“What? I’m not avoiding you. What do you mean?”

  She tried laughing it off as if Magnus was being ridiculous, but his eyebrows only furrowed more.

  “I’m not unobservant. You suddenly asked me to stop coming over for breakfast and to stop giving you rides to Novalbus. You didn’t attempt to contact me over the weekend, you haven’t eaten lunch with me for the past several days, and you never ask me to walk you to your next class anymore. If that isn’t avoidance, what is?”

  Dumbfounded, she stared at him with her mouth agape. Shouldn’t those all be good things? He seemed to genuinely despise every interaction he’d had with her so far. Why had he phrased it as though it was something he was upset about her doing?

  The gears in her head turned at top speed as she tried to offer a timely and non-suspicious response.

  “Rather than trying,” she said slowly, forcing herself to look him in the eye, “to avoid you, I was merely trying to be considerate. I’ve noticed that your mood gets worse whenever we interact. Because of my past behavior, I understand where you’re coming from, but that also means I don’t want to subject you to spending more time with me than you’d like.”

  Truthfully, she was happy to stay away from him as well, so it was a win-win. She didn’t need someone hovering over her and breathing down her neck all the time. Too bad she couldn’t tell him that.

  She continued, “In fact, I thought you’d be happy I’m giving you some space. Don’t you dislike me?”

  She’d wanted to say ‘hate’ instead of ‘dislike’, but she worried about sounding too extreme.

  The doubt on his face turned into shock. His frown remained, but his eyes widened. Magnus even took a half-step backward.

  “No, I don’t dislike you.” With a shake of his head, he regained his composure. “I admit, I have become increasingly frustrated with your attitude over the years. Not towards me, but towards Daisy. As far as I know, you’ve been holding a strange grudge against her for no good reason at all ever since you’ve met her. And no matter what I said, you wouldn’t see reason. It did upset me to think you simply wanted to do whatever you wanted without regard for how your actions also reflect on me. Everyone saw your ungracious behavior, even if they said nothing about it. On Monday, however … I saw the efforts you made to show that you’ve actually done some self-reflection.”

  “You did?” She squinted at him, her mind still muddled from feeling thrown off. “Wait, what did I do?”

  As if she was asking something obvious, Magnus raised an eyebrow. “Although I mentioned that I spoke with Daisy last week, you didn’t throw a fit and take it out on her when she came into the classroom. You even smiled at her.”

  The bar was on the floor. Was that all it took to change his mind about despising her guts? His favorability points with her were still in the negative. She would’ve expected him to be antagonistic towards her to properly reflect those numbers.

  Come to think of it, the original Blythe was probably a yandere—who threw a fit because her fiancée had one innocent conversation with a girl who barely interacted with him to begin with?

  “I mean, yeah,” she mumbled, fiddling with the large button on her school tote bag. “I told you I’d stop picking on her.”

  At least, I hope I’ll be able to stop doing it.

  She steered her mind away from that terrifying thought. “So, um, is that all?”

  Her carriage was taking a million years to get here.

  Tentative though it was, the smile he flashed her was much less perfunctory than the ones he’d been giving her since she’d woken up as Blythe. For once, his striking blue eyes weren’t cold.

  “I want to trust what you’re saying. If you truly mean it, I’ll make an effort on my end to treat you as I used to. We got along well before we came into the academy, and I don’t want to be on bad terms with my fiancée.”

  Words couldn’t describe how flabbergasted Blythe felt in this moment. He was way more level-headed than she’d thought him to be, especially considering how his favorability points fell at the drop of a hat. He’d always sounded frustrated when talking to her, too.

  Seeming to mistake her shock for hesitance, his expression softened as he spoke in a gentler tone. “I apologize for acting so hostile that you felt like I detested you. I really don’t. I should’ve expressed my frustrations in a better way.”

  Her hands flew up to wave at him before she even realized what she was doing.

  “No, I’m sorry for not listening to your concerns. I was too stubborn then.” Technically, it was the original Blythe’s fault, but she apologized for it anyway since the consequences were falling on her. It was easier that way.

  If the original Blythe had softened her stance just a little bit, she probably could’ve held on to Magnus. As long as she behaved in a more reasonable manner, he was willing to reconcile. Of course, the storyline was written such that she refused to listen when it came to Daisy. What a shame.

  She wondered if he’d be less hasty to deduct favorability points now that he was less on guard for suspicious behavior. The thought didn’t particularly endear her to the idea of hanging around him more.

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  “I hear that you’ve been participating in your PE lessons as well,” Magnus said, smiling at her again. “What brought on that change of mind?”

  She frowned. “Who’d you hear it from? Wait, never mind.”

  It was a girls-only class. Some of the girls probably talked about her out-of-character decision to exercise.

  He looked unbothered by her question. “Cole heard about it from some girls in your class.”

  Leave it to the resident playboy to pick up all the juicy gossip from the girls he was surrounded by all day. Blythe managed to suppress her snort.

  “I want to be healthier,” she said eventually, realizing that he was waiting for her answer. “Physical exercise is an important part of becoming healthier.”

  He gave her a solemn nod. “You have changed. Blythe, I really am sorry for making you feel like you needed to distance yourself. Will you have lunch with me tomorrow?”

  How was she supposed to refuse his request when it was so direct? Making up some other excuse to evade this question would only make it evident she didn’t want to be around him.

  Reluctantly, she said, “Yes, of course.“

  It was impossible for her to act infatuated with him. The more time she spent around him, the more obvious the discrepancy between her and the original Blythe would be. She could only hope he didn’t think she was holding a grudge.

  Magnus beamed. “Great. I look forward to it. And … thank you for showing me so much consideration. I did manage to get a lot of things done on the weekend without the usual back-and-forth with our VocAvis.“

  He was basically hinting that he liked not hearing from her on the weekends, wasn’t he? She wasn’t going to argue with that. As it was, she didn’t have enough time to fit in her workouts and her desperate studying over those two days.

  “It’s a relief to hear that,” she said, returning his smile. “It sounds like we should maintain some space during the weekends, then.”

  Somehow, despite being the one to bring it up, Magnus gaped at her like her answer had caught him off-guard.

  “Yes,” he said, recovering after a second of awkward silence. “That would be for the best.”

  Even though she didn’t know how she’d earned it, she got a green light.

  Ignoring her protests that she was fine to wait alone for her ride home, Magnus waited beside her until the carriage arrived.

  ???

  Getting home was a relief. It had been a long day, and her muscles were still aching from the workout she’d given them during PE earlier. Blythe was so tempted to flop down on the bed and sleep after she had her bath and dinner.

  With great difficulty, she scrounged up some willpower from deep within herself and pulled out her diary. Her kitchen reservation was for tomorrow after school. If she didn’t use this time now to find a recipe book for the chocolate truffles, she would have to use Jessica’s. She knew there wasn’t a problem with that, but Jessica had appeared excited to try making them together.

  Blythe’s diary, thankfully, contained the title of the recipe book she’d used to make those chocolate truffles: 20 Elegant Chocolates to Make for Valentine’s. According to the journal entry, she’d asked the servant guarding the library at her parents’ estate to get the book for her. Blythe left a mini-reminder for herself in her planner about asking that librarian servant for help with finding specific types of books in the future.

  She dug around in her room for the book, but couldn’t find it anywhere.

  Sighing, she dropped her head down to her desk. The cool polished wood against her cheek nearly made her drift off into slumber. With a startled jerk, she snapped out of her dozing state and sat back up.

  “Are you alright, my lady?” Suzy, who was standing by the wall, asked.

  Rubbing her eye, she got to her feet. “I’m fine. I’m going to my parents’ library.”

  Suzy went with her to the main estate, where the same librarian servant—Neil, Blythe checked from his status window—from last time greeted her. Blythe wasted no time in asking him about the recipe book title.

  “Oh, that was the one you returned last week,” he said, pushing open the library doors. “I believe I know exactly where it is. If you could give me just a moment, I will be able to bring it to you.”

  “Could you take me to it instead? I’d like to see the shelf it’s on.” Familiarizing herself with all the library shelves could come in handy one day.

  He glanced at her, surprise flickering over his expression for a second. “Certainly, my lady. Please, follow me.”

  The shelf this particular book was on was packed with recipe books for all kinds of chocolates. Of course, this bookshelf was filled with recipe books for desserts and confectionery in general.

  “Here it is,” Neil said, using his index finger to tip out a book from among its surrounding books.

  As Blythe watched him do it, a book with a thin, shiny spine near it caught her eye. The title read, ‘The Revolution of Chocolate Manufacturing: How Valentine’s Day and White Day came about.’

  She reached up and pulled the thin book out, looking at the illustrated cover of delicious-looking chocolates. She had started flipping through the pages when Neil’s startled voice cut into her thoughts.

  “My apologies for the oversight, Lady Blythe. This book belongs to the history shelf. If I may—”

  He put his hands in a gesture of wanting to receive it from her, but she clutched it to her side.

  “It’s fine. I want to read it anyway.” It looked interesting, and she’d been wondering about Valentine’s Day taking place in August within this world anyway.

  Neil withdrew his hands, blinking multiple times at her response. “I understand, my lady.”

  Then he retrieved the other book she’d asked for and proffered it to her. With two books in Suzy’s hands, Blythe left for her own room once again. While seated at her desk, she skimmed through the book.

  It was essentially a book of fun facts on Valentine’s Day. Apparently, in this world, the daughter of a wealthy merchant with the last name Valentine popularized chocolate-giving among her various social circles. Because she differentiated between the chocolate she gave her platonic friends and the one she gave to the guy she liked, it caught on quickly as a romantic gesture that was easy for women to carry out. She went on to open a chocolaterie to fuel the trendy excitement that had taken over the town she lived in, and the rest was history. White Day came later as a marketing scheme to promote business and to encourage reciprocation from the men who’d gotten chocolates from women.

  That explained the difference between the dates of Valentine’s Day in this world and her original world. They had different origins to begin with. Sufficiently entertained, Blythe set it aside on her desk and continued catching up on the subject guide books she’d borrowed from the school library. She still had so much to catch up on.