Magical Girl with Demonic Time Magic-Chapter 97: Conversations

It’s already the next day and after a not-so-great night, I called Setsuna to go out together, but the plans weren’t good, so in the end we decided that she would come to my house to talk.

And she arrived very quickly, now we’re here in my living room while I serve her a cup of hot chocolate since the weather has started to get cold.

’I called her to talk about my breakup, but...is she okay?’ Setsuna has dark circles and marks around her eyes as if she had been crying all night, which is quite absurd because I’ve never really seen her cry.

"Setsuna, are you okay?" I ask as she drinks the hot chocolate and ponders the answer.

"I’m great...just a little tired, I had a terrible night," she says, not wanting to discuss the matter further.

"..." This leaves me uncertain. Should I really talk about my problems when she already has her own? Wouldn’t that be insensitive on my part?

"Ayane, you don’t need to hold back, I’m fine, really, I just didn’t sleep well," she tells an obvious lie. We’re magical girls, a single bad night of sleep wouldn’t do this to her.

"I’ll tell you if you tell me your problem first," I say seriously. She seems to think for a moment.

"It’s just...that thing, you know? That I told you I lost the person I cared about the most once, I just felt that bad feeling and couldn’t sleep at night," she says uncomfortably.

"...I’m sorry to bring up the subject," I was insensitive. I should have thought about it and asked more carefully instead of making it sound like I was ordering her to tell me.

"Don’t worry about it. So, why did you want to talk?" She asks, as if she’s prepared for a bombshell.

"I...broke up with Itsuki..." When I say this, she is completely surprised.

"Broke up...you broke up with your boyfriend?" She asks as if it were something unreal.

"Yes...He wasn’t the kind of guy I expected, I didn’t love him, and in the end I found out he was just a jerk who only wanted my body, he even forced me to kiss him, it was really horrible."

"...He forced you to kiss him?" She asks in a cold voice, cold enough to give me a shiver down my spine.

"Y-Yes, I pushed him away and slapped him for that, we had a rather unpleasant argument because of it, he saw our relationship as something...almost commercial, it’s really unpleasant."

"...I see...so that’s what happened," she murmurs softly.

"...?"

"Ayane, do you want to play a board game? We can talk during the game," she asks a little more enthusiastically and with a gentle smile for me.

"Sure, we can continue the conversation during the game," I say to her, getting up to get the board game I have here at home.

"Ayane, did you happen to see Hexael?" She asks me as I remember seeing Hexael.

"Yes, he was at the park last night while I was breaking up the relationship. You must be worried about him, right? If you want, I can help you look for him."

"No need, just knowing you saw him yesterday is enough..." She says as I return with a box and open it, placing the game on the table. I’m not sad about the breakup, it was just a small fiasco in life.

We quickly start playing a board game that’s based on rolling dice, drawing a card, and moving forward. In the end, with the cards obtained, we’ll have a battle.

It’s basically a mix of a board game that ends up as a turn-based game. While we play, I tell her how everything happened at the park. 𝕗𝐫𝚎𝗲𝘄𝐞𝕓𝐧𝕠𝘃𝕖𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝚖

Of course, I never tell her about the fact that I’m liking her, I just say the reason for breaking up the relationship is the lack of love, which is a truth, just not the whole reason.

Setsuna just listens to everything, and she seems much lighter than when she arrived here. I think in the end she just needed to spend some time with a friend.

So after finishing the conversation, we decide to move on to something more fun. I tell her about all the cool things about Mizuhane while we play the game.

The moment is fun until we reach the card battle, I manage to overcome Setsuna at first, getting a card to win.

"..." But as her final move, she plays a sequence of 27 cards that if I hadn’t seen the game from the beginning, I could swear was cheating.

"...Setsuna, how did you manage to get an exact sequence of 27?" I ask curiously, playing my last card and losing.

"I just saved the best ones while you were spending yours."

"Wow, I wouldn’t have the mind to be able to think about which ones could fit together correctly in that way to be able to play them all," I say, getting up to get more hot chocolate.

"Setsuna, would you like another cup?" I ask.

"Yes, I’d appreciate it," she says in a gentle tone. She seems much better than at the beginning, and that’s what matters.

...

...

...

"So, that’s it?" Hayato, the president’s son, says after hearing what I told him.

"That’s it..." I say with a cloth in my mouth and a slightly distorted voice, that slap from Ayane broke my tooth.

"Pfff hahaha, man, you shouldn’t have said that kind of thing to a girl, you should have been smarter, took too long to escalate the relationship," Hayato says, laughing at me.

"But who would have thought she’d break your tooth with a slap, that girl is strong," he has a mocking tone while sipping a bottle of wine.

"She’s friends with that genius girl, right? I’m really interested in that girl, my dad is too, did you know the school genius sent an impressive essay? Something at an advanced academic level," he says, citing Setsuna, Ayane’s best friend.

"And what about it?" I say, sitting in the chair and grabbing the chilled wine.

"What about it is that my dad thinks that girl is suitable for marriage," he says as if it’s nothing while I’m incredulous.

"But she’s like an orphan with nothing special besides the intelligence," I say, not understanding how the subject went from my rejection to that girl who looks at me as if she’s going to stab my heart.

"Tsk, you’re so foolish sometimes, it’s precisely because she’s an orphan that she’s perfect, she has no contacts, no family, no one who can claim anything from her."

"In a marriage, it means the husband is the one who holds any real ties to her, and above all, she’s a genius who’s beautiful, those qualities make her a wife who couldn’t go too far on her own."

"In politics, that’s great, you know how bad it is to find a wife without the damn family members wanting to come like vultures?"

"Of course, Setsuna hasn’t shown all the exact qualities for a marriage yet, but she’s pretty close to something that would satisfy my dad...you understand where I’m going with this?"

"...Yes."

"Great, I’ll help you with your problem with your girl, but I also need help to get to the genius girl naturally, I’ve heard she’s beautiful and I’ve already seen some photos."

"She’s undoubtedly a cutie, and it wouldn’t be bad at all to pair up with her," Hayato says with a greedy little smile.

"Unfortunately, her aversion to contact and her emotional dampening make her someone difficult, I bet I’m the type of person she doesn’t want around, so it would be good to have a good bargaining chip, if you know what I mean," he puts the wine on the table while picking up his phone.

"Look at this," he shows me his phone. Since we’ve been friends for a long time, he has that freedom with me.

"Oh...her," I lean back in the chair, drinking a glass of wine and feeling the pain in my tooth, making me shudder.

"So Setsuna knows Ophelia?"

"Apparently so, and Ophelia is really bizarre. Who would have thought that a bitch who only isolates herself and lives in a wheelchair could be so scary? Not even my dad would pick a fight with someone like her, and yet somehow she and Setsuna have gotten close."

"Isn’t that interesting? It seems Ophelia has decided to move again after years of being still, of course, move in politics, since with those legs she’ll never get out of that chair hahaha," he mocks her as if it’s the most natural thing in the world.

"That seems incredible, I guess. Well, if you want my help, it’s obvious I’ll help, but then how will we do to get Ayane? I need to get revenge for what she did."

"Hmm...I’m not one to get involved in other people’s love problems, but since it’s for a friend, I’ll give you a ’special team’ to follow your orders."

"What you do with them is no longer my problem, just be smart. Remember that the genius girl is mine, and if she gets involved in your love games, you’re screwed."

He says seriously.

"S-Sure, Hayato, don’t worry, I don’t want your genius girl..." I say, drinking just one more sip and giving up on the rest.

"Your tastes are so boring, you should stop going after girls that way, that dummy there is the seventh? Or the eighth?" He questions with little interest.

"Something like that...anyway, thanks for letting me hang out here, my dad is furious about the unnecessary money I spent trying to impress a girl."

"Seems complicated," he only says without interest.

’Complicated?’ He wouldn’t understand it when his father does everything he wants. At least as his friend, I receive this kind of help that I can’t normally get.