Blythe covered her mouth at Daisy’s disbelieving tone, wry amusement bubbling up in her. It vanished when she realized her snicker was being actively suppressed—no sounds had come out from her nose or mouth.

  It seemed there was no way to interfere with this scene as well. Was it because it was an in-game scene?

  She tested it out by trying to shout, but her mouth remained shut and her throat closed. A shiver rolled down her spine. Was she doomed to bully Daisy until she was the time came for her execution?

  No, she couldn’t accept that. There had to be another way. There had to.

  "Yeah, the fountain. Here, I'll show you."

  "No, I know where the fountain is. Do you mean you saw a bag in there and simply left it there?"

  "Well, I didn't know it was your bag."

  "That's not the point I was trying to make ..."

  Their voices became softer as they strode further away, Daisy following Cole. Soon, Blythe couldn't hear them at all.

  Daisy was appalled by Cole's flippant attitude even towards things she considered basic decency. A normal person would have figured the bag wasn't supposed to be in the fountain and brought it to the lost and found.

  Although he came across as approachable and friendly to most people, Cole didn't care much for anyone other than those closest to him. Of course, if the player went for him, he would gradually learn to be a more caring person thanks to Daisy's influence in his life.

  Blythe watched Daisy and Cole stand before the fountain. Her body still wouldn't let her move past the hiding spot by the side of the classroom block.

  Cole grabbed the bag out of the fountain, lifting it up as it dripped over the grass. Daisy collected a couple of the items that had fallen out of it, flicking them as if it would do any good. Eventually, she took her bag from Cole and held it out before her. As they approached the dormitory building, Blythe was forced to retreat further into the shadows.

  “Someone just put your bag in the fountain?” Cole was asking. “Do you know who it was? Are you going to tell a professor?”

  “No offense, but it didn’t even occur to you to take my bag out of the water until you learned it was mine.” Daisy’s tone was terse, probably because she was busy thinking about how to handle the water damage. “Thanks for the concern, but I’m alright.”

  Not knowing where he’d gone wrong with her, Cole opted for a generic apology. “I’m … sorry?”

  “Please don’t apologize.” She turned around on the steps of the dormitory building to face him.

  Even though Blythe couldn’t see it, she knew Daisy was smiling at him to show her appreciation for his earlier help. While she wasn’t impressed by him as a person, she was still grateful that he’d saved her some time searching for her bag.

  “Thank you very much for letting me know where my bag was. That was a great help on its own. I hope you have a wonderful day.”

  Before heading into the building, she bowed her head at Cole. He uncertainly wished her a good day as well, watching her go out of sight.

  When Cole went into the classroom building, Blythe could finally move freely again. Without giving herself time to think about it, knowing that she didn’t have much time before Daisy went into her room, she sprinted into the dormitory building. None of the people in the vicinity were Daisy. There was a telltale trail of water that stopped at the door leading up to the dormitories.

  Blythe opened it and rushed up the stairs, wishing her lungs and legs would cut her some slack. She was panting by the time she reached the fifth floor, where Daisy was staying. Her legs were screeching their protest of her abuse, but she managed to step out into the hallway. Every step she took elicited a squishing sound from her shoes, leaving her with a gross spongey sensation.

  Upon catching sight of Daisy’s figure plodding towards her room at the far end of the hall, Blythe called out, “Daisy!”

  Halting, Daisy turned her head with a confused look. It gave her enough time to catch up to her, even though her legs felt like jelly at this point. She should incorporate stairs-climbing into her training menu—it was giving her a way harder time than jogging on flat ground.

  “Blythe?”

  Daisy was still holding her bag at an arm’s length away. Water was dripping at a rate of one droplet every two seconds now, slightly better than the constant trickling from before.

  She seemed nonplussed by Blythe’s sudden appearance. “What are you—”

  “I’m sorry!” Blythe blurted out, the two words blocking out any other thoughts in her mind.

  Instantly, Daisy’s bewilderment shifted into shock. Her eyes traveled downwards, seemingly taking in Blythe’s damp socks and shoes.

  At the dawning horror in Daisy’s eyes, something awful stirred in Blythe’s gut, turning her legs wobbly.

  "So it was you?" Daisy gaped, her face the perfect picture of devastation. "I thought ... I thought we were ..."

  “No! I didn’t—I couldn’t control myself—my body just did it on its own—”

  With every word that came out of Blythe’s mouth, Daisy’s blue eyes grew glossier until the first tear slipped from her left eye.

  Realizing it was doing more harm than good, Blythe stopped trying to explain herself. In everyone else’s eyes, she was the one who’d instigated this whole thing and followed through with it.

  Nobody was going to believe her.

  Nobody did believe her.

  Red flashed past her vision.

  Two hundred points?! If she remembered correctly, that was twice the amount of deduction she’d gotten the first time around! Was it because the points doubled with each subsequent bullying scene in the game, or because Daisy felt betrayed?

  “I’m really sorry!” She began rambling, wanting to do something to make it up to Daisy, “Please, allow me to replace the contents of your bag. If you tell me what’s inside, I’ll get you new ones. I-I’ll copy your notes over as well! Or, um, copy my notes over if the words are smudged. I know that won’t fully compensate—”

  Blythe broke off mid-sentence as Daisy turned away.

  “I understand.” A tremor ran through Daisy’s voice.

  “What?” What do you understand?

  Daisy continued down the hallway, ignoring any of Blythe’s further attempts to engage with her. Not that Blythe tried too hard after that; her insides crawled with cold emptiness at the sight of the tears rolling down Daisy’s cheeks.

  Instead, she went to her own room with heavy feet. After tugging off her sodden shoes and socks, Blythe sank down onto the chair by her desk. The cold, hard floor was reassuringly solid against her bare feet.

  What was she doing?

  In the game, Daisy had suspected Blythe and her friends, her opinion of them dropping more as a result of it, but lacked proof or confirmation to solidify her belief. When Magnus discovered this incident during one of their shared classes, his responses to Daisy hinted at his suspicion of Blythe as well.

  But here she’d exposed herself as the culprit with no game plan to make Daisy feel better. Judging by how utterly crushed Daisy’s expression was, the apology had only made things worse. She hadn’t even wanted to take Blythe up on her offer to replace her stuff.

  Thinking about it that way, it made sense that her favorability with Daisy had dropped so drastically upon revealing that she’d done it.

  Guilt and panic descended over her in the form of weakness in her limbs, transforming her into mush in the shape of a human being. Daisy’s last stare of despair before she turned around and walked away, Jessica’s and Sophie’s uncomprehending gazes, that white school bag staying just out of her reach no matter what she did …

  Image after image ran through her mind, mocking her for thinking all this could’ve been avoided by minimizing contact with Jessica and Sophie. The incident in the dining hall should’ve tipped her off.

  She knew it. She knew she should’ve left Daisy alone. She shouldn’t even have entertained a single conversation with her.

  She should’ve just kept her distance and let Daisy think she was an unrepentant bully.

  But now Daisy probably thought she’d been getting close to her as a tactic to twist the knife of betrayal harder.

  The back of her eyes burned until her vision blurred. Bending forward so that her elbows pressed into her lap, she clutched at her head. The pressure from her fingers nudged away the rest of the thoughts in her head, leaving only the image of Daisy’s pained eyes seared into the recesses of her brain.

  Was this her life now?

  Tears trickled down, warm against her cold cheeks. She wailed, the ugly noise resonating in the large room.

  Why? Why? She’d never asked for this. Life wasn’t fantastic as Mira, but at least she had full control over her body whenever she wanted.

  She’d just wanted to stop bullying Daisy and fade into the background as a mob character, the only role that truly suited her. She hadn’t even set her sights on befriending Daisy or any of the love interests. She’d never been an ambitious person.

  Her everyday life had been boring and predictable, but she hadn’t hated it. Her father made them pancakes on weekend mornings, her mother listened to her ramblings about her favorite web novels, her coworkers at her part-time job were pleasant to work alongside with, and she had Riley to sit with during lunch periods.

  And she’d been pulled away from that peaceful life for this, for being used as a puppet to ensure the game’s scenes played out as they should.

  As she cried into her hands, she clung to the memory of her mother’s comforting voice, trying to etch the sound of it into her mind. That one day in third grade she’d come home from school sobbing because nobody wanted to be her friend, her mother had pulled her into a tight embrace and quietly talked about how very special Mira was to her.

  It had been a long time since she’d felt so helpless and hopeless.

  Her palms grew damp as she wiped at her face, until they became nearly slippery.

  It finally sank in that these fuzzy memories were all she had left of her old life. She didn’t have a single picture or tangible memento to hold on to.

  She suddenly missed her phone for a lot more than the internet.

  ???

  Blythe dragged herself to Beucian class.

  It wasn’t worth giving in to the temptation of skipping class when she’d attract more unwanted attention from the professors or the principal for it within the same day.

  She sat in the back at a corner by herself, intending to use the excuse of having a cold to spare her from the obligation of sitting next to Magnus. When Jessica came in, however, she came straight up to Blythe.

  “Why are you sitting here, Blythe? Your eyes—were you crying? Is everything alright?”

  “I’m fine, thanks.” Sniffling, Blythe whipped out her handkerchief. “I don’t want to spread my cold, so I’ll be sitting by myself today.”

  Go away.

  “But you came to us just now during free period.”

  Blythe confirmed that nobody was paying attention to their conversation before whispering angrily, “I told you I wasn’t in control of my body.”

  Jessica laughed lightly. “Are you still sticking to that unnecessary story? You don’t have to put on a front with me. Nobody saw us. Even if they did, they wouldn’t say anything about it.”

  In all honesty, she wanted to give Jessica the cold shoulder out of resentment for not listening when she’d asked her and Sophie to stop. The only thing that stopped her was the awareness ’she’d’ started the whole thing and egged them on.

  If she were a mean girl crony of the alpha mean girl, she would be baffled at her leader’s fury at her for carrying out a suggestion she herself had made. The abrupt objections she’d made halfway through had been quickly swept away by words that indicated her approval.

  She wondered what would happen if she’d duct-taped her mouth. From how her arm had wrenched itself out of Beatrice’s grip in the dorm hallway, it wasn’t hard to make a prediction.

  “I’m sitting here today,” she said flatly. “You should sit at your usual desk.”

  Jessica acquiesced.

  Left alone at last, Blythe stared blankly out the window.

  It felt like her insides were carved out, and she was just stumbling around with an empty shell of a body.

  Tomorrow, she’d sit Sophie and Jessica down and see if she could get them to agree to listen when she asked them to stop during bullying scenes. Right now, she had no energy to do anything other than wallow in self-pity.

  In her next class, the final period of the day, she sat by herself again. Jessica’s and Sophie’s apprehensive glances from the other side of the classroom were easy to ignore while she was still in engulfed in this shroud of hollow despair. Blythe kept her eyes on her desk throughout, not looking up even at Daisy’s entrance. She couldn’t look at her.

  After the lesson ended, she went straight to her room.

  Before officially moving in, her parents had reminded her she could send a letter to either Suzy or the head butler if she was ever in need of any fresh school supplies. She’d received some funny looks for asking what the head butler’s name was, but it couldn’t be helped.

  What was she going to write the addressee as, ‘Head Butler of the House of Ridge’? Actually, that could’ve worked despite the awkward phrasing. The servants would probably just think she was weird for it.

  Based off her playthroughs of the game, she could roughly guess at the contents of Daisy’s bag. She got to work writing out a list on paper, racking her brain for each possible item.

  Once done, she pushed the envelope to one side of her desk. She’d submit the letter to the administrative office before going for dinner later.

  She got out all her notebooks for the core subjects fourth-year students were required to take, setting them beside the unused notebooks she’d grabbed from her cabinet.

  She began copying over her notes in earnest.

  Every now and then, her brain insisted on revisiting the memory of Daisy’s betrayed expression. She shut her eyes and shook it out of her head whenever the mental image popped up.

  Her stomach hurt.