Something Suspicious?
Yes! This is exactly it...!
Through the crack of the slightly open door, Yuri peeked inside, her whole body trembling with barely contained excitement.
Yesterday, watching Aslan Belmont force the two of them to make up had left her bitterly disappointed.
What she wanted to see was Charlotte and Yulia, after that awkward stretch, naturally clashing again and then reconciling on their own—not some formal end to the fight with a single "Make up" from Aslan!
She had resigned herself to never getting that natural reconciliation between Charlotte and Yulia.
But after finishing her ten laps around the training grounds and coming back, she found a thrilling scene unfolding right inside the room.
Cute plus cute equals insanely cute... Hehehehe...
That was Charlotte for you!
She had half-expected it the moment Charlotte's terrible sleeping habits had invaded Yulia's bed.
But the distance between them was even closer than she had imagined, and Yuri felt her heart pounding wildly.
Charlotte and Yulia stuck together that tightly.
Close enough that the slightest movement would make their bodies bump.
She had to burn this into her memory forever.
Drool trailing from her mouth, Yuri stared through the doorway without blinking once.
"Even if we really do fight, it's okay. I'll come back to you as many times as it takes. So don't worry."
"Th-that's... I mean... It always feels like Charlotte is the one who comes to me first or lightens the mood... So I wanted to try being the brave one this time..."
And Yulia is the one pushing forward here!?
At Yulia's unexpected advance, an earthquake shook Yuri's pupils.
The introverted, timid Yulia saying something like that...!
Wasn't this basically a confession!?
Ahhh! Too sweet!
She was going to rot for real!
Just as Yuri wiped the drool from her chin—
"Hnnngh! What do I do! Isn't Yulia way too cute!?"
"Urgh... C-can't breathe, Charlotte..."
"Ah. Sorry."
Whoa. She's hugging her right there?
Charlotte's sudden move short-circuited Yuri's thought process completely.
The stimulus was simply too much; her brain stopped working, and the overload made her nosebleed erupt.
"Haaahk."
"...?"
"...?"
Startled by the sudden nosebleed, she sucked in a sharp breath—
and that choking gasp rang out loud and clear.
To make matters worse, her hand slipped forward and shoved the door wide open.
In an instant, Charlotte and Yulia's eyes snapped toward her.
Ah. I made a sound.
"Ah."
"Hm?"
"Huh?"
In that exact moment, Yuri realized the nosebleed was the least of her problems.
She had no mask.
She had let her guard down and come without putting it on!!!
"H-hey, Yuri..."
"...!?"
She just called me Yuri, right?
That wasn't a slip of the tongue?
Yuri hastily turned her back to hide her face, but she had stood there frozen like an idiot with her face fully exposed for more than three whole seconds. There was no way they hadn't recognized her.
Ah. Am I actually an idiot?
Her plan had been to quietly infiltrate Belmont Manor, keep her identity hidden to the end, and uncover Aslan Belmont's true face.
Instead she had gotten so drunk on the sight of Charlotte and Yulia squealing and tumbling around in each other's arms that her identity was blown on day two.
A catastrophe born of a single moment of carelessness.
Regret came flooding in, but it was already far too late.
Wh-what do I do? Should I just insist I'm not her?
There were plenty of options.
She could run.
She could claim she wasn't Yuri.
She could even spout nonsense about this being an illusion mask and that she was running an experiment to see their reactions to their friend's face.
But would any of that really mean anything?
It would just be covering her eyes and pretending the truth wasn't there.
If she flat-out denied it right now, Charlotte and Yulia would probably pretend they hadn't recognized her.
They were kind-hearted kids; they would definitely do that.
But would that actually help?
Just tell them the truth...
Yuri steeled herself and squeezed her eyes shut.
The reason she had hidden her identity from Charlotte and Yulia all this time was to eliminate any chance that Aslan Belmont might discover their connection.
But it was too late for that now.
Even if Charlotte and Yulia pretended not to know her, any slip would still get back to Aslan Belmont eventually.
Since things had come to this, she might as well just come clean to Charlotte and Yulia.
She had held back this whole time.
She had swallowed down every urge to chat with Yulia and run around with Charlotte.
She had only ever watched them from right next door. It was time to stop hiding.
Yuri gathered her courage and turned around.
"Y-Yulia! What are you doing calling someone by the wrong name?"
"Ah? Ahh! Right! It's Yuria, isn't it? Not Yuri—Yuria. Yeah, yeah. Yuria."
"The truth is, I am Yuri—!"
"..."
"..."
Just as Charlotte and Yulia were scrambling to play dumb, Yuri came out with it.
Silence settled over the room for a beat.
Ah. So this is the moment we were supposed to admit it?
Charlotte and Yulia scratched the backs of their heads, looking sheepish, then glanced at each other and launched into exaggerated shock.
"Whoa! Whoaaa...! Yuria was actually Yuri?"
"I-I really had no ideaaa... What a surprise. To think the Yuri we lost contact with after being separated would show up like this... Wowww..."
"...Did you two actually not know?"
"..."
"..."
Under Yuri's suspicious glare, Charlotte and Yulia's eyes darted around with nowhere to land.
No matter how you looked at them, those were the eyes of people who were anything but honest.
Yuri took another shock and her mouth fell open.
"No way. So you knew it was me from the start? Since when...?"
"Hmm? Since when was it? Oh, right! The day Yuri showed up wearing the mask! I figured it out on the way to the North!"
"So you saw through me the second I put on a disguise...!"
"Not the exact second. Actually, that evening, when you took the mask off for a second, I peeked..."
"That's only a few hours difference!!!"
Then what the hell have I been doing this whole time!?
She had been wearing a mask, modulating her voice, acting all cold and distant, putting on a whole ridiculous performance in front of kids who already knew exactly who she was?
Yuri collapsed under the sheer hollowness of it all.
"Ha... Ahaha... Uhehehe... Ahahahahaha...!"
"...?"
Yuri, who had been sitting there blankly, suddenly burst into laughter.
Charlotte and Yulia were seized by considerable alarm.
Has she finally lost it?
Laughing like a maniac with clear nosebleed stains still on her face was not a reassuring sight.
"Yuri, it's okay! Your efforts weren't for nothing...!"
"No. No... It's just too funny. Ah. It was this easy the whole time. All I needed was a tiny bit of courage to take one single step. Then I could have skipped all the heartache and faced you two like this ages ago... I couldn't even muster that little bit of courage and ended up here. And if I hadn't slipped up and forgotten the mask today, I would have kept doing this stupid act for even longer."
Wiping away the tears that had leaked out, Yuri let out a dry laugh.
What had she been so afraid of this whole time?
Charlotte and Yulia had noticed ages ago.
Why had she been so desperately trying to hide?
The regret and self-loathing only lasted a moment.
A far greater sense of liberation washed over her, and the tightness in her chest finally burst open.
She didn't have to wear that uncomfortable mask anymore.
She didn't have to pretend she didn't know Charlotte and Yulia.
She didn't have to suppress the urge to jump into those sweet little moments when Charlotte and Yulia were pressed close together.
The moment those thoughts hit her, her chest swelled so full she thought it might burst.
Charlotte and Yulia knew from the beginning. And since Aslan Belmont still hasn't found out, things will probably be fine going forward too.
The crisis she had imagined—that once Charlotte and Yulia knew her identity, hiding it from Aslan would become impossible—turned out to be pure delusion.
It didn't matter.
It was okay to tell them.
Not realizing this on the first day was a real shame, but simply knowing it now—and no longer having to endure the ordeal of hiding her identity in front of her friends—was pure joy.
"Whew. That feels so much better! But why did you two pretend not to know even after you figured out it was me?"
"Ah, well, about that..."
"We figured there had to be a reason Yuri was approaching us so secretly!"
"Yeah. We thought there must be some serious reason we weren't supposed to notice your identity..."
"Ah. There really isn't anything like that..."
Yuri smacked her forehead and laughed hollowly again.
So they had assumed she was doing this for some profound reason.
In reality she had just been acting like a complete fool.
With the whole truth out in the open, the emptiness and anticlimax were almost unbearable.
"We should have been brave enough to show we recognized you too..."
"But seeing you again like this is so, so good! How long has it been since the three of us could just hang out like this...!"
"Yuri, what have you been up to all this time? I'm dying to know!"
"Yeah! So, about that...!"
Taking Yulia's hand and linking arms with Charlotte, Yuri began pouring out everything that had happened.
How she had gone to the Imperial Magic Academy full of grim determination to get them back.
How she had met a precious connection there and earned a special admission.
How she had used that person's connections to join Belmont Security, and so on...
Yuri left nothing out of her recent life.
Stories she had never been able to tell anyone—
not even the hardships she had kept from the Black-clothed Mister himself—
all of it came tumbling out.
In this entire world, Charlotte and Yulia were the only ones she could talk to this freely.
And as Yuri's long story finally wound down, Charlotte and Yulia—who had been diligently reacting and nodding along the whole time—locked eyes.
Both of them wore the exact same look.
This 'Black-clothed Mister' person... is super suspicious...
The mysterious benefactor who kept popping up in Yuri's stories...
No matter how you looked at it, something about this guy felt off.
Could he be some mastermind trying to use Yuri...?