小嫂子的味道

It was one of those perfect autumn evenings, so common in stories but so rare in the real world.

Inside the café bustling with students, three sat together at a table. It wasn\'t an unusual thing, many students sat and ate together. The groups consisted of acquaintances, friends, couples, and such. Then there were the ones we could not forget: those who shared a table simply because there weren\'t any vacant seats.

But this group of three students was different; they fit in neither of these categories. At least not when their opinion was combined, each had different thoughts about the connection they shared.

The students in question were two girls and a day. Ellyn, Anya, and Leon, or their names followed.

Leon was finished with his snacks by the time Anya arrived, but he ordered a cup of coffee to accompany her, and judging by the pace he was drinking, it seemed like that cup was going to accompany Ellyn as well.

Anya was halfway done with her meal when Ellyn came, leaving her with the tea. It was mostly a coincidence, but now all three of them were having their refreshments and having a sweet little evening chat.

The topics varied. Sometimes it was about how a certain professor was bad at teaching a specific part, how he wasn\'t bad and had misspoken a word, but the rumors spread like a fire, making too much of a small mistake.

They talked about how their lessons were going, their thoughts on the new custom magic they were being taught, and how that one student in the class was still unable to get his head around it. This piece of information was, in a way, just an attempt to fill in the silence that occasionally shrouded the three.

"How are things coming along for your brother? Is he in better health?" Leon asked, shifting the conversation toward the topic he\'d been meaning to ask from the start but was hesitating.

The attention fell on Anya, Ellyn eyes her casually while taking a sip from her cup.

"He\'s better than before. Most of the injured have healed, and he\'s got permission to leave his room…" there was a momentary pause, and she looked lost in thought. "It lifted his spirits quite a bit," she added.

"Well, I certainly would have died from boredom if they told me to lay in bed for half a week," Leon said. "It\'s not strange that he wants to get some fresh air."

Ellyn did not comment as she watched the two of them and sipped her tea quietly, which was unlike her, but no one took notice of it.

"Still, I\'d never have thought that Mr. Alderman would do something like this," Leon stated, shaking his cup slightly in a circular motion while he looked down at the table.

"Neither did I. But from what they told me, he had his circumstances. Though they don\'t justify his actions in any way," while she spoke, Anya\'s eyes were elsewhere; they seemed distant, as if she didn\'t want to think about this man.

"What did they tell you anyway? I never received an expulsion as to why all this happened?" Leon asked, leaning back in his chair and tipping in on two legs.

Anya looked straight at him, meeting his eyes as she said. "I can\'t tell you. They have refrained me from doing so…since it\'s now classified info and all."

"Tch, that\'s a pain. I know the academy doesn\'t want this incident to come out in public but at least I, Ellyn and everyone else who was involved should get the right to know the whole thing," he eyed both the girls for their approval. "It\'s not like we aren\'t trustworthy."

"It\'s not about trust," said Ellyn, finally seeming to have decided to step into the conversation. "If word got out, the academy will face a huge backlash," she paused for a while and looked at her surroundings, then she leaned in closer to the two and said in a low murmur. "... especially since Mr. Alderman is confirmed to be dead."

She leaned back and sat comfortably on her chair. "I\'ve asked Mr. Jekar about it. He didn\'t tell me the backstory, but what he did reveal was that only he, Anya, and the academy\'s chairman knows all the details aside from her brother himself."

"They aren\'t even telling their people. Why do you expect them to tell you? A student."

"Well… I-I helped in the search," he tried to think of other reasons but didn\'t find any.

"We all did. If you\'re bothered by this, then let me remind you, we were the ones who volunteered for the search. Not the other way around," Ellyn said, her voice sharp like her eyes that stared down hard at Leon.

"What?! It\'s not like I can\'t handle secrets. I\'ve got a handful of them myself, and am pretty good at…" he finally noticed Ellyn\'s stare and what she was indirectly trying to tell. That made him swallow his words and sip on his coffee.

They were arguing over the fact that they didn\'t get to know what was the reason behind Zero\'s kidnapping, and everything else that followed. Leon was demanding the information as if it was a book, a scene out of a play, a source of entertainment, and not something that was the reason behind the condition Anya\'s brother was in.

Maybe that was why Anya carried the quiet while the two argued. Ellyn had been observant enough to notice this, but Leon, being the dense protagonist he was, ignored her and acted in an insensitive way…or at least that\'s what he and Ellyn thought.

In reality, Anya wasn\'t too bothered by it. She\'d already gotten over the past and the thing did not make her curse Leon secretly, she was just uncomfortable is all. Hence, was the reason she did not have much say on the topic.

"By the way," Ellyn said, filling in the silence that had been there since Leon came to an awkward stop. "Are you dating Millia?" she asked.

"What?!" Leon was caught off guard by this so much that he almost choked on his coffee. Anya was startled too, her eyes went a little wider than usual as she was amazed by the intensity of the question.

"Why do you say that?!" Leon appealed in an almost-offended tone.

"I\'ve heard about it…people talk, you know? Especially since we are confined in the academy\'s campus, things such as this don\'t stay hidden for long," Ellyn gave a little shrug of shoulders.

"B-But no! That\'s utter nonsense! I may have met the girl a few times, but we are not in a relationship," he said as if he was speaking something very obvious, something that didn\'t need to be explained for one to understand.

And he was right. He was not in a relationship with this girl.

Millia Windward. She was a girl of a height a bit lower than average, had ivory-blue hair, and had a knack for books. Quite a bookworm, you could say.

However, Leon was not dating this girl, as he said so. He just happened to be under her when he was on a ladder, picking up a book from the shelves in the library. He just happened to look up at that time and spot what color of panties she was wearing—received a smacking with a thick book from her afterward.

Just like this, having the protagonist\'s luck he had, Leon just happened to be at the place where she was being bullied by a group of girls in her class who defended her. Then, when some boys—who were probably related to those girls—were tearing Millia\'s favorite books in front of her while she cried and begged them to stop, he just happened to arrive at the right time and beat the shit out of them.

A couple of days after that, he received a letter from her which told him to come behind the Instrs—the most isolated place on the whole campus. He went there and met with Millia.

She was dressed quite nicely for a normal day, her cheeks were flushed red, but it was not the makeup that did that. She stepped closer and said to him to close his eyes, and he did.

Then lo and behold! What he received was a kiss on the lips—not his first kiss. That had already happened in the early chapters of loli_pop\'s novel.

So he got Kidd, followed by a love confession afterward. According to him, it was unexpected, and he had not a single clue that she harbored romantic feelings for him.

But sad as it was, he had to decline her offer…but wait! It didn\'t happen instantly. At that moment, he was too stunned to speak, and Millia took it as a yes. For two days that followed, they dated while Leon tried to find a way to respectfully decline her.

What he needed was an opportunity, which he got right after they slept with each other. As they say, when the post-nut clarity hits you, it hits hard. It could also be because Millia has served her purpose in his novel so loli_pop decided to remove her, but that couldn\'t be true.

In the end, they kissed and had sex, but at the very core of it, they weren\'t in a relationship. Hence, Leon was right in his take.

"They are nothing but rumors. And like most rumors are, they are clusters of lies," Leon clarified as he took another sip of his coffee and tipped back his chair further.

Ellyn eyed her for a good long moment as a wry smirk spread on her face like butter on a piping hot piece of bread. She placed her now-empty cup on the coaster, and it made a CLINK sound.

"So kissing a girl doesn\'t count as dating, then?" she said, looking at Leon like a predator staring at its prey.

This time Leon was out of luck. He tried to say something immediately, choked on his coffee, and the chair he was sitting on fell backward as he\'d tipped it too far. He tried to grab the table to balance himself, but ended up dropping the coffee cup on himself.

A loud THUD sound was heard in the café, catching everyone\'s attention and casting it to Leon who lay on the group, above the fallen chair with coffee on his shirt…and pants too, which didn\'t give the best impression.