The following Monday, the morning routine was functionally identical to every other before it: Lizu waking up early in the morning, eating her pre-breakfast snack, and sharing a morning soak with Enetha, while Inkaro twiddled away at some manner of magic-related thingy. Followed up by the trio eating an Inkaro-crafted breakfast, then Enetha being returned home to get dressed by Kutina, and, finally, the trio heading off for Solicrave Academy at long last. However, unlike all the times prior, aside from Paruneha being present before falling asleep again as the three of them were leaving, Lizu was down in the dumps, even before waking up.

  Heartbreak was one way to put it; it was one so potent that it left her physically weak, requiring Inkaro to carry her on his back and Enetha in his arms to ensure the three of them would arrive at the academy in a timely fashion.

  "Well, it was nice while it lasted," Lizu grumbled deflatedly, still a little disheartened that the counterspell had only amassed enough mana to keep Inkaro in his adult form for a measly ten minutes and three point five seconds, leaving her moping the whole of Sunday that she'd been robbed, both spiritually and physically.

  "Is she still broken up over the departure of your future physique?" Enetha asked calmly as she sat on Inkaro's right shoulder, while Lizu occupied the other with her head. Inkaro nodded his head, getting displeased murmurs out of Lizu, leading her to complain that Inkaro was making it hard for her to mope properly with all his head movements. While the other two were busy doing something, Enetha was busy picking apart how Inkaro had gotten cursed, and more importantly for her, how to recreate it. However, that line of thinking from Enetha caused a peculiarly bizarre thought to pop up in the little princess's mind: "Say, you wouldn't mind showing me that adult form of yours one day, would you?"

  Seeing her chance to strike and finding Enetha's potential reaction worthy of relenting on moping, Lizu knew she had the perfect opportunity to test how much specifically targeted teasing the little princess could take until she could break the other girl out of her princessy shell.

  "Isn't that a little childish, Enetha?" Lizu grumbled weakly, acting emotionally exhausted so her intentional teasing wasn't so obvious, as she loosened her tail wrapped around Inkaro's waist for extra support, adding to the illusion.

  "You think?" Enetha asked bluntly, face unmoving and devoid of any shame. The same couldn't be said for her internal reaction, but only a mind reader, or Lizu with inside knowledge, could hope to uncover the truth buried beneath the little princess's social mask. Currently, the mental image of a question mark was the only thing going on inside of Enetha's little head, and the question mark had a checkered pattern layered over it.

  "Oh, she's good," Lizu murmured under her breath, finding Enetha's poker face positively Machiavellian.

  Readying to continue on her teasing, Lizu straightened out her posture and raised her head to be eye-level with Enetha, before quickly responding to the short return question, not wanting to raise Enetha's suspicion, of course. "Yeah, Enetha, you're asking him to do something that'll happen naturally; so why bother threating over the inevitable?"

  Before Enetha could finish listening to Lizu's words to comprehend them fully, Inkaro beat the little princess to the punch, having noticed a hypocritical error behind the dragolyte's statement: "You're one to talk, Lizu."

  That comment from her fiancé managed to stoke a bigger reaction out of her than she had out of Enetha, in the form of her tightening her tail around Inkaro's waist until it resembled an oversized belt. And to add to her physical display of visceral embarrassment, casting whatever shreds of moping she still had to the wind, Lizu repeatedly pounded her fist against the guy's back that sounded like soft drumming against a drum. "Hey! You can't go teasing me out of the blue. What if my heart explodes? And my tail suddenly growing, hurts like hell! So it's more anticipation than threatening over something."

  "That sounds... sound." Enetha concurred with the notion that Lizu was explaining, the one where having extra limbs comes with additional ways for their bodies to cause them more discomfort in daily life.

  While her face remained the same as ever, Enetha shuddered abruptly as the sensation of her cloth-like appendages getting too soggy wormed its way into her brain. The memories were so sickeningly invasive that she constantly had to suppress them; she likened the feeling to something sticky and slimy being plastered directly to the surface of and under the skin at the same time. Downright torture was another way for her to look at getting her clothy limbs utterly soaked.

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  It was the main reason why the little princess refused to go anywhere near the hive in Inkaro and Lizu's backyard.

  Although it did happen as she'd expected, Lizu mentally fist pumped at seeing Enetha could be influenced by words alone, meaning she wouldn't need any outside influence for her plan to work. "Thanks, Enetha; at least you understand."

  Later at the first-year Star Course homeroom, everyone had arrived promptly and on time, to the detriment of some: Anazenpha and Yuuvia being the prime victims, having spent the prior night on who knows what, which left them particularly exhausted. In Ana's case, she was simply too excited to sleep a wink after Yuuvia had received a text from Lizu saying Inkaro had finished the glasses for her. Yuuvia was too absorbed by Anazenpha's excitement to sleep, unable to will herself from witnessing every second of the snake girl's happy expressions. The noble girl compared missing out on it to someone missing the birth of their child, which she'd never do personally.

  Unlike any other day, Lizu would have gladly taken Yuuvia's current state to antagonise her, but the dragolyte was too preoccupied with formulating teasing methods against Enetha to care about her archrival.

  Whilst the group of twelve students were busy waiting for homeroom to conclude so they could head off for their school day consisting solely of practical lessons, their homeroom teacher harboured much dismay from basically having the morning off with nothing to do. It made her wish she had a teaching assistant to push the responsibility onto in cases like this, allowing her to sleep in on days other than the weekend.

  "Alright everyone, I hope you've taken some time out of the weekend to decide on the three you'll be voting to be required to partake in the Halnuemi Enkindle Festival's tournament exerpition thing," Alureino stated dispassionately, finding no interest in the events contents that didn't focus on curios, but was forced to get three names down for the event's paper work.

  "Are those who already have stigmas exempt?" Nova asked, only raising her hand after already asking her question, but Alureino still appreciated the battle maniac's attempt to partake in the bare minimum of decorum expected of a classroom.

  "In the past, perhaps, or so I've heard, but nowadays, those chosen to receive a chance to obtain a stigma have spread to every facet and event of the festival. Put in simple terms, anyone in any event, who shows promise can get the opportunity to enter the Phantasm Vortex for a stigma," Alureino stated expodisiously, ensuring every piece of information was divulged to her students so she wouldn't need to repeat herself. "Besides, the head masters informed me that having a stigma doesn't give any of you exemptions, and they changed it to five of you now, so keep that in mind."

  "Ma'am, you suck... at summarising things," Anazenpha said in a lazily blunt-sounding way, choosing the single worst way to split up her sentence and making it sound like a personal insult on her homeroom teacher's character. Everyone, especially a mortified Yuuvia, went silent in an instant, excluding Inkaro, because he wasn't talking to begin with. Instead of blowing up like she does when Inkaro breaks the norm, Alureino simply rolled her eyes amusedly, finding Ana's remark somewhat entertaining and respectable for managing to get her classmates to shut up for a second from their discussions.

  "You'll be terrible at things you have no interest in, kid; if you're putting your all into everything, you'll end up like that dumb kitsune," Alureino grumbled, followed by her angrily grimacing as that demon's face flickered through her mind. " Urg... just thinking about all the work he does makes me want to go back to bed, forever."

  Soon enough, before the curio crafter could commit to bashing her head into her podium, the academy's period bells chimed. So instead of giving herself a concussion out of frustration at her workaholic leader's awful work-life balance, Alureino waved off her students, plopping her face into her podium-mounted pillow out of exhaustion as the last student vacated the homeroom. "Uuuurrrrrrg... at this rate, I'm going to lose my mind if this keeps up... but at least I got those participants now: Inkaro, Xythio, Lizuranti, Yuuvia, and Myhail. Only three of those lot made any sense being there, but democracy is king these days."

  The thought that Inkaro would have to participate in something he had no interest in and couldn't lazily forfeit his way out ofwas enough to soothe her soul, bringing her to small fits of giggling that threatened to make her get a little unprofessional. "Oh, I've got to call Tiliana to brag... and I suppose I should call Kalusozalna to let him know who'll be participating in the tournament before they're officially announced, shouldn't I? But why was his daughter so interested in such information anyway?"

  Back around Inkaro and Lizu's house, Paruneha was out like a log, perhaps even deeper in their sleep than that. They were nestled in the droves of the honey lake situated in the beegirl's Nuenala-made hive, slowly drifting through the pure liquid substance that had yet to fully set as it drew upon the stigmai's essence to generate a new flavour under Enulatina's watchful observation. Clacking the deep pink metalic spikes hidden within her fur against eachother, Enulatina gleefully flutter above the slumbering stigmai, eyes full of selfish aspiration: "Yes... This will be the best flavour yet, not even Imperator will be able to resist praising it once he sees it with his own eyes. Oooh, I can't wait. Haa...ha hahahahhahahaaaa!"