"Damn, Mirai really knows her stuff! I might actually be able to pull off a Mana Blast in class!" Sophia cheered as she bounced down the halls of the balls of her feet. Pausing on the second floor, she glanced at the staff dorms. Though there were few, each had a little bit of customization, like the alcohol stains on Professor Gnosis' door. At the very end of the short hall, a room literally glowing through a cryptic rune sequence was on display. Racking her memory, the witch couldn't put a name to the technique or the style. Putting it on the backburner, she resumed her pleasant stroll down to the lobby.

Upon stepping into the large space, she stopped. There was only one person in the room, Mirai Senshin. Gulping, the brunette brought up her left arm and rolled her sleeve back, giving her a brief glance of a cheap watch. Letting her arm drop to her side, she took a few heavy steps to the couch that the silver-eyed girl decided to inhabit.

“Um… Mirai?” Sophia spoke up, garnering the other girl’s attention despite her not looking up from her notes.

“Yes, Miss Gardnir?”

“What are you doing here at four in the morning?”

Silence.

Nothing else needed to be said, the lack of an answer said it all. Breaking the awkward moment, Mirai’s pencil scribbled something down before she crossed out the rest of the page. Slamming the pencil down on the coffee table, she closed up her fresh notebook and threw it across the table.

“Forgive me,” spoke the silver-eyed witch, though her serene tone completely contradicted her rushed actions. “I had woken up earlier than expected and decided to speed my time working on my spell theory rather than going back to sleep. Besides, I wanted to use my training time with Professor Klein and Professor Gnosis more productively.”

“I guess that makes sense,” the other girl commended. Plopping herself down on the couch, Sophia reached for Mirai’s notebook, but it was snatched before she could grasp it. “Hey! I just wanted a peek!” She whined.

Rolling her eyes, the silver-eyed witch grabbed her bag from its place next to a couch leg and placed it between herself and the armrest. Meanwhile, her notebook got sandwiched into her textbook. Rewarded with a pout, the shorter witch stared at her taller peer for a few seconds.

Letting up on the staring match, Sophia sagged her shoulders, leading her posture to decline significantly. Noticing this, Mirai forced her eyebrow to not twitch, which had been a successful effort to her surprise.

“Come on! We’re like best friends already! Just let me read your notebook!” The brunette whined again while keeping up her pout.

Gripping her textbook tighter, Mirai huffed in sheer annoyance. “For the record, we have known each other for less than two days, so in actuality, we are barely friends. We are classmates, nothing beyond that. This means that there must be a certain degree of privacy maintained, otherwise, you will be in much more trouble than you can afford to have.”

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“Spoilsport.” The other girl complained with a put-out expression.

“Nosy annoyance,” the silver-eyed witch retorted.

“Uptight princess.”

“Mannerless buffoon.”

“Bossy bitch.”

“Meddlesome brat.”

“Um… bitch?” Sophia said, though her tone led it to sound like a question.

“You just used that one,” the shorter student rebuffed. Her textbook was still tightly gripped between petite fingers.

Groaning, the brunette gave up. “Alright, fine. Let’s just stop the name-calling and I’ll stop trying to peek into that notebook of yours.”

Closing her eyes, Mirai’s hold had not loosened in the slightest. “That is acceptable,” she drawled out before opening her silver eyes once again. Hearing a contented sigh from the taller girl, she let go of the slump in her posture. “Dolt.”

“Deal’s off, princess.”

“Good luck prying anything from me, dolt.”

“Challenge accepted.”

Giving the shorter witch a smirk, Sophia shifted until she was leaning heavily on the other armrest. Letting her smirk fizz out into a resting line, the brunette tugged on a loose strand of her hair while she eyed the other girl in the most subtle way possible.

Having not moved from her guarded form, Mirai kept her textbook close and gave her companion the side-eye. When she had averted eye contact, a thick notebook was pulled out and opened, only to be closed seconds later. “What is on your mind, Miss Gardnir?” Letting her eyes bore into brown locks of hair, she knew the heat of her stare reached the other girl.

“I mean… is that journal for spells? You have our basic spellbook, so it’d make sense,” she proposed in return.

Holding a dry, unnerved tone, Mirai said, “Of course. What else could it ever hold?”

“I don’t know, maybe a diary? Or a dream journal?” She offered, noting that the other girl was taking a grain of salt. “Honestly, I can never tell with you.”

“Few can. Only my mother and father have ever predicted my actions and thoughts correctly with any amount of consistency.” She slipped her notebook into her bag, keeping it between her and the armrest—both always out of sight of her peer.

Humming as her thoughts came to her, Sophia crossed her arms and blurted out, “So, what do you want to do?”

“Where is this coming from?”

“Well,” the brunette flicked away a lock of hair absentmindedly, “you have this air of mystery and nothingness, I guess. That sort of leads me to wonder what could someone like you ever want. You already have power and looks you could flaunt around if you ever wanted. Plus, I know some guys who like that bitchy personality and have some money to throw around all willy-nilly.”

Mouth agape, the silver-eyed girl took a few slow blinks. “Is that really what you think about me?”

“Right now, maybe. Maybe it’ll change if you answer the question,” the skirt-wearing student teased with a coy grin.

“I suppose I want the freedom to do whatever I choose when I decide to. Even now, my existence is controlled by outside forces, many of which I have never even met and never will. So, a time of freedom would be nice.”

“Isn’t that what you have this academy for? You have so many choices like dueling, exploring dungeons, and learning new spells.”

Shaking her head, the black-haired girl looked at the coffee table while she considered her next choice of words. “No, this academy is a contradiction and far too limited. Even so, my life has already been written to end.”

“Huh? What is that supposed to mean?”

“Pay it no mind.”