("Dear Yifia, I hope the caramel pudding is to your liking. It's a pity you couldn't come in person. If you go somewhere unfamiliar in the future, please be careful. If you need me to accompany you, don't hesitate to ask. And won't you introduce your new friend to me?")
The handwriting on the card was elegant and beautiful. There was even a faint, lingering fragrance to it.
As Yifia read Amelia's words of concern, her heart felt sweet as honey. In the dorm, she didn't need to hide it, and the corners of her lips lifted so high they were practically flying into the sky.
Holding the card in her hand, she flopped onto the bed at once. Then she started flipping over and rolling around, her feet kicking nonstop, with all that surging emotion having nowhere to go.
It felt like it had been so long since she'd heard someone care about her like this.
She was so happy!
After venting through all that rolling, Yifia sat up again. Her smooth black hair had turned messy, and her watery almond eyes blinked and blinked. Looking at the card in her hand, she still couldn't help smiling.
Her overwhelming urge to share made her set her sights on the system.
[System, look! Amelia's worried about me~ The task you gave me is totally easy mode. There's no way it could stump me, Yifia. I can finish it in minutes!]
[Have any of your previous hosts ever been as amazing as me?]
The system looked at its host, whose grin was practically splitting her face, and for a moment, it didn't even know what to say first.
The Villainess Heiress's message wasn't concern at all, okay?!
She was questioning her.
Why had she refused her invitation at Medeni's Divination House and gone with someone else instead?
And that last sentence on the card—the system was even breaking into a cold sweat for Jesina... Getting targeted by the Villainess Heiress because of this idiot host was just too unlucky!
The key point was that its host hadn't noticed any of it at all!
Instead, she thought the Villainess Heiress was caring about her.
All it could say was that idiots couldn't read between the lines, and first impressions really could ruin everything.
She'd helped her when they first met, and afterward she'd been considerate and gentle... so in her host's heart, the Villainess Heiress was an absolutely perfect good person.
Anyone could be a bad person, except the Villainess Heiress!
Especially after suspecting the Villainess Heiress over the butler incident, Yifia had only become more convinced that the Villainess Heiress was exactly as kind inside as she seemed outside.
[Host, you're amazing. So incredible. I admire you sooo much.]
[That flat, soulless reading is way too perfunctory. I don't like it. Do it again!]
Hearing her host's words, the system only wanted to roll its eyes speechlessly. It had just come off the production line when it got thrown into this SSS-rank difficulty world. It hadn't even been given time to properly find a partner, so it randomly bound itself to one and then got kicked over here by the Main God.
And now she was asking whether she was the strongest? There wasn't even anyone to compare her to!
The system couldn't be bothered with Yifia's swelling ego. It directly went offline and vanished. After calling for it several more times and failing every time, Yifia stopped bothering it. She got out of bed and walked over to her desk.
After looking through it for a bit, she pulled out a thick theology textbook and solemnly placed the card inside.
A little keepsake like this deserved to be preserved properly. When she got the chance later, she'd buy a tin box to store it in.
"Eileen, the bracelet you made is so pretty. Teach me too, okay~ As a getting-back-together gift, Ronny will definitely love it!"
"You got back together with Ronny?"
"Yeah! Ronny told me he was forced by Branny before, and he only compromised because he had no choice. Now that Branny's dropped out, he can be with me again."
Just hearing those suffocating words, there was no need to guess. It had to be Fina, that hopeless love-brain.
Yifia shot onto the bed at lightning speed, then pulled out the novel she'd tucked under her pillow. She quickly flipped to the page she'd last read, then put on a serious face and pretended she was fully immersed in the world of the story.
Otherwise, if Fina caught her, she'd start praising her bizarre love story with Ronny all over again. That soul-crushing feeling was basically like Sun Wukong getting hit with the tightening headband spell—pure agony!
Like Eileen, Fina didn't have much reaction to George being expelled.
Her indifferent attitude was solid proof that their friendship was plastic and not worth mentioning.
So when facing Yifia again, Fina acted even more naturally than Eileen did... After all, she no longer needed to borrow money, and she had no other conflict with Yifia.
Besides, Yifia was a very qualified listener, and she was also close with Jesina in class. If Yifia casually mentioned it while chatting with nobles, then her love story with Ronny would make its way into noble ears!
And if it spread through noble circles afterward, Ronny would definitely be thrilled, and she herself would be proud too. Just thinking about it made her excited!
Of course, Fina still knew how to read the room, so she didn't reveal her little scheme in front of Eileen.
Last time, she'd waited until Eileen wasn't around, then grabbed Yifia and enthusiastically told her the entire story of her romantic journey from start to finish.
After hearing it, Yifia had been so shocked her pupils practically quaked. For a moment, she didn't know whether to praise Ronny as a master manipulator or say Fina had already surpassed that one legendary woman who dug wild herbs for eighteen years...
If someone told her Fina would kill for Ronny, Yifia wouldn't even find it strange!
As the voices grew louder and louder, the dorm door was pushed open from outside. Besides Eileen and Fina, there were three unfamiliar faces too... Since Yifia had only just enrolled at the academy, and she often zoned out or slacked off in class, she wasn't familiar with her classmates at all.
Unless they were the type to come up to her on their own, like Lucy and Jesina, she probably wouldn't recognize the rest even if she ran into them on the street.
Yifia put on a show and glanced toward the door. After seeing Eileen and the others, she smiled and greeted them, then lowered her head again and pretended to read her novel seriously. She looked so focused that no one would dare disturb her.
But in reality, she'd already perked up her ears. How could a certified gossip-lover possibly miss out on juicy drama?
The girls who had just come in really didn't disturb Yifia either. They sat down by Eileen's desk and started chatting.
"You have no idea how good Ronny is to me. He actually baked bread for me himself, and he even added sugar. Sugar is expensive, you know. It made my heart bloom. Ronny is the best man in the world, he—"
Fina was the first to speak. Listening in secret, Yifia put on a mask of pain and only wished someone would hurry up and stop her!
"Hey, did you know? A disappearance case has happened in Darva City!"
Maybe someone had heard Yifia's prayer, or maybe everyone else was tired of hearing Fina's love story too. Before Fina could keep going, someone quickly cut in.
And once a strange incident or criminal case came up, it always stirred people's curiosity and made them want to know what happened next.
"A disappearance case?"
"Mhm. Two people have already been missing for three days. But since they're both commoners, the Imperial Police haven't been very efficient. If it were nobles who disappeared, they'd probably have been found already."
"The missing people are all commoners? That's terrifying!"
"And the missing commoners are all young women. From now on, when we leave Pris Academy during breaks, we all need to be extra careful outside."
While Yifia was listening with great interest, the system flipped through the script and discovered that the Darva City disappearance case was actually a plot point. The heroine would get involved in it, and in the end, the male lead would rescue her.
The process would be extremely dangerous!
Luckily, in the original plot, Yifia wasn't involved in this storyline. So the idiot host it had bound itself to probably wouldn't run into any trouble either...
