Chapter 222: Myra’s Test
Chapter 222: Myra’s Test
The moment the bell rang and recess began, Layla bolted from her desk without even fully packing her things.
The immense embarrassment of having her feelings exposed in front of the whole class, and the doubt Cassian’s words had planted in her mind, forced her to act.
"He might even end up dating Rose..."
This sentence kept echoing in her brain. As she hurried out the classroom door and jogged away, she likely wanted to find Felix, fend off the girls hovering around that idiot, and protect her territory. Her ’man was slipping through her fingers,’ after all.
Cassian watched Layla’s panic-filled escape with a shrug. Then, he turned his head to the window as usual.
As the whispers in the class slowly died down, Cassian had only one thought in his mind.
’I wonder if I should go see Iris?’
But constantly being around her, clinging to her every moment... This thought felt far too suffocating and uncomfortable even to Cassian, who was fond of his independence and solitude.
’It’s best to wait until the lunch break,’ he decided to himself.
Just as he snapped out of these thoughts, a familiar silhouette with a wide straw hat appeared at the classroom door.
Lunox.
But this time, Celine wasn’t with him.
He was alone.
Not paying the slightest attention to the surprised stares of the other students in the class, he walked with steady, slow steps and came right up to Cassian’s desk.
"Hello," Lunox said, his voice completely emotionless and flat.
"Hi," Cassian replied, without turning his head from the window.
Without saying anything, Lunox pulled out the chair from the desk right in front of Cassian, turned it around, and sat down with his arms resting on the back of the chair. The two were now facing each other, but neither was looking at the other.
"I’m bored," Lunox said, after the silence that filled the room.
"Me too," Cassian replied shortly and clearly.
The pair weirdly stared blankly out the window for a while.
After the silence stretched on for minutes, Lunox turned his head slightly to Cassian and asked:
"Are you free after class?"
"No."
There was another brief silence. Lunox narrowed his eyes, examining the dull expression on Cassian’s face.
"Are you going to meet her?"
Cassian slowly turned his head from the window and fixed his red eyes directly on Lunox.
"Yes," he said in a flat voice.
"What are you two talking about?!"
When Cassian and Lunox slowly raised their heads, they saw Daemon standing right over them. He was glaring down at them with his arms crossed over his chest and a scowl on his face.
"Don’t you have your own class, Easterner?!" Daemon hissed, looking directly at Lunox. "Hearing your voice in my class is far too annoying. Get out of here right n—"
Completely ignoring these words, Lunox raised his index finger, pointed at Daemon, and asked Cassian with a totally blank expression:
"Who is this?"
Without even bothering to look at Daemon’s face, Cassian said calmly, "Fish boy."
Daemon’s right eye twitched violently. The veins on his forehead looked like they were going to pop.
"WHO ARE YOU CALLING FISH BOY, YOU LOWLY SCUM?!" Daemon roared. He balled his right hand into a fist and raised it into the air to bring it down on Cassian’s desk with great force. He just wanted to scare him, to satisfy his own arrogance.
But his fist remained suspended in the air.
Without fully turning his head, Cassian just looked at Daemon from the corner of his eye.
Within those blood-red eyes lay pure death and emptiness, far different and far more terrifying than the darkness he had projected during that brutal exam in the forest.
Daemon’s body went stiff. All the strength in his raised arm evaporated in an instant.
His breath caught in his throat, and large, ice-cold drops of sweat began to roll down his temples.
Right in the middle of this freezing, deadly silence...
*Ringgg!*
The Academy bell rang.
This sound instantly dispersed the terrifying pressure in the room, as if breaking a spell. Lunox slowly stood up as if nothing had happened. "The bell rang," he muttered, and walked away with heavy steps toward his own class without even looking back.
Cassian, on the other hand, pulled his gaze away from Daemon and turned it back out the window.
Without saying a word, his head bowed and his face deathly pale, Daemon turned around and slowly walked back to his own desk, practically like a beaten dog.
---
When the lunch break arrived, Cassian left his classroom and walked toward the class where Iris was.
The moment he stepped through the classroom door, the buzzing, cheerful atmosphere inside came to a halt. All the eyes of the second-year students instantly locked onto the pure white-haired, red-eyed youth who appeared at the door.
"Who is that?"
"A first-year student? Why is he in our class?"
"God... He looks as flawless as a doll."
"Wait... Isn’t that him?! The crazy first-year kid who was holding hands with Iris this morning!"
As the whispers spread in waves, Cassian didn’t care about any of these stares.
He scanned the class with his eyes and found Iris in one of the front rows, her head buried in her books, trying to escape the gossip around her. He walked straight to her desk and stopped right in front of her.
Iris quickly raised her head when a shadow fell over her. "Ca-Cassian!" she said in surprise and mild panic. "What are you doing he—"
Before Iris could even finish her sentence, Myra, sitting next to her, interjected.
Myra drew a wide circle, walking a full lap around Cassian, carefully looking him up and down as if inspecting a piece of merchandise.
With her hand on her chin, she mumbled thoughtfully: "Hmm... Hmm... So you’re the childhood friend, huh. Height, posture check out. Face isn’t bad. Actually, a bit too good..."
Suddenly, Myra smacked her hand, and in an unexpected and completely uncouth move, gave Cassian a light slap on the butt.
*Slap!*
"I’m Myra!" she said cheerfully, grinning with pride. "Iris’s best friend! Nice to meet you, white boy!"
Cassian was utterly dumbfounded by this sudden slap on his butt. His eyes widened slightly. His perfect, emotionless mind short-circuited trying to process this absurd "greeting" ritual.
’Should I slap her too?’ he thought to himself. Was this some weird greeting custom or something? However, just as he was about to raise his hand and reciprocate in kind, the girl he bumped into in the corridor and the "harassment" accusation he received came to mind.
’No, no,’ he thought quickly. Remembering that touching a girl could be considered harassment, he abandoned the idea.
Following this logical deduction, he slowly lowered his hand and replied to Myra’s grinning face in a completely flat and unresponsive voice:
"Nice to meet you."
Meanwhile, Cassian’s eyes caught on a desk in the other, back corner of the class.
Sitting there was the second-year student who had declared him a "pervert" and challenged him to a duel. And right next to him was the girl he had bumped into in the corridor, her face flushed red.
The boy was glaring at Cassian with hatred, literally growling like a rabid dog. The fact that Cassian had come all the way to his class and was casually hanging out infuriated him.
Not caring about those angry glares in the slightest, Cassian quickly pulled his eyes away from them and turned to Iris, who had buried her face in her hands from embarrassment at her desk.
"Should we eat lunch?" Cassian asked, getting straight to the point.
Just as Iris was about to raise her head and say ’Sure’...
Myra wedged herself between them again like a wall. Crossing her arms over her chest, she gave Cassian an extremely serious, parental look.
"Hoi, hoi,hoi ! Slow down, Mr. Childhood Friend," Myra said, wagging her index finger at Cassian’s chest.
"Just so you know... Iris is mine. If you want to spend time with her, take her out to lunch or whatever, you have to get my permission first!"
Cassian frowned slightly.
"Why?"
"Because I was here before you!" Myra explained proudly, as if stating something perfectly logical. "I’ve been by her side since her first day at the academy. That’s how things work. You have to ask the best friend for permission first."
Faced with this weird, possessive, and absurd philosophy this girl held, Cassian literally froze. His eyes darted between Iris, who wanted to crawl under the table from embarrassment, and Myra, who stood there with immense pride.
Unable to bear the eyes of the class staring at them and this ridiculous conversation any longer, Iris let out a deep, pained sigh.
Reaching out with both hands, she grabbed Cassian with one hand and Myra with the other, and forcefully dragged them through the aisles and quickly out of the classroom.
"What is wrong with you two?!" Iris rebelled in a whisper, letting go of both their hands and glaring at them.
"Did you guys make a secret pact to kill me from embarrassment today or something?! You know I don’t like having people’s eyes on me!"
Myra shrugged. "Yet you still joined the Student Council."
"Because if I don’t do something prominent and respectable at the academy, my mom might make up excuses to pull me out and lock me up in that boring duchy!" Iris explained, rubbing her face with her hands.
Cassian repeated his question.
"Can we go to the cafeteria?"
Intervening, Myra cut Cassian off. "Ohh, no. We don’t go to the cafeteria during the lunch break."
Cassian tilted his head slightly. He had already guessed as much. Despite being at the academy for days, he had never run into Iris in the cafeteria.
"Why?" Cassian asked.
"Because it gets too crowded and noisy," Iris said with a shrug. "We usually eat in Professor Pharsa’s office, or we go after classes are completely over when it’s quiet."
However, Myra pinched Iris’s stomach lightly with a cunning smirk.
"Liar!" Myra giggled. "You see, white boy, because someone thinks she’s a little bit ’overweight’, she skips some meals. That’s why we don’t go down to the cafeteria!"
Iris’s face flushed with shock and embarrassment. "Myra! Stop it!"
Meanwhile, to make a logical deduction, with absolutely no ill intent, Cassian slowly reached out his right hand and moved to touch Iris’s stomach where Myra had pinched her.
Seeing Cassian’s hand coming toward her stomach, Iris suddenly tensed up, holding her breath and freezing in place.
*Slap.*
Myra’s hand came down on Cassian’s raised hand.
"Oi, oi! Slow down, Mr. Childhood Friend!" Myra said, narrowing her eyes to warn Cassian. "You can’t just touch a girl like that out in the open! That’s something only allowed after marriage!"
Cassian merely stared blankly at this meaningless slap on his hand. People’s boundaries for ’touching’ were truly like a minefield.
Iris, on the other hand, was a bit upset that Myra had declared her overweight, and was terribly angry that she had blurted out this secret to Cassian so recklessly.
"Whatever!" Iris said, crossing her arms and starting to walk ahead. "Come on, we’re going to the cafeteria! One meal won’t hurt."
Winking at Cassian as if she had won a victory, Myra tagged along behind Iris. "Right, Iris? Thanks to me, you’re going to have a good meal today!"
With a light sigh, Cassian followed behind these two bickering girls, setting off toward the cafeteria for a noisy and weird lunch.