A Useless Girl (13)

Cyrus Fyodor's POV

I'm having a great deal of trouble figuring out whether Olivia is an idiot or a genius. Is her care-free attitude a clever ploy or genuine foolishness? When I looked into her background I found practically nothing. Apparently she was always kind and sociable as a child, she was intelligent and well spoken. Beloved by all who encountered her, her smile brought joy to the world...

This information conflicted with my own interactions with Olivia. Most of the emotion she emoted were negative, she seemed angry and tired. Not to mention she had no regard for Proper etiquette. Obviously she was lying, but what was she trying to gain with her peculiar actions? It simply didn't make sense that she would be well-mannered as an unimportant orphan, but rude as a student of The Royal Academy. She should be focused on making connections, unless she somehow knew that her actions would cause me to become interested.

Or I suppose it is technically possible that Olivia grew tired of acting and decided to be honest, but I seriously doubt that possibility.

Despite her puzzling motivations it couldn't be denied that the results were impressive. She had managed to become allied with me, an incredible feat, and seemed to be on friendly terms with Lucina- but I suspected that there was something ominous going on there. When ever Lucina was involved things turned out inconvenient for me. And maybe the most concerning was her strange connection to the prince.

Now that was truly puzzling, the more I thought about it the less it made sense.

For now I was pretending to be her friend, but how exactly should I use her. Olivia's too involved with my rivals to simply manipulate with just emotions, I could threaten her, but she didn't seem very scared of me...also I don't really l want to hurt her.

This is quite perplexing, how do I control someone without using fear or violence? And why don't I want to? I suppose for now I should just keep acting friendly, it's pretty fun actually and easy. I just say what I'm really thinking.

What's most important right now is making her trust me, so I can get more information. I can tell that there's a wall she puts up that won' be easy to get through.

"Sir Fyodor! Sir Fyodor!" A student who is one of my underlings called out to me.

I closed the book that I had been pretending to read and stared icily at the student. "What?"

"It's the crown prince, he disappeared with Ms.Erem!"

What? So she wasn't joking about that? "Explain."

The student swallowed nervously before continuing "This morning the prince was seen talking to the commoner, when he apparently started crying. Then they both left school together."

"Started...crying?" How peculiar, prince Julius was far too cold-blooded for that, and he was alway conscious of his public image. Could this have something to do with his sudden change? And it's involving Olivia too...what should my next move be?

Julius was allied with Lucina before, but obviously didn't like her. Maybe his change in personality could lead to him joining my side. There's the dilemma, should I attempt to save Olivia so she'll owe me at the risk of making Julius upset?

Olivia is my link to Julius, but...

The best option would be to have someone rescue her with no obvious relation to me. Then to tell Olivia it had been my plan. Still there is some risk involved, I should wait and see how things go. It's important not to jump to conclusions, maybe Olivia will be back at school tomorrow.

That would be boring, and after I came up with a perfect plan.

Ellie Cross's POV

Julius made me spend the night at the castle, he tried to get me to sleep in his room but I firmly refused. We ending up settling on a connecting rooms, aah the castle suite sure is nice~.

So comfy, and large! Royalty sure has it nice. It will be easy to fall asleep in such a wonderful bed! It seemed like the second I closed my eyes I was taken into a dream world.

The strange dream room from yesterday night appeared in front of me again. Ugh does this mean I have to deal with the original Olivia again? What a pain.

Sure enough Olivia appeared in front of me. She was staring at me with intense confusion in her eyes.

"That guy, was it really Julius?"

I nodded "yep, that was him."

Her shocked expression didn't fade "but,but he was so...smiley!"

Olivia's eyes seemed to being staring right through me at some invisible creature "and so affectionate, I-I don't understand..."

"Mm, yeah I often heard that he seemed like a different person when he was with me, so troublesome."

Olivia gripped my shoulders and stared at me aggressively "what's your secret? How did you do that?"

"Secret? Um, honesty maybe. Or hmmm, it's really just chance." Aah, her gaze really is intense.

"Explain, please. I need to understand." The desire in her voice was tangible

"Um, well I met him when he was young. And going through something difficult, and I happened to have just gone through something difficult as well...and I ended up helping him with some stuff. It was really just a lucky occurrence haha"

Olivia clicked her tongue "you expect me to be satisfied with that explanation? There's got to be more to it than that."

"I mean there is, but it's not some technique. Sorry if that disappoints you, but that's not really my problem."

"So, you've forgotten that I have information you need?" She smiled smugly at me.

Aah, I knew it wouldn't be easy, "so you're going back on our deal?" I frowned, and tried to remain calm. "If you don't fulfill your promise, I'm not going to work with you in the future"

Olivia pursed her lips, "hmph, so you're not a complete idiot. Fine..."

"Like I said yesterday I used a relic to summon Julius and some others, but then I needed a way to get revenge after he ruined everything. I felt the mysterious artifact calling to me, it told me that if I cast it's spell again I could trap Julius in a time loop for as long as I want." Her lips twisted downward and a bitter expression appeared on her face.

"Unfortunately I was also stuck in the time loop..."

Sounds like using that artifact is a dumb decision and never works out.

Olivia's bitterness leaked out as she continued her story "and Julius soon found out about my involvement in his situation, which didn't go well...but the artifact called out to me again."

She used that wacko artifact again?????

"It told me that it could make it impossible for Julius to hurt me...and it ended up causing another person to posses my body while I watched silently without being able to do anything. I couldn't feel pain anymore though- so I guess that's where the impossible to hurt me thing came in."

I stared at Olivia in bewilderment "why would you make the same stupid decision 3 times?"

"Well I had the opportunity to make it 14 times, I think I did pretty well"

Suuure, "okay so you're telling me that you've trapped yourself in a time loop with your mortal enemy and lost control of your body to some rando."

"It's a bit more complicated than that, but I suppose it's a fair criticism. Not that I expect you to understand how consuming the lust for power is."

"Yeah, I'm so sorry about that." This girl, she's seriously got issues. Like a super incompetent villain. Ah, I'm starting to feel sorry for her. How terrible my kind soul is...

"Olivia, you need to get ahold of your life."

She stared at me in bewilderment "wha-"

"This is pathetic!, you need to stop obsessing over revenge and power and figure out how to undo your past mistakes." I waved my hand in the air to emphasize my point "I mean you don't even have control of your own body."

"No thanks to you."

"First off, what's the deal with this time-loop. Is there a way to stop it?"

"If you find the artifact, then I can undo it. Probably..."

I sighed loudly, "do you have any idea where it could be?"

She brought her thumb to her lip and glanced at the hazy dream floor. "No, it always just appears."

Seriously useless.

Olivia's eyes started to wet "if the set time expires and it loops again Julius will seriously make my life a real and genuine hell." She grabbed her head and curled up into a ball.

Should I help? I crouched down next her and patted her gently on the back "relax, how much time do we have?"

"About 3 years."

"Oh great, that's plenty of time. I'm sure we'll find it by then."

Olivia looked up at me with tears in her eyes "your optimism is meaningless."

"It's going be alright, okay? Don't worry so much." I continued to pat her on the back. "It's not like being upset will help the search."

She wiped her tears away "I suppose you're right..."

As I stood up I offered my hand to her and she grudgingly took it.

When morning came Julius attempted to convince me to stay home and play games with him, but considering my abysmal attendance I had to refuse.

"But school is so boring Ellie, and there's so many annoying people there." As the carriage bumped over the rocky road Julius continued his effort to convince me.

"Like who?"

He pressed his lips together, "Like Cyrus, or Cecilia, and most of the time Lucina."

"Cecilia? Who's that?"

"Cecilia Rodenne, she's intolerable."

Cecilia Rodenne ?? Woah I finally found out her first name, I totally forgot she had one. "Ah, I've met her, what's the deal with her weird way of talking and polar personality?"

Julius's expression darkened "why do you want to know?"

"Haha, I guess cause it's interesting,and a little worrying."

"Then I won't tell you, at this rate you'll be spending all your time with others."

"You're cute, but really I'm quite curious."

"I wasn't joking Ellie, you shouldn't concern yourself with random people- especially her."

How frustrating, there's so much he refuses to tell me. Ack, maybe I'm being too nosy? Hmmm, but this is Alex- I mean Julius, would he really be bothered by such a thing. It must mean the things he's keeping a secret are big deals.

Bribery might get it out of him...I wonder if there are any good cake shops around here?

"Hey Julius, you're not going to be weird at school right?"

"What could you mean by that?"

He's definitely going to be weird, ack I need to prepare my self.

When we arrived Julius offered me his hand, and helped me out of the carriage. Several students who were exiting their carriages or milling about stared at us. Haha, it's going to be a long day.

In first period Julius insisted on sitting next to me, Joselyn quickly agreed to give him her seat. The same thing repeated in all of our classes, I had never seen Julius in any of my classes before. I thought it was because he was in different periods-but apparently he had just been skipping in order to take more naps...

The looks the teachers and students gave me were truly incredible. Such confusion, such shock, the entire student body seemed to be the same entity judging from their shared emotions. It's a little fun to be the center of attention...

Now to brave lunch, I hope it's peaceful-but I feel like I'm going to be disappointed.