Time with Yuri
I had resolved to hit the books hard. Originally, I planned to just hole up alone in my room and study. I had only missed a week, but when I added up every subject, the pile of material was surprisingly thick. Still, if I crammed for a few solid days, I figured I could at least catch up on the missed progress. And if that failed, borrowing my friends’ notes should be enough, right?
“So about that… I think it’d be better if you guys go without me today.”
We had promised to go shopping together at the newly opened store once I was discharged from the hospital, but I had already decided to skip it for self-study and told my friends as much.
“No way! We all waited on purpose so we could go with El!”
“I’m really sorry. But if I want to catch up on the lessons, I’m going to have to buckle down for a while. Just cut me a little slack.”
I felt bad that they had waited a whole week for me, but there was no helping it. Of course, skipping just today and starting tomorrow wouldn’t have been a disaster… yet one day could easily turn into two, three, four. Things like this were best begun the moment you made up your mind.
“But if El’s not there, it’s not really ‘all of us’ going.”
Cielian complained in that way that wasn’t quite a complaint, looking genuinely disappointed. Watching her dejected face made my guilt swell. Should I just close my eyes and go for today only…?
“Um… then how about I help you study?”
While everyone hovered in indecision, Yuri spoke up.
“If we study together, you’ll catch up in no time. Wouldn’t that be better?”
Honestly, if Yuri was offering to help, I could only be grateful. But gratitude and guilt were two different things.
“You don’t have to waste your time on me. That would just make me feel even worse.”
I tried to refuse, but Yuri raised her voice—something she almost never did—her usual quiet tone suddenly firm.
“I’ve received so much help from El already. If I can return the favor now, I’d like to. Or… am I just getting in the way…?”
The rare volume faded again at the end.
“No, no! Of course not! I’d actually love to ask you. Yes! Please help me!”
I blurted the words out to soothe the suddenly crestfallen Yuri, but once spoken, they couldn’t be taken back.
“Really?”
The moment she heard me, Yuri’s voice brightened again as if nothing had happened. She grabbed my hand, eyes sparkling as she asked once more.
Sigh. Fine. Since it’s come to this, I’ll just shamelessly accept Yuri’s help.
“I… I’ll help too. I’m confident I can teach well.”
“Huh?”
Watching from the side, Cielian seized my other hand—the one not already held by Yuri—and looked up at me.
“What? Leaving me out again? Me too! I’m going to help El too!”
“Eh?”
And then Anne, who had somehow been left alone, wrapped her arms around my waist from behind and declared,
“Helping a classmate is the class president’s duty. I suppose I have no choice.”
“Huh?”
Lena, who had come to deliver the backlog of handouts, took one look at the scene and spoke up.
“…Come to think of it, even the first-year swordsmanship students learned the basics of magic theory. If it’s magic, I can teach you more than well enough.”
“Eh?”
And for some reason Freesia had sought me out first; she sized up the situation in an instant and added her own offer.
???
Before I knew it, my friends had decided among themselves that they would help me—completely ignoring my opinion. With all of them burning with such enthusiasm, I couldn’t exactly pour cold water on them and refuse.
“But the goal is teaching, not studying together… wouldn’t one-on-one be more efficient?”
“One-on-one… yes. Studying ‘one-on-one’ would certainly be more efficient. In that case, I’ll—”
“Ahh~ Ciel’s trying to monopolize El! I’m doing it too!”
“M-monopolize? I would never—!”
“…I can teach magic better than anyone.”
“I won’t lose when it comes to notes!”
The place had turned into pure chaos. By the way, Yuri—do you realize the person you just spoke casually to is a professor of the magic department? She may look like a little kid the same age as Anne (and she is a little kid), but she is still a full professor. Watch your language…
“Then how about we take turns teaching her one day each?”
Lena, who had been watching the free-for-all from the side, clapped her hands once and offered a solution. The others thought it over for a moment, then nodded, deciding her idea was reasonably fair.
…Why is no one asking for my opinion?
Time with Yuri
In the end, they all agreed to take turns looking after me one day each. I figured that if I opened my mouth to protest, I would only get blown back by the reverse wind, so I simply stood there and nodded.
Knock knock.
I was tidying my room while waiting when the clock on the desk chimed the appointed hour, and a knock sounded at the exact same moment. She couldn’t possibly have been waiting right outside and knocked the instant the time arrived… it must have just been perfect timing.
“Just a second~”
I finished clearing the desk and opened the door.
“Welcome, Yuri.”
“Hello, El. Excuse me, then.”
Yuri offered a demure little greeting and slipped softly into my room.
“I hope I’m not just wasting your time because of me.”
“If you say that one more time, I’m really going to get mad.”
She claimed she would get angry, yet her puffed-out cheeks only made her look like some small, adorable animal. The sight almost made me want to tease her on purpose. Come to think of it, I had never actually seen Yuri truly angry—
For a split second, the image of myself chewing on an apple flashed through my mind.
I shook my head hard, erasing the scene. Yup. I remember nothing. Our sweet Yuri would never get angry.
She had only fed me that apple because she was worried about me!
“El?”
Yuri called my name in a puzzled voice, watching me put on a one-woman show.
“Nothing! It’s nothing!”
Fortunately, she didn’t seem to notice anything odd about my loud reply; she merely tilted her head once and let it go.
“By the way, this is my first time inside El’s room.”
“Is it?”
Thinking back, I had greeted my friends at the door plenty of times, but I had never actually invited anyone inside. Being alone in a room with a girl would make any guy’s heart race. After becoming a girl myself, though, the fluttering had only lasted at the very beginning; these days I could treat it as normal… most of the time.
…Yes, I’m sorry. I was pretending to be calm, but this is exactly one of those “most of the time” exceptions.
Yuri began looking around my room as if she had discovered something fascinating.
Anything that might reveal I used to be an assassin had already been disposed of or carefully hidden, so I wasn’t worried on that front. What did concern me was that my room was a bit more barren than the others’; I hoped she wouldn’t find it strange.
“We can tour El’s room later. Shall we start studying now?”
Thankfully she made no comment about the room and, true to our original purpose, pulled textbooks and notebooks from the bag she had brought.
“Yeah. I’m counting on you.”
And so I found myself receiving one-on-one tutoring from Yuri.
“That part’s easy if you just plug in the formula we learned before.”
“Really? Then if I do it like this…”
Yuri lightly solved a math problem I had been stuck on and gave me the hint. Just as she said, once I applied the formula I already knew, the problem unraveled at once. I had heard that being good at studying and being good at teaching were two different talents, but Yuri clearly possessed both.
“Oh, it really does come right out.”
“Now that you’re getting used to the problems, want to try this one? It’s an advanced question, so it’s pretty hard, but if you can solve it, it means you’ve completely mastered this section.”
Saying so, she slid a problem written in her notebook over to me.
“The professor assigned it separately during class. There’s a solution too, so it’d be good to try it yourself and then compare.”
“Okay. Give me a minute.”
I picked up my pen and began working on the problem she had handed me. Just as Yuri had warned, the difficulty was on a completely different level from anything I had seen before. From the very first step I had no idea which formula to use or how to approach it.
So I wrestled with it for a long time. Since this wasn’t a timed exam, I ignored the clock and focused solely on solving it myself.
I scribbled in the notebook, tried plugging in various formulas, realized I was wrong, went back to the beginning, and started over.
After clinging to the problem for what felt like forever, I finally spotted a thread. After that, everything fell into place in an instant. I filled an entire page with the solution process, but I managed to arrive at an answer I was reasonably happy with. Of course, whether it was correct or not was still unknown to me. Now it was time for Yuri to check it.
I double-checked the work and the answer written in my notebook, then gently pushed it toward her so she could verify whether I had done it properly.
Yet no reply came from Yuri.
“Yuri?”
I needed her to tell me if it was right or wrong so we could move on, so I turned and called her name.
“Y-yes!?”
Our eyes met as I looked back; Yuri flinched in surprise. What was that about?
“I finished this…”
“Y-yes!”
When I nudged the notebook toward her again, she finally registered what I was saying, took it, and began checking my solution and answer.
Did she doze off?
Well… even studying yourself can make you sleepy; just watching someone else study would naturally be boring.
Even so, she had kept teaching without showing it. I offered her another silent thank-you and waited for the grading result.
“Mm. Perfect. From now on you just need to keep solving problems so you don’t forget this section.”
“Haa~ Why do we even have to learn math~”
I leaned back against the chair, stretched my arms high, and groaned. A glance at the clock showed that curfew was almost upon us.
“You should hurry back to your room. You’ll get demerits if you’re late. Thanks so much for today.”
If Yuri received demerits because of me, I would feel so guilty I wouldn’t be able to look her in the face. That was why I tried to send her off before it got too late.
“……”
Yet Yuri still seemed to have something to say. She kept fiddling with her textbook and notebook without putting them back into her bag, hesitating.
“Yuri?”
“Um…”
“Yeah?”
After a moment of hesitation she nodded to herself and spoke again.
“It’s been a while… could I stay over and sleep in your room like we used to?”
“…?”
Sudden overload locked my mouth shut. A few seconds later I finally managed to process her words.
Hey, you’re a grown young lady—have you no shame…
But the moment I was about to say something, I remembered my own situation.
I was no longer the male assassin “Number 3.” I was the girl “Elicia Frentz.” And to Yuri I was the childhood friend she had played with since we were little. She had probably just recalled those old days of playing and sleeping over together.
If I had truly been Elicia, I would have accepted without a second thought. But with the memories of being a man still lingering, I wasn’t thick-skinned enough to sleep alone in the same room with a girl.
I wasn’t that much of a scumbag yet.
“No, that’s…”
“There’s not much math left… so let’s finish it off tonight and move on to the next subject tomorrow.”
“But…”
“Is it not okay…?”
“There’s no way it wouldn’t be… okay…?”
I opened my mouth to refuse, but Yuri looked up at me with those sparkling eyes and asked again before I could answer.
Of course I should have refused… yet the expectation shining in her gaze made me accept without realizing it. Something about my inability to turn down Yuri’s requests felt like déjà vu. But that had to be my imagination.
By the time I realized what I had said, Yuri was already beaming as she headed back to her own room to check in for curfew.
…I’m not a scumbag.