Chapter 243 - Preparation for Social Week (4)

"Almost," Ethan grunted with the last group of bugs on his end.

The lid on the cage closed as we both sighed in relief. Meanwhile, footsteps of multiple people were heading towards our way. When I turned to where Ethan was, that jerk was already gone, leaving me alone. How was I supposed to explain what happened with him gone? Maybe we shouldn't have destroyed his family's teleportation gate that time since the s-class monsters followed us to school anyways.

"Rika?" Charles eyed me crouching on the ground.

"Hey?" I awkwardly waved.

Instead of focusing on the people who gathered where I hid near the bushes, I froze when I could feel an ant crawling on my shirt. Its legs were starting to march into my shirt as my mouth opened to scream. I immediately got up to shake the bug off while screaming my lungs off while checking if they were any others.

"Is it off? Is it?" I cried to Charles.

I jumped up and down while thinking of jerk that couldn't handle the cleanup properly. There couldn't be more bugs inside that hole, could there? Their beautiful garden was in tatters from the large hole near its entrance. Random piles of dirt were placed nearby, ruining the clean green grass. He didn't even bother to get rid of the shovels on the ground!

"Is it?" I shook his shoulders.

Charles looked at me like he didn't know what I was talking about. Right, not everyone knew I was out here, threatened by Ethan to get more food for Sprinkles. When I couldn't feel the bug on me anymore, I searched the ground where it landed. I sighed in relief when it flew back into the hole from my shaking when I looked down. In fact, there were quite a bit of bugs left.

I got out a cage of my own from elementary school to collect the remaining bugs. It could be used against Ethan in the future when he ran out of his current supply. The people behind me backed away when they watched me using the levitation spell to collect the insects into the cage. My clothes were already stained with dirt to no repair as I did the cleanup in Ethan's place.

Someday, Sprinkles was going to be discovered and I wasn't ever going to help him when it happened. Until the cage was back inside my marble, everyone made sure to stay a quite bit of a distance away from me. I guessed this was the first time they were actually seeing these disgusting creatures with their own eyes.

"How did you get inside here?" Charles made sure to stay at least a metre away from me.

"You should ask Ethan," I made sure to not let him off the hook.

It was time for me to go now since I've done my part.

"I'm going to go now," I turned to get out this situation.

"Can we let her go when she knows our fraction location?" a person questioned the group.

"She may have heard the details about social week," another person agreed.

"I didn't hear anything," I immediately blurted.

"If you don't believe me, I can also swear on the Impalia family name to not tell anyone," I watched their distrusting glares.

People in the first district placed great importance in their family names. Swearing on your family name as like swearing an unbreakable oath unless you wanted to greatly ruin your family's reputation. I waved my hand over the bush for it to stay still in its place. I frowned, seeing that I wouldn't be able to leave this place unless someone in their fraction let me go.

"What should we do?" Another person blurted out everyone's thoughts.

"We can let her into our fraction," Ethan finally appeared from behind with the same dirt covering his clothes and face.

"Where were you?" I kicked his shin.

"You know how everything started with you bringing me into this place," I threw him a punch.

"You already know a few of us here and we need a replacement after few members left from a certain incident. It solves everything," Ethan shrugged.

"And if you didn't want to join, you should have ran when they first started talking," Ethan blamed me instead.

Wait. Where was this conversation going? It was like they were on the path of making me join their fraction to keep the secretive information inside their fraction.

"I was doing the cleanup like usual!" I yelled back.

"It's your problem to find more members if some people left. Don't drag me into this," I crossed my arms.

Unfortunately, it seemed like Ethan held some power in his own fraction. Some people were starting to nod their heads to agree with him. Even Charles sighed like nothing could be done except for admitting me into their fraction.

"Don't you think it's weird?" I pointed out his dirty appearance.

If I was going down from this incident, Ethan was definitely going to go down with me. Sprinkles would be finally revealed to his fraction members today. And it would all be his fault.

"I'm definitely not going to be joining your fraction. Please let me out," I walked towards the front of the bushes.

I glared at Ethan as I coughed, 'Sprinkles'.

Since they were a fraction together, they could help themselves out by themselves instead of bringing an outsider like me.