It wasn't long after she resumed her work on her half of her creation, or so she believed, that the dragolyte had finished rune-scribing the runes into the crescent moon earring curio. It was only then when she noticed the bedroom was dark, only broken up by the trails of moonlight seeping through the gap in the sliding door's vaguely parted blinds. The state of the blinds was no doubt the doings of some drone beegirls. Lizu murmured, in a somewhat sickly-sounding manner. Mentally battered from forcing her already taxed brain to squeeze the last bits of brain juice she could out of it, she whined at her slow progress time, which wasn't out of a difference in skill between herself and Inkaro.

  From an unbiased perspective, being from G.Galore, the only reason Lizu took so long was from her commitment to putting every bit of her design into the curio in one go. Such a task wasn't made any easier by the fact that the moon earring contained a bulk of the dual curios' magic logic within it, while its sun counterpart acted as a sort of stabiliser for the moon half's magic.

  But given the time, and testing out the earrings now wouldn't be flamboyant enough for her liking, Lizu slumped full body backwards into the bed beside her favourite person.

  Recalling how it was usually her who fell asleep first, even during nighttime calls to Inkaro, Lizu could feel the tenseness within her unravelling. Lizu could tell she might pass out at any second, while Inkaro had barely reached the cusp of slumber. Based on his strength and speed of breathing, Lizu knew Inkaro would have a short window before falling asleep. Such a feat was a rarity, given how recently he'd entered the final stages of sleeping, in Lizu's opinion.

  Not even needing to look, Lizu roughly calculated how much mental power would be necessary to outlast Inkaro. And those mental calculations were in her favour, for once. Leaving her snickering at the news, Lizu was emotionally overwhelmed to no end, squirming in an overflow of giddiness on the bed from almost missing the chance to see Inkaro fall asleep.

  Eyes wide, heart silently bounding about and thumping in her chest, Lizu emphatically rolled onto her belly and planted her enamouredly puffed up cheeks in the care of her perched hands. With vigour restored from her sheer refusal to miss this monumental event, Lizu watched Inkaro, invoking the visage of an apex predator eyeing its prey with her unbridled intensity. Her pupils widened to those of a doll; every instance Inkaro showed signs of drawing closer to reaching a state of slumber, until she heard the guy softly snoring. Then, Lizu contentedly grinned and pressed her face forward, making her cheeks squish around her palms, like melted ice cream after only just succumbing to the ambient temperature, in the process.

  So with her little bit of nighttime Inkaro watching concluded, Lizu finally relented on prolonging her continued state of refusing to sleep. Or so she believed; after all, she was about to encounter something that would rekindle that fire to stay awake.

  So as she set the in-hand earring down beside its counterpart, Lizu happened upon Inkaro's old diary, just left out on the nightstand: defenceless.

  She had to do a do a double take in the form of blinking to make sure she wasn't seeing something that wasn't there, almost unable to believe her sleep-deprived eyes: it was the faded rouge red, B5-sized book with a pale marron threading acting as the binding for the whole thing together and stitched on the cover to spell out Inkaro's name. That name on the front, that she'd taken five hours, broken up into five-minute chunks after every failure, to stitch as a kid, made it abundantly clear that the book on the nightstand was Inkaro's diary.

  The girl was certain she would've lovingly awed at seeing such a treasure trove of Inkaro goodness, had she not been so exhausted on all fronts to leave her thinking more normally for once. But she did clasp her hands together, not in prayer, because Lizu wasn't about to share this treasure with anyone, no matter how holy. She'd rather be damned. However, before she so much as reached out to pluck the diary, something occurred to Lizu. She pouted at her own audacity of second-guessing herself, as she considered whether the book was bait for her to fall for, so Inkaro could test a trap-type spell. Such a thought only occurred to her for one simple reason; she'd fallen for such a trick seven-hundred and thirty-one times in the current year alone.

  But the desire to re-read the contents of the diary was simply too strong for her to resist. So, as much as it emotionally pained her, but spiritually satisfied her soul, Lizu softly shuffled across the bed, stopping short of making physical contact with the bed's other occupant, as she slowly raised a finger to the barely sleeping Inkaro, still very much paining the dragolyte to do so.

  "Heeey, heyyyy, Inkaro, Iiiinnnnkaaaaarroooo," Lizu whispered softly, lightly prodding at Inkaro's cheek. Getting a light... something that bordered on maybe being a yawn out of the guy, the girl continued, poking on and on in a determined, if lazy, effort to get the guy's attention, which she did, eventually. Remaining horizontal in his choice of orientation and not opening his eyes one bit, as to not risk fully waking up, Inkaro rolled onto his back before blindly waving his hand in the girl's direction, until said open palm was softly plopped on Lizu's face. Lizu was silenced. The guy's commitment to trying to sleep, for once, managed to get a little giggle out of Lizu, which bled into her words as she voiced her request: "Can I read your diary? ...I don't wanna risk getting up to find my tablet."

  "Despite the two things being right next to the other?" Inkaro mumbled, which was so groggy that only Lizu had the capabilities to decipher. Lizu found herself shyly 'eep'ing at the call out, turning a little red in the cheeks at genuinely missing such an oversight on her part, even having her double-check to see the two things sitting neatly side-by-side on the nightstand, before the guy tiredly remarked, "But be my guest."

  At hearing his consent, followed by his resumed snoring, and wanting to forget her observational blunder as soon as she could, Lizu gently snagged Inkaro's diary before jumping back into bed and snuggling right up with her bed buddy. As she opened up the diary, Lizu dived right into reading, which sadly left her missing out on noticing the tiny smirk Inkaro was sporting.

  Date: wed.seven.march.974 PtSH

  - I just got this nice grimoire book.

  - Don't know why she did though. Maybe when noble kids get a grimoire, then they have to give a diary to the maker? Yeah, that makes sense.

  - I wonder if I give her a different item, then she'd gift me something else.

  - Oh yeah, she made a funny face. Does that count?

  -This dairy stuff is confusing.

  Date: fri.nine.march.974 PtSH

  - Day two of Lizu inviting herself to my room for a sleepover. How fun.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  - Oh, forgot to write anything yesterday. Umm, Lizu visited for a sleepover.

  Date: Sun.eleven.March.974 PtSH

  - Forgot to write again.

  -Yesterday, Lizu caught a glimpse of my diary and asked why I hadn't "capped" all days and months.

  -I didn't know they liked hats.

  -Note: she meant capitalised, but did laugh when I asked if we should give each letter a small hat or the whole words a large hat.

  Date: Mon.12.March.974 PtSH

  - Sadly, Lizu had to cut the sleepover short.

  - wondering how long she would've stayed if her older sisters hadn't shown up and whisked her back home for some visit that required her to be there. Lizu looked a little troubled

  - I think they changed their masks again.

  - Addition, Lizu called in the middle of the night to mention my diary would be neater if all the numbers were all characters, so I did that.

  - Lizu also complained about a boy over the phone. He must be a bad cookie if Lizu doesn't like his attitude, but I can't be sure.

  - Maybe she knew he would be visiting, so she tried to hide out in my room to avoid him.

  Date: Tue.13.March.974 PtSH

  - I decided to go visit Lizu after she called me again, still complaining about this boy.

  - But when I got there, I saw a gathering of high-class cars(as Teach called them) parked outside the Feubread estate.

  - At first, I wondered if it was Lizu's sisters' birthday, but that didn't make sense... they would've taken me along with Lizu if that were the case.

  - I tried to go to the house, but some guard people from the cars said Lizu's dad wasn't receiving any other guests and was busy talking to some duke dude. They seemed nice enough.

  - Although their tones got meaner when I only said my name, after they asked who I was.

  - But then, they got an earful from Iunia(red mask at the time) for having the nerve to talk to Lizu's friend in such a way.

  - She let me in, only after she made those visiting guard people apologise seventy times. I think that was about double the amount of words they'd said to me with their mean voices.

  - I met the boy Lizu was complaining about. He wasn't as bad as Lizu said he was, but mabye its a energetic person not gelling with a lazy one, or so Teach mentioned when talking about some Tiliana person.

  Date: Sunday, 25th of March in the year of 974 Post Stigmous History

  -The cute dummy must have left his diary the other day. You're lucky it was me who found it. Had Lunia or Tialoua found, they might've read more than the first page before skipping to the next clean empty page to leave you a message. When you read this, I would like a full night of talking over the phone. Okay? Please?

  Date: Fri.30.March.974 PtSh

  - Lizu seems really interested in seeing what I've written in my diary lately, but whenever I offer to let her look, she turns all red in the face.

  - I don't know why she gets all mad, or is it that fluster thing? Whatever it is, she did say something about only couples being allowed to see each other's private notes, under usual situations.

  -Is that how it works? How peculiar.

  -Does that mean she has a diary of her own?

  -Oh, and Lizu must've been busy. Why else would it have taken her so long to return this book?

  Lizu lightly cooed as she flicked through the pages, feeling a shameful buzz in her chest. She almost wanted to reach and pinch her younger self's cheeks for having the nerve to read Inkaro's diary without his permission, even if it was by accident. After all, how could she blame the little dragolyte when the diary had been face down when she found it? But due to her nostalgia-crazed state, Lizu didn't realise she'd been mindlessly flicking through the diary's pages like someone who only read a story book when quotation marks indicating dialogue were on page. Realising her grave crime of page skipping, Lizu swiftly grabbed the page to rectify her mistake, but was mid-page turn when she paused, only stopping when she caught sight of the current page's content.

  Date: Wed.22.October.983 PtSH

  - Another failure, Grimoire Galore's emotional core collapsed again. How odd.

  - Her logic module is working based on the grimoire syntax I've written, but no matter how or how many times I rewrite her emotional core or its logic, it always collapses.

  -...

  - Am I missing something obvious and overlooking it?

  - Am I the issue?

  - Maybe Lizu has an idea how to solve the issue, but she's busy at the moment, so I'll just have to go it alone until she returns from her family trip.

  Starting off with a soft gasp, one not loud enough to register on G.Galore's radar, as she read the snippet invoking the progress of G.Galore's creation, Lizu peered over to Inkaro. Then, she closed her eyes and earnestly smiled.

  "You're a lot more introspective than you give yourself credit for, dummy," Lizu murmured to herself. Closing the diary and setting it back down on the nightstand, Lizu felt the growing fluttering of butterflies within herself. Likening the sensation within her to that of her younger self when being sneaky, she found herself cuddling up to the sleeping guy, with her arms wrapped around him in a not-so-sneaky bear hug, and rested her head against Inkaro's back for extra comfort.

  As she allowed the clutches of slumber to take her, Lizu wished for the day Inkaro would be open about his issues without her or external things instigating him to do so. Even with thinking that, Lizu was content, knowing Inkaro would eventually get there, so she wouldn't dwell on it, for the time being at least.

  So as she snuggled up even more firmly into Inkaro, Lizu contentedly yawned and went to sleep.