“What do you mean, Blythe?” Jessica asked.

  They were going down the stairs now. Her friends focused their attention on the steps they were descending instead. Blythe still didn’t have control over any part of her body other than her mouth.

  “Don’t do it. Forget everything I said just now!”

  “What do you mean?” Sophie’s voice was filled with concern, but she didn’t stop moving.

  They continued walking down as a group.

  “I mean, put Daisy’s bag back! Don’t throw it into the fountain!”

  “Gosh, Blythe, of course not,” Jessica said, sounding scandalized. “We would never throw it anywhere, would we?”

  “That’s right,” Sophie agreed. “Terrible accidents happen sometimes.”

  “No! Are you two even listening?! I don’t want you to make this ‘accident’ happen!”

  They left the building and went down the wide stone steps.

  Looking over her shoulder at Blythe, Jessica winked. “Don’t worry, we know exactly what you mean.”

  It was like talking to a wall, except that the wall wouldn’t misconstrue her words to suit its will. Her body was still subject to this strange force, so she couldn’t move to stop them either.

  “You can leave it to us!”

  They came to a stop in front of the large, circular fountain sitting in the middle of the courtyard.

  “No, don’t do this,” Blythe begged, feeling her arms cross themselves over her chest.

  “This is what you suggested, though?” Jessica’s brow furrowed.

  “I’m saying I’ve changed my mind! Don’t do it!”

  “It’s okay, Blythe,” Sophie said soothingly. “We completely understand your concerns. An accident can’t be blamed on anybody.”

  “No, I’m asking you to stop! Someone! Can anybody help me?!” From her field of vision, she couldn’t see anyone else in the courtyard. How could there not be a single person in sight?

  Jessica squinted at her. “Are you alright, Blythe? What help do you need?”

  Help to get you guys to stop what you’re doing! she tried to snap, but her voice box seized up and wouldn’t work.

  Sauntering up to the edge of the fountain, Sophie slid Daisy’s bag off her arm until it dangled over the rippling water from her fingers by its straps.

  Blythe tried to shriek for her to stop, but her mouth remained disobedient.

  Then ‘she’ spoke. “Be careful, Sophie. It would be awful if your hand slipped. Poor Willoughby would feel so troubled.”

  “Of course,” Sophie said, then promptly dropped the bag into the water. “Oh, no! What a terrible accident!”

  Her theatrical gasp would’ve sounded authentic if not for the unchanging smirk on her face as she brought a hand to her chest.

  Jessica patted Sophie on the shoulder. “Oh, well. It can’t be helped. Accidents happen.”

  “I think Willoughby really shouldn’t leave her belongings unattended in future,” Blythe’s mouth said. “All kinds of accidents could occur while she’s away.”

  Jessica giggled. “They do, don’t they?”

  A system window popped up in front of her.

  Blythe still couldn’t move her body. It walked by itself in front of Jessica and Sophie, leading the way towards the library.

  It was only after they stepped through the library doors that she regained control once more. She turned to scowl at Jessica and Sophie, who were discussing whether to stay here or to go upstairs to the Reading Space. They started at her fierce glare.

  “Blythe?” Jessica asked. “What’s wrong? You seem upset.”

  “Would you rather go upstairs or stay here?” Sophie asked hastily. “We’ll go with your decision.”

  “I don’t care about that,” she said to Sophie before looking at the both of them. “I asked you two to stop and you didn’t!”

  “What do you mean?” Jessica lowered her voice, her eyes flicking around to check if anyone else was listening in. “It was to deny culpability, right?”

  “No! I asked you to stop!”

  Sophie and Jessica exchanged glances.

  “But you clearly made it clear it was something you actually wanted,” Sophie said slowly. “After it fell into the fountain, you said that accidents could occur while people left their belongings unattended, didn’t you?”

  This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

  “I—yes—no—that wasn’t me!”

  “What do you mean it wasn’t you?” Caution crept into Jessica’s tone. “You … were the one who said it.”

  “It wasn’t me who said it,” Blythe insisted. She didn’t care how wacky she sounded at this point. “My body just moved and said things on its own! That’s why I asked you to stop halfway through!”

  To her confusion, Sophie giggled and gave her a relaxed smile. “Oh, Blythe, you don’t have to make up an excuse like that. You know we’re always on your side.”

  Nodding, Jessica said, “Truly. And most of the girls in Novalbus would never stand in your way either, especially when it comes to Willoughby. You don’t have to worry about what others might think.”

  “What … No, that’s not it!”

  “I was worried,” Jessica added, “you were becoming more lenient on Willoughby for a moment there, but I was so glad when you made that wonderful suggestion and proved that wasn’t the case.”

  “I said I couldn’t control my body! It was moving and saying things by itself. Are you listening to me?”

  Sophie tilted her head to the side. “In what way? You seemed like you were controlling yourself just fine. And there doesn’t seem to be an issue now.”

  “It only happens for some reason near Daisy,” she said, her heart sinking at the amused grins Sophie and Jessica shot her.

  “We already told you,” Jessica said, “that you don’t have to justify yourself. We completely understand.”

  Of course they wouldn’t believe her. Would anyone believe her? It was too convenient that she just so happened to be possessed by some mysterious force that only made her bully Daisy on certain occasions, but let her do whatever she wanted in the intervals between.

  “Don’t you care at all that you destroyed Daisy’s belongings for no good reason?”

  “But it was your idea,” Jessica said, raising an eyebrow. “A great idea that we followed, of course. Why should we care about what Willoughby thinks?”

  Flipping her golden-blonde hair over her shoulder, Sophie added, “You can rest assured that we’ll always help you with anything, Blythe.”

  They sincerely thought they were doing something that pleased her, and she couldn’t even refute them because those horrible, inciting words had literally come out of her own mouth.

  There was no use in talking further with them.

  She was better off trying to retrieve the bag and hopefully mitigate the water damage to Daisy’s belongings. The longer she waited, the worse it would be.

  “I’m going back,” Blythe said, turning around.

  “We’ll come with you,” Jessica offered, causing another bolt of anxiety to slice through her nerves. “If you need anything—”

  “No! You should stay here. I need to be alone.” You’ve done enough, she wanted to say, but it would be disingenuous. The prompt to do it had come from her, after all.

  The last thing she needed was for them to tag along and potentially sabotage Daisy’s stuff even more.

  “Okay…”

  “If you need us, we’re just a VocAvis message away!”

  Blythe returned to the courtyard. Nobody else was around. Daisy’s bag floated in the fountain’s water. A couple of notebooks were slipping out of it into the water.

  Sighing, she bent forward and reached for the bag.

  Her hand stopped short of touching it.

  “Huh?”

  She tried to push through and grab it, but her hand wouldn’t budge. When she gave up and retracted her hand, it pulled back perfectly fine.

  Blythe reached for the bag again.

  Nope.

  Her hand froze in place the moment her fingers got anywhere near the bag itself.

  She moved along the edge of the fountain to get it from another angle. On her third try, she realized it wasn’t going to work.

  Somehow, probably by the same mysterious force that compelled her to act out these in-game bullying scenes, she simply couldn’t touch the bag.

  She tried using the stick candy in her bag to hopefully be able to put it through the bag straps and lift it up. It wouldn’t touch the bag either.

  “Let me get it,” she cried, desperately jabbing the stick candy in its direction without success. “What’s your problem?!”

  Her last outburst made her cast her gaze around wildly to check if there were any witnesses to her going crazy over a bag, but there was still no one in the vicinity.

  She tried various angles, even kneeling on the flat edge of the fountain to see if that would allow her to stretch further. She stepped into the fountain, feeling the cool water slosh over her calves. She got as far as a few inches away from the bag when she couldn’t move her legs closer to it anymore. She walked around the bag, trying to test the radius of this strange force. It was the same all around.

  Exhausted, both mentally and physically, Blythe sat down on the edge of the granite fountain and sighed.

  Was this the game’s way of telling her she couldn’t interfere with what was meant to be?

  None of this made sense. It was always so easy for the newly-transmigrated ‘villainesses’ in the isekai web novels and comics she’d read to turn their lives around. They did nice things and won over the love interests—sometimes even the original heroine—all the time.

  Why couldn’t she grab one school bag out of the water?

  She looked down at her feet, feeling her lips spread into a grim smile at the soaked-through shoes and socks. And for what?

  The soggy sensation enveloping her feet and toes deepened the hopelessness in her heart.

  Then it happened again.

  The ground gradually became further from her, and she realized ’she’ was standing up. ’She’ bent down to pick up her own school bag that she’d left leaning against the fountain side.

  “What now?“ she demanded of empty air, knowing that she wouldn’t get any kind of response.

  Carrying her bag on her shoulder, ‘she’ marched out of the courtyard towards the library.

  Blythe was suddenly overcome with the ferocious desire to fling her bag to the ground and stomp her feet, screaming the injustice of this whole situation with all the magnificence of a toddler’s temper tantrum.

  Her body wouldn’t let her do any of it.

  It did, eventually, slow to a stop once she arrived outside the library doors. She lifted her hands to examine them suspiciously, then stomped her left foot for good measure.

  Why had she been forced to come here?

  She reconsidered the question. Had she been forced to come here, or had she been forced to leave the courtyard?

  Resolving to find out, Blythe turned around and began to walk back to the courtyard. So far, she wasn’t being stopped. She made it to the corner of the classroom block before her legs wouldn’t continue. An attempt to step sideways yielded the same result.

  After some experimentation, she discovered there was a narrow perimeter she was allowed to walk around in. It had to be behind the side of the classroom block, and she couldn’t step too far away from the building wall into the exposed area of grass next to it.

  She was staring at the bright green grass lit up by the sunlight she couldn’t step on for a few minutes too long when it hit her. Standing there would expose her presence to anyone looking in this direction from the courtyard.

  Was it so that she wouldn’t be able to interfere with the upcoming scene of Daisy finding her bag in the fountain?

  But she’d been able to pick up Giovanni’s lost book in the hallway the other day. Granted, she’d put it right back where she’d found it, so it wouldn’t have affected Daisy’s in-game moment with him …

  As Blythe ruminated on this, she heard a familiar voice coming from the front of the classroom block.

  “Good afternoon, Daisy! Why do you look so blue?”

  It was Cole.

  Blythe hugged the wall and tried to peep around it. Her head made it past the wall enough for one eye to see what was going on, and that was the full extent of it. Daisy was on the stone steps in front of the building, while Cole was standing before her on the grass of the courtyard.

  “Good afternoon, Cole,” Daisy said dully, looking around in various directions before trudging down the steps. “Thank you for your concern, but I’m fine.”

  “You don’t seem fine,” Cole persisted, keeping up with her as she moved across the courtyard. “Maybe I can help?”

  “If you could help, that would be great.” There was an edge to Daisy’s voice. “I was in the training hall gallery earlier. I left for a bit to the restroom, but when I returned, my bag was gone. I’ve been trying to looking around for it.”

  “Are you saying that someone stole it?” Cole sounded shocked.

  “I don’t … I don’t think there’s anything inside worth stealing. But it’s possible it was taken as a prank.”

  “A prank? Oh, hey, I may have seen your bag in that case! Is it a white messenger bag with a sunflower on the side?”

  “You know where it is?! Please, tell me!”

  “Yeah, of course! I saw it in the fountain just a minute ago.”

  “In the … fountain?”