🐦 Magpie Bridge 🐦

18

Cory still looked shocked. I thought I understood the situation a bit more.

Cory was a magic geek. I had completely overlooked that he would be interested in this area. I had only assumed that the only people interested would be those who wanted to figure out the secrets of the underworld and force me to work for them.

I just nodded, slightly embarrassed. When I nodded, Cory’s expression hardened and he furiously walked out of the club room.

As soon as the door closed, I heard a loud crash. A girl screamed. It was quite a ruckus.

Cory returned a long time after he had left. His face when he had returned was calm as usual. The shock on his face was wiped clear and he was back to normal. The piercing I had gifted him earlier was in his ear. But it looked like he had just pierced it: blood was still flowing down his ear. His face was still calm, though.

Cory sat on the sofa, refusing to look my way. He didn’t even lay down–a sign of incredible respet from his part. Cory put his hands together and then mumbled.

“I must’ve spent my entire life’s worth of luck. Maybe I’m going to die now.”
“What?”

When I responded, Cory just said it was nothing and shook his head.

Cory just looked at me ever so often without speaking. He spent a long time just thinking about something, then said that he was going to sleep and laid down on the sofa. Then, he quickly fell asleep.

When he woke up from his nap, he blocked me on my way out as we were heading out to our afternoon classes. Then, he stared a hole into my face and opened his mouth to speak.

“Give me your hand.”
“Why?”

When I shot him a suspicious look, Cory just said, “Give me you hand,” and put his hand out. I gave him my hand.

Cory grabbed my hand, shook it a few times, then looked at his own hand.

“Yay.”

Cory looked like he was in high spirits. He gave me a ton of his snacks, candy, and chocolate to hold in my arms and headed over to his classroom.

***

“Shuraina, I’m so jealous of you.”
“Why would you be jealous?”

I was yawning loudly and working on my history notes during break. Rose, who was famous for being loud and talkative in the yellow class, came up to me. Rose had a bun on the top of her head and a huge red ribbon attached to it. She was a very vibrant character. I was surprised at her bun as I responded.

“That Cory is talking to you.”

Rose, who was famous for being a chatterbox, seemed to have difficulty finding conversation partners have her friends had left her one by one.

“He just looks like of scary; he’s actually a really friendly kid.”
“Cory is friendly?”

Rose looked surprised for a moment, then she wrinkled her face. I could feel a weird sense of envy and anger at her expression.

“What, you’re showing off because he likes you?”
“What do you mean, he likes me. I’m not a pet. If you’re jealous of me being friends with him, go talk to him yourself.”

Rose stared at me as if I was strange at my words.

“Shushu, Cory is really popular. People just can’t approach him because of how scary he looks. In the beginning, there were as many people vying for his attention as the prince.”

Rose’s face went red with anger. It looked like there was a bit of shame as well.

“I, I tried talking to him once but I was ignored, too. Anyway, people probably stopped approaching him because he wouldn’t respond to anybody and just had a sort of angry look on his face. He’s incredibly powerful magically, and he’s at the top of his magic class. Do you know just how many people want to be close to him? Cory is the one pushing them away. And now he looks like he’s been studying too hard, with those dark circles…….. Sigh. Now he just looks too scary to approach.”