Chapter 23.2

The strawberry candy was unnecessarily delicious.

“Is that so? I’m glad.”

“Oops.”

Did I say that out loud?

I covered my mouth, flustered, and Gloria pointed to my face and laughed boisterously. “Haha! Your face is red.”

“Haha…” I let out a laugh with a completely insincere face.

Once we’d walked like that around for a while, we found ourselves on the floor of the second-year classes.

“W-We’re here now. Thank you for accompanying me.”

Bowing my head, I was about to high-tail it out of there immediately when Gloria called me to stop with a suddenly lowered voice, “Hey, let me tell you something.”

When I happened to look up at her face, my breath caught in my throat.

Gloria was not your regular arrogant thug.

Rather, she was shameless and vicious enough to create all sorts of traps and conspiracies and still claim to be Flora’s friend.

The Gloria from the book had shown the epitome of the thorough and calculating villainess.

Just like, in fact, she was now.

Gulp.

Feeling her cold eyes on me, I swallowed.

Her sunken, darkened blue eyes were still staring down at me. “You don’t suit him.”

She didn’t need to tell me who ‘he’ was for me to know what she was talking about.

A worthless kid like you doesn’t have the right to stand next to Noah, or something like that, probably.

As I’d thought, was she finally revealing her true colors in earnest?

“Then have fun in class, sweetheart.”

Gloria gave me a sweet smile as if she had never put on a cold expression, then patted me on my shoulder.

Had ‘sweetheart’ been such a scary nickname before? Wasn’t that usually an affectionate term?

“… G-Goodbye.” I greeted her back, barely managing to pry open my mouth.

Gloria disappeared from sight after a final wave.

The villainess thusly pronounces, stay away from my man.

Squatting down, I rubbed my face up and down.

My life…

“Wow, what do I do now?”

… is now targeted. No matter how you looked at it, she was targeting me.

With a miserable face, I roughed up my hair. Every time I remembered those smiling blue eyes, my heart pounded wildly.

I mean, who gives candy and pretends to be close friends then turns out to be that scary? Her ins and outs were no joke.

I returned to my surroundings a little once I felt the pain from biting my lips.

This was not the time to be doing this. At least I should be helping Flora. Now that Gloria had come into our club, Flora was now more in danger than ever before.

“That’s right…”

Even Gloria wouldn’t be able to go all-out on a completely fine noble.

And to be honest, it’s not like I was as oblivious as Flora was.

Now that I thought about it, according to the book, all the seniors were perfect with exactly one weakness each.

Flora was a bit ignorant of her surroundings, Noah had an unexpected pushover side to him, and Gloria’s sense of morality had been…

“What are you doing?”

“Oh.”

My mind had wandered without my knowing it.

Having left the classroom, Dora was looking down at me blankly.

I grabbed onto Dora’s shirt and whined. “You’re really not going to leave me?”

“What are you going on about since the last time, man?” Pulling me up by the arm, Dora grunted and nagged at me. “Stand up already, we have to go to class.”

“Yes…” Sniffling, I shook my head.

“From the looks of it, something happened during your book club hours, didn’t it?” said Mallory, pointing at my face.

Making a pitiful face, I arranged my messed-up hair. “The senior… Gloria’s with us now.”

“In your club?”

“That’s a surprise. Ilya from the social club was so adamant about getting her to join them.”

Though they seemed a little surprised, that was all—my friends had a more nonchalant reaction than I’d expected. That was natural. After all, I was the only one who knew about Glora’s true colors.

“Is it because you have a new rival for love?”

“Aren’t you worried for me?”

“Why? Does she eat people?”

When Dora asked with a puzzled expression, Mallory added to it.

“Yeah, she might have made a pretty sharp impression, but that’s no reason to be so terrified of her. I think I’ve heard she’s not as scary as the rumors suggest.”

Dora, who was brushing dust off my skirt, narrowed her eyes into slits and murmured to herself, “That reminds me, I thought things were going well, but I guess they weren’t? Goodness, Noah sure is weird, too.”

At her last words, I clenched my hands into fists.

Tightening my stomach, I yelled as loud as I could, “Don’t insult Noah!”

“…”

Looking at me like I was absurd, Dora sighed. “Alright, I’mma say this just in case, but…” Tidying up my messy collar, Dora spoke sharply. “They say you’ll be happier meeting people that like you, rather than with people you like.”

“…”

“How about you start looking for someone new, too.”

Mallory pounded on Dora’s shoulder, scoffing. “Goodness, Dora—someone new? It’s not even like she divorced or anything…”

“Thanks, Mallory,” rubbing my face, I mumbled.

“Let’s go to class now. We definitely need to study.”

“That’s right. The material we need to study this time really seems like it would be over-the-top.”

Putting my feelings and my expression away, I began replying to them as we moved. My hands were still tightly clasped onto the hems of my friends’ clothes.

Even if a diabolical villainess of a senior targets me and tortures me terribly, you guys can’t look the other way, okay?