Her proposal got him to hate her even more, because she got a red notification light.

  Funny. She thought he would’ve jumped for joy at the opportunity to break it off. A large part of why the king hadn’t allowed Magnus to end their engagement in the game was due to Blythe’s desire to be with him. It stood to reason that the king would be more likely to permit it if the feelings were mutual.

  “What are you up to now?”

  “I’m not up to anything other than suggesting we end our engagement. If you’re amenable to that. That way, my actions won’t reflect on you anymore, right?”

  He was flat out glaring at her now. “I know you. You don’t mean that. What do you have up your sleeve now?”

  “Do you really think that little of me?” she deadpanned.

  She probably shouldn’t have antagonized him, but there was nothing she could say at this point to improve his opinion of her anyway.

  Relenting when she saw the steam start to come out of his ears, she said, “I mean it. You don’t want to be engaged to me either, right? I’m sorry I roped you into this engagement when we were just kids. If His Majesty will allow it, we can break it off.”

  He stared distrustfully at her.

  Magnus ended up leaving in a huff, taking his food with him. He warned her that he intended to find out what her motive was.

  Actually, she’d expected him to agree straightaway. Maybe he thought it was too good to be true.

  “Oh well,“ she muttered, picking up her third skewer.

  ???

  Blythe hurried from Botany IV to her Mathematics IV classroom without sparing a word for Magnus.

  He’d spent the entire class glowering at her every spare moment he had outside of their classwork. She couldn’t believe he still chose to sit beside her despite how awry their earlier conversation had gone.

  On second thought, it could’ve been his way of keeping an eye on her.

  Either way, she’d lost another ten favorability points with him over the course of the lesson purely on account of breathing next to him.

  Once she stepped into the classroom, Blythe halted in her tracks. She’d been so anxious about coming early to put the notebooks on Daisy’s usual desk that it slipped her mind they had free seating.

  The desk Daisy had picked yesterday in Mathematics IV was a little closer than usual to Blythe’s regular seat, but that was before the fountain incident. She couldn’t be sure where Daisy would sit today.

  It looked like she would have to wait and see.

  A couple of minutes later, Jessica and Sophie arrived and took seats beside her. They were eager to ask about how lunch alone with Magnus had gone, but Blythe gave them short answers. Irrational though it was, her annoyance with them from yesterday hadn’t faded. Although she knew, right from the beginning, that they were bullies who were eager to hurt Daisy, she’d still thought they would listen to her when she asked them outright not to do certain things.

  Blythe’s whole body tensed once Daisy entered the room with her eyes on the ground. She leaped to her feet the instant Daisy sat down at a desk—it was all the way at the back of the classroom, far away from where Blythe was.

  “Blythe?”

  “Where are you going?”

  She ignored Jessica’s and Sophie’s questions in favor of making a beeline for Daisy.

  As she stood before Daisy’s desk, the latter seemed to freeze. She’d been staring down at her empty desk, but now her head didn’t move at all.

  Blythe stole a glance at the back of Daisy’s chair—a canvas gym bag hung off it.

  Her stomach lurched. Her letter was supposed to take two days to arrive at her home. She just hoped they would quickly send her the items she requested.

  “I’m sorry,” Blythe blurted out.

  She said nothing else, instead placing the notebooks down onto Daisy’s desk. Being the coward that she was, she fled before Daisy had the chance to make eye contact or give her the same stomach-sinking expression from yesterday.

  Blythe returned to her own chair, dropping herself down in it and peeking over at Daisy.

  “Were those the notebooks you attempted to give her this morning?” Sophie asked.

  “Yeah.”

  Daisy was slowly pulling the notebooks towards herself. Blythe imagined she was reading the note she’d placed on top.

  She’d written it last night, desperate to clarify the intention behind the notebooks: I’m not sure if they’re thorough enough compared to yours, but I copied over my own notes to these so you can use them however you wish. I’ve sent in a request for some things to replace your ruined school supplies, but they will take a few days to arrive. I’m really sorry.

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  She hadn’t wanted to ask for forgiveness or say anything in the note that would make it sound like she was seeking any kind of reconciliation.

  It was better for her to stay away from Daisy, at least until she could discover if there was some way to extricate herself from the game’s will.

  A prickling sensation rose on the nape of her neck. She looked around the room and saw a couple of girls she didn’t know around the room staring at her. Upon realizing they’d been caught, each girl averted her gaze and started talking to the girls around them.

  “I’ll find out what they’re saying,” Jessica promised, her sharp eyes sweeping around the room. “If they’re saying anything about you.”

  She’d obviously figured out what Blythe was looking at.

  Regardless of her present irritation at Jessica and Sophie, it struck Blythe how much on her side they were. It was the type of ride-or-die friendship she could only dream of in the past. If she could just get them to agree not to harass Daisy, her life here would be so good.

  “Alright,” she replied. “I’ll leave it to you.”

  ???

  At Blythe’s request, Jessica and Sophie gathered in her dorm room after school.

  Taking into consideration the sensitive nature of this upcoming conversation, she’d rather not have it take place in public.

  The two girls entered with overt excitement, looking all around and drinking in the sight of her room’s interior.

  “I can see your personal touch in this room,” Jessica gushed, clasping her hands together. “It’s simply wonderful!”

  As they took off their shoes, Blythe closed her door behind them.

  All of a sudden, her sight was hit with green light.

  Feeling more than a little puzzled, Blythe turned around. She followed Sophie’s gaze to her desk, where the plant plushie she’d received from Sophie sat. The only other object on the desk was a textbook, so the plushie had to be the cause.

  Blythe waited for Sophie to remark on it, but she never did.

  They all sat down in a triangle on the soft rug in the center of the room, facing each other.

  “I need you two to listen to me,” Blythe began, staring into Sophie’s eyes before moving on to Jessica’s.

  “We’re all ears,” Jessica said immediately.

  Sophie nodded, her expression earnest.

  This time, without the pressure of limited time or contradictory actions, Blythe told them about the mysterious force that had led to the events of yesterday and the first bullying event.

  She concluded her tale by saying, “So I need you two to do me the favor of ignoring what I say when I suddenly say disparaging things about Daisy and imply I want to make her experience something unpleasant or put her in her place, because that’s not me.”

  Silence descended upon her room as Sophie and Jessica stared at her.

  The next bullying event was some time away, but she wanted to get this out of the way now and set expectations for the next time it happened. She could understand why they, upon hearing two contradictory orders from her, followed the one they thought made the most sense.

  The original Blythe had spent her school years bullying Daisy after all. It was unreasonable to spring ‘weird’ demands on them and expect them to know what she wanted before communicating it in advance.

  Blythe resisted the urge to fidget and stared right back at them.

  Eventually, Sophie broke the silence with a few giggles, holding her hand to her mouth. “Goodness, Blythe, we already told you yesterday, didn’t we? You don’t have to invent such a fantastical story for us. We’re your best friends. We despise Willoughby as much as you do—we’re happy to do it on your behalf so you don’t have to get your hands dirty.”

  Jessica chortled along with her.

  Frustrated, Blythe demanded, “If I cared about getting my hands dirty, why would I have told Daisy I was the one who did it?”

  “Why did you tell her?“ Jessica looked baffled.

  “Because I wanted to apologize and make it up to her! Aren’t you getting it yet? I never wanted to say any of those things about putting her bag in the fountain!”

  “So then why did you say those things?”

  They had come full circle. She was beginning to regret even sitting them down for this conversation.

  “I’m telling you I never did! My mouth opened on its own even though I tried to stop it!”

  The ghost of a grimace drifted across Jessica’s face for a second. “Blythe, you’re saying that by some strange force, you were compelled to say and do things against your will, but this only occurs with regard to teaching Willoughby a lesson. By no means am I trying to dismiss your words, but it does sound oddly … convenient.”

  There it was again. Convenient. She was getting sick of hearing that word.

  She hated that she agreed with them. If she couldn’t be sure she’d believe herself, why would she expect them to believe her?

  “You’ve never said anything about this before,” Sophie added. “We’ve all seen Willoughby’s insufferable behavior since our first year at Novalbus, and you’ve always approved of our efforts to improve that.”

  If she couldn’t make them believe her, she could at least have them do as she asked. They were her lackeys, weren’t they? Shouldn’t they listen to her orders?

  “Didn’t you two say before you were happy to help me?” she demanded.

  Beaming, Sophie winked at her. “I am happy to help with anything you need! That’s why I took on the responsibility of ’cleaning’ Willoughby’s bag last night.”

  They just didn’t get it.

  During her first day in this world, Blythe had thought she got two instant allies in the form of Jessica and Sophie. Apparently, they were only her allies as long as the subject matter didn’t involve Daisy, otherwise they quickly became hindrances instead.

  She couldn’t rely on them to help her with anything when it came to Daisy.

  “I want you to stop doing anything to Daisy,” she snapped. “Leave her alone, even if my body says otherwise.”

  “‘Your body’?” Sophie giggled again. “Gosh, Blythe, you’re really persisting in this. Don’t worry, we know exactly what you mean.”

  Blythe’s face felt stuck in its scowl.

  “Speaking of which, I found out what Willow and Adeline said about you,” Jessica chimed in before Blythe could respond. “It’s all good things. Talk has been going around today that Willoughby lost her notebooks and only has one she’s using for all her subjects at the moment. After you gave her yours, the other girls began spreading word about your magnanimity and grace for showing her such kindness despite her making eyes at His Highness. That was such a brilliant move, Blythe!”

  As Sophie made awed sounds, Blythe threw her hands up.

  “It wasn’t a move! I owed her those notes!”

  Smiling knowingly at her, Jessica said, “Really, you don’t need to keep up this act. It’s just the three of us here. Your reputation is safe.”

  For a moment, Blythe nearly shouted at them that this was a game world and that she was being controlled by an external force to act out the bullying scenes. But then she saw Jessica’s and Sophie’s carefree grins, not grasping the gravity of the situation at all, and stopped.

  In the best case scenario, they would believe her and try to brainstorm ideas to help.

  What were the odds that they would jump to help her if they truly believed her? They seemed blindly loyal to Blythe so far. If they learned she wasn’t the original Blythe, would they turn on her in an effort to get the real Blythe back?

  And if they didn’t believe her, how likely was it that they would push for her to get a health check-up? Jessica was under the impression that Blythe had hit her head and was suffering from amnesia. Her outrageous claims might end up getting attributed to a head injury in this case. The possibility it might escalate to other people learning about this didn’t escape her.

  She couldn’t risk it when she hadn’t explored every avenue to overcome this yet. It could affect the rest of her life—not that it was looking promising anyway.

  Deflating, Blythe finally gave up on talking sense into her friends. There had to be another way to get around this nonsense.

  For the next hour, they chilled in her room and discussed the latest romance novels they had read. Sophie and Jessica voiced their opinions on the male leads in a very impassioned manner, entertaining Blythe to no end with them. When it was just the three of them in their little bubble, Jessica and Sophie were so fun to be around. Blythe just wished it could always be like that.

  It was only later that night, when she was about to head to bed, that Blythe realized Daisy hadn’t told anyone—other than Magnus, who clearly had no intention of spreading it around—about what ’she’ had done. Nobody else had said anything to her, and she hadn’t heard anyone talk about it. Although Daisy didn’t have any female friends to vent to, there were still boys around her who would likely have asked her what happened to her bag or stationery. She could even have told Cole if she’d wanted to, but Cole hadn’t said anything to Blythe that indicated he knew.

  Daisy had kept it to herself just like she’d done in the game.

  The thought only made Blythe feel worse.

  This sucks. Everything sucks.