My Next Life as a Heroine – Chapter 10

“Maria? Are you alright?” Mary asked, worry written all over her face.

“I-I’m fine,” I promised her, hurriedly. “If anything, I’m the one who should be worried here… I mean, I just spat tea all over your table!”

“That’s nothing,” Mary hurried to assure me. “My maid will have it cleaned up in no time. More important is what made you spit it out in the first place – was it not to your liking? I noticed you didn’t add any sugar to it…”

“Yeah, I uh… generally like sweeter stuff,” I said. “But it’s fine. No worries! No worries at all, even – like, no need to worry about me. Even if someone bullies me, I’m sure it’ll be-”

“Naive,” Mary declared, cutting me off.

“What?”

“Do you really think you can handle the bullies of this academy?” Mary asked me. “I’ve seen firsthand the lengths bullies will go to in order to make you feel broken and worthless, and that’s just from my own siblings. Lady Claes already has you in her sights, from the look of it – which is odd, I suppose, since she usually can’t be bothered with anything that doesn’t relate to Prince Jeord…”

“Yeah, well, there’s a chance I might have already caught his attention,” I muttered, grimacing. I shouldn’t have – I mean, I hadn’t done anything in particular to attract his attention, as of yet – but if he’d been shooting looks at “the commoner with light magic” like everyone else, then… Yeah, I could see Katarina wanting to preemptively put me in my place.

“All the more reason for you to be on your guard,” Mary warned me. “It’s possible you’ll pass beneath her notice, so long as the prince doesn’t take an actual interest in you, but I also wouldn’t be surprised if she tried to stomp you out as a rival right from the start… The rumors about her are vicious.”

“I’m sure she wouldn’t,” I argued. “I mean, as long as she doesn’t have a reason to, she…” Probably wouldn’t even pay attention to me?

Crap. Did that mean I needed Prince Jeord to pay attention to me? Without falling for me, preferably…gah, but if I did have his attention, then Katarina would totally bully me, and then Mary would get in the way of our interactions, and it’s not like being bullied was how I wanted to interact with Katarina in the first place…

Maybe if I could be in his presence without actually doing anything to earn his affection? Like, by getting into the student council? If I avoided all unnecessary interactions with him, there was no need to think he’d take any sort of interest in me. At the same time, it would put me close enough that Katarina would want to keep an eye on me… It seemed like the best possible solution, except…

“Crap, how am I supposed to get into the student council!?” I didn’t know how the original Maria did it! Or rather, I did – she probably spent every spare moment studying, forcing information into her skull day by day. Hard work, over natural genius.

Which was unfortunate, because I really didn’t want to do the work… but for the sake of true love…

“Do you perhaps need a tutor?” Mary asked me.

“N…” I started to say no, then paused. Mary was on the student council, in the books. Same as Maria. She wasn’t the highest scorer or anything, but she didn’t need to be… and heaven knew I didn’t need to be, if I wanted to avoid Prince Allan’s attention. Learning from Mary wouldn’t just help me with cramming more information into my head, but would also give me a good baseline on what score to shoot for to not get too high… rude as it felt to put it like that.

“N?” Mary asked, tilting her head a little to the right.

“Nnnn….Know what? Yes! I do  need a tutor.”

“Then I’d be happy to arrange for one.”

“…Huh?” I blinked. 

“Kidding!” Mary assured me, laughing lightly. “I just wanted to tease you a little. Of course I’d be happy to tutor you.”

“Oh…” Whew. Almost felt my heart drop out of my chest for a second there! But everything was fine. I was going to study hard. I was going to get on the student council. And I was going to avoid the various male love interest’s attention!

“Mary?” Called a voice, as someone stomped towards our table. A boy, about our age, with gray hair and blue eyes. He looked right past me, scowling at the girl sitting across from me. “What are you doing here? I’ve been looking all over for you.”

“Alan!” Mary called back, a smile on her lips that didn’t reach her eyes. “You found us. How… good to see you.”

“I’m uh… I’m going to go find my dorm, alright?” I said, hastily getting out of my chair. So far plan don’t-get-noticed-by-the-male-love-interests was going just swimmingly. Really! I mean, Alan hadn’t even spared me a glance yet!

“Of course, Maria.”

Annnnnd now Alan’s eyes were on me. “Maria? The commoner with light magic?”

“That’s me,” I replied, fighting the urge to grit my teeth. 

“Is she the same commoner who-”

“Who gave me confidence when I needed it most?” Mary interrupted. “Yes. She is. And I intend to keep her safe.”

He stared at me for a long moment, then snorted. “Whatever. Just remember our agreement.”

Was it just me, or was their relationship sorta… different than it had been in the novels? Or the game, for that matter. Had I messed up? Maybe Mary wasn’t in love with me – because yeah right, like that could happen – but she definitely wasn’t in love with Alan, and Alan didn’t really seem to care about her either.

“What sort of agreement?” I asked, unable to help myself, and for the first time the weight of Alan’s eyes actually landed on me, and I finally felt like he was really looking at me.

And you know what? I felt insignificant under his gaze… which was honestly kind of a relief! He clearly didn’t care about me in the slightest! Though now his brow was furrowing in confusion? Like he’d seen something confusing… I wonder what? But… I was honestly too busy sagging from relaxation into my chair to care.

“Don’t worry about it,” Mary told me, smiling a bright smile that somehad made me feel  like I should not pry.

“We need to talk,” Alan said. “About that agreement.”

“I’m not sure there’s anything to talk about in regards to it.”

“Well I wanna talk anyway.”

“I’m… going to leave, okay?” I said, cautiously getting up, and then quickly walking away before anyone had the idea to stop me.

“See you later, Maria dear!” Mary called after me, as I hurried off.

It was only… ten-ish minutes later? When I finally realized a couple things.

First – the academy grounds were huge. Like, seriously huge. Huge enough for Katarina to have a hidden vegetable garden in them, which… when you thought about it, meant it had to be pretty damn huge, right?

Not that this Katarina had any interest in farming…

Oh, and I’d also realized that I was totally lost.

Where had Mary dragged me while I’d been lost in thought?

~~~
Author’s Notes

Well, this is it – the last of the chapters I’ve already written. From here on out the daily updates stop, but hopefully it won’t be too long until I create something new. That’s the entire reason I started posting it to Patreon, after all – to encourage myself.

I wanna write a chapter of Naughty Magic and probably Hatching a Heroine first, though, and of course I’m not gonna stop with My Own Villainess, so…. We’ll see!