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“If you rip out my hair, I’ll rip out your tongue.”
“Azu-azu is so silly! Don’t you know you’re failing torture class?”
“I am not failing anything! That would be an insult to my bloodline.” Even though he tended to zone out while everyone was ooh-ing and aah-ing over the calipers. Torture was neither algorithmic nor, actually, physical, so other interests tended to take precedence. But that wasn’t the same thing as failing.
“But I…” Clara spat out a couple of bobby pins and tried to rephrase ‘insult’ , “make fun of you all the time.”
Unfortunate.
Unfortunate, was all that Alice could say to that. It was true, and besides, he was almost used to it, a fact he resented even more than the thing itself: he could be made to submit to banal tortures such as hair-pulling and being made to look like an idiot. If he was honest, he made himself look like an idiot from time to time, but he did not voluntarily roll around in mud and paint and glitter glue the way Valac did.
“I’m aaalmost done,” she said, yanking on a braid. Alice winced. He might have said something, if not for the door. Sometimes they spent time in royal one, and sometimes their defunct magiapp batra room, if Schnell wasn’t hanging around like a irritating stench, or sometimes, if he had too much time on his hands, he’d end up at Clara’s house.
Her little siblings liked him. Small children could be like devicats: if you ignored them, they suddenly wanted attention from you specifically. And being impolite to Valac’s family would be a bit much—or if one wanted to rephrase, another insult.
The door creaked open, sunshine yellow and blinding through the sudden aperture. Their friend flopped down on the floor like the halo was an accident. “Hey guys.”
“Irumachi!” / “Iruma-sama!”
Alice was immensely cheered, but the feeling was nearly lost in embarrassment as Iruma sat back up and stared at him with an intense expression. His hair had to be half-done. It couldn’t be the paint or the glitter glue; Iruma was used to picking googly eyes off of Valac’s clothes by now.
Valac was already grabbing his arm and chattering at him (asking why he took so long, probably), but Iruma took a moment to respond to her. “Azu-kun…”
His heart was suddenly in his throat. How could someone switch from a closed-off expression to an open face so easily? “Yes, Iruma-sama?”
“Your hair looks nice like that.”
There were definitely pom poms, but alright.