Scary woman

After the principal had concluded the small "discussion" between me and James, I followed Lindsey to her apartment, as we had already made plans for the night.

When we entered her quarters, she grabbed my arm and dragged me to the couch, forcing me to sit down. It resembled how a mother would set the stage for admonishing her child after they had behaved badly.

Confused, I tried to read the facial expression of my friend, but even though I had learned how her face worked a bit over these few days, I couldn't interpret it.

"I'm going to make some tea.", she stated, not even asking me if I wanted some or not. Letting my eyes wander the room, it was as if I got to see Lindsey's inner self. The couch was covered in plushies, ranging from ordinary teddy bears to frogs, and even game characters like an electric rat from a popular ball game.

The walls had posters of popular pop bands and different paintings while flowers were distributed in most of the suitable places, which led to a fragrant scent filling the room.

"Here you go." Lindsey had returned from the small kitchen area, giving me a cup of green tea before sitting down on one of the armchairs. As she sat down, the ice queen said a single word with an incredibly monotonous tone, "Explain."

It made sense that she wanted me to explain the situation that had just gone down, but, fortunately, she already knew most of it already. The one thing she didn't know was that I had a conversation with Sarah.

With a sigh, I tried my best to live up to her expectation, "So, as you may have noticed, James wasn't too happy with me. The reason was that he thought that I had done something to Sarah. Earlier today Sarah had sent me a message where she asked if we could talk, to which I said yes. So we met up at a restaurant where she asked me a couple of questions, to which I answered truthfully. In the end, she must've returned to the academy quite upset, which created James's misunderstanding."

Making sure I kept myself as clear and concise as possible, I told her about what had happened today, leaving out the details about what Sarah had asked me on purpose. Unfortunately, Lindsey immediately destroyed my hopes of keeping the information hidden, "What did she ask you?" She kept her eyes on me sternly, as if to make sure I wouldn't be able to talk my way out of this.

The reason why I didn't want her to know about the conversation was that I knew I had acted childishly, intentionally not explaining myself to Sarah as if to make some sort of point. In hindsight, it had been a big mistake. No matter what kind of mental state I was in, I should have seen that the pros dwarfed the cons. There was no debate that if I had explained myself I would be in a much better situation than now.

Grabbing a plushie, I tried to busy my hands to keep my nervousness at bay. Tap, tap, tap. She had started tapping her foot on the floor as she urged me on, "Miren, answer me." I swallowed the urge to say 'Yes, mother', and just told her the truth.

"She asked me if I had killed someone, to which I just said yes. And I think that someone had seen us coming home yesterday when I was covered in blood, thereby painting the picture that we had gone out just to kill someone." There was no need to tell her that I also kind of said that I would kill James, this was probably enough for her to understand why Sarah had gotten upset.

My friend fell into deep thought, trying to arrange the pieces in her head to make sure she got the right idea of the situation. Thankfully, for me, she didn't insist on inquiring about anything else, "I see, so that's how it was. So you didn't explain to hear what happened? You didn't feel the need to at least mention the fact that we got attacked first?"

Her tone was now colder than ever and I think I saw the signs of anger on her face, but as she kept it pretty much blank, it was hard to tell. Feeling a shiver going down my spine, I couldn't help but be a bit afraid of the woman in front of me. I hadn't been scared at all when James assaulted me, but this being, it was frightening. The wyvern of my memories wasn't so scary all of a sudden.

Feeling some cold sweat running down my back, I tried to come up with excuses for my behavior but it felt meaningless against her piercing stare. Instead, I just lowered my gaze to the floor, still fidgeting with the teddy in my hands.

In the end, she just relaxed down into her seat with a sigh. "Haaaa. Well, at least I know the situation now. So in the end, it's all just a number of misunderstandings?"

"I guess so..."

I felt quite silly now, although I wanted to show James his place, and what he gets for stabbing me in the back, which would already be settled by the duel, there had been no need for me to aggravate the situation. My 40 combined years of age appeared to be useless as I had let my judgment get clouded for no reason.

She stood up from her seat and started to make her way to the door. "What are you doing?", I asked, confused about her movement. Turning her head to me, while tilting it a bit, she looked confused, "I'm going to explain to them the truth? Isn't that the reasonable thing to do here? There would be no need for you to duel with added terms if they knew about the misunderstanding."

I was baffled. Lindsey had just found a way to completely eradicate this issue completely, by utilizing a strategy that I didn't think about at all; talking with them and telling them the truth.

'Damn you, woman! You and your stupid logic!'

"Please stop Lindsey." Unfortunately, I couldn't let her do so anyway. "Why?" The girl in front of me looked even more confused by me stopping her, so I quickly explained so as to not think it was just some sort of stupid male pride in the workings.

Pointing to the chair, I signaled for her to come and sit again. As Lindsey made her way back, wearing a skeptical face, I took a sip of my tea before verbalizing, "There are two reasons why this is not a good idea right now. First thing is that because of the heated situation tonight, they wouldn't be in the right mindset to listen anyway, meaning it would all be a waste of time. It might even escalate the situation further, as they might think I sent you as a way to manipulate them."

Lifting her cup to her lips, she was listening keenly to my words.

"Secondly, and most importantly, this is a good chance for me."

"A good chance? What do you mean?" At this point, I was afraid that she would enter a permanent state of confusion, so I hurried myself a bit. "This is a chance for me to prove to the other students that they shouldn't mess with me, meaning it would lessen the chances for people like Bayyan and Troy to try something. However, the most important part is the demand I added in case I won."

"That James could never fight you again? But if you win against him, wouldn't that in itself deter him from challenging you again?"

Shaking my head, I dismissed her words, "No, it's not in his nature to give up. Even if he lost, he would continue to challenge me again and again, until he won. Don't ask me why, but I know for a fact that he needs to be the strongest, and he won't stop until that rings true. Therefore this is a chance for me to prevent this."

"But isn't there a big problem with all of this?", she asked as she put her cup down on the table.

Not seeing what she meant, I had to ask, "What problem?" In my head, this was quite a good plan, without any real holes in it.

"Are you sure that you will win?"

'So that's what she meant...'

It made sense for her to be doubtful about my chance of winning against the golden boy, the prodigy of the century. Although it was now clear that I was powerful, he appeared to be on another level. In spite of this, I had a very clear answer to give her.

"I will win. Now, let's watch that movie you wanted to see."