Alecto boldly narrowed his eyes. Liarnon glared at him with burning eyes and looked at the stone rolled at her feet.

“Hey, Alecto Islani. Did you throw this?”

“What are you talking about?”

Alecto spoke, shrugging his shoulders as if he wanted everyone around, including Idalia, to hear. Liarnon picked up the stone and showed it to him.

“You threw this.”

“No, I didn’t.”

Idalia kept her mouth shut as if she didn’t want to lie, but there was a triumph in her eyes. Alecto spotted someone who hadn’t gone into the building yet and asked for their opinion.

“Hey, Neris Trued. Diane McKinnon. You tell me. Do you know what she’s saying?”

Diane had been sitting in a chair most of the time during dance lessons, but she participated on slow dance days. However, regardless of participation, everyone had to change into dance shoes for dance lessons, so she was getting help from Neris at the entrance.

Diane scowled, indifferent to whatever conversation Alecto and Liarnon were having, but Neris stared straight at Alecto. Her piercing gaze made Alecto uncomfortable.

“What? Why are you staring?”

“I didn’t stare.”

Alecto, who had already witnessed Neris Trued’s temperament several times, was surprised by the milder response than expected.

She hesitated to say what she wanted next. Well, then…

“You saw what she did to me?”

Liarnon spoke before Alecto.

Liarnon’s expression was grim, to say the least. Negative emotions dripped from her raised eyes. Alecto snorted. None of her classmates would take Liarnon’s side.

…Wait, should Neris Trued be considered a classmate too? Would she have such insight?

Neris’s expression was strange. Her slightly upturned lips drew an ambiguous line, either smiling out of embarrassment or mocking the situation, and her famous purple eyes were cold.

Alecto looked at Neris curiously. Always neat without a single servant, Neris was different from her peers. So she might have acted differently as well.

“I wonder?”

Fortunately, Neris answered with an innocent voice after a moment. However, nobody in the first grade thought she was truly naive, so her tone infuriated Liarnon.

Alecto chuckled. Yeah, Neris was no fool.

She was going to do the same if she sided with the ostracized idiot.

“You were watching!”

Liarnon was about to explode.
She had locked eyes with Neris for a moment earlier after being hit by the stone. Considering the timing, it was right to say that Neris had been looking at Lianon because she had witnessed Alecto’s crime. But ‘maybe?’

Neris spoke as if she was singing.

“What was I looking at?”

“You locked eyes with me earlier!”

“I looked for a moment because you were screaming. All the kids did.”

“You wretched girl!”

Lianon cursed at Neris. It was something she couldn’t dare say to Alecto. Although she was quite fierce, Neris smiled without being affected.

“Why? Weren’t you just claiming that Alecto threw a stone at you? You’re just annoyed at anyone? Funny, kid.”

Alecto burst into loud laughter, and Idalia smiled cautiously but sincerely. The children around, watching the situation, complained. Why is she like that? I don’t know. She always ruins the mood. Just disappear from the school.

Tears welled up in Lianon’s eyes.

Alecto spoke arrogantly, a confident attitude of someone sure that everyone was on his side.

“Got evidence? Evidence! If not, get lost, you idiot.”

Idalia grabbed Alecto’s sleeve.

Playing nice. Alecto had the same thought as before but obediently turned around.

She was hit once and paid back once. Although she was someone who would pay back tenfold if hit once, there was no need to necessarily pay back the remaining nine today.

(This is a time separator.)

Today was a good day for sightseeing. Neris concluded as she entered the room.

Alecto was not the type to stay still if something happened to him. And he overreacted if he felt he looked ridiculous because of his inferiority complex.

It was the same when he had turned everything upside down at Anagarad’s party, and when he publicly humiliated Lianon, whom he judged had attacked him.

Yesterday when Alecto was hit by the stone and Lianon passed by, it wasn’t an incident concocted on the spot. Neris had been watching for an opportunity since the letter incident. If it didn’t happen at once, she was prepared to try two or three more times.

According to Cledwin, it was a precarious plan, but it was followed by enough results once it succeeded.

However, now she could come up with a more comfortable and feasible plan.

Thinking that way, she felt a spiteful satisfaction and contempt for herself.

Today, Neris certainly saw Alecto throw the stone at Lianon. Because she had been watching when Alecto would move.

Alecto and Lianon had many different classes, so if something happened, she expected it to be during the dance lesson.

“Don’t be funny! Got evidence?”

It was a disgusting statement.

She kept watching until the end, thinking that it was the price she had to pay, not really because it was funny. Other children’s sympathy with the situation also made her nauseous.

Alecto would soon get his just deserts, and Neris cynically hoped that Lianon would find some consolation then.

‘Huh?’

While putting down her bag next to the bed, Neris suddenly noticed a white envelope on the floor right in front of the door.

The dormitory manager was a young man who, to put it unkindly, was lazy or, more nicely, minded his own business. He was not someone to push letters into the student’s rooms.

Who had come to the dormitory? There was nothing to steal, and it didn’t seem like someone had come into the room, but it bothered her.

Neris approached the door and opened the envelope. There was no writing on the envelope, but inside was a white paper, folded in half.

The uniform texture and color of both the envelope and paper seemed to be expensive.

That was the only word written on the paper. Neris guessed the sender from the abrupt way the words were tossed and the beautiful handwriting.

What does he mean? She pondered for a moment, then took out a pen and ink from her bag and added three short sentences below Cledwin’s letter.
Perhaps it was his way of instructing that they should contact each other like this in the future, but why couldn’t he inform her in a more normal way?

P.S. Please buy Mr. Hallogress of Rantbil. Deduct the cost from my salary later.]

Neris blew gently on the paper until the ink dried. And when the paper was sufficiently dry, she folded the letter back up, put it in the envelope, and slipped it very slightly through the crack in the door.

The next morning when she got up, the envelope was gone.