Agatha had to say that studying was way easier when one was used to reading and writing. She knew that part of her struggles wasn’t because of her lack of effort or because she was a moron – well, partially at least – but now it became a whole lot more apparent that being able to read and write with fluidity helped a lot in one’s retaining of information and development of such.

  The first day of the academic year had started with a bit of a hiccup, but the next weeks went by easily and peacefully. She completely understood the lessons in class, though they had reinstated the study group on the weekends because it was just good practice. And truth be told, she preferred to avoid spending too much time alone with Christie. Not because she hated her girlfriend or because she feared her, but… she preferred if the redhead didn’t get too excited.

  More relationships and social connections ought to help that, or that was what Agatha liked to believe.

  “I must say that the usefulness of these meetings is rapidly diminishing,” Shayla commented as she precariously balanced on the back legs of her chair, her physics notes lying discarded on the table.

  “It is good practice to keep one’s brain active. Not that different from exercising,” Mateo added calmly.

  “Are we not exercising our heads constantly? I mean, is lithorica not half of that already?” The Intaksolfani sighed as she rocked.

  “Different type of exercising,” Agatha was surprised to see a fake smile in the scholarite’s face. It would seem that his patience was nearing the breaking point when dealing with Shayla. “Calisthenics is not the same as cardio. Different objectives, different muscles. The same applies here.”

  Agatha clapped as soon as she saw Shayla opening her mouth. “Shayla holds a kernel of truth. There are diminishing returns to our sessions, so I believe a change is in order.” She scared herself with her tone; it almost didn’t sound like her. “How about we extend the time between sessions until exam season? Once a fortnight, perhaps?”

  “I would go as far as saying a month, but that works for me.” With a push of her center of mass, Shayla placed her chair in all fours and stood up at the same time in a fell swoop.

  While Agatha seemed impervious to obtaining any musculature, forever locked to just being well-rounded, the same couldn’t be said for her dark-skinned classmate. Out of all the female students, Shayla was supremely well-built. Perhaps not burly, but with defined muscles, nonetheless. A fact that, even with all her innate shamefulness, Agatha knew as she had been inclined to give the Intaksolfani a look or two in the changing room. Even now, her eyes darted to Shayla’s neck – strong as a log – and collarbone as she had her coat’s neck slightly opened. She almost wished they were in the changing room again to…

  “Mm,” Agatha grunted silently as something – or rather, someone – softly pressed on her foot.

  “Is there something wrong?” Shayla turned her head to face her.

  “Nothing at all,” the dirty-blond girl said with complete nonchalance. “You are free to go.”

  “I will take you up on that,” the dark-skinned classmate snorted and walked away with a swagger that no Crochetan could boast.

  Agatha turned her head to face at her girlfriend who was smiling at her. Not the kind of smile you wanted to see in your partner. So much for making Christie mingle with other people.

  “I will take my leave too, then,” Mateo stood up after storing his books in his satchel. “I fear I need to dedicate more time trying to unlock lapiloquia if I want to keep my grades.”

  The moment the boy was out of sight was when Agatha began fearing for her life.

  “Mock sapphire~” Christie whispered melodiously, the softness sending shivers down the spine of the seamstress-in-training. “Do you mind telling me what you were looking at?”

  “Uh… our classmate?” That was the incorrect answer as the redhead pressed harder on her foot. “Okay, okay. I was looking at her collarbone.”

  “Huh,” her girlfriend backed out and straightened her back. “I expected something… else.”

  “Well, and I expected you to be anything but jealous.”

  “I-I am not jealous,” Christie blushed and looked away.

  “You are lucky that you are cute,” Agatha snorted.

  “Me lucky? How about you? You were still eyeing Shayla.”

  “Now I cannot look at other people?”

  “You can look at men,” Christie replied without any sort of hesitation.

  “You know I do not like them,” the dirty-blond girl arched a brow.

  “Exactly,” the redhead smiled at her. “I know with absolute certainty that you will never try anything with them.”

  “It is not healthy for a relationship to be based on what-ifs and outbursts of paranoia.”

  “Ah, but it is not unfounded. After all,” Christie closed onto her and approached her mouth to the petite girl’s ear, “this concupiscent seductress stole my lips.”

  “You are never going to let that go, are you?”

  “No~” The crisp and soft voice caressed her eardrums, and Agatha found herself fighting not to show anything.

  For better or worse, she knew this was a jest. This was only but a roundabout way to tease her. Christie had… really vulgar proclivities that you wouldn’t expect from a nouveau riche. Agatha should have pushed her away, and she could utmost definitely have stopped her before she got this far, but… she didn’t. A part of her enjoyed how different Christie could get from her usual self.

  That first day of the second year, Agatha had run away because she feared she was about to lose her meek bunny, but now she understood that part of her girlfriend would never vanish. It was usually a mask that she wore, and while romance novels always painted masks as this awful thing that should be discarded, the azure-eyed girl had understood that it was part of the girl she loved. The mask was part of the visage, not just an accessory that could be removed.

  But that didn’t mean she couldn’t look beneath the mask. Not in the slightest. What she saw her was an unmoored Christie, one that was freed from restrictions – and almost common sense some of the time – and she had created that freedom. Christie had spoken the truth; it was that stolen kiss that kick-started such a transformation, the key to the redhead’s self-imposed chains.

  And while it had taken several weeks to assimilate it, Agatha finally understood that she also loved that aggressive Christie. Not the bunny, but the fox. The vulpine princess. Her dummy doll.

  “You are lucky that you are cute,” Agatha whispered back and flicked a finger to her girlfriend’s face.

  “Ouch,” she reacted playfully, clearly indicating that it was more surprise than pain that she was feeling.

  “If you have finally met your teasing quota, I believe we still have more work to do. We have an advantage in lapiloquia thanks to Terráquea, and yet we are not the first in class to have unlocked it.”

  That privilege went to Cristobal Echevarria. Agatha had finally bothered to engrave his name in her memory after she almost killed him back in the first year. Not only was that blond boy the second-best in grades – some might say third, namely Agatha herself, as Christie was evenly matched – and he was also the second-best lithorist, right behind Agatha. Perhaps not the best at anything, but he was easily the second-best at anything, making him far better than your average well-rounder.

  And while he might have been the first to unlock lapiloquia in their grade, it was too early to tell if he was the best at the discipline. Though it was partially likely as lapiloquia depended on the body and, unfortunately, men had an innate advantage in that.

  Hmm, perhaps that’s why Shayla is so well-built as of late. Is she trying to compensate for lithorica by building her body? Their dark-skinned friend was one of the few members of the class who only had a single Second Stratum agate to their name. It didn’t sound bad, until you realized the other two were Agatha herself, who was at the Third Stratum – and had only a single agate to upgrade, to begin with – and Christie, who – like Agatha, wasn’t on the Second Stratum, but instead still on the first – had more agates than all of the soldiers in the academy combined. Sixteen agates didn’t look that fancy compared to that.

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  “I hate him,” Christie said out of nowhere. Agatha’s eyes shot wide open in surprise, not by the abrupt nature of the words as they had been walking to the training grounds in silence, but by their contents.

  “You… hate someone?” Agatha expressed veritable shock.

  Her girlfriend frowned at her. “I am capable of hate, yes, mock sapphire.”

  The stern reaction got a snort out of Agatha. She’s cute when she’s mad too. I should make her mad more often.

  “That came out wrong,” the seamstress-in-training feigned regret, rectifying her words. “I meant to say, why do you hate him?”

  “He looks at you,” the nouveau riche said with crossed arms.

  “We really should do something about your jealousy, dummy doll.”

  “It is not jealousy,” Christie pouted. “He has been looking at you since the start of the first year, even more so since you got to Second Stratum first. And he is continuing to do so still.”

  “Okay, he is looking at me. And what about it? A lot of people look at me.”

  “You know I do not mean it in that sense.”

  “For starters, it is impossible for him to look at me romantically, Christie. I am a commoner, and he is a noble. The heir from a big house, from what I have heard, in fact. He would never want to do anything with me.”

  “And I am the heiress of another house. Perhaps not a noble one, but still far wealthier than the Echevarrias.”

  “Point taken,” Agatha gave her that small victory. “But you still forget the fact that I could not care less about him.”

  “It is not you that I am worried about, but him. My dearest father warned me about how disgusting men, especially noble men, could be.”

  “Christie, oh beautiful Christie, your father said a lot of stuff. And not everything was empirical truth.”

  “Point taken,” Christie sighed. “But I am inclined to believe him there. What if he wants to make you his mistress by force?”

  “Then I will shove my sapphire into his depths,” the petite girl stated plainly. Her girlfriend stopped in her tracks, making Agatha stop too. “Christie? Is there something wrong?”

  “N-no,” her girlfriend blushed in a leporine – yet quasi vulpine – manner. “I am just… glad you would defend yourself in such a way. To get those… lengths to protect our relationship.”

  “Right…” Agatha rolled her eyes and continued walking. Sometimes Christie got like that, and the best course of action was to simply ignore her.

  Soon, they made it to the training grounds. There were a handful of students here and there, but thankfully, the Skyscraper Academy’s installations were more than big enough for everyone.

  “Do we really need to train outside?” Christie groaned. Agatha liked to think that it was the result of the bad influence she had on the redhead. And that amused her. “We have that peridotite.”

  “Yes,” the villager stated plainly. “The peridotite is one thing, an aid, but we still need to unlock lapiloquia, and you are aware of what Terráquea told me.”

  “Macrokinesis, I am aware,” her lazy princess nodded. Hmm, now that I remember, Christie mentioned that she would wake up around high noon when she lived on her estate.

  “And there is also the fact that you can let loose here.”

  “Let loose?” Christie arched a brow.

  “I have noticed how much you need to strain yourself to contain your sea of agates to not make a mess of our bedroom. If we are outside, you at least do not need to strain yourself that badly if an agate or two escapes.”

  “I think we are talking about more than ‘an agate or two’; but yes, I do understand your point.” The redhead sighed and the dirty-blond girl smiled at her. “I will start then.”

  Even though they were in their student uniforms rather than the soldier ones, Christie squatted and pressed her palm against the sandy ground; the hem of her skirt dragged on the sand, but she didn’t care.

  While Agatha hadn’t outright lied to her girlfriend, she had obfuscated the truth a bit. Christie’s recent jealousy was proof enough that she needed a bit more time in the open and less time locked in the bedroom with her. For once, Agatha was happy that the training grounds weren’t empty.

  But unfortunately for her girlfriend, Christie didn’t hold long in her squatting position. In less than a minute, she was already drenched, hyperventilating, and dazed enough to tumble to the ground.

  “I hate lapiloquia,” the redhead groaned.

  “We all do,” Agatha giggled and pressed her palm to the ground.

  Fortunately for her, she didn’t need to keep a whole sea of stones at bay while she also had to command the very earth, so she lasted longer. Her whole sapphire was pressed on the bedrock with Amplify Embed. Teacher Dago had told them that Amplify didn’t do anything here – Amplify Embed just rooted the agate more strongly – but Agatha liked to think otherwise. A faux remedy for her mind, for if she believed it would do something hard enough, maybe it would actually do something.

  Using her lone agate as a proxy, the petite girl transmitted her non-verbal command, her raw will into the stone below her. It should drain her mind if it were agate, but it didn’t, just her body. She could feel her sweat glands secrete and her heart accelerate in real time. It made sense how lithorica taxed the mind. One had to think really hard to control their agates with dexterity. But lapiloquia? It was as if her energies were just vanishing out of her body, going nowhere.

  Agatha was aware of the innate advantage men had with lapiloquia as their bodies were just sturdier by default. Well, sturdier unless they were against a common cold, then they became whiny babies. Yet the issue she had now wasn’t their advantage, but women’s disadvantage.

  Even though she could have pushed harder as she wasn’t fully drained, Agatha was forced to stop as she gagged and her lower body burned.

  “Ugh,” she grunted nauseously and fell on her butt. “I do not think I can go any longer today.”

  “What do you mean?” Christie protested with a hint of indignation. “You are the one who proposed this, and we have barely been at it for more than a quarter of an hour.”

  “Christie,” Agatha said softly, “I am queasy.”

  “Oh.” Those three words were more than enough for her girlfriend to understand. “Do you want to get something to eat then?”

  Agatha turned her head to the crown in the heavens and snorted. “It is not even sunset, I fear it is a bit early for that. No, I just want a bath now.”

  It was clear that Christie was far more drained than her, all that sweat and slight strain on her agate-like eyes being proof of it; the redhead still stood up first and offered Agatha a hand to stand up. She accepted the hand and was easily pulled up. Perhaps the dummy doll didn’t have much muscle, but her size alone conferred some strength to her. And she hadn’t skipped training either.

  “Everything well there?” Her girlfriend asked softly.

  “Yeah, I stopped before there were any complications,” she giggled softly. “I am sorry I made you do the whole journey just for a single try.”

  “Do not apologize,” Christie looked at her and picked up a blond lock of hair that had fallen down; she parsed it behind Agatha’s ear. “I am more than well aware that lapiloquia will not be a task for tomorrow, or even the day after that. Even Teacher Dago was surprised by Cristobal’s haste.”

  “I think that he has had some previous instruction on lapiloquia,” Agatha started making her way to the dormitories, if just so Christie couldn’t goad on her growing blush. It was those casual gestures that embarrassed her the most.

  “How come?” The tall girl followed in her wake.

  “I recall hearing him mention something about it in the first year. Maybe he wasn’t as unjustly instructed as I have been with your father, but he has had a bit of an advantage.” Christie chuckled at her words. “What?”

  “Nothing, nothing,” she chuckled again. “It is just that I realized that you – even when taking into account your humble background – are the one who has had more advantages. That Mister Krugger offered you the necklace, which ended up getting you the Second Stratum faster than others, and you have mentioned my dearest father, but we also have the recent dealing with Terráquea. It is like everyone is eager to help you.”

  “Huh…” It is… true. Agatha was astonished by Christie’s comment. I always thought of myself as… unlucky, and yet, there’s no denying that a lot of people have helped me. Almost coddled me. Like her, her eyes landed on that long and gorgeous mane of her girlfriend. “What can I say? I have a magnetic presence.”

  Agatha smiled, for she didn’t want Christie to know of her pitiful thoughts, even if she was well aware that the redhead was the first person – if not the only one – that would accept them. For even with all of that overwhelming help, she was only a single step in front of her peers. She was so useless that she could only manage that.

  As soon as they made it to their bedroom, the dirty-blond girl snatched clothes from her closet and made a run for the bathroom, her physical discomfort overpowering the mental one.

  “Ugh,” she groaned the moment she undressed. “I’m happy I don’t need to wash any of these clothes…” She threw her dirtied, drenched, and soiled clothes into the dirty laundry basket as she resisted the need to gag.

  It was so much of a mess that she didn’t dare to enter the tub outright, so she first washed herself with a wet cloth. Perhaps her malady hadn’t ended, but removing the grime already made her feel better. And when her foot touched the tub’s warm water, she almost felt whole again.

  “Ugh,” Agatha groaned again as the water gained a distinctive coloration. “Fuuuck…” She muttered weakly, too tired to even raise her voice. “What was I thinking?”

  She quickly washed her hair – thank the earth for the detachable faucet – and then drained the tub before it got messier. For better or worse, blood was easy to wash away in porcelain.

  The small surprise notwithstanding, Agatha left the bathroom refreshed. She usually didn’t spend much time marinating in the bathtub, and even less after she finally cut her hair a few weeks prior. With her little Spin Control Heat trick, she was able to easily dry her hair and then walked out in her nightrobe mostly dry.

  “Nightrobe already?” Christie commented from the balcony, a book in her hands as she rested on the lithic armchair. “Are you not planning to go to supper?”

  “Honestly?” The seamstress-in-training lazily sat in the opposite armchair. It was cold, but at least there was a cushion to protect her butt from freezing over. “I am too tired to get down to the mess hall.”

  “Would you like me to bring you something up?” The nouveau riche said, her gaze undecisive as she switched from her book and Agatha.

  “I would appreciate it, but I am not that hungry yet,” Agatha turned her head toward the horizon. Unfortunately, their room didn’t have a direct line of sight of the sunset, but like all curses came with blessings, that meant they had a killer view of the sunrise. “Still a bit too early for that. But you know what I would like?”

  “And that would be?” Christie still kept acting as if she wasn’t looking at her, even if she utterly failed at that.

  Unlike the redhead, Agatha didn’t usually wear a brassiere under her nightgown, and that was something that Christie had issues dealing with. The dirty-blond girl might not enjoy nakedness from any party, but this kind of teasing was something she was oddly comfortable with. Mostly because it was the only teasing she could use against Christie.

  “I would like you to stay here with me,” the villager borrowed her girlfriend’s family signature smile as she looked at Christie in a vulpine manner.

  The redhead snorted and finally closed her book. None of the girls said anything as they looked at the horizon, the autumnal zephyr caressing them. They were frustrated that all of their efforts in lapiloquia continued to be for naught, but at the same time, none of that mattered at the moment. They were just themselves in that small and personal piece of the world, a shallow breeze of plenitude filling their hearts.

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