The next day, in Cycelia's room, in the morning…

Cycelia is slowly, reluctantly putting away her decorations back into her baggage, arranging them all to fit into the remaining space atop of the books. Every few seconds she gives the figure in her hands a prolonged, wistful look, then sighs as she puts it away. Straf notes the abysmal pace at which she's packing up, raising his brow at her contemplative face.

「…Do you want me to help you with that, Lia?」

He asks, and her surprised emerald eyes snap to him.

「Huh?- No I- Sorry… I'll hurry up now.」

She briefly stammers as her gaze darts between Straf's bored face, the figure in her hands, and the baggage. Cycelia gains a guilty, sullen look on her face and picks the pace up.

「I'm not in a rush, you can take your time… You were just taking your sweet time, so I thought it's because you don't want to do it yourself.」

「Well, it's not that I don't, but… 」

「But?」

Straf asks, raising his brows on his otherwise bored and nonchalant face while sitting on his bed. Cycelia pauses what she's doing and briefly fiddles with her hands in her lap.

「…I just had a really fun time here, and I don't really want to leave all that much. I know it's silly and impossible, but… You understand what I mean, Straf?」

She raises her eyes up to his from her lap, gaining eye contact with him, still idly fiddling with her hands.

「Yeaaaah… The bane of every kid at a playground, the parents saying that it's time to go home.」

「Eheheh… Something like that.」

Cycelia giggles softly, smiling, though her emerald eyes are still wistful and full of some indescript longing. She lets out a sigh, and resumes packing.

Roughly ten minutes later, she looks at the now-empty desk to check if she forgot something, then looks around the floor for things that she may have dropped or knocked over.

She finds nothing, takes one last look at the contents of her baggage, and reluctantly closes it with another sigh. Cycelia glances at Straf, who's patiently waiting for her to finish.

「Straf…」

「Yeah?」

Straf briefly spreads his hands before they drop down back to his thighs again.

「…Do you think that I maybe should tell Tisha and Neela the truth?」

Cycelia asks, looking at Straf's face with her brows gently furrowed.

「About what?」

「About our true identities… I was worried that Tisha had realized it, but…」

She replies, and pauses for a brief sigh as her thoughtful emerald eyes drift lower.

「But?」

「…But then I thought about it, and I was wondering what was I worried about, exactly. The headmaster already knows, after all. I didn't expect you to solve it so smoothly.」

「Well, Lia, I'm just pretty convincing…」

Straf smirks, spreading his hands with a shrug of his shoulders.

「Eheheh… That's right… But don't you think Tisha and Neela deserve to know? They're my friends, after all…」

Cycelia lets out another soft giggle, smiling once again, but her smile quickly fades away as her serious, pensive expression takes over. She turns her gaze to Straf's eyes.

「Do what you think is best, Lia. I don't really have friends, so I'm not in a position to tell you how you should handle relationships between yours…」

He replies, grimacing a little as he tilts his head and nonchalantly shrugs his shoulders again.

「…Though what I can tell you is, lies have short legs, Lia. Kind of like midgets. You throw them around and have fun, but then you find yourself at odds with a midget rights organization.」

「Huh?」

「What I mean is, do you want to have to pretend that you're someone that you're really not, Lia? Are you Lia Vindict for your friends, or Lia Redwing?」

Straf asks, throwing his hands up while they look at each other.

「I…」

Cycelia breaks the eye contact, her gaze drifts down towards the floor as she thinks in silence. Suddenly, her eyes return to his with a resolute and determined expression on her face.

「…I think I know what to do now, Straf. Thank you.」

She nods at Straf, and her face gains a very mild but contented smile.

「…We should return those uniforms, huh?」

He says, looking Cycelia over up and down from her thighs to her partially unbuttoned blazer.

「Ah… Yes, I suppose it's time…」

Her eyes jump down to herself, then to her clean and neatly folded clothes that she arrived in.

「Well, I'll just change now and go turn mine in. I'll wait for you there…」

Straf declares and stands up, then lazily throws his green blazer onto his bed and begins unbuttoning his white shirt.

「Eh? Eh!? Eeehhh!?」

Cycelia's green eyes progressively open wider and wider while Straf is casually opening his shirt up. Red-faced, she covers her eyes when she catches a glimpse of his muscular shoulder…

…

Thirty minutes later, in the Academy's uniform storeroom…

The door swings open, and with his hands in his pockets, Straf enters while holding his uniform chaotically tangled up underneath his arm.

「Hello, leave your- Ah, it's you…」

Leila's smile quickly fades when she sees Straf's handsome face, and turns her yellow eyes away.

「You sound almost disappointed.」

He remarks with a smirk, and pushes the door shut behind him.

「I'm not, I'm just…」

「Mad that I actually brought the uniform back? I can keep it if you don't want-」

「Tsk… Just give it here!」

The elf woman stands up from her chair and snatches the balled-up uniform away from Straf, then throws it onto the empty chair beside her as she sits back down into hers.

「So what's the problem? I don't know if you have a reason to hate my guts… Unlike most people here.」

Straf asks as his hands idly wiggle their way into his pockets like twin snakes. Leila's eyes are still refusing to as much as glance at him while she's propping her head up on her fist.

「…I just don't like how you gave me a lot of things to think about. Things that I don't want to think about.」

She replies, then finally looks up at Straf's bored face with a sour expression on her face.

「Like what?」

He shrugs his shoulders as he asks, and Leila only responds with a scoff, turning her head away again.

「…I've thought about it, and I've realized it's almost like you've seen straight through me. I don't like it. It feels gross that a stranger seems to know me better than I know myself.」

After a prolonged pause, Leila sighs and replies, turning her mildly frustrated eyes back to Straf.

「…And what are you talking about, exactly?」

「Tsk… You gave me so much to think about, and you don't even remember!?」

Her hand makes a noisy thud as she lowers it down to the desk with no effort to slow it down, angrily furrowing her brows with her yellow eyes narrowed.

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「Hey, I make at least a dozen of shockingly accurate offhand remarks every day, can you just point me to which one in particular do you mean?」

Straf explains, spreading his arms for a few seconds before returning his hands back to his pockets. The elf woman lets out an exasperated sigh, and looks into his eyes.

「That thing about being afraid of loss… I've been thinking about it for days on end… And as much as I hate to admit it, you might have been right…」

Leila begrudgingly admits, staring down at the record open book in front of her. Straf slowly raises a singular brow, listening silently.

「…Ever since I've left with my mother for your lands, we've seen nothing but hundreds and hundreds of humans passing away. Usually from disease or natural causes…」

「Yeah, natural causes get most of us… Kinda hard to live with leaky holes in your important bits.」

Straf lets out an amused huff, smirking at the elf woman as he delivers a quick quip. Her eyes flash a hint of frustration at the interruption, but then soften, and she continues.

「…I don't think I'm alone because nobody wants me. It's a little funny… I'm an outcast in elf lands, but you humans find elves beautiful.」

「Hm. Eh, you're not bad…」

After taking a few seconds to look over the details of Leila's face, Straf shrugs his shoulders. Lowering her eyes, she smirks, and lets out a bitterly amused huff.

「…You have that girl, so you're not impressed, but I could probably go to the town below and find a horde of men interested in me in just a few hours…」

She shrugs with her hands, letting them drop back down onto the record book. Leila pauses, and lets out a prolonged, troubled sigh with a gloomy expression on her face.

「…But then, I'd be worried and wondering if they're good men. I'd be even more worried if I found out that they are good men. I suppose it's because of my father.」

「The human?」

「Yes… Neither my mother or I really recovered after his death, though he lived a very long life… For a human.」

She nods with her eyes blankly locked onto the thick record book filled with names and numbers scribbled in black ink. She pauses for a few moments again.

「…You know, it's strange… I don't usually open up to people like this, but I suppose you already knew most of it… Do you mind if I tell you a short story about him?」

Leila brings her yellow eyes up to Straf's bored ones, smiling at him, though the smile on her face is visibly tinged with an internal pain.

「I'm already listening… Psychologists would have a lot to say about a woman talking about her father.」

With his hands in his pockets, Straf shrugs with a small smirk on his otherwise bored face.

「Right. Well then… My father murdered a man in our settlement to be with my mother. Obviously, they had to flee to avoid retribution, but it wasn't over even then…」

「Oh boy, repeating patterns…」

Straf rolls his eyes while he listens.

「…You see, elf society isn't like human ones. They are strongly against marriages like my parents'-」

「Between an elf and a murderer?」

「Can I finish?」

Straf chimes in, and Leila's mouth scrunches to the side as she crosses her arms. She lets out a frustrated sigh, and continues.

「…Their marriage was especially cursed. Not only it would be frowned upon, but the children of murderers are undesirables. Elves don't hold grudges, but we have a long memory…」

She explains, lowering her gaze back down to the desk.

「…So even if my mother was free to return, I am not. I can't return to elven lands, even if I wanted to.」

Leila shrugs, and lets out a sigh as she looks into Straf's eyes.

「So, you're stuck with us whether you like it or not thanks to your daddy?」

Straf asks, raising his brows.

「I don't particularly mind, I like humans… But it does mean I have to watch you all die. After my father passed, my mother said not to ever marry one…」

She replies, tilting her head a little with a troubled expression on her face.

「…I found it strange. They obviously loved each other to death, so it couldn't have been that she hated them. I thought maybe she was referencing the cultural taboo of it…」

「She obviously is sad about your father.」

Straf scoffs, shrugging his hands. Leila clicks her tongue, rolling her eyes in frustration.

「I know, okay!? I know!… Now that I thought about it a little, it's painfully obvious. She just didn't want me to go through the same ordeal. She's now a hermit and avoiding people.」

She replies with her voice raised before quickly calming down.

「Well… Unlike Lily, you've been shafted by getting born… But is this really a good idea?」

Straf asks, rubbing his chin as he looks at her.

「What is?…」

「Being so afraid of loss that you just stay alone forever. It's not like people will stop dying because you're not there to watch them die…」

He replies, shrugging the hand rubbing his chin and promptly returning it to his pocket.

「That's…」

Leila lowers her eyes, furrowing her brows and looking away rather than just simply down, evading Straf's gaze. At the same time, the door opens and Cycelia enters.

「Hello? Can I return my uniform?…」

She asks, first peeking her chestnut head into the room before fully walking in after she notices Straf is already there.

「Ah, Lia… If a tree falls on an elf and kills him with no one around to see it, is that fucked up or what?」

「Huh?」「What?」

Straf asks a philosophical question, causing both Leila to snap out of her gloomy mood, and Cycelia to tilt her head and blink her emerald eyes at him with deep confusion within them.

「Straf… Is this more of your human supremacist stuff? You better cut it out!-」「Nononono!…」

Cycelia asks with a tight-lipped expression, staring at him with a troubled face before Leila cuts her off, shaking her hand and her long white hair.

「…It's nothing like that. He's actually a nice guy, we were just talking about stuff for a moment…」

「Mhm! He is!」

Cycelia nods, smiling at her while holding her neatly folded uniform in her dainty hands.

「…You gave me a lot more to think about, but so be it.」

Leila lets out a fatigued sigh, looking at Straf with a faint smile and a mix of many emotions on her face.

「Uniform too, huh? Hand it here, I'll handle it…」

She says, turning her yellow eyes to Cycelia's uniform. She sticks her hands out, waiting to receive it. Cycelia places it in her hands with a little bow of her head, smiling warmly.

「Ahem!… I'll handle them, put that in the records.」

Winfrey loudly clears his throat as he suddenly emerges from the open door to the side with a swaggering step.

「Winfrey, what took you so long!? It was five uniforms! You took twenty minutes to do something I'd do in five!」

Leila asks, audibly angered as the man nonchalantly takes the neatly folded uniform from her hands, and scoops up Straf's tangled mess of one.

「I was, uh… Sorting stuff. Less work for later.」

He explains, shrugging his shoulders as he walks back to the side room.

「For twenty minutes!?」

She spreads her arms in complete disbelief, receiving no reply. Her arms drop to her legs, and she turns her indignant, shocked yellow eyes to Straf and Cycelia.

「Well, some men are into older and widowed women. The world is your oyster, albeit with a short expiry date discount… I'll mail you my bill for the therapy.」「Huh?」

Straf shrugs his arms, and turns for the door. Cycelia glances at them both with a face of confusion as she follows him out to the hallway.

「Let's grab your stuff and turn the keys in as well, Lia…」

He says to Cycelia as she slowly swings the door shut, leaving Leila likewise confused, staring at the door with her white head tilted…