The training hall was a pleasant enough location to work out in.

  Blythe came down here every morning for a jog around the hall before retreating to an unused space for some resistance training. She’d been slowly but steadily increasing the number of reps for her exercises, aware that muscle growth required increased use over time. If she wanted ‘sufficient’ strength to lift something basic like a classroom desk, she had to keep going. She typically didn’t bother with working out on days she had PE, but the flashing red light and system windows yesterday had scared her into taking action.

  This morning, the day after Valentine’s, saw a rather empty hall as compared to its usual human traffic. The tall boys Blythe had grown accustomed to seeing practice their sword swinging in their usual spot were completely absent. The same went for the small group of muscular boys who would mostly spend their morning before the start of school putting the punching bags in one corner of the ginormous hall to good use.

  Frowning, she looked around as she broke into a jog. The lanky morning joggers were here, at least. They moved at a steady but brutal pace, completing a lap around the hall before Blythe could even make it through a quarter-lap. If they weren’t, she would’ve feared she’d missed seeing the memo that the training hall was reserved for some kind of event today.

  Maybe those guys had overdone it on the chocolates and were presently laid up with a stomachache.

  More space for me, I guess.

  Blythe let her mind wander as she ran.

  She hadn’t heard from Magnus after school yesterday. Cole had implied the original Blythe would’ve sought Magnus out for a ‘date’ on a romantic holiday like Valentine’s Day. With that in mind, the fact that he hadn’t even sent her an accusatory VocAvis message about how suspicious he was felt odd. Previously, he hadn’t hesitated at all to try to catch her out in whatever weird scheme he thought she might have been up to.

  They had two shared classes today, but she hoped he would let her sit away from him, or at least stop breathing down her neck.

  It felt crazy now, how she used to love him so much when she was playing the game. In spite of his princely status, Magnus was kind, friendly, and reliable. He had helped Daisy out of sticky situations multiple times, and Mira had always swooned whenever he allowed Daisy to learn more personal things about himself.

  Whenever she’d had a bad day at school, Mira would open the CG gallery to admire his handsome face and replay those particular story scenes again. It always cheered her up to look at his attractive character design. His character had been her soothing balm for so long.

  She could never have imagined there would come a day where she would dread looking at him or hearing him speak.

  Interacting with him was exhausting. He had every right to feel frustrated—even betrayed—by what he perceived as lies on her end, but she wasn’t going to try to appease him anymore. She wanted to be left alone in peace to figure out how she could possibly stop her body from acting out those in-game bullying scenes towards Daisy.

  She tried to shrug off the sudden fear that rippled through her, ignoring the goosebumps that rose on her arms.

  It was fine. She was going to be just fine. She wasn’t about to let some lame, unseen force compelling her to bully Daisy just like in the game have its way without putting up a fight.

  She had to think.

  So far, the only times she’d been unable to move of her own will were during events that she’d read before in Waiting for Fireflies. If the activation of this mysterious force was restricted to those moments, was it reasonable to assume it was the will of this ‘game’ world itself attempting to impose what it determined was ‘supposed’ to be upon every character’s actions?

  And then there were those system windows. She’d subconsciously brushed off their appearance as a feature that was not uncommon in otome game worlds post-transmigration.

  In several of the web novels and comics she’d read, the protagonists had access to system windows that indicated their progress in the game or directed them to specific actions via quest-giving. Some of them would have ‘yes’ or ‘no’ options popping up to give the protagonist a choice in accepting or declining the quest. There were often rewards for quest completion, and sometimes even penalties for not succeeding within a specified time limit.

  Of course, the ones Blythe could pull up weren’t like that at all. She hadn’t given it much thought then, but that was before she’d been forced to rethink her position that this world was like those she’d read about. The protagonists in the stories she’d read hadn’t been bodily forced to act out game scenes. She had to consider this world’s mechanics as its own and not lump them together with other fictional worlds.

  The ones displaying her stats and her relationship points with others were pretty similar to those she had access to in the game as a player. The only difference was that Daisy didn’t form new connections with people she interacted with. The relationship points stats the player had access to were limited to the six love interests, whose names were all revealed right from the beginning.

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  On the other hand, the system windows showing her ‘skills’ weren’t in the game at all. She didn’t seem to have an option to interact with any of the system windows beyond opening them on command. They mostly just appeared before her to share information relevant—albeit mostly useless—to the moment.

  She’d have to poke at them a bit more later tonight.

  Before she realized it, Blythe had completed a lap around the training hall. Satisfaction rose in her chest. It used to be that her lungs and legs would cry for mercy by the time she was three-quarters of the way around, but right now they were merely feeling some discomfort.

  She pushed through it and continued, deciding that she’d stop once she couldn’t take it anymore. Amazingly, she made it through another half-lap before she had to call it quits. The burn in her lungs and legs felt almost good.

  A smile spread across her lips as she wobbled back to the area where everyone had set down their belongings. For the morning crowd, there was an unspoken agreement to put their water bottles and gym bags here if they didn’t want to use the locker rooms. It wasn’t as convenient to grab their water bottle from the locker room for a quick drink between exercises.

  After grabbing her own bottle off the floor, Blythe plopped herself down cross-legged on the floor. She’d picked up the electrolyte drink—diluted lemon juice, honey, and salt—from the dining hall earlier in the morning.

  Much to her delight, she had discovered that Novalbus provided complimentary electrolyte drinks to their students the morning after moving in as a boarder. She’d overheard a boy at the training hall thanking his friend for grabbing an extra bottle for him. She had then indeed found one of the student-accessible coolers in the dining hall to contain electrolyte drinks the next morning.

  It didn’t quite taste the same as the isotonic drinks her parents used to stock the fridge with back in her original world, but it was refreshing all the same.

  As she tipped the bottle back and glugged the delicious beverage, something grey and white darted before her on the polished wood floor.

  She blinked down at the newcomer, lowering the glass bottle in her hand to do so.

  “Oh, hi.”

  Gavin stared back with his large, round eyes.

  “What’s up, Gavin?” she asked, resting the bottle on her lap. “Where’s Titus? Are you here alone?”

  He made a vague noise at her. Since she couldn’t understand him, she looked around in an attempt to spot his owner. Titus was nowhere in sight. The runners were still going strong, but they were the only other people currently in the vicinity.

  The strange sensation of her glass bottle slipping out from her grasp caused her to whip her head back around. It was now tightly clutched between Gavin’s two forepaws, and he was lying back to gulp down the contents like there was no tomorrow.

  “Hey,” she started, and her mild annoyance at his antics rapidly shifted into horror as it struck her that this was a human beverage. “Hey! Are you even supposed to drink that?!”

  Blythe reached out to snatch it back, only to realize he’d succeeded in consuming a significant volume. Only half of her electrolyte drink remained.

  Her stomach lurched. “Gavin!”

  Titus was going to flip out. Sure, it wasn’t her fault that Gavin had stolen her drink, but it could be argued she could’ve kept a closer eye on her own belongings. More importantly, she was concerned for Gavin’s health. If he collapsed from it, she would freak out.

  She had no idea what was toxic to raccoons and what wasn’t. All her life, she’d been cautioned against giving animals human food, especially if she wasn’t sure what their diet looked like.

  Gavin might be a thief, but he was an adorable little thief who didn’t deserve to fall ill or die.

  The instant Gavin began scampering off on all fours, Blythe scrambled to her feet and ran to keep up with him. Chances were high that he’d lead her back to Titus, and she needed to inform the latter what he’d drunk and clarify if it was poisonous to raccoons.

  Gavin was ludicrously fast. He sped out of the training hall into the stairwell leading up to the viewing gallery above. It took everything Blythe had in her to just to lag several paces behind.

  “Titus!” she yelled this time, thankful that barely anyone was here today. “Where are you?”

  He had to be somewhere nearby. According to Jessica, beast tamers weren’t allowed to leave their animal unsupervised around campus.

  Gavin deftly scaled the tall steps, making a sound along the way. He went out of sight upon reaching the top of the stairs. Blythe scowled and tightened her hold on the stairway railing she was using as support to heave her aching legs up each step.

  Maybe she should’ve grabbed him while she’d had the chance. Ragged pants left her lips as she kept going.

  The gallery appeared empty.

  Blythe glanced around in confusion.

  She walked past rows of seats, calling out, “Gavin? Titus?“

  A pair of furry, rounded ears popped up behind the backrest of a chair.

  “Gavin!” she cried in relief, hurrying over to them. “Where’s Titus?”

  Once she stood in front of the chair, she got her answer. Titus was lying down across a few seats, his eyes covered by one forearm resting on his face. His mouth was slightly open, and small sounds escaped from him as his chest rose and fell. Gavin was sitting by his head, peering curiously up at Blythe.

  “Titus,” she said urgently, tapping him on the shoulder. “Titus, wake up!”

  There was no reaction whatsoever.

  She tapped him harder and leaned down so she would be closer to his ear. “Titus!”

  Even though she kept calling his name, he never roused from his sleep. Blythe switched from tapping his arm to rapping her knuckles on the ball of his shoulder, then to grabbing his shoulder when there was no reaction.

  This guy slept like a log.

  Eventually, after a series of futile attempts to wake him, she resorted to violently shaking his upper arm with both hands. How did he get up in time for classes if he was so impossible to wake up?

  Her stomach dropped when Gavin flopped down on his stomach, closing his eyes. What if he was having some kind of bad reaction to the drink? They probably had a vet on campus, right?

  "Titus! You need to get up now! Wake up! Wake up! Wake up!”

  Finally, he shifted a little and let out a whine.

  Upon seeing this, Blythe went all in and shook him even harder with all her might. After all, her body didn’t have much strength to begin with. He groaned again, but finally pulled his forearm off his face and opened his eyes.

  His deep amber eyes met hers as he said in a voice scratchy with sleep, “Blythe?”