Sera raised one eyebrow sharply when she made eye contact with Rosé, who quickly turned her head away. She averted her gaze and instead stared at the ceiling.
She didn’t know how to lie.
“You’re really not lying?”
“No!”
At the strong denial, Sera smiled. When she was Ferre, he also clearly had the body language of, ‘I’m lying!’
‘Should I see who’ll slip up first?’
As Sera smiled purposefully, she clasped her hands together and spoke in an exaggerated tone.
“I’m so glad to hear that Your Highnesses aren’t lying. I was really so very worried that you might have told a lie.”
“Why are you worried?”
Rosé’s eyes were wide open as she asked this.
“If you lied to me, you’ll be in big trouble. But that’s not the case, right? I was so very very worried because I was afraid that you did.”
The nervous Ferre glanced at Sera, then leaned towards Rosé, partly to hide himself.
He was convinced that they had been caught already. He was hesitant about the prank, but he was nonetheless disappointed because they thought that she would be easily beaten.
“Hey, Rosé. We lied. Heli Hyung scolded us already, this is like the same thing…”
Ferre whispered into Rosé’s ear, not knowing that Sera could also hear.
Rosé scowled at Ferre. Likewise, she glanced at Sera with sharp eyes, then replied to Ferre in an equally hushed voice.
“Then what’s the point? Heli Oppa doesn’t even play with us! She said she was worried. What if something happens to us?”
“Keuhmm, ahem…”
Sera’s dry cough stopped the twins from whispering. Two pairs of eyes headed towards Sera.
“If we lied, why would we be in trouble?”
Rosé asked and raised her head bravely. As she moved, her pigtails fluttered as well, while on her side, Ferre was looking up at Sera with frightened eyes.
“If Your Highnesses lied…”
Sera beckoned the two to come closer.
Rosé and Ferre stretched out their necks and leaned forward like baby turtles, coming closer to Sera. Slightly nervous, the two inhaled and held their breath.
“When you lie, your nose will get reeeeaally long.”
She said it in such a serious voice that there was no other choice but to think that she really meant it.
Shocked, Rosé and Ferre shivered and jumped far away from Sera. Then, the two faced each other and reached out one hand to each other’s faces, gingerly touching their noses.
“Hey… Rosé… Did my nose get longer? Huh?”
Ferre said this as he fumbled with Rosé’s nose.
“Umm, I think it’s gotten longer.”
Rosé was also fiddling with Ferre’s nose. Believing that his nose really had gone longer, his confused green eyes were instantly full of worries.
“It’s a bit longer!”
“What should we do?”
The twins whispered and panicked amongst themselves.
Meanwhile, Sera just watched her two cute charges become restless like that.
‘I don’t think they know that I can hear everything.’
It’s like watching a sitcom from her previous life. Small children who looked like dolls who had cute expressions that changed from one moment to another. They didn’t even realize that they were only being teased.
When the twins became quiet after getting flustered like that, Sera took out the sheets of paper and the teaching aids that she prepared for this class. Last time, she couldn’t properly assess Rosé and Ferre’s levels due to the circumstances, so today, she would be assessing them properly to check how far their education had gone.
“What’s on that paper?”
“Is that a test paper?”
The twins, naturally noticing the ‘test’, looked into each other’s eyes in a different sense this time. They then exchanged determined looks as though they had made up their minds. Soon after, they nodded at each other as well.
Unfortunately, because she was organizing the sheets that she had brought in order and were packed efficiently, Sera didn’t see this interaction…
While she was busy preparing, Ferre and Rosé suddenly came down from their seats and hugged Sera.
“Sera!”
“Oh my! Your Highnesses!”
The papers that she had neatly arranged in order were abruptly scattered on the desk because she had let go of them as she was startled. She tried to organize them in a hurry, but she was already fully immobilized by the twins.
“What’s going on?”
Sera said this as she hugged back Rosé and Ferre, who were clinging onto her now. The twins held one arm each and held Sera tightly, not wanting to let go.
‘Is this a new type of distraction because they don’t want to study?’
“We prepared a gift for you.”
Rosé spoke in a tone that was as clear as water. When Sera looked at the girl whose eyes were green and whose hair was tied in pigtails, it seemed like a bunny was speaking.
In a different sense than when she had talked to His Majesty, her heart dropped. It felt exactly like when she would see a small, cute, pretty animal.
“Right. We have a gift for you.”
Ferre looked up at her with his purple eyes as well. At first, it seemed like they wouldn’t ever let her go, but at that time, they stepped away from Sera.
Rosé and Ferre smiled. With one corner of each of their lips upturned, their smiles looked ominous as though they were announcing the end of the world.
“A gift?”
What kind of prank were they going to pull this time? Sera asked herself, though she tried to ignore the anxiety that might be showing on her face.
The smiling Rosé and Ferre pointed to Sera’s pocket.
“My pocket?”
Sera consciously patted herself down with both hands, then reached into the pocket of her dress. Something touched her right hand inside the pocket.
‘What is this? It’s… moving?’
At that moment, she felt goosebumps rising all over her body. The thing that touched her hand was tickling her. When she looked back at Rosé and Ferre, they gave her the brightest smiles ever while they were holding each other’s hands tightly.
Bright smiles?
No.
Those were the smiles of the devil.
The hairs on the back of her neck stood up. She couldn’t decide whether to bring up the thing on her hand or not. She was so scared to check even though she desperately wanted to get it away from herself right away.
It was a great predicament—should she take her hand out or not?
However, she couldn’t wait any longer because she felt chills down her spine. In the end, Sera decided to pull her hand out from the pocket along with ‘that’.
‘You can do this, Sera Popo. It’ll be worse to keep it in your pocket until 9 o’clock.’
Her heart pounded heavily.
Cold sweat trickled down her back.
Sera closed her eyes. She was out of breath. The moving ‘thing’ was caught in her hand. Then—she quickly pulled it out.
And… she carefully opened her hand.
The ‘thing’ was black and had several legs. It also had wings, and… its long black antennae were moving vigorously.