Chapter 74

Nikami POV

As I sat on Yasachu's bed, I looked over to where she was, nervously looking for the dress she talked about in the closet.

The air was heavy around us, an awkward silence was filling the room.

I glanced over her bed, the mattress wasn't as soft as mine, the blanket was extremely wrinkly. It wasn't good at all. However… It seemed more comfortable than my expensive yet cold bed.

"U-uhm... " Finally having the strength to speak up, Yasachu paused before taking a deep breath and continued.

"I'm… I'm really sorry for the thing I did… I-I don't know why you… Always avoid me but I really want to know. I'm not telling you to uhm, talk to me all the time but… I still have to know what I did wrong…" Yasachu spoke up, gulping in nervousness as she glanced over at me, then immediately looked back at the dress.

"..." I went silent, not knowing what to say to her. I've always been blunt with the things I say, and I know what I want to say… Yet somehow, nervousness crawled on my back. I can't look her in the eyes.

Me? Nervous? Impossible.

"I-I'm sorry, you probably don't want to talk to me. I really apologize… I hope I didn't stall too much! Ahaa… H-here's the… Dre-" Yasachu took my silence as me ignoring her, tears swelled up in her face as she tried to laugh it all off. Turning towards me.

Hearing her sniffles, my brain went wild.

"I'm sorry! I didn't mean it, I don't want you to cry. Please stop crying. I can't let you cry, you're simply too good for this world-"

And before I knew it, I was hugging her.

"No… What am I doing? Get away from her!"

"No. You didn't do anything wrong."

"What are you saying?!"

"########-####?" I could hear Yasachu's confused voice, yet, I couldn't understand what she said. Everything was going numb, blurry, as if my soul was being taken away from my body.

"Yasachu, don't apologize for things that you didn't do. You truly are too kind."

"No, what are you even talking about??"

"I'm the one who needs to apologize for ignoring you. Understand that it's not you, it's me. I had my reasons, unfortunately, it's classified information."

"Shut up! Shut up, shut up shut up-shutupshutupshutup-"

I felt as if I couldn't control my body, but I could feel everything. From her fluffy hair, my arm holding her close to me, seeing those big yellow bright eyes so close up…

Yet, I couldn't move. My mouth was moving on its own. The only thing I could see clearly was her body, I could even see my hand getting blurrier, the room getting warped.

I felt like I was a statue. Wrapped around in thorns as it connected me to Her.

"########-####... ##'# #####, #'## ####### ###!" I heard her soft cooing voice, smiling up towards me that could melt all my stress away.

This girl… Does she even know what she's doing to me? How dare you smile in such an innocent way while I'm here suffering?

"Melt all my stress away? What are you even talking about? She's the point of your stress! Just get out…! GET OUT OF THERE! MOVE… WHY CAN'T I… MOVE…?"

"Shiromoru-sama… You really are so kind… I'm sorry for acting childish…" Yasachu nervously laughed, leaning on to me as I started to breathe heavily.

I'm… I'm back…?

I started to sweat, even shake, what I just went through was terrifying. I got out of that state, I'm so happy. But… That dread I felt earlier was something else.

I took the opportunity to take the dress out of her hands and book it, Yasachu was surprised of course, by me suddenly running away, but she just thought I was being shy.

I, on the other hand, went inside my room and locked the door, my left hand started to go crazy, my entire arm was frozen as I sat down next to my bed in a fetal position. The dress was next to me, and tears started to fall out of my eyes. I was just sobbing into my knees and when the water touches my skin it immediately freezes.

My left arm was still covered in ice, and my room temperature dropped. It was getting colder and colder.

My chest hurts, my stomach hurts, my head feels tingly and I keep on crying. I continued to shake, starting to pant and breathe heavily, it was getting hard to breathe. Everything was spinning, the only thing I could hear properly was my fast heartbeat.

Feeling bad is an understatement, I felt like I was having a panic attack.

Nothing felt right, what I did earlier didn't feel right, why did I say those things? How couldn't I move? It was like I was just seeing someone's life through their lenses, just only looking in and couldn't control anything.

I hated it.

I hate not having control.

Raijin POV

I slammed the door open, growling as I took in a deep breath.

"IT'S BEEN THIRTY FUCKING MINUTES!! WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU?!?" I yelled out, looking around the room to only see Shukona and Yasachu drinking tea together, Emica serving them.

"Rai? Why are you here? I thought you were out with Nika today." Shukona titled her head, placing the teacup on the table.

"Ahaha! Did she ditch you?" Emica teased me, giggling for a bit.

"Hah?! No she didn't! She didn't go to the front gate! And besides, Nika isn't the type of person to do something like this." I fully walked in, closing the door behind me as I sat down on the chair.

"That's odd… I already gave her the dress like two hours ago. She left in a hurry too, so I assumed she was just excited to go out…" Yasachu tilted her head, confused about this situation.

"We should go find her! Damn her… Makin me wait… Come on with me!" I stood up and took Shukona's hand, dragging her with me.

"Wait a moment-"

"Amatarini-sama!"

"Aaahhh… How thirsty are you for Nika?"

The three went with me, albeit reluctantly. We split up and tried to look for Nikami, I looked at the library, yet she wasn't there. After 10 minutes had passed, we grouped back at the dorm.

"I didn't see her at the library, I asked Kiyu-senpai about it too, and she said she hasn't seen her in the library today…" I reported to the group, a bit confused on why any of them didn't have her.

"I checked the gardens and the courtyards, she wasn't there either." Shukona folded her hands.

"I was with Shukona-sama!" Emica cheered.

"I-I asked a lot of people if anyone had seen her… But no leads. It would be hard for someone like her to sneak around due to her reputation…" Yasachu reported, starting to get nervous.

What the fuck…? No one has seen her?

"What the hell is this?! Where did she go?!" I yelled out, gritting my teeth as I started to stomp on the floor.

"Have you ever thought of looking at her room?" Emica suggested, putting her hand on her chin.

""Ah…"" The three of us were dumbfounded, then Emica bursted out laughing.

"Ahahaha!! Are you serious right now?!" Emica started to point at us, scoffing and laughing.

"It was Rai's fault!" Shukona covered her face with one of her hands in irritation.

"Ahaha… Gakerumi-sama's enthusiasm made me go along with searching for her…" Yasachu laughed nervously, her ahoge wagging sideways.

"Sh-shut up! I just didn't think of that!" I ran towards her room, pouting as I heard them blame me. They were right that I might have overreacted! Nikami could have just reading a book and didn't think time has passed and-

….Huh?

"Why is… The fuck…? The handle is cold…?" I spoke my thoughts and everyone snapped their attention to me.

I felt the icy chill from the door handle, but despite that, I slammed the door open and we saw that her room was just filled with ice, the breeze from it made us all shiver. The side with her bed has the most ice, but on the other side wasn't as much. And the window was also open.

"Ack-" Since I was at the front of the impact, I felt the coldest, just the air from the room felt like winter.

"What happened here?!" Shukona exclaimed, shivering from the cold air.

"Is Shiromoru-sama okay?!" A scream of concern came from Yasachu.

"What happened…?" I looked around, taking off my gloves to heat up my fists and made them go up in flames. I entered the room, my panting made a cold mist come out of my mouth, but I made my flame gleam brighter and hotter, despite the area around me being cold. Some of the ice melted, but when I looked around the room, Nikami was nowhere to be found.

"NIKA?!" I called out to her, but no one replied. She wasn't here. She wasn't in this room. Even though I melted a lot of the ice, she still wasn't here.

When I realized this, the flames on my fists grew hotter to the point of burning some of my sleeves. Furious, I stomped out of the door, looking down. The fire on my sleeves reached up to my shoulders before Shukona put them out with a handkerchief.

"I'm guessing she wasn't there...?" Shukona spoke to me in a gentle voice, trying to calm me down.

"Yeah…" I gritted my teeth, clenching my fists as I made my flames die down. I was trying to act as clear headed as possible, but my mind was racing with the thoughts of her getting hurt.

"W-was Shiromoru-sama… Attacked…?" Yasachu stared over at the scene and covered her mouth in shock.

"No, Fortunately, I don't think she was attacked. Rather, I think she came out on her own accord... " Emica snapped back to her maid self, rather than her teasing and more carefree behavior.

"Hm? And why would you say that?" Shukona turned over at Emica, tilting her head.

"Isn't that clear signs of struggle already?!" I yelled, pointing over at the remaining ice inside the room.

"That is true, but at this scale, wouldn't me and Yasachu have heard? I mean, we were right outside. I saw Yasachu here, and when I asked for Shiromoru-sama, she said she went out 5 minutes earlier. Yasachu, you went out as soon as she left, right?" Emica turned to Yasachu, which she slowly nodded.

"H-huh? Y-yeah? I mean, not immediately but it was just a few seconds before I came out…-" With Yasachu's words finished, Emica followed up on her own.

"And then, 5 minutes later, I was there with her. An hour later, Shu came. Wouldn't it be impossible to not hear something from her room? Or, hypothetically, if the attacker had noise cancelling magic, we would still be able to feel the vibrations coming from her room. Not to mention Shu was with us, and an earth user is sensitive to things like that." Emica then explained, and I went to ask her something.

"And so? What does that prove? It just makes it weirder if you couldn't hear anything! Then, why would you assume that she got out with this mess!" I pointed over at the ice.

"That is a great question, Shu, what does Shiromoru-sama do again when she's stressed? More specifically, what does her magic do?" Emica faced Shukona, and Shukona calmly replied.

"Her left arm usually builds up ice and... " Shukona paused, noticing something. She blinked for a moment, before Emica giggling and then continued.

"That's correct, and in extreme stress, without anyone comforting her, you could say that the ice could build up like this. Slowly and silently, as evident to the ice mostly at the bed area." Emica explained once more, then pointing out of the window.

"And we all know by now that Shiromoru-sama isn't particularly fond of knowing when to reach out to people, so she escaped through the window instead." Emica pointed over at the open window.

We all stared at her in awe, before Shukona clapping for her.

"Bravo, that was excellent observation." Shukona smiled towards her.

"H-how did you get all of that with just one look…?" Yasachu asked Emica, which was returned into a carefree smile by Shukona's applause.

"Weeeeeeell~ Being her maid a big part of it. A lot of brain power is needed to even understand a small part of Nika, and if you have been her maid for years, you might get some of her habits. Doesn't help that she's a nerd who overthinks a lot in her head." Emica went back to her casual self, shrugging.

"But that still doesn't solve where the fuck she is." I grumbled, still being pissed on where the hell that girl went. I kicked the door open with my hands on my pockets and started to run out, wondering where Nikami really went.

Today… Was supposed to be a fun one… Where the hell did you go?