Chapter 78
I stared at both Swanhaden and Yves. They stared right back at me, eyes wide open in shock.
Swanhaden had a sheep-shaped sleep mask on his head, and it seemed as if he had just woken up. His hair was an absolute mess. Swanhaden didn't seem to have pajamas, and was wearing his normal black short-sleeve shirt.
Yvnes looked like he had just gotten out of the shower, and was wearing a sleeveless shirt like me. His hair was wet as he sat at his desk looking at documents. His hair wasn't up like usual and was instead loose. His hair stick was in its container.
I seemed to have bitten my tongue when I rolled into the room. I tasted blood.
Swanhaden seemed surprised at my sudden entrance, then stiffened when he saw blood coming out of my mouth.
The two of them seemed to have a lot they wanted to say to me, but they were both so surprised that they couldn't seem to open their mouths. I would probably have done the same.
"Room blue 301! What's the ruckus?!"
I could hear the teacher's angry voice and the sound of footsteps. The quiet thump, thump, thump of the teacher's footsteps slowly grew to a resounding THUMP, THUMP, THUMP. I had heard that the teacher in charge of supervising the male dormitory was pretty large. It seemed that this fact was backed up by the sound of his footsteps.
Swanhaden and Yvnes both stopped staring at me and stared at each other.
Then, both of them brought over their blankets and covered me with it. Both of them hugged me at once. Swan and Yves helped me stand up from where I had landed on, and then put me under the covers. Both of them were hugging me in an attempt to hide me, so from the outside it looked like Yves and Swan were hugging each other.
As soon as I hid in their arms, the teacher entered the room. The teacher stared at the mess inside of the room, then checked Swanhaden's name on the door and seemed to understand.
The teacher looked at Yves and Swan with an unpleasant expression on his face before speaking.
"…..what are you two doing, hugging like this in the middle of the night?"
I could see the teacher's belly through the tiny space between the blankets.
I burrowed in further into the blankets to hide from the teacher's sights. I tried to make my body as small as I could make it. My ear was right by Swan's chest. I could hear his heart beating frantically. It looked like Swan was nervous about being caught just like me, and Yves seemed to think that this was the opportunity to hug me tighter and did just that.
Swan hugged me as he activated his heal. My tongue and all of my other injuries were all healed.
Yves' long wet hair made my clothes slightly damp. On the other hand, Swanhaden, who had just woken up, was incredibly warm. The mix of Swan and Yves' blankets mixed Yves' shampoo scent and Swan's unique soap smell. I was reminded of Hestia's and my pajama parties when we were younger.
Thankfully, the teacher didn't seem to notice my presence. At the teacher's question, Swanhaden opened his mouth to respond.
"As you can see, Yves hyung and I fought a lot earlier."
Yvnes listened to Swan's words and continued the statement.
"We're currently reconciling."
The teacher scoffed at that response and spoke again.
"The two of you, both itching to kill each other, hugging to reconcile?"
The teacher narrowed his eyes, suspicious. He looked around the room and then pointed at the broom that I had rone on.
"Hey, what's with that broom with a seat on it?"
"It's from Yves hyung's broom collection."
The teacher was well aware of Yves' obsession with cleaning. He nodded, muttering, "There are some strange brooms out there."
He glanced away from the broom and stared at the Swan and Yves, who were still hugging each other.
"What, did you guys fall in love with each other or something? Why are you sticking together?"
At that question, an incredible amount of murderous intent and magic began to spread in the room. Yvnes seemed equally disgusted.
"Okay. I got it. I'm not going to bother the two of you anymore, so stop hugging each other and go to sleep. And don't forget to pick up a dorm repair sheet later."
Apparently the teacher was kind of frightened of the two of them. He hurriedly left the room.
Anyway, seeing the teacher's reaction, it seemed that this wasn't the first time this kind of destruction had occurred in this room.
The window was a complete mess, but he didn't say much and just accepted it as it was. The teacher did look kind of confused about the hug, but he seemed incredibly used to seeing broken items after a fight.
Man, how much of a mess did the two of you cause on the regular?
I stayed inside of the blankets for a bit longer before looking back up and around the room.
Honestly, it was always a bit of a treat to visit someone else's room. The saying went that the contents of a room showed the person's personality.
Yves' side was super neatly organized. He only had two organizers on his desk–one for his documents, and one for his pen.
All of the books in his bookshelf were also organized by size and neatly shelved. On his desk was a few spelled drawings of the small orange-haired puppy he had recently adopted.
I turned to look at the opposite side, Swan's part of the room. It looked like Swan was also a pretty neat person. On his bookshelf were books about morality. Most of the books were brown, but there was one pink book that caught my eye. The title was "How to Capture That Woman".
He had chess, cards, and other games and weapons laid out on top of his drawers. There were iron chains, an iron mace, a ring-shaped weapon, a dagger, and other etc. weapons. A lot of them. On his desk were colored pencils and papers full of doodles. Most of Swanhaden's doodles were a giant orange furball. Moreover, it looked like he had put in a lot of effort. I wondered if it was some kind of monster and tried to think what it could possibly be.
As soon as the teacher left the room, Swanhaden immediately stood up straight and Yvnes dragged me into his arms.
Yvnes had just gotten out of the shower, so he smelled great. I could see his relaxed silver eyes between his wet bangs. His lips curled up as he brought my face closer to his. His wet hair made him look more seductive than usual. He brushed away the hair covering my face as he looked down at me, expression suddenly turning worried.
"What happened for you to come bursting through the window? That's dangerous. It probably wasn't to see me, either."
When Yves jugged me, somebody from behind pushed the two of us away.
Swanhaden rolled me up in his blanket and separated me from Yves, then held me in his arms as he tried to step on Yvnes. Yvnes seemed to expect Swanhaden's attacks and dodged sideways.
"Don't pollute Shushu like that. I'm going to cut off your hand."
He must really hate Yves. He was treating him as if he was a bundle of germs. Well, I tried to think if there was anyone that Swanhaden seemed to like or rate highly, but I couldn't think of anyone. A sudden thought crossed my mind. I guess that fact was incredible in itself.
Anyway, this was the first time that I was so close to Swan since last year's monster subjugation. Excluding greetings, that is.
Swan generally didn't act close to me, but he suddenly swept in to act close at times. To explain, he sometimes acts like we're super close every once in a while. Of course, I wanted to be good friends with him, but I just didn't feel like we were friendly enough to consider each other super important.
I looked at Swanhaden. Swan was busy glaring at Yves, and on his head was a cute sheep-shaped sleeping mask. The hair that stuck out from under the tie was pointing in every direction.
Swanhaden was always wearing that sleeping mask when I saw him.
Because it was in the shape of a sheep, it almost made him look soft. I was kind of disappointed that he wasn't covering his eyes with a sleeping mask or his shirt like before. It was kind of cute. I remembered how Cory also borrowed this particular sleeping mask often.
When I just continued to stare at Swan, Swan looked right at me.
Unlike before, Swanhaden looked right at me.
"…..are you okay? Why did you break in through the window? That must've hurt. You weren't attacked by anyone, right?"
He asked, worriedly.
It was the first conversation we had in a year, so it was kind of awkward. I blinked at him a few times before explaining the situation to Swan.
Yves also concentrated and listened to my story.
I gave them a short summary of the situation: I made a magic item for my younger brother, who wanted to fly across the sky. I tried out the device and got in a small accident.
When the two of them asked if I was serious, I nodded slightly. They sighed.
I just stared at Swanhaden, who still had me rolled up in blankets and held me in his arms. I just looked because he was right there.
"……."
Swanhaden seemed a little intimidated by my stare. He took off the sheep sleeping mask off of his head and put it on me. I couldn't see anything.
"But if Shushu gets caught here, she's going to get punished. And the rumors aren't going to be good, either."
I couldn't see anything, but I could hear Yves' voice.
"Swan, you're the magician, you do something. Can't you do some kind of shapeshifting magic like Cory? Oh. Shushu, can you do some kind of shapeshifting magic?"
Yves approached me and asked.
Can I use shapeshifting magic? Yes, I could, but I used up all of my magic trying to calm down my broom earlier. Moreover, I kept pouring my magic into the broom to not fall off of it. I was totally out of magic.
"I can't. I used up all of my magic earlier."
Yves easily accepted my explanation.
"Swan, make some magic stones."
"You know I'm on punishment for a week."
I could hear a jingle. It sounded like Swan had raised his arm to show Yves his bracelets.
Well, Swan was constantly getting punished. This time, he was getting punished for destruction of property. Punishments differed for each student. At first, the school had given Swanhaden cleaning or public cleaning punishments to shame him, but it didn't seem to work. They had to change his punishments into something more effective. Swanhaden was impossible to figure out, so the school ended up giving him punishments in the shape of magic restraining bracelets.
Magic stones were incredibly difficult to make. Only those with incredibly high magic stores could create them. To create a magic stone, you needed to be able to compress a large amount of energy at once. But with a magic restraint, it was impossible to concentrate magic at all. Personally, I didn't have enough magic to create stones in the first place.
Yves began to think of another solution. If we wanted to sneak out of the dorms, we needed someone who could use a lot of magic at once. There was one person that we all thought of at once.
Cory.