"I'm telling you Dormouse; I'm not sick, just tired."
Despite my protests, my dear assistant continued to hold her palm against my forehead in search of any sign of a fever. The placeholders in the classroom were giving us odd looks (I liked it better when they ignored our shenanigans, but I don't think reversing their developnt was possible, or ethical, for that matter), so I gently removed her hand from my head. I honestly didn't know what I found weirder: the fact that Judy could tell that I was out of it against my best efforts to appear normal, or that she waited until lunch-break to raise a fuss about it.
"Couldn't sleep?" ca the well-aning question from Josh sitting at his desk behind mine, though considering he also had giant bags under his eyes, he was probably trying to divert attention. As such, it was only fair that I threw the ball back into his court.
"Nah, I slept exactly as much as usual," I opened with a half-truth, followed up by, "Speaking of which, you look pretty out of it yourself. Did you stay up all night yesterday?"
"Ah, yeah. I kinda got fixated on finishing a quest in a ga, and before I knew it, it was past midnight."
Oh? Now would you look at that? No awkward shuffling, no averted eyes, just a straightforward answer. It was almost like he expected to ask that very question and made preparations in advance. In other words, the plot thickens.
It was at this point that I sent a sneaky glance at the class rep standing a little apart from the rest of us. In return, she gave an 'I know you know' kind of look, to which I responded with a 'I know you know that I know' smirk, which she answered with a 'I know you know that I know you know' flavored raised eyebrow, and while I was sure we could continue this until the cows ca ho, I figured this was good enough.
"Ga? What ga?" Elly asked out of pure curiosity, much to my friend's well-disguised chagrin.
"It's... an RPG. You probably never heard of it," Josh deflected her with a smile.
"We can talk over the details during lunch," Judy urged us along, but I had no choice but to disappoint her.
"You do that. I have sothing to discuss with the class rep first."
Once I declared my intentions, the two of us spent several seconds communicating only using our eyebrows, and once we cleared things up (I hoped), my dear assistant sharply nodded in agreent.
"All right then. We'll go ahead. Don't dally for too long."
"Hold on for just a second!" The expression on Josh's face sohow appeared even more gravely wronged than his voice implied, and he followed his interruption up with the question, "If Leo stays behind, who's going to pay for my lunch?"
"Oh, shaddup ya muncha'!" Angie exclaid in an undecipherable fake accent. I was sure it was another one of their esoteric inside-jokes that I simply had no chance of understanding due to not growing up with the two of them. Maybe for the best, I reckoned.
Anyhow, she put her hands onto Josh's shoulders and began to push her childhood pal out of the classroom while telling him, thankfully without the accent, "For once you can lower yourself to us lowly mortals and eat a ticket nu like the rest of us! Trust , you'll survive!"
"Ow, wait! This was just kidding! Leo, help!"
Even if I wanted to (which I didn't), I couldn't aid my friend, as he was already out in the hallway and being pushed even further away. My girlfriends shared an uncertain look at the pair's expense, so I urged them to follow after the two. They soon did so, though not before Judy made promise that I would catch up with them as soon as possible. That left alone with the suspicious class rep. Well, her, and all the placeholders still paying an unnecessary amount of attention to us.
"Should we go sowhere more secluded?" I proposed, and she nodded without any delay.
I almost wondered where we should head, but by the looks of it the class rep already had a destination in mind. I followed her lead, and in a few short minutes later we were already inside the library. It's been ages since the last ti I'd been here (subjectively speaking, of course; objectively it's been less than three months), but the place was just as unnecessarily spacious and fancy as I rembered. I thought we would sit by one of the desk at the back, but the class rep went the extra mile to find the most secluded corner behind the rows of bookshelves on the first floor before she ca to a halt.
"Were you spying on us last night?"
Straight to the point, eh? It was a little surprising, but I had to give it to her; it made things much easier than spending who-knows-how-long dancing around the topic.
"I wasn't exactly 'spying' on you per se, but yes, I noticed that you were up to sothing," I corrected her. "Sothing about sneaking into a building with Josh and Mike, if I'm not mistaken."
The mont those words left my mouth, Ammy's shoulders imdiately slouched in defeat. It only lasted for a second though, as right after that she glanced around the empty corner, probably just to be sure, before she gestured for to lean closer.
"Listen, Leo." Her whispers were barely audible, so I had to lean even closer. She looked a little uncomfortable by my invasion of her personal space, but hey, she was the one who wanted to do this double-secretly. Once she collected herself, she took a deep breath, looked in the eye, and told , "Please don't get involved."
"Okay." My answer apparently took her aback, so I told her, "I'm really busy already, so if it's your personal business, I have no reason to stick my nose into it."
"Erm… Yes, it is personal." She kept eyeing as if she was expecting a theatrical 'However!' from , but when I remained silent, she tentatively asked, "How much did you see?"
"Practically nothing," I admitted without any reservations. "As I said, I was insanely busy last night, so I didn't have the ti to pay attention to whatever you guys were doing."
"All night? What were you doing?"
"Nuh-uh, class rep," I chided her as I waved my finger in front of her face. "I don't ask about your business, you don't ask about mine. It's common courtesy. All I say is that it involved so negotiations, waiting for soone to sober up, and then so more negotiations."
"I… see."
With this, the conversation ca to a natural halt, but there was at least one last thing I was curious about, so I softly cleared my throat.
"So, details aside, is the thing that you guys were doing dangerous? Say, on a ten point scale."
Ammy hesitated for a second, but instead of giving a straightforward answer, she responded with, "I don't have a fra of reference, so I can't answer that."
"Ooookay then, how about this: One is taking a candy from a baby, ten is taking a certain key from a certain underground office."
My clarification prompted her to fall silent for several seconds while she contemplated, culminating in a single word.
"Five."
"That… is actually a bit higher than I expected," I admitted, but then I also shrugged my shoulder and added, "Oh well. If you need help, you know where to find . Either way, be careful."
"I will be. You should just focus on your recovery."
"I try, but honestly, it's not sothing I can just recover from on my own. I appreciate the sentint all the sa though," I told her with a reassuring smile, yet for so reason it only made her frown deepen. "Don't worry, I actually have multiple experts lined up to help . One of them surely can fix my hand."
I wanted to punctuate my words with a thumbs up, but my fingers refused to play along, so in the end I had to use my left hand to bend my thumb into position. That… likely did more harm to my point than good, but there was no sense crying over spilled milk.
"I understand."
"Good." I opened and closed my right hand, but since she still looked a little uncertain, I decided to add, "Anyhow, if it's sothing I can help with even in my current condition, don't be afraid to ask."
I figured we would be leaving it at that, but then in a sudden one-eighty-turn she threw an unexpected question at .
"In that case… can I ask you a favor?"
"Wait, is it related to the conversation we were just having, or a separate favor?"
"The forr," she admitted, making even more baffled by this turn of events. "There is a… box I need you to hide."
"A box," I repeated after her, and she reaffird it with a nod.
"I need you to put it sowhere safe, and more importantly, a place I wouldn't know about." I probably looked quite confused at the mont, as she also told , "It is in case soone starts suspecting . I originally wanted to leave it with Michael, but I don't want to endanger him. He already helped more than he really needed to."
"And don't forget that he's technically an agent and he might leak it to the Celestial Information Network," I pointed out, even if only half-seriously, yet she took quite an offense to my words.
"He wouldn't do that!"
Seeking how vehently she was glaring at , I had no choice but to backpedal a little.
"… On second thought, no, he probably wouldn't," I agreed with her, and after one more huff, she returned to the previous conversation.
"As I was saying, I need to get rid of this 'box', but I can't destroy its contents. I can't give it to Josh or Michael either, and I can't hide it myself. Unlike , you cannot be interrogated, so it would be safer in your hands."
"Wait, what do you an 'I cannot be interrogated'?"
The class rep gave a look that said she couldn't decide whether I was serious or not, but when she finally realized I was sincere, she let out a long sigh and lazily readjusted her glasses.
"I don't know what you did to grandfather, but he apparently doesn't want anything to do with you. So long as you aren't directly implicated, he would rather swallow the indignity than to deal with you again. If I didn't know him better, I would almost think he's afraid of you."
"Oh, please. I'm not that scary," I jested, but Ammy remained entirely serious, so I left it at that.
"If you do this for , then even if I get interrogated, I can say under oath that I don't know where the… contents of the box are."
"Is that so?" At first I wanted to question what kind of incompetent interrogator would leave things at that, but then I rembered my own experience with Onikiri's apparent truth-detector capabilities and how easy it was to circumvent them, and I figured it might not be such a far-fetched idea after all. "If that's all, then I suppose I could accommodate you. How about I pick it up after school today?"
"Sounds good to . Just promise you handle it with care, and that you don't get involved any further."
I wanted to point out that hiding incriminating evidence was getting about as far involved as possible short of doing the actual deed, whatever that was, but I refrained from doing so in favor of another idea that just popped into my head.
"Can I ask you a favor in return?" She imdiately nodded, so I told her, "Do you have any books on enchantnts?"
"You an technical manuals, or theoretical works?" she asked back, and while I was tempted to answer with a cheeky 'Yes', it was probably more productive to explain myself in detail.
"Anything you can give . The symposium for the Artificers is coming up soon, and I was invited as a guest speaker. The problem is, I'm completely clueless of the jargon and how enchanting is normally done by normal people under normal circumstances. In other words, I'd like to do the absolute minimum research on the topic so that I won't sound like an utter simpleton."
There was an uncomfortably long beat of silence after I finished my explanation. In fact, I was just about to break it myself, but before I could do so, Ammy blurted out an incredulous, "You were invited to the Symposium."
"Yeah, Gowan asked to attend. Why, is it a big deal?"
For a mont Ammy opened her mouth wide in preparation of a retort, but then she just as quickly closed it with an audible clack of teeth and she soon buried her face in her hand.
"Yes, Leo. It's a 'big deal'," she told , her voice suspiciously sounding like she was squeezing her words through her teeth.
"Really? Well, all the more reason why I should do so howork beforehand," I responded in a chipper voice. She didn't seem to appreciate it. Oh well, tough crowds happen.
"You know," she told once she removed her hand from her forehead, "Sotis I wonder if you are doing this just to ss with the heads of everyone around you."
I didn't know what she ant by that, but that never stopped from responding.
"I'll leave it up to your imagination. So, do you have those books?"
"Not yet, but I'll borrow so from the School library." I very nearly pointed out that we were already here, but then I realized she said the word with a capital 'S', so I swallowed my words. "Where should we et to conduct the exchange?"
"I'll just hop over to your place," I said without thinking.
"Very well. I'll make sure to wear the Magiforr."
I was once again stumped for a mont, but then I recalled that my cover story said I could only Phase over to enchanted anchor objects. Sheesh, keeping all of these different cover stories in mind was starting to be a bit of a hassle…
"You do that. Have we discussed everything we wanted?"
"I think so," she told , so I imdiately took half a step back.
"Great. In that case, we should head to the cafeteria before the rumor mill starts moving."
She agreed with a hum and the two of us started walking in silence. That didn't last long though, as there was one last question I couldn't get out of my head.
"So, class rep? Is getting invited to this Symposium thing really that big of a deal?"
She sent one last sharp glance in response, and after holding my gaze for a while, she slouched her shoulders and muttered sothing about 'achievents of ignorance'. That didn't sound good.
"Oookay then. I guess I better ask Judy to help study beforehand."
"Yes, you better," the class rep agreed, and with that, we left the school library behind, with my stomach suddenly feeling heavier than when I entered.
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