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There wasn’t a person who wasn’t aware of Asta’s enchanted quill. Designed with a self-writing spell, it will write whatever the user is actively listening to. Such a magical tool was undoubtedly the object of envy for almost all students attending NRC.
Still, whenever someone asked to borrow it, Asta would simply smile and say, “It’s not for the weak of mind.” People of weak constitution, with a mind so easily led astray, would not be able to use her quill at all. It only writes what you’re thinking about, after all, and Asta wasn’t so weak-minded to waste her quill in such a way.
At least, that’s what she’d thought of herself. In a new world with evolving possibilities, even she could falter.
“Yuu, can I borrow your notes?”
“No dice, you’re better off asking Asta. I fell asleep again…”
With a laugh, Ace shuffled closer to the petite girl, playfully nudging her shoulder with his before realizing she seemed completely out of it. It wasn’t the first time but it certainly wasn’t something so common that he didn’t feel a bit … off right off the bat.
“Heeey, class is over. Stop spacing out~ I need to borrow your notes~”
Asta came back to the steady trickle of footsteps trailing out of the classroom, and Ace in the corner of her vision. Her pen, that had been silently etching its ink into her pages, came to an abrupt stop as she raised her head up to properly face her friend.
“You good? You’ve never really been a space case before.”
“Sorry, I guess I was thinking too hard,” Asta’s quill floated into Ace’s awaiting hand, and the redhead kept watching her with an ever growing grin.
“Asta~ I asked for your notes, not your pen~”
The girl blinked, before scrambling to pass her notebook to a snickering Ace. Deuce, who’d been watching the situation unravel from start to finish, finally raised a hand to her shoulder, smiling sheepishly as he hands her the actual notebook she’d been taking her notes in. “It’s not like you to be so out of it, prefect. Is something on your mind?”
Asta’s mouth hung open, reply at the ready as she reached for her notebook, but Ace snatched out of her hands at a lightning speed, turning away with an expectant grin.
And his grin only widened as she completely delivered on his expectations.
“Woo~ I knew something was up when our usually super focused prefect was so out of it~” Ace started off, raising his eyebrows as he flipped the pages. Asta tilted her head, wondering if her notes had been messed up in some way. She remembered something being on her mind, but she couldn’t remember for the life of her what it’d been, something so uncanny for a person like her. “I can’t believe our little Asta has a crush~”
That was when it finally clicked in her head, and Ace watched with a bit too much glee as she jumped out of her seat — Squishy tumbling off of her head as she did, shocked from his unusually rude awakening — and tried to reach for her book back, her cheeks already a bright rosy pink. “Wait, Ace—“
“‘Eyes with warmth that rival the sun, the prettiest hair that shines like gold but softer than silk—“ Ace read the lines aloud in a sing-song voice, easily dodging Asta’s dives towards him, desperately trying to recuperate her book. “Man, what is this? It’s so lame~”
“Come on, Ace, give it back,” Deuce sighed from his seat, rising up to help the poor thing. She was practically glowing at this point from the embarrassment; if he didn’t know any better, he was poised to believe she’d explode just like her sodium metals with any more teasing from Ace. “If Asta has a crush, that’s none of our—“
“A crush? On who?”
Asta felt her heart stop in this moment, before it picked right back up, beating even faster than before. Was this death? Was she going to die if she turned around?—
“Rin-chan~ You gotta see this, Asta’s got a crush~”
—No, before she could die, she had to get rid of that notebook no matter what. Rin could not see it, no matter what!!!!! If she did, then—
As if sensing her intentions, Squishy broke into a run across the desks towards Ace, before spitting a powerful blast of water that sent the notebook hurtling out of his hands. With a quick flick of her fingers, the book flew out the open window of the classroom, and Asta finally felt relieved. If Rin caught even a peek of what was inside, she’d be completely exposed for sure.
“WHY DID YOU THROW YOUR NOTES OUT THE WINDOW!!! I WAS GONNA COPY!!!!!” Ace practically screamed in panic, running over to the window but deflating as soon as he saw her book floating face down in the fountain outside. “You reap what you sow,” Yuu offered with a snide smile, and Professor Trein sighed for the tenth time in the past ten minutes, not that anyone had noticed he’d been waiting for them to finally leave. Idiots, the lot of them, he’d decided.
“THOSE WERE HER NOTES?” Rin wanted to faint right then and there. If she’d known that she was going to scare Asta that bad to the point of batting her book out the window, she’d have just waited outside of the classroom for the group instead.
“Man, I was planning on asking to borrow them so I could copy them too,” Rin huffed disappointedly, before turning to Asta, her hand reaching up to ruffle the younger girl’s hair out of instinct. “But you know~ it’s normal to have crushes, Asta~ it’s not something you need to be so—“
Asta was no longer in the spot she’d been standing just earlier. To be more exact, she was no longer in the classroom, leaving Rin with her words in her mouth and the rest of their friends staring incredulously. “Was Shortie always that fast?” Ace blinked, before turning to face the commotion he was hearing outside in the courtyard.
And sure enough, there she was, standing in ankle deep water, fishing her book out of the water. One of the campus professors was giving her a stern talking to for just hopping into the fountain like that, but Asta seemed way too in her head to pay attention to him either. The professor continued to rage at the nonchalant way she’d brushed him off without even trying, his arms flailing at miles a minute as he continued to lecture her on Seven knows what.
“Dude, I’ve seriously never seen her this out of it,” Ace loosely comments to Deuce, who had been watching the scene over his shoulder. “I think you went too far with your teasing, Ace. I’ve never seen her like that.”
As the two bantered back and forth, Yuu remained seated and silent, observing as the gears turned in Rin’s head. They wouldn’t betray Asta’s fragile heart by telling the object of her affections anything, but it was only a matter of time before someone as clever as Asterin could put the pieces together. Asta hadn’t been terribly subtle about it at all, after all, and they knew Rin would see right through that soon enough.
“Do you think she’ll find out?” Grim finally lifted his paws from his face, a preemptive effort from Yuu to prevent the feline monster from blurting anything out from start to finish, and Yuu chuckled as they rose from their seat. “That’s not for us to mess with. She’ll find out eventually.”