Magical Girl with Demonic Time Magic-Chapter 124: Peculiarities

Four days have passed since Setsuna started living with me, and I have to say it’s strange. After that conversation with Ophelia, nothing really improved.

I tried conversations, games, unique and fun meals, and I even asked her out on a girlfriend date, but she either avoided it or participated as if she wanted to leave before it even started.

Setsuna won’t tell me what’s wrong, and I can see she’s not well. She even tries to hide her dark circles with makeup, but you can’t hide that kind of severe exhaustion with makeup.

Setsuna has even become more "expressive," but not in a good way. She just expresses more anger, stress, and she even yelled at me once, though she apologized immediately afterward and left the house, staying out for a few hours after that.

Besides, from my room, I can hear strange noises at night. I also hear her footsteps wandering around her room, making it clear she isn’t sleeping, along with the fact that sometimes everything falls into a strange silence for several hours. Those moments are when Setsuna just leaves the house and comes back hours later.

And during the day, she goes to school with me but keeps her distance. It’s obvious she’s ignoring me and that something bad is happening, but she says nothing and I don’t question it either, maintaining this stupid, unpleasantly complex equilibrium.

And honestly, our relationship is going to fall apart if this continues. With her trying to keep me away and me just accepting it, it’s obvious this isn’t going to work. That’s why I’m determined to change it.

I just need time to gather the courage to have a serious talk with her about what’s going on. It’s not fair for her to keep me totally in the dark about what she’s feeling and why she’s so blatantly avoiding me.

What kind of relationship is this? Where one girlfriend avoids the other? That’s not how it works. I was afraid of pushing for answers and hurting her or ruining something in our relationship.

But that was only while everything was normal. Something isn’t normal now, and I’m not just going to believe it’s the fault of those so-called nightmares. She never explains what they’re about and always blames them.

"Ayane, you seem anxious and nervous." A classmate’s question pulls me from my thoughts. I’m so distracted thinking about Setsuna that I didn’t even notice the classmate approaching, and I realize I dropped my sandwich on the floor and I’m holding my breath, which must look strange to others.

"Ah..." I look at Setsuna sitting far away, eating the sandwich I made this morning for breakfast. She won’t even stay near me during mealtime.

"I’m just a little tired, but it’s no big deal. Thanks for your concern," I tell the classmate while staring at Setsuna in the distance. I pick up the sandwich from the floor and stand up to throw it away.

"Alright..." The classmate just gives a nod and ends up walking away without further questions, while I can barely even pay attention to the interaction.

Setsuna still has her usual beauty, but if before she was an unattainable flower atop a mountain, now she seems like a darkened, obscure flower slowly sinking into water.

For some reason, as the days pass, I get bad feelings when I’m near her. I don’t know what it is, but my wings beat erratically when she approaches me and only calm down completely when she’s far away.

’I need to investigate...’ I decide to investigate Setsuna. I’ll follow her tonight and see what she’s been doing in secret. I know it’s wrong, but I need concrete evidence so I can confront her and press for answers.

If I just keep questioning her, Setsuna will probably just pull away even more from me. So I’ll follow her stealthily and try to find out as much as possible about what she’s doing.

And when I find out, I’ll pressure her for answers using what I’ve discovered, even if it’s somewhat wrong to follow her without consent. But I’m doing this for her own good.

I’m really worried about her and her current questionable actions. I fear she’s in trouble and trying to handle everything by herself when she could actually have my help.

’At times like this, I wish I had Septarion here with me...’ For some reason, Septarion hasn’t appeared these last few days, and it’s been quite a while now, which is unusual.

Since Septarion said he would appear much more often because monster activity had decreased significantly, but now the opposite is true and he seems to have just vanished.

Besides, Ophelia gave me a week off and gave Setsuna time off too, so we don’t even have magical girl work, and Ophelia told us not to go to the base because it would be under ’renovation.’

"Haaa..." I let out a sigh as I walk over to Setsuna. I force a gentle smile as she hears the sound of my footsteps and watches me. Her eyes meet mine, but they quickly shift to the ground, unwilling to maintain contact.

"Setsuna, I saw you eating alone, so I came to keep you company!!" I say, pulling out another sandwich I had kept in my clothes. I take it out of its wrapper and sit down beside Setsuna.

"..." Setsuna seems restless. I see her moving her right foot up and down anxiously, as if she wants to leave right now. It really hurts me.

’Why does she want to get away from me so badly? Did I really do something wrong?’ I thought a lot about whether I had done something wrong, but I couldn’t find anything, so seeing her treat me like this just feels awful.

"Ayane... do you want to study at the library with me today?" she asks with a strained smile, confusing me, but I quickly realize she’s finally trying to get close.

"Yes!! We can go! I won’t have anything to do! I also need help with the material," I quickly seize the opportunity, grabbing onto it with all my strength.

"Great... we can study together... afterward we can go home... how about we also have dinner at a diner today?" she says, offering more interactions, which I accept with a smile and a happy nod.

I take a bite of my sandwich, moving a little closer to her until my shoulder touches hers. Instead of pulling away, she also moves a little closer, giving me hope that things will get better. 𝑓𝓇𝘦ℯ𝘸𝘦𝑏𝓃𝑜𝘷ℯ𝑙.𝑐𝑜𝓂

We continue eating in a silence that isn’t exactly good, but isn’t bad either. I don’t know when we’ll be able to get back to the relationship we had before Christmas, but I hope this helps.