Situated at the dining table of the livingroom, metaphorically confined by the tempting array of delicacies that Lephaelia had whipped up for her, Lizu remained reservedly still on her seat. The only major movements the dragolyte had employed over the past few minutes had been to reach out and get herself a tasty treat as she divulged the encounters she'd had during the ghost mansion visit. Which, she happily did. Whether it was from the relief of figuring out Lephaelia wasn't intending to tell her off, or from the freshly-made food that was the next step above Inkaro's current cooking level.

  "...and yeah, that's basically how our trip went, for the most part," Lizu explained calmly, finishing off her retelling by taking a sizeable bite out of the jam-filled cookie before finishing it with her next bite. Lephaelia happily listened in earnest appreciation to the story being told to her, amusedly so from how happy Lizu was when speaking.

  "Oooh, that sounds so exciting, my favourite part was when you got that gift from my little boy~" The mother of her fiancé cooed again, much more enthusiastically this time around, making sure to squeeze out the enthusiasm she could to show the storyteller she was ever-so-much enjoying every word Lizu spun.

  "Heh, I thought you would." Lizu and Lephaelia snickered at the dragolyte's comments. But as they both laughed away, Lephaelia's own slowed, losing its strength at a snail's pace that took a handful of seconds for even Lizu to notice until the woman had all but stopped, while the dragolyte was still somewhat snickering from her own comment. Despite the dragolyte's best efforts to keep the mood more upbeat, the unreserved look of sombreness on the woman's face silenced Lizu; the weak remnants empowering her snickering were too removed from her vocal cords along with her missing voice.

  So following a shallow exhale, Lizu nervously murmured, "Is something the matter, ma'am?"

  Lephaelia too sighed, much like Lizu. But unlike her snack-eating guest, Lephaelia's was much more heavy, heavier than Lizu's tail when the girl was out cold. Such weight wasn't lost on Lizu, much to her reluctant dismay, as she felt an intangible pressure pile down on her psyche to the point she found it hard to eat. It left the dragolyte incapable of asking for any further clarification before Inkaro's mother began to explain: "Sometimes I wonder if he'll be alright in the future, you know?"

  "Huh? H-however do you m-mean?"

  Following a deep sigh that knocked her previous one out of the park, Lephaelia plucked a cookie from one of the snack plates and only stared at it instead of eating it. "It's just... I'm worried, worried you'll get sick of Inkaro being so emotionally unforthcoming-"

  There was a loud bang.

  Starling the woman weakly by the sudden slapping thud she made, Lizu passionately slammed her tail, well, the end third of it anyway, against the floor, shattering her state of silence as the force of her strike generated enough force to lift her onto her feet. "I would never! I love Inkaro with all my being, I tell him that all the time, and he knows that."

  "And how does he respond when you tell him that?" Lephaelia wiggled her cookie-holding fingers at Lizu, effortlessly messing up the girl's train of thought and focus, mainly to get her to stop slapping the floor with her tail.

  Lizu paused, ending her defence of Inkaro to recollect if the woman's words held any water. Skimming well over roughly ten years of her life, something became crystal clear to the dragolyte, not that she didn't already know those facts already. Sure, Inkaro wasn't the lovey-dovey type of partner. However, he just had his own way of displaying his interest in Lizu, and Lizu knew she'd have to be insane to have an issue with his methods. But Lizu was sure saying something like that to the guy's mother wasn't all that advisable, enough to have the girl itching her cheek in momentary apprehension."Okay... I see your point, but implying he doesn't care about me in any capacity would be similarly incorrect, wouldn't it?"

  Lephaelia lightly snickered, softly lowering her untensing shoulders before finally taking a bite out of her first snack.

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  "I know, but I can't help it. As he has gotten older, his range of interests has shrunken. It is to the point now, I'm concerned he won't find anything outside magic interesting anymore. "Don't get me wrong, I know firsthand how much exploring magic is to him, but what if he manages to burn himself out at some point in the future?"

  "I don't think you'll have to worry about that," Lizu said swiftly, harnessing enough unabashedly fiery confidence behind her words that it managed to appease Inkaro's mother, to some extent. Lizu took a bite of a muffin.

  As Lizu had seconds ago, Lephaelia brought a hand to her face and faintly itched her cheek, unsure if she should feel enamoured by how much Lizu had grown from the closed-off noble kid she once was.

  "I suppose worrying about a non-issue is rather silly, isn't it?"

  Whilst the two's conversation continued on and began to steer towards Lizu's school life on a more contextual level, Inkaro followed behind Inoni as the girl led him on one wild goose chase through the hallway of the single-storey house. The following following of the little sister went on and on, and Inkaro remained steadfast on fulfilling his mother's request to such an extent that he hadn't noticed Inoni had lead him outside the house.

  It took until the two of them had reached the town's public flower park for Inkaro to notice his minor change in location. Inoni shook her head, but didn't utter so much as a snarky quip, not that she could if she wanted to.

  "Can you teach me how to write the grimoire syntax for teleportation magic?" Inkaro tilted his head at hearing the abrupt request, well, saw the request Inoni had written out using a text app on her touchscreen phone. Watching his head swing further and further to a right angle, Inoni scrunched up her eyes, scowling that she would likely have to spell out what she wanted out of Inkaro more clearly. So, following a spin of her phone to see what she was typing, she flipped her phone back around and sharply thrusted it upwards, right up to the guy's face, and had to employ the technique of standing on her tippy toes to do so. The little sister's written note was as follows: "I asked my teacher why the textbook in our class doesn't say anything about teleporting, and you know what she said?"

  As Inkaro slowly read the text, Inoni slightly pouted in impatience, knowing where in the text her brother was currently at, based on the angle of his line of sight, which slightly irked her based on his slow speed. It was enough to have her lightly tapping her foot and crossing her little arms.

  "Only demon magic can do teleporty magic without setting up those curio beacon thingies, but I know that's not true. I've seen you do it all the time, and I know you're no demon, so I know I can do it if you teach me!!!!"

  "I see. So I take it this means you've already breezed through all your classes so far to know what is and isn't in there?" Inkaro's question scratched just the right part of her brain, causing his little sister to light up like a warm early sunrise with how wide her toothy smile was.

  "He-heh, naturally, I'm a natural after all," Inoni proclaimed pridefully as she rubbed the tip of her nose. But as her snarky self-praise wasn't met by any sort of reciprocation or reaction from her brother, Inoni found herself getting somewhat impatient with her bro's persistence in not outright refusing or agreeing to her demand. It was somehow more annoying than getting refused rudely. "Soooo? Pleaseies? I've got to prove her wrong."

  "I don't see why proving her right or wrong matters all that much, but if you're up for it, I'll teach you. On the condition that you don't complain about your head hurting in the middle of studying."

  The little girl didn't even listen to the warning bestowed upon her by her brother. Instead of heeding them, Inoni was far too busy bouncing on the spot and singing to the moon at hearing she'd be able to skip straight to high school if she could prove grimoire syntax can activate teleportation-type magic. Although she was happy things had turned out how she'd intended, it was only then that something occurred to her, mainly the phrasing of her teacher's challenge. Didn't her teacher say that she only needed to prove grimoire could do teleportation-type magic? So, wouldn't bringing Inkaro or Spatial Serverance to school be far easier than learning the magic herself?

  Whilst Inkaro was in the middle of creating a study guide for the syntax stored within Spatial Severance, something oddly cute occurred, not that the guy registered it as such. The grimoire reaper watched as Inoni dropped to her knees on the paved path and hung her head at a defeatedly aggressive angle. "No... how could I... overlook something so... obvious? Dummy. Dummy-dummy-dummy."

  Inoni repeatedly whimpered aloud at her huge error in logical deduction as she transferred to a fetal position on the floor, cowering faintly at fully registering the gruelling task she had needlessly given herself. Her little scene drew the eye of a few passersby, some of whom were mothers who felt nostalgic at the scene of a kid being overly emotional.