velvet and the other strawberry. It was her suggestion since I've never tried cake before.

She put her own down and grabbed her fork to eat but stopped as she looked at me, shaking my drowsiness away with concern. "Did you not sleep last night? We have a test in 5 days, and you messing up your sleep schedule is the last thing you need before it."

I clenched my hand around my knee, forcing myself to calm down before she noticed. I shrugged and ate some strawberry cake, and it melted on my tongue with the pleasant sweetness of strawberries. "Yeah, I was finishing my prep for it and lost track of time."

"Really? I'm surprised you can focus on studying for that long. I could never." She bit into some of her own cake and hummed happily at taste.

I flashed her a shy smile as I ate the strawberry cake. I fidgeted as I tried to think of a question. "...So, um, what are we doing after this?"

"If you and your parents fine with it, to my house to show you the center piece of the project I was talking about." She put a large suitcase on the table with a thud and flipped it open. Showing an extensive amount of papers and even a tablet since the topic was too large to write it all down.

I relaxed at the familiar topic and hummed to myself as I read the calculations and her scattered notes. I quickly skimmed through her old notes until I got to her new ones as she talked. "Yeah, they won't mind. But your personal theorem? Last time, you said you couldn't find a way to prove it with what you had. Oh, how did you get a mana visualizer!?"

She smiled broadly at me and showed me a photo of a beautiful girl with ice blue hair, a white dress that shimmered with the frost coating it, and snowflake like pupils. "I got lucky and talked to a Saint about it, and they gave me the equipment I needed for this."

My head hurt for a moment as I stared at the photo before looking up at my friend. "She's pretty... Wait, who is that? I don't know anyone like that."

"Abby Winter! A new Saint who ran into." She seemed really happy about something and started narrating how they met while I looked through some of her notes.

[Where does mana come from? Does Yggdrasil supply it? But Saints wouldn't struggle so much if that was the case, so if not God, then where? Fractals, fractures, outer space, or even the planet's core could be the source. I thought it was made alongside certain radiation, but what if the source was far closer than we thought?]

"What were you trying to imply in this note?" I went for more cake, but my fork hit ceramic. Both of us were done with our desserts. My friend stopped talking when she heard me and looked up.

She realized i wasn't listening to her story and sighed as she got up to look at what I was talking about. "So what note are you talking about? Oh, let's go to my house for that one."

Taking that as our que to leave, I got up, and we made our to the counter where she paid and, in the same motion, called someone on her watch. "Who did you call?"

"Just getting a car ready." We walked out of the café and down the sidewalk for a few minutes until we stopped at a small parking lot sparsely filled with cars. I've never seen a large parking lot since owning a car was so difficult for non workers, so people usually rent them.

We came to a stop at a small bench, and she sat down, followed by me. I gave her a questioning look to which she a. "They're on their way, so we just need to wait."

As we waited a broadcast on a billboard caught my attention, I read the clip before scowling. [Birthrate continues to fall due to increasing occurrence of stillbirth. Stillbirth was almost forgotten from the world because of the advancement of medical technology, but the rate of stillbirth reaching 65% and still climbing.

Doctors have not been able to find a reason behind the horrible phenomenon, but they say if this isn't solved soon, it will be catastrophic for the future of our world.]

"What are you looking at? Oh, why is that..." I turned to my friend who was looking at the tv with a similar expression as me silently.

"Miss?" A man called out to us from a black car with the insignia of a snowflake on it, snapping our focus away from the billboard. We got in the car, and the driver quickly got on the road.

My stomach sank, and I clenched a nearby handle as I felt the car lift off the ground, unlike my friend, who was unfazed by the movement. "Urp... how do you deal with this?"

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"Lots of experience, and you can get used to anything." she pulled a drink out from under her seat and handed it to me.

I loosened my grip on the handle as I took a sip from the drink that I now realized to be a kind of soda, and I loved it. "Yeah, I agree..."

"Can I ask you to do something?" She looked out the window for a moment before turning to me. I was a bit confused at her tone and waited for her to continue.

"Could you take a shower at my house while I clean your clothes?" I blinked at her for a few seconds before what that meant made my face flush red.

"Why didn't you say anything sooner?!" She laughed at my embarrassment, not making me feel any better.

"Because there wasn't much you could do about it." I wanted to retort, but I don't want to yell at her. She wasn't wrong either.

"...I guess." I solemnly agreed, and I quickly changed the topic to about our favorite Saints and how cool or nice they are.

"Oh, we're here. Get ready to get off." The car slowed to stop at a balcony. She got out with little hesitation and turned around when I didn't follow after several seconds.

I stared at the sizeable gap between the balcony and car where there was just whooshing air, leading to a fall that would absolutely kill me. Fear racked me, freezing me in place as my headache worsened. "Um, I d-don't..."

A hand reached over the gap, making me look up. She was offering me her hand with a smile and glittering silver eyes and hair that made me relax. "Here, just look at me and take my hand!"

I glanced down and back up to her. My hand trembled as I took her hand, and all it took was a short step and a tug, and I was on the balcony. "Marri, if you focus so much on what you're afraid of, you'll never find what you love."

She let go of my hand and walked into a sort of air lock where their shoes were kept. I stood there rubbing my hand before scurrying after her.

We took off our shoes and went inside. The moment I stepped inside the subtle scent of flowers and coffee hit me.

"Please wait here as I get the shower ready." With that, she walked off to a hallway, leaving me alone. I glanced around at the room. There were several mounds of papers and folders with the occasional empty mug.

Out of curiosity, I read through one of the papers, but it felt foreign to me even when compared to Starlight Academy's ridiculous calculus assignments. All I can understand from this is that it's about a rare illness and the attempts at treatment.

Huh... there's a couple of similarities with ----'s stuff. Did she work on this? A door squeak turned my attention away from the paper to the sound of approaching footsteps.

A tall man with bright silver hair and matching eyes. He was wearing a loose robe and had an empty mug in his hand. He locked eyes with me with utter confusion as to why I'm here.

After several seconds, his look at me changed to frustration and sighed towards me, sending shivers of anxiety through me, and I instinctively tried to avoid making eye contact. "So, where is he?"

I let out a huh at the question, and some of my anxiety faded as I answered stuttering. "Him? I came here with ----."

His face softened, showing a smile that let the anxiety I was feeling fade. "And here I thought my stupid son brought a girl home, unannounced!"

His smile and sudden attitude change was jarring and left me stunned for a moment. I shook it off and bowed. "Hello, Sir, I'm... Marri!"

"Rise... Were you looking at my work?" I nodded, and he tilted his head and asked me what it meant. My head was starting to hurt, but it wasn't too bad yet.

"It's about treating a rare illness, and it has some similarities to your daughter's work?" He looked surprised I knew, and went to approach me, but he stopped and sniffed the air, then winced.

"Why do you reek of cigarettes?" I hurriedly sniffed my hoodie and hair. I tried so hard to get that smell to go away, and I thought I finally got it off, but he could from several feet away?

"I'm sorry, my parents smoke, but I thought I got the smell out. I guess that's why she asked me to take a shower. " He was about to talk when she finally came back with a small hamper with some soap and a set of clothes in it.

"Father! I thought you were asleep... why are you still up?" He gestured to all papers with a knowing look. She didn't look happy at his response and stepped closer.

"You collapsing due to you not sleeping for 3 days will only make things worse!" This was the first time I've seen her raise her voice, and it was at her father. I looked over to him expecting something, but he just put his cup down.

She turned to me and handed me the hamper. She pointed a room out, and I assumed to be the bathroom. "Please put your clothes in this after you take them off and I'll clean them but I need to make my father go to sleep first."

I didn't want to be around to see her angry, so I left them to go take a shower. I held my head as I entered the bathroom.

The bathroom was remarkably clean with a large walk-in shower. Taking the clothes out hamper and swapping it with mine before saw myself in the mirror. My black hair and brown eyes looked so dull compared to her. "I never liked looking in a mirror."

I stepped in the shower and turned the it on and screamed as the hot water hit my back and heard my friend asking what was wrong. "Sorry, I just had the water too hot!"

I turned it down and tried again with it, only stinging now. The layers of dirt quickly fell off with soap she gave me.

I zoned out, and when I stopped, I was putting on her clothes. They were incredibly soft and the best things I've worn just as anything else she gives me.

I couldn't find the hamper, so I peaked into the living room to see her sifting through papers. She noticed me and gasped. She ran up to me and took my hands. "You look fantastic!"

"Thank you for lending me this..." My vision started to blur as my headache worsened again. My head throbbed as I tried to focus on what she was saying.

"Marri?" I had trouble even standing and started to sway until I collapsed into my friend. I could feel her panicking as I tried to move, but I felt like I weighed 5 tons.

"Marri!" She shook me a few times with my only response being moans of pain before picked me up effortlessly and carried me somewhere.

She laid my head on a clean pillow as my eyes lingered on a clean ceiling with a poster of an elf wearing scrap armor and goggles. Makeshift, the founder of magtec, and I started to fall asleep. Is this what it should be?

.

.

.

My consciousness was forced awake by the feeling of sleeping limbs, but it was my whole body. I wanted to just go to sleep again, but something nudged me, sending a small wave pain through me.

"Come on, wake up!" I inhaled sharply as my eyes snapped open to see in front of me a horned panther larger than me nudging me.