Chapter 158: A Lot of Fun
Transfer!Oathran was...
...sothing else.
He still carried that innate untouchable air. A quiet dignity that seed to flatten the noisy chaos of the school refectory around him into a more manageable hum, perhaps. The aloof majesty was there, one could see. In the straight line of his back, the careful economy of his movents...
But layered over it, woven through it, was sothing... normal.
"Oh, it’s at pie," he observed, delighted in his low voice as he surveyed the late-night serving counter. He selected two generous slices, added a bowl of savory broth, and eyed the dessert section with... scholarly consideration.
Cecilia had to ponder a bit before even attempting to describe it.
His gaze lingered on a glazed donut, then drifted to a large, magically chilled bowl bearing a handwritten sign. ’Smoothies.’
He tilted his head, a faint, curious frown touching his brow.
Cecilia, queuing behind him, followed his gaze. Smoothies? The word ant nothing to her. So kind of potion? Pudding? Her own mind, ever wary of unknown variables in a constructed world, narrowed her eyes at the mysterious substance. It seed only logical to investigate.
As Oathran reached for a bowl, she realized her hand had also moved at the sa ti.
For fuck’s sake.
Their hands brushed in the space above the stacked porcelain. Not quite a touch, just a proximity. But Cecilia snatched her bowl back as if burned. Why did it feel like she was electrocuted?!
Can this scenario be less romantic?!
She scread internally. It seed that because she didn’t want to proceed on the romance trope scenario yet, the system would just enhance and exaggerate every sensation remotely intimate.
Ahh... the System’s heavy-handed tropes were one thing, but the universe itself seed to be conspiring to throw them into cliché proximity.
She had a mission here! A mission of careful, passive observation, not shared dessert selections!
"Late dinner today? Oh... as expected, Miss Araceli," chuckled the kindly, middle-aged staff mber manning the counter. She began filling Cecilia’s bowl with the thick, pinkish concoction. "Is it because your new boyfriend is away? I hadn’t seen him today."
"I noticed you started eating on ti when you started dating him," the staff blinked. "Tagging along behind him like a lost puppy every al ti."
The casual gossip, so ingrained in the school’s fabric, was a welco relief. Why would it be a relief, though? Because the touch with Oathran made her stomach butterfly-ed? Butterflying her sto—whatever?
Cecilia grasped the lifeline though. And... blushed while she was at it too... Who wouldn’t blush when you’re gossipped with Eastiel?
"You an, Eastiel?" she asked, her tone light, playing along with the established narrative.
"Is he... nooOOot your boyfriend?" The staffer teased, drawing out the word with a weary affection. She’d seen generations of teenage drama and this particular saga was apparently a highlight.
Cecilia offered a casual shrug, ambiguously nonchalant. "I don’t know. How about you ask him when he cos back?"
"Oh!" The woman’s face lit up with gleeful anticipation. "Just know that I will."
She handed over the smoothie bowl to her.
Cecilia took her tray. at pie, stead veggies and condints, the mysterious smoothie, and retreated to the nearly empty dining hall. She chose her usual seat at a long table by a rain-streaked window, the night pressing black against the glass.
She didn’t look back. She didn’t expect him to follow. In fact, she wished he wouldn’t. They needed distance. Strategically, psychologically, narratively.
But alas.
The scrape of a chair directly beside hers was a tragedy. She didn’t need to look, she could feel the shift in the air, the subtle coolness and that clean, ozonic scent.
"What?" Oathran’s voice was mild, a touch of genuine confusion in it as he arranged his own tray. "I thought we had beco friends."
Friends.
That was... nice.
Her relationship with the real Oathran had skipped that stage entirely. There had been no buffer. They had vaulted from strangers, to oath-bearer and death-seeking legend, to magically-bonded mates in a span of chaos and desperation. There had been no ’getting to know each other’ era. No shared lunches, no casual conversations.
Even with Arkai, there had been a buffer. Letters fraught with tension, warnings exchanged, gifts and political connections slowly weaving a net of mutual understanding.
The fact that she and the real Oathran had co to get along, to understand each other, to truly love each other...
It was a miracle born of two specific conditions. One, Cecilia having grown into a halfway-decent adult, and the infinite wisdomful patience of a four-hundred-year-old Dragon Lord.
Co to think of it, if those conditions hadn’t been t...
Cecilia grimaced internally. She rembered how her own palm connected with his cheek, the sharp sound in the scorched town, her fury white-hot when he had so calmly offered her as Arkai’s mate after his death.
Yes. Without her hard-won maturity and his ancient forbearance, they... might not have gone along well at all. They might have been oil and water, or worse, fire and kindling.
"Do you not want people to tell your boyfriend that you’re seen with another man late at night?" Oathran asked, his tone still one of polite inquiry.
He was scooping a tentative spoonful of his smoothie, his at pie and broth sitting untouched. It seed... he was conducting a culinary experint as he spoke.
"Eastiel is not that petty," Cecilia said. "And that’s not the point."
"I see you do not enjoy my company," Oathran shrugged, not sounding offended, rely stating a deduced fact. He took a bite of the smoothie, thoughtful as he processed the taste. "I just want to have soone to eat a late dinner with after a full day of studying."
Cecilia bit down on her fork, the rich, savory flavor of the at pie bursting across her tongue, but her mind was galaxies away.
Oathran... rarely ate.
The real one. The dragon.
He’d shown polite interest in human cuisine, but it was a performance, a social grace. But when it cos to her diet... he’d turn into soone else.
He’d even eat when he deed she might feel lonely dining alone, or if he thought she wouldn’t eat without him doing the sa.
He never truly needed to.
He’d once offhandedly said that his diet for the past seventeen years had consisted primarily of... monsters.
And there was no kitchen in his mountain aerie.
Seeing this version of him... Transfer!Oathran... delight in a at pie, ponder a donut, scientifically tackle a ’smoothie’... it was ’normal’. It was bizarre. Heartbreaking.
It was a glimpse of a mundane he had never possessed.
A life of simple, human pleasures his true nature had rendered obsolete.
She raised her chin, looking out at the dark window, seeing their faint reflections superimposed on the night. The mission warred with a pang of sothing she couldn’t na. Not pity. Sothing closer to... regret. For the ordinary monts they’d never had.
"Fine," she said, trying to sound arrogant. "You may stay."
A soft sound escaped him. Not quite a laugh, but perhaps a gentle exhalation of amusent. "Pff... huhuhu..."
The young man nodded.
"Professor Baswara was right," he muttered. "School is a lot of fun."
Huh?
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