Chapter 110: ~Chapter 38~ Part 3

"Do you have your school supplies?" I asked my newly minted little sister as we stepped through my front door.

"Yes," Snowy replied and hefted her bag on her shoulder.

"Spare key?"

"Got it," she declared after taking a keyring out of her coat pocket and playfully jangling it in front of me.

"Emergency app?"

She blinked at me, then she hurriedly put away her keys and fished her phone out of another pocket. Less than three seconds later, there was a loud notification blaring from my phone.

Last night, after I took Judy home, I downloaded one of those 'stranger danger' apps onto her phone. With a press of a single virtual button, the application sends an emergency signal to the parent app on my phone with the ID and GPS location of the sender. The latter was useless to me, but it was still an essential safety net I planned to install on everyone's phones.

I turned off the alarm and pocketed my phone with a supremely satisfied grunt, then I locked the front door and we headed towards the first stop of our morning commute. We were actually a little early, but Snowy turned out to be an early riser, and since I promised I would pick Elly up on the way, I figured heading out a little ahead of schedule was the prudent thing to do.

Our first destination wasn't the Dracis estate though, but Judy's place down the street around the corner. Snowy was in high spirits and she had a spring in her steps as she walked beside me. It was probably because of her enthusiasm that we arrived at my assistant's doorstep in record time. Even so, we didn't have to wait for long, as Judy walked through the front door just a few seconds after we arrived, followed by her familiar, absurdly youthful mother.

"Good morning, Dormouse," I greeted her, then I flashed a smile in the other woman's direction and added, "Good morning, Mrs. Sennoma. You look great as usual."

Hearing my comment, my embarrassed girlfriend ineffectually elbowed me in the side, but I only chuckled at her expense. Serves her right for making fun of my dramatic revelations the day before.

In the meantime, Mrs. Sennoma let out a charmingly girlish giggle and told me, "Oh, you flatterer!" while dismissively waving a pasta spoon in my direction. "I've heard you were sick, Leonard. Do you feel better now?"

"Thank you for the concern, ma'am, but as you can see, I'm fit as a fiddle," I answered her coyly while striking one of those silly bodybuilder poses, which earned me another poke in the side and a stream of tinkling laughter from the woman at the front.

She soon stopped though. To be precise, it was when she noticed the white-haired girl quietly standing by my side.

"Oh? Who's the cutie?" she asked while leaning forward with her hands on her knees, which inadvertently emphasized her rather generous bust. I wasn't looking or anything, but Judy still elbowed me in the side for the third time. Speaking of her, I had no idea why my dearest assistant was so conscious of her appearance. If she inherited just half her genes from her mother (which was kind of a given, now that I thought about it), she should turn into quite the looker in a few short years.

Future expectations aside, I was asked a question, so I gently pulled the hapless Abyssal girl to the front and replied, "I believe you haven't met my sister yet. Her name is Neige," I pushed her forward a bit more and added. "Come on Snowy, say hello."

"U... Um..." she stuttered for a moment, and I was afraid that she might accidentally lapse into her vamp persona, but thankfully she quickly collected herself and said, "G-Good morning... uuu... miss?"

"Aaaaw!" Judy's mom cooed with a dopey smile, but before she could say anything else, my assistant pushed her back into the house by her shoulders.

"Stop bothering them, mom. We have to go or we'll be late for school."

"Oh, okay," she agreed with a slightly disappointed bend in her lips, but then she quickly bounced back and graced us with a fittingly motherly smile and said, "Have fun!" while waving at us with her random cooking utensil still in hand.

We returned the gesture (though in our case without any props) and after exchanging a few more pleasantries we were on our way again, with Snowy on my left and Judy on my right.

"Let's pick up the princess next," I posited, earning me a disinterested shrug from Judy. I figured she might be pouting, so I sneakily grabbed hold of her waist, pulled her closer, and whispered, "Guess what? The ninja maids worked overtime last night," right into her ear.

My assistant looked puzzled at first, but then she gave me an extra deadpan look and replied, "Is that really all you wanted to tell me right now?"

"More or less," I answered with a grin as I let her go.

It wasn't a Joke though. While the damaged furniture remained unchanged, all the bloodstains and dirt were cleaned off both the floor and the carpets I initially threw aside. I kind of hoped that the ninja maids were also into furniture renovation, but I suppose it was too much to ask for.

While I explained this to my still peevish girlfriend, plus I made her download the previously mentioned emergency app, we reached the neighborhood of the Dracis mansion, and even from a distance I could see the princess impatiently pacing up and down in front of the gates. More alarmingly, she wasn't alone.

"Son!" Papa Dracis greeted me with his usual, boisterous voice, and I couldn't help but notice his wheelchair-bound wife subtly rolling her eyes at his exclamation. Not only were they there, but Sebastian, Melinda, and even the two weird twin maids were crowding in front of the driveway. I felt a headache coming, but I returned his greetings with slightly less gusto.

"Good morning," I addressed them at once as my eyes swept over the group, then I added, "I'll be honest here: I'm feeling kind of weirded out by this reception. What's going on?"

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The Dracis patriarch let out a hearty chuckle and replied, "Our princess spent the entire morning tense as a piano wire waiting for you, so we decided to look after her to make sure she doesn't snap!"

"Daaad!" Elly protested with a nasal voice, but her father only let out another deep, affectionate chuckle in response.

In the meantime, Melinda rolled the sharp-eyed mother of the household over to my side, and she immediately leveled the question, "Did someone really break into your house?" at me the moment they arrived.

"News travel fast, it seems," I muttered while sending a meaningful glance at the princess, then I replied, "Yes, they did. My living room got turned over, but no one got hurt."

"Was it one of the accursed knights?" came the next question the moment I finished my previous sentence.

"I'm not one hundred percent sure yet, but I personally don't think so. I'm running a background check on her, just to be safe, and once I've got a definite answer, I'll inform you."

"Good man," she... approved, I think? Anyhow, after nodding to herself, she pointedly glanced at Snowy, who was for some reason hiding behind my back, and she curiously asked, "And who might she be? She smells... like the Abyss?"

"She's my sister," I told her with my most harmless smile, and when she raised a critical brow in return, I hastily added, "Freshly adopted."

Lady Emese looked like she really wanted to say something, but she didn't get the chance, as all our attention was drawn to a certain blonde dragon girl stomping her feet and loudly declaring, "Daddy, you... You nincompoop!" with a beet-red face.

After delivering this most serious of insults, Elly turned on her heel with a loud huff, linked her arm with mine, and began to forcefully drag me away.

"Err... Goodbye and have a nice day, I guess?" I mumbled uncertainty while waving with my free hand, which must have looked really comical, as Papa Dracis let out a hearty guffaw that made all his previous laughs pale in comparison. After the initial confusion, Judy and Snowy quickly followed after me, but it wasn't until we were no longer able to see the mansion that the princess finally stopped pulling me, though she didn't actually let go of my arm.

"My dad can be such an idiot," she grumbled in a whisper, making me raise a brow in puzzlement. I admit, I wasn't really paying attention to the two of them after her mother engaged me, but I didn't remember anything coming out of her father's mouth that warranted such a response. I was almost tempted to ask, but my train of thought was quickly derailed by Judy firmly stepping up to me and grabbing hold of my other arm without asking.

More amusingly, since both of my sides were quite literally taken, Snowy was momentarily flustered and unable to decide where to walk, ultimately settling with falling in line next to my assistant. It felt a little weird to walk like this, but it definitely wasn't unpleasant.

We were already in the neighborhood of the school by the time I found Josh and Angie on the road. I would've liked to wave towards them if my hands weren't occupied, but before I could get annoyed about this, Snowy got their attention in my stead by raising her hand high over her head and calling out, "Mooooooorning!" in a chirping voice.

What can I say? Apparently little sisters aren't just cute, they are also really convenient.

Jokes aside, once they noticed us, the childhood friend duo made their way over to us post haste.

"Hi, Lili. Hi, Judy. Hi, Elly," Josh greeted each of the girls in turn, then he finally looked at me and added, in a decidedly wooden voice, "Good morning, Casanova."

I let out a tiny scoff and told my friend, "Sorry pal, but I do have two pretty girls clinging to me. You really need to up your ribbing game if you want to get a rise out of me now."

Josh clicked his tongue with the face of a man who just bit into the world's soured lemon, a picture made even funnier by Angie barely managing to stifle her giggles at his side.

"Morning, guys," the Celestial girl greeted us a last, her eyes still smiling with schadenfreude.

"Hi, Angie. Did you sleep well?"

"So-so," she responded while twisting her hand back and forth, then she and Josh fell in line beside us as we all continued our commute as usual.

"This is weird," Joshua suddenly spoke up with a conflicted expression on his face.

"What? Walking in a line like this?" Angie spoke while looking over our group, but Josh quickly shook his head.

"No, I mean..." he paused, seemingly lost for words as he looked at the steadily approaching school grounds, then he finally spelled out, "In the past week I was almost kidnapped, I learned that I have superpowers, and I trained in how to use those superpowers against a scary goat-man... and now I am walking to school like everything was normal. Isn't that weird?"

"Not really, no," I answered him while simultaneously greeting the always dependable (and frowning) armband guy. "You shouldn't compare your boring, peaceful days against the crazy ones. You should just savor them while they last."

"Savor them?" Josh repeated after me with an odd light in his eyes, as if he just heard something really profound. I wondered what he was thinking about for a second, but in the end I decided it probably wasn't important.

Like that, we began yet another boring, peaceful, blissful school day, and for one, I intended to follow my own advice to the letter.

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