Call Me Seli
"Miss Elicia?"
"Yes~ What is it, Miss Celian?"
At our dear Celian's summons, I immediately scanned her face.
Just now, when she called my name, her voice had been roughly three degrees colder than usual. It might have been nothing, but it never hurt to be careful.
Eyebrow angle: tilted upward about five degrees more than normal. Mouth corners: the same gentle smile as always. The blue of her eyes: clear sky... no, the deep, deep ocean depths?!
Dimples! Were the dimples that appeared when she truly smiled present?!
They were not!!!
Emergency! Emergency!!!
Celian Pattern 3!
That was the face of someone with a complaint! Celian in this state was genuinely terrifying!
I'd rather take a slap-slap thrashing from Anne any day—Celian's icy voice attacked my soul directly!
Ahh, where are you, Anne? Don't leave me alone!
But Anne had chosen that exact moment to step out with Ian for the snack shop, leaving her seat empty.
"Miss Elicia?"
Still wearing that soft smile, Celian called my name once more. Um, Miss Celian? Are you aware that while your mouth is smiling, your eyes most definitely are not? If you looked in a mirror right now, even you would be startled, you know?
"Yes, the Elicia you're looking for is right here?"
But a professional assassin never let her thoughts show on her face! I answered in my usual bright, cheerful voice, poker face firmly in place so as not to ruffle Celian's mood.
"Miss Elicia?"
"......"
Yet she called me again, as if she hadn't heard my reply at all.
The odds that Celian, who had been chatting just fine until a moment ago, had suddenly gone deaf? Even giving it the benefit of the doubt, 0.01 percent. Which meant it wasn't entirely impossible.
Ahaha, Miss Celian, really. If your ears suddenly stopped working, of course you'd be anxious, right? That's it, isn't it? Come on, shall we head to the temple together for some healing magic? I can escort you right now if you'd like?
"......"
...Father, wherever you might be! If you're watching me, please give me the answer!
I simply could not see the strategy for conquering Miss Celian. I would stake my life on this: capturing the Demon King's castle would be a hundred times easier than capturing Celian in her current state. If someone ordered me to bring back the Demon King's head right now, I was confident I could return with it before a teacup went cold!
"Why aren't you answering, Miss Elicia?"
"S-sorry!"
Hyeut! In my rush to answer as fast as possible, I bit my tongue and my poker face crumbled at the same time.
There was no time to even feel the pain. I had to figure out why Celian was angry before her mood sank any further.
What mistake had I made with her?
That morning on the way to school, when she greeted me, had I answered 0.4 seconds later than usual? Or during class earlier, had I encroached on her desk by about 0.8 centimeters?
Or else... could it be... that?
No, it had to be "that." Nothing else would make Celian this angry. I must have been out of my mind. It was so obvious I'd get caught, and I still did it...
I immediately bowed my head toward Celian and made my confession.
"I'm sorry, Miss Celian. That candy you told me to take from the jar last time... I actually pretended to take one and took two! It was just so delicious I couldn't help myself...!"
It was clearly expensive candy, and I'd gone and taken two at once—of course she had every right to be upset.
But back in my assassin days, snacks like that were unimaginable, you know? The guild was so poor I had zero resistance to anything tasty.
What we called "patience training" was usually just bending fingers or yanking out a fingernail or two—actual torture. Resisting temptation? I never even got the chance to try.
I carefully lifted my head to gauge Celian's reaction.
There was light back in Miss Celian's eyes! Reading her expression: pure incredulity!
Pattern 3 terminated!
As expected of a hero (candidate) who would save the world—when I apologized with all my heart, she mercifully forgave me.
"Haa... If you want candy, you can eat as much as you like."
And she didn't just say it. Celian promptly pulled out a piece of candy and popped it straight into my mouth.
Ooh~ sour! And sweet! Delicious!
"What I wanted to talk about wasn't the candy, you know?"
Flinch.
"It... wasn't about the candy...?"
Feeling the sugar I'd just consumed burn away at high speed, I scrambled to think.
If it wasn't that either, then what on earth was the problem?
Just what did you do, past me!
"It's the same right now."
And what are you doing, future me!
Celian's lips pouted, just the tiniest bit.
"Why do you use formal speech with me, Miss Elicia?"
?
"Well, because you're Miss Celian?"
"What is that supposed to mean!? Weren't you and I friends?"
Father who ignored my earlier plea, can you hear me? Miss Celian just acknowledged me as a friend.
"But you use formal speech too...?"
"This is just how I talk! I speak formally with everyone else as well! Yet you use casual speech with Anne and the other classmates—so why is it only with me that you stay formal?"
Come to think of it, I was already speaking casually with the entire class. The sole exception was, exactly as she said, when I talked with Celian.
"Well... because you're special to me?"
To me, Celian was someone I had to be more careful with than anyone else. I always had to watch myself so I never did anything to upset her, and as a result I simply couldn't drop the formal speech.
"Eh! Ah? Heut!"
Teacher, Miss Celian is broken. She's suddenly started making strange noises.
Making those odd little sounds, Celian kept her head bowed for a moment, then jerked it up with a pop!
"S-special treatment is nice and all, but it makes me feel distant... Now that I know you think of me as special, please—just speak casually with me, like a close friend."
"Okay, got it. Celian. That good enough?"
If our dear Celian wanted it that way, of course I would oblige.
Yet even after my answer, something still seemed to dissatisfy her. She stretched out one slender finger, caught my sleeve, and tugged it insistently.
"Celi—"
"Hm?"
"Not Celian... please call me Seli."
Come to think of it, she had said something like that when we first met. People close to her called her by the nickname Seli.
"Okay! Seli!"
Overjoyed at finally being acknowledged by Celian (sort of), I called her nickname with a smile that rose from the very depths of my heart.
Ha! Bet your house doesn't have a nickname for Celian!
"Elicia~ Celian~"
Ta-da~ Anne returned from the snack shop and pulled from her arms a bag of a shape I'd never seen before.
She waved it proudly in front of my face, then tore it open and took out something small and neat.
That little something, pinched between Anne's tiny, bud-like fingers, promptly slipped straight into my open mouth as I sat there.
Jelly today?
"Well? Well? How does it taste?"
Ever since she'd fed me cake on our last outing, Anne had started enjoying feeding me things the same way Celian did.
At first it was mostly small stuff like candy, chocolate, and jelly, just like Celian. But at some point the two of them had begun competing, and the scale had only grown.
Holding out the bread they were eating so I could take a bite, handing me side dishes at lunch, and so on.
The two of them probably thought a former assassin who'd undergone every kind of training would never fall for mere food—but the truth was, they knew me far too well.
As I'd said earlier, I was weak to delicious things. And of course I was: the assassin guild I'd belonged to had always been so strapped for cash that everything we ate was bland and flavorless.
"So what were you two talking about?"
Anne seemed curious about the lively conversation Seli and I had been having.
Even as she asked, she kept pulling jellies from the bag—one into her own mouth, one into mine, one into Celian's, one into mine, another into mine, another into mine, another into mine...
"Mmblph!"
"Ahahaha! Elicia, what are you doing~ You're so funny!"
Is this a new form of bullying? You made me like this and now you're laughing? How cheeky. For a naughty child like that, the sentence is tickle torture.
Tickle tickle.
Even if I looked like a girl on the outside, the insides were still a guy—tickling a little girl's side felt a bit perverted, but with Anne it was just barely safe.
Anne felt less like a girl my age and more like a cute little sister. So it was okay.
"Hyeheh! Hiheuhek! Stop! I was wrong, so quit it...!"
The way she went past laughing into making weird noises was so entertaining that I didn't stop—I just kept tickling her.
Uwahaha!
Never look down on me again! If I get serious...
Thud!
"Uhek!"
Anne's perfect right-hand straight punch that I'd seen once before...
Thankfully the straight ended after a single hit, but Anne followed up by smack-smacking my back over and over with her palm.
Hold on. That hit me right in the solar plexus. For real... I think I'm gonna thr—
"Uup!"
Fortunately the catastrophe of actually throwing up never happened. The moment I dry-heaved, Anne stopped hitting me.
Could I really call that a blessing?
Anyway. We roughly called it even—my tickling versus Anne hitting me.
Anne's prank of stuffing my mouth full of jelly still remained, but since the jelly was delicious, that was pretty much even too.
Back to the original conversation.
"Right~ Seli?"
Haha! How about that! I am someone who has been granted a nickname by Celian herself!
Anne, I'm not someone you can look down on, okay?
"That's right, El."
?
"El... meaning me?"
"Yes. Because you're Elicia, so El. Or would you prefer Eli...?"
Well, since I'd decided to call her Seli, it wasn't wrong for Celian to call me by a nickname either.
That said, Eli felt a little too similar to Seli, which was embarrassing.
"No, El is fine!"
"Fufu. Then I'll call you El from now on?"
"Wait! What the heck! Why just the two of you while I was gone?!"
Anne flailed both hands at the empty air as she charged in with a tackle.
"Me too! I'm gonna call you that too! Seli! El! Seli! El! Seli! El!"
Anne shouted our nicknames over and over. Then, as if something had just hit her, her eyes went round and her mouth fell open in shock.
"I... I'm the only one without a nickname...! Anne... if you shorten Anne... if you shorten it..."
The story of how Seli and I spent a long, sweaty while afterward trying to soothe the muttering Anne is a tale for another time.