In the cycles of her slumber, the girl who prided herself on her commitment to noble etiquette found herself in an odd dream, made even more bizarre by the fact she was conscious of being in a dream. Although struggling to do so at first, Yuuvia managed to roll her head over a few degrees, enough so that she could see the plump clouds she was snuggled up in, which wrapped up from underneath her and overhead like a loose cocoon of fluffiness. Very soft and inviting.

  Like an all-encompassing embrace, Yuuvia felt a passionate clinginess sweep over her, with select parts of her body receiving an increased, targeted pressure applied to them: her right thigh, left tricep, right cheek, and the sensation from her cheek slowly crept towards her lips.

  If she had to describe the dream she'd fallen into, she'd call it endearingly pleasant, for some reason she couldn't explain. Other than the enviorment giving off a plesant warmth, that was what she inicial impression of the dream and would've kept throught the few hours she'd spent in it, had it not been for one tiny thing right at the end; A drop of some sort of liquid hitting the back of her neck, sending a chilling thrill through her spine as the ice cold touch of the liquid fully hit her nervous system.

  The lifelike chill was potent beyond belief, snapping Yuuvia awake and making her jolt slightly in her half-conscious state as she forced her eyes open. However, all she could muster was out of her eyelids was getting them half open.

  With the snappiness of a sloth running for its life, Yuuvia groggily brought her left hand to her eyes to rub the sleepiness out of them. For a little bit, she just led there on the plush tentacle, only breaking her inactivity to gaze toward the early morning sunrays creeping into the living room. Following her confirmation of the time, it was only once she'd fully woken up that she noticed the faint pressure being applied to her left cheek, matching the sensation she'd felt against the back of her neck but much warmer.

  Serving as the source of the noble girl's odd dream, Anazenpha happily clung to Yuuvia like a baby to their first ever toy, most likely having migrated from her original spot on BRM Umbra Termination and, in her sleeping state, joined Yuuvia under her covers for whatever reason.

  It all made sense to Yuuvia now: The comforting embrace she felt was from Anazenpha objectively embracing her and sharing her consistent body heat, which Yuuvia had overheard Lizu mention was most likely from Ana's constantly burning through her mana reserves. The areas where she felt extra pressure applied to her body could also be explained away by the snaky girl's bizarre sleeping posture against her, and not from the noble girl's subconscious. That was a relief to said noble girl.

  As she focused on the snake girl, mainly on how the other girl had her mouth pressed against her right cheek, Yuuvia registered how the heat of Anazenpha's breath matched that of the encompassing heat she'd experienced in her dream perfectly, almost, too perfectly.

  Anazenpha's breathing was relentless. Had it not been for the floral fragrance from the catalysts the demon girl had taken, Yuuvia was sure Anazenpha's breath wouldn't have been as pleasant as her nose currently found it.

  Despite all the positives Yuuvia found about her current situation, she did find one piece of Anazenpha's sleeping antics less than desirable: the girl's relentless insistence on sucking on her cheek.

  All Yuuvia believed she could do in her predicament was mentally sigh. She figured it wasn't worth the risk of trying to escape Anazenpha's grasp; after all, there wasn't a low chance of the demon girl crawling to and clinging onto someone else, or so she believed.

  "To think I would be in such a position during a sleepover. I suppose it didn't matter that Unuvi wouldn't let me bring one of my snakes with me after all." Yuuvia ruminated on the thought, deeply contemplating going to more sleepovers if Anazenpha would be present. "Wait, why am I thinking that?"

  Following a solid fifteen minutes of Yuuvia lying down and being on the receiving end of Anazenpha's sleepy attacks, almost all four of the other girls were awoken. Surprisingly, Anazenpha remained sound asleep when the smell of Inkaro's cooking came sashaying into the pillow fort.

  The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

  The amount of breakfast and the pace it disappeared at was reasonable compared to dinner from the night prior, thanks to Anazenpha's catalyst pills still being somewhat in effect, forcing her to refrain from eating until they fully wore off.

  It wasn't long before the girls, at Lizu's behest, migrated to the outdoor bath for a pre-school soak.

  Strangely enough, there was a divide between the physically resilient(Lizu and Nuenala) girls, who went with the hotter hot water. In contrast, the high-status(Enetha and Yuuvia) girls went with the more calibrated hot water. The only girl not in the bath, excluding Enetha's cloth-like appendages, was Anazenpha. On account of her being in the middle of her seventh plate of honeyed toasts and bagels, Anazenpha was forced to sit on a hinoki bath stool made of grey mana beside the hotspring-like bath.

  With a bandana wrapped over his eyes tightly that wouldn't allow a blurry outline through, and back in his usual attire, Inkaro placed a hand on Anazenpha's back before channelling some mana into her back, which the girl didn't even bat a single eyelash at. As he focused, his mana turned into a PSG:TE tattoo: this one's design being of a light blue snowflake engraving that vaguely resembled a shower head.

  Watching the guy as he removed his hand from her back, followed by a bubbly suit of soap water covering Anazenpha from neck to toe, Yuuvia eyed Inkaro suspisiously, not because of his content of character but because of the event that led up to him helping wash Anazenpha: "Do you think there is something peculiar about him?"

  "What, did you expect him to put up a fuss when asked to cover his eyes?" Lizu teased while flicking the tip of her tail playfully, much to Yuuvia's embarrassment as the noble girl's left cheek reddened to match the red mark on her right one.

  Scrunching up her face in indignation at Lizu's implication behind her comment, Yuuvia defensively blurted out, "I wasn't talking about that! I meant how he can so readily get changed in front of us and then can share a space with us when we're naked, even if his eyes are covered!"

  Enetha shook his head as she poked Yuuvia on the shoulder to get her attention. Almost like it was second nature, Yuuvia turned her head the second Enetha made her desire for the noble girl's attention known to her. And, with Yuuvia's attention, Enetha spoke calmly, "I dunno, I like that he isn't all uppity about small and superficial things."

  Yuuvia grumbled under her breath, not wanting to argue over something someone of high status considered superficial and make herself look petty by proxy. Her annoyance levels weren't helped by the air drier-like noise that came from G.Galore as she conjured a jet of warm air at Anazenpha with the power from one of her grimoire siblings.

  [Convection Conviction][Type: Temperature Manipulation][Rank: SS]

  -An ellipse-shaped book when it is fully open. The top left half of the covers is a deep, ocean blue(top) to teal blue(bottom) gradient colour filled with small pearls and bubble-looking drawings. The bottom left half of the covers is a bright orange(top) to deep red(bottom) gradient colour filled with grey pentagon yellow swirls. The top right of the covers is a light blue(top) to a blue(bottom) gradient colour filled with a tornado-looking grey lines. The bottom right of the covers is a white(top) to light grey(bottom) gradient colour filled with dark grey snowflakes. Between the sections on the same side is a dark grey, mountain range-looking divider line. And, the spine of the book is a segmented iron strip.

  "I fear my sense of normalcy has been long since warped from being this guy's childhood neighbour," Nuenala said jokingly as she subtly suggested Yuuvia shouldn't overthink things, adding that Yuuvia should do her brain a favour and just go with the flow when dealing with Inkaro.

  Yuuvia couldn't really refute such a suggestion, going very much against her pride for not being able to think of a retort of refusal. "Yeah. Yeah. Whatever you say."

  Anazenpha, not finding the other girls' conversation interesting in the slightest, turned her close-eyed stare up at Inkaro as the PSG:TE tattoo on her back faded away.

  "Inkaro, are you a... magic researcher?" Anazenpha asked amusedly before taking another bite out of a honey bagel, readily eating again with her hands free of any soapy bubbles. Inkaro lightly shrugged, not really seeing himself in such an academic light concerning his passion, but couldn't deny the title was accurate, irrespective of his opinion.

  "I suppose you could say I am, but I wouldn't personally," Inkaro remarked merrily, only to notice Anazenpha's low hum of contemplation. "Something on your mind?"

  With much contemplation and a lot of audible humming, Anazenpha finally found her question for the guy: "Do you think... You could help me find a way to... weaken my stigma's power over me?"

  Not even batting an eye at the request, Inkaro readily gave a confident thumbs up, much to the snake girl's appreciative giggles that unintentionally almost sent Yuuvia over the edge and passing out on the spot from a snake-related cuteness overlord.