Chapter 89: ~Chapter 30~ Part 1

"Bye," my dear assistant spoke as she waved with a rare sense of enthusiasm in her voice.

"I'm not leaving yet!" my other girlfriend retorted while still clinging to my arm, an act which normally made walking difficult, yet in this case, it actually helped with my balance, so I didn't really mind. Anyways, Elly gave my other girlfriend a classic type-C glare and stated, "We are still not at our mansion!"

"Bye-bye. Take care," Judy continued her (fairly) passionate waving, undaunted by her words.

"I told you, I'm not letting go until we are at the gates!"

"Buh-bye."

"Leooo! Judy is bullying me," my clingier girlfriend apparently gave up on the idea of a direct confrontation, and instead she pleaded with me by employing the tried and tested puppy-eyes strategy. I would be lying if I said it had no effect on me, but I didn't let it show on my face. I mean, it's not like she was cute or anything.

"Stop it, you two," I chided them at first, and then tried to raise my arm to poke them in the forehead (my usual last resort when either of them was getting out of hand as of late), but since one of my hands was occupied by the princess, while the other held several fairly heavy paper bags, I wisely decided against the idea and instead I chose to divert their attention by telling them, "You are weirding out poor Snowy with your act."

"Are we?" my assistant questioned back, but before I could repeat myself, she sent what I presumed to be an inquisitive glance at the girl in question.

"U... Um... I'm fine, not weirded out at all, I think…" Snowy told us with an awkward expression while peeking out from behind the gigantic white bear plushy she was holding in her hands. More on that later.

"See?" Judy turned back to me with a triumphant... well, I wanted to say 'smirk', but it was more of a twitch of the corners of her lips, really.

"Snowy is just too polite to tell you," I countered in mild exasperation.

"If you say so," my dearest assistant gave a non-committal answer, but a moment later she faced Elly again and told her, in a voice that was even more monotonous than usual, "Oh look. We arrived. What a shame."

The girl holding my arm sent her another, obviously ineffective glare, but ultimately she let out a disappointed sound as we came to a halt in front of the familiar gates of her family mansion. As we did so, she finally let go of me... only to grab my arm again a moment later, and then she began rubbing her cheek on my upper arm.

"What exactly are you doing right now?" I asked incredulously while trying to keep my balance.

"I'm stockpiling some leonium for the rest of the day."

"… Okay, do I even want to know just what the heck this 'leonium' is?" I inquired with my incredulity level raised by a notch.

"You wouldn't get it, Chief," Judy told me while gingerly tugging at the blonde dragon girl's coat. "It's an inside joke."

"Since when do you two have inside jokes?" came my next question, which incidentally also signaled the maxing out of my incredulity-o-meter.

"Don't sweat the small details," my assistant gave me a non-answer as she finally got Elly to let me go. Well, okay, technically it was she who let go of me on her own, completely independently of Judy's usual limp-wristed efforts, but she still seemed satisfied with the results.

"Oh fine," my draconic girlfriend grumbled before she unceremoniously pushed the large paper bag into the hands of my unprepared other girlfriend, and then she faced me with upturned, expectant eyes.

"Goodbye kiss?" she asked in a voice that was both shy and a little coquettish at the same time. I have no idea how she managed, but it wasn't as if common sense had a really firm grip on her in the first place, so I just filed it under 'Yup, just as you would expect from our princess' and then tossed it into one of the dusty corners of my brain.

In any case, the moment she said that, I immediately leaned down and put a small peck on her lips, my decisiveness apparently surprising her quite a bit. It couldn't be helped though, as knowing my luck, if I hesitated even for a moment, it was practically guaranteed that a certain annoying butler would have shown up to 'accidentally' witness me getting really intimate with her young lady/charge/possible great-great-granddaughter, and then proceed to complicate my life even further.

After a second of shock, Elly finally let out a girlish giggle and tried to hug me again, only for Judy to drag her back with slightly more ardor, and not a moment too soon, as my knack to predict (and avoid) romcom situations was once again validated by the aforementioned butler showing up out of nowhere and opening the gates with one of those tiny, one-button remotes. That kind of made me almost smile for a moment. I mean, a dragon opening a gate with a remote controller. How silly is that?

But back to Elly: when she noticed him, the princess let out a disappointed grumble and finally stopped trying to glomp me. I was glad she had at least that much common sense, though I had a sneaking suspicion it wasn't because she was aware that our relationship should be kept low-profile for a while longer, but because she was shy in front of good old Sebastian. Speaking of whom, in the meantime the butler walked up to us with his hands behind his back and his posture ramrod straight.

"Welcome back milady, miss Sennoma, and…" Sebastian made a face like he just bit into a lemon when it was my turn to be greeted, and then he casually ignored me and focused on the white-haired girl behind me. "What a surprise. I thought young miss Inanna was missing."

"Yep, she was. Past tense. She's with me now," I told the annoying bastard with a cheerful smile hiding my ire. "By the way, I'm happy to see you too, old man."

"The sentiment is not at all mutual," he answered with a small twitch in the corner of his eye. "What exactly are you doing here?"

"I just brought the princess home, as a gentleman should. Do you have any problem with it?"

"Not with that, but with you," Sebastian stated, and I had to give it to him, he didn't beat around the bush. "Your very presence around the Dracis mansion offends my sensibilities."

"Really?" I answered with a toothy grin that probably didn't look like a glower. Probably. "I don't know why, but that just makes me want to stay around more. Maybe I should move closer? Are there any vacant lots around here?"

"If there were, expect them to be burned to the ground before you could even think about moving there."

"Aw, that's not good. I didn't know there was an arsonist on the loose. Maybe I should move even closer. Like, move in with you. For safety."

The butler theatrically shivered at my words and said, with a face that seemed so bitter it could only be produced on purpose, "Your jokes are getting worse over time."

"I'm not joking," I told the old lizard with a toothy grin. "Hey, Elly? What would you say if I tried to move in with you?"

"H-Huh?" The princess only gave me a classic deer-in-the-headlights look for a while, but then her cheeks flushed in a familiar shade of crimson that I just realized I was missing a little, then she stammered, "Y-You can't! I have to ask my parents first!"

"Milady, please don't encourage his juvenile behavior," Sebastian mumbled while massaging his temple, somehow completely missing how weirdly she was acting. Though again, this was pretty much how she acted all the time just a couple of weeks ago, so maybe he was already used to it?

Either way, I let out a small chuckle and told her, "Nah, maybe later. We should get going before it gets dark. See you tomorrow, Elly!"

"Um, yeah! Bye!" she returned my goodbyes with a slightly timid wave.

Meanwhile, the old lizard shook his head and, to my surprise, directly addressed my other girlfriend.

"Miss Sennoma, please keep him on a short leash."

"Working on it," my assistant answered with a nod, making my eyes slowly narrow into suspicious slits, but she didn't seem to notice (or care), so I quit it and instead gave another wave at the tragically lonely looking dragon-girl staring after us from the other side of the gates. Honestly, while Elly was getting a little too clingy lately, now that she wasn't hanging on my arm, I was kinda missing her warmth. Not much, just a little. A tiny bit. At any rate, once we were a fair bit away from the mansion, I finally addressed the proverbial elephant in the room.

"Hey, Dormouse?" I called out to my dearest assistant, and she gave me a questioning look in return. "I was just wondering; since when are you on such good terms with the old butler?"

"Good terms? I believe we are simply familiar due to him observing me whenever I browsed the Dracis library." She momentarily paused, then she gave me a suspiciously innocently look and asked, "Why do you ask? Could it be that you are jealous?"

"What? No!" I denied.

"Oh?" Judy's expression became honest to goodness crestfallen for a moment as she muttered, "That's a shame."

"… You want me to be jealous?" I asked suspiciously, but my girlfriend openly nodded in return. "Why?"

"My vast research on relationships tells me jealousy is one of the signs of a passionate relationship."

"… Okay, first off, get better sources, as that is just silly. Secondly, I'd like to let you know that I would rather jump off a bridge than even consider being jealous of that old coot."

Judy gave me a weird look, and it seemed like she wanted to say something, but in the end she just clicked her tongue and muttered a quiet 'spoilsport' under her breath, at which I promptly shook my head, rolled my eyes, and extended my free hand towards her.

My dear assistant looked at me funny for a moment and then she asked, "Are you asking me to take Eleanor's place?"

"What? No," I grumbled while gesturing with my hand again. "I want you to give me the bags you are carrying."

"Oh," she said in a soft and overly disappointed tone, followed by a melodramatic sigh. "For a moment I thought my subtle insinuations finally made you realize our relationship is lacking intimacy. How silly of me. In the future, I will strive to get rid of such naïve thoughts."

"… You call that subtle?" I asked with raised brows, but my girlfriend kept sighing so hard it sounded like she had some kind of respiratory problem, so I let out a groan of my own and relented. "Fine, I get it! Do you really want to link arms that much?"

"A little," she answered shamelessly, earning yet another roll of the eye, at which she huffed and then added. "Chief, skinship is really important in a relationship. It's how you build up familiarity towards the more intimate acts between a couple, such as—"

"Fine, I get it!" I finally admitted defeat. "Once we get home, you have my permission to snuggle or whatever, just stop talking about this in front of Snowy! Are you happy now?"

"Yay," she… well, not exactly 'exclaimed', as she was still deadpan as usual, but I took it as such, after which she finally gave me the bags and so I continued on our merry way again, except four bags heavier.

Said bags, by the way, all contained clothes. After our not-at-all frantic exit from the school grounds (which earned me a particularly disapproving look from Armband Guy on the way out), we decided that since we were already outside, we should take care of a few problems.

First and foremost, following Snowy's lead, we returned to the high-class hotel where she and her brother were staying during their excursion from the Abyss. Now, while getting into the already vacated hotel room required some convincing, a bit of bribery, and a metric crapload of refuge in audacity, we actually managed to gain entry after a talk with the manager's manager. While all of the 'incriminating evidence' of Crowey's presence had been scrubbed, they thankfully didn't bother to bring back all of Snowy's clothes with them to the Abyss when they left. Unfortunately, while we could gather a few changes' worth, including her school uniform, most of them were of the skimpy variety she was wearing the first time we met. Needless to say, I was not going to let her run around in those during the winter, so after we finished packing what we could, our next stop was at the local shopping street, where I proceeded to buy my new housemate several new outfits, even though she was fighting against it tooth and nail.

Oh, right, speaking of housemates: since according to the others I have totally screwed up Snowy's chances of getting proper asylum at the Magi headquarters, and since I was already living alone, I was unanimously delegated by the gang to take care of Snowy for the time being, which naturally included providing shelter as well. Truth be told, that was my plan from the beginning, but getting the responsibility dumped on me like that was still a little frustrating.

In the end, I may have even overdone it a little, as I not only bought her clothes, but an electric toothbrush, a set of combs and hairbrushes, new school supplies, several pairs of footwear, multiple warm jackets, and other assorted winter wear, and a giant polar bear plushy, the last of which was specifically recommended by Josh of all people. Naturally, I had to carry most of these by myself, explaining the number of large paper bags in my hands.

The impromptu shopping spree ended just a little after five in the afternoon, and while it wasn't especially late yet, the others in general, and Josh in particular, complained that they'd been mentally drained by the day's events, so we decided to head home. This meant that I got grouped in with my girlfriends and Snowy, while Josh, Ammy, and Angie went the other way while still discussing the finer point points of the supernatural masquerade using analogies from the oft-referenced show about a teenage werewolf hunter, the irony of which wasn't lost on me at all.

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Anyways, after we escorted the princess home, we headed straight to my house and we arrived without any interruptions on the way. Once we were inside, I finally put down the bags, hung my usual black coat on the hangers by the entrance, and rolled my stinging shoulders. Thankfully I had the good sense to leave the thermostat turned up, so the temperature in the living room was quite balmy. Speaking of which, by the time I entered there, Judy had disappeared somewhere (the toilet, I presumed) while Snowy was awkwardly standing by the sofa and she was alternating between looking at me with an expression that said she wanted to say something and then burying her head into the back of her plushy. It was a little weird, even by her standards, but I decided not to ask her just yet and instead let her collect her wits while I absent-mindedly sorted the bags into two piles of roughly equal weight.

Unfortunately, she didn't manage to do so under a minute, and since the silence was getting a little uncomfortable, I decided to lightly clear my throat to get her attention. Snowy winced, but instead of taking the opportunity to voice whatever was gnawing at her, she just hid behind her plushy again as if it somehow made her invisible. It was around this time I was slowly losing my patience, so I grabbed the bags again and told her, "I'll bring these to your room, and then we can—"

"I... I will get a job!" Snowy suddenly declared, throwing me off the loop for a moment.

"That was a bit of a non sequitur," I told her with a frown as I tried to figure out what she actually tried to say.

"I mean..." she stammered for a moment, the finally explained, "I will get a job and pay you back. For all of this. Rent too."

"Ooooh, so that's what you meant!" I reacted with just a hint of bemusement as I moved closer to her. "Don't worry about it. I'm in no need of money, and as for the rent, I have this whole house all to myself anyway, so one more person staying here won't even be an inconvenience. At least this way those empty rooms will finally have some use."

"But I..."

"Come on Snowy, no need to be reserved," I told her with an ever so slightly amused smile, then I gestured for her to follow after me. "Let's go up. You still need to unpack all of these, don't you?"

I didn't give her the chance to answer, as I immediately headed up the stairs, and while at first she only gave me a conflicted look, by the time I was halfway up, she quickly caught up with me, and she was standing by my side when I opened the door to the guest room next to mine.

The insides were pretty plain if I wanted to be honest. Kind of spartan, even. It was also naturally squeaky clean, no doubt due to the tireless efforts of the loyal invisible ninja maids. In terms of dimensions, it was exactly the same as my room, though it looked bigger at first glance because it only had a normal size bed, a small desk, a single wardrobe, and a commode. As for the color palette, the walls were pure white while the furniture were all a shade of dark brown that was just barely on this side of black.

In short, it wasn't a room that screamed 'girly' at first glance, but that was something that could be fixed with time. Maybe I should get her some new wallpaper? Oh, and some slightly less bland bed sheets. Plus one of those cat-shaped wall clocks with the swinging tail. I always found them amusing, but it would've looked weird in my room. It should fit right in here once we've done some remodeling.

"This is going to be your room," I told Snowy after I put down the bags. "Let's unpack your stuff."

"Okay..." she replied a tad uncertainly. First she put down her plushy onto the bed, then she looked around like it was a completely new environment, even though she was sleeping here the previous night. In fact, she was staring at every nook and cranny so intently it kind of disturbed me.

"So, what are you waiting for?" I asked her once my patience ran out, again, but she only shook her head.

"Just a moment. I'm… trying to commit the room to memory."

I'm not going to lie; if someone invented a machine that turned skepticism into electricity, my eyes would've been able to power half the damn island at this point.

"You are committing what to memory again?" I asked, just to make sure I heard it right.

"The room," Snowy answered while still scrutinizing the place as if she was a detective in one of those crime scene investigation shows. "I'm trying to make sure I would remember where all the furniture and items were."

"... Okay, I bite," I told her after it became blindingly obvious that she was so engrossed that my piercing gaze didn't even register for her. "Would you please tell me why are you memorizing the layout of the room?"

"Um..." She hesitated for a short time, then for some mysterious and slightly foreboding reason she appeared to be steeling her nerves before she answered, "It's so that when I leave, I can make sure I would leave it in the same condition as it is now."

I gave her a long, hard look to try and figure out if she was serious, but the way she was clenching her fists and looking at me with earnest eyes gave me little hope that she was joking. At last, I allowed my brows to ever so slowly furrow into the mother of all disapproving frowns, which seemed to finally take her sincere, if misguided, fervor down a notch.

"Snowy," I raised my voice, making her shudder, but I didn't really care at this moment. "You are being really obnoxious right now." She only hung her head at my scolding, so I disapprovingly shook mine and continued, with added emphasis: "You didn't even unpack your things yet, and you are already planning on how you should make the room look when you leave? Are you serious?"

"But... I told you I don't want to impose on you, so once I find a job I will rent a room and—"

"Snowy!" I interrupted her sternly, but I quickly toned it back when I added, "Please look at me when I'm talking to you."

For a couple of seconds she didn't react to my request, but then she took I sneak peek at me, and when she realized I wasn't glaring at her or anything, she seemed to become a little more at ease and she finally looked me in the eye.

"Good," I told her before I raised my right hand and then immediately placed it onto the crown of her head, eliciting a surprised yelp and a confused look from her. "I'm going to tell this one more time, so please listen closely. Can you do that?" I waited for her to nod, and I ruffled her hair a little in endorsement. "Great. So, let me stress this once and for all: you are not imposing on anyone. From this moment onwards, this is your room. I'm not renting it to you, I'm not letting you stay. I'm giving it to you. Everything in it is yours; you can do with them whatever you want. You can stay as long as you want. I won't ask for rent, I won't throw you out, and while you can leave if you want, I won't hear anything more about finding any kind of job. You are going to go to school like us, and you are going to have a fun and memorable school life with the rest of us whether you like it or not. Are we clear on that?"

I tried to make my voice a little more playful by the end, since Snowy was looking at me like she just found a white raven or an honest politician. Contrary to my best efforts, she just kept intently staring at me with those large, innocent, and slightly disquieting eyes of hers, so as my last desperate move, I rustled her hair again. That finally got a reaction out of her, as she blinked at me with what I presumed to be disbelief.

"I can… stay here as long as I want," she said instead of asking, earning her another head pat.

"Yup, that's what I just said," I answered with a toothy smile.

"And you take care of me?" This time it was a proper question, and after a moment of thinking, I actually nodded my head.

"Sure."

"But… why?" she finally asked the pivotal question, and I could only awkwardly scratch the base of my neck with my free hand.

"Do you want me to be perfectly honest?" I asked back, and she immediately nodded her head, so I told her, "It's because I feel responsible for your current situation."

"You do?" she asked, her voice practically dripping with incredulity.

"Yeah," I mumbled a little sheepishly. "I mean, think about it. I knew you were doing something fishy back at the school, and I knew Crowey was up to no good, but I never pursued either of those obvious issues. If I did, I might've gotten ahead of him, and then the kidnapping wouldn't have happened, and then you wouldn't have thrown an icicle at me, and then you wouldn't be in trouble with the Magi."

"That makes no sense!" Snowy suddenly and vehemently objected against my assertions with tears in the corners of her eyes. "None of that was your fault! You didn't do anything bad!"

"Not directly, maybe, but I am still guilty of inaction," I answered her with a soft voice as I continued to gently rub her head. "So, this time I decided to make sure that a certain awkward girl with a habit of acting like some kind of cheesy seductress wouldn't do something stupid out of desperation that I could easily prevent just by providing her shelter, sustenance, and maybe just a bit of security. Hence, we are here."

I flashed another optimistic smile at her as I waited for her next words, but those never came. Instead I noticed she was getting a runny nose, but before I could offer her a tissue, I was suddenly and unexpectedly tackled by her, her arms clamping around my ribcage like a giant vice and pushing all the air out of my lungs.

"Whoa, easy there, Snowy. I—"

"So that's where you were," my assistant said as she entered the room with the worst timing ever while carrying a tray with several mugs on it. "I brought some hot cocoa and..." Her words trailed off as she beheld Snowy clinging to me, then she added, in a dangerously flat voice, "Am I intruding?"

I promptly rolled my eyes at her and gestured for her to put down the tray and help me with calming the sniffling girl hugging me so hard I had trouble breathing. Just where did she even hide all that strength in that tiny frame of hers anyway?

Nevertheless, after a few short minutes of coaxing, during which at one point Snowy clamped down on my flabbergasted assistant for a change (which served her right, if you ask me), we finally ended up all sitting on the side of the bed, with the Abyssal girl in the middle, and each of us holding our own mugs.

Speaking of which, I still had my trusty 'I <3 Coffee' mug and Judy had her usual 'I <3 My Boss' one, which left Snowy with a generic white one from the kitchen cupboard. It bothered me a little, so I made a mental note to get her a matching one. Maybe for her birthday?

Actually, that reminded me of something, and I decided to ask it before something inexplicably wacky derailed our conversation once again.

"Say, Snowy?" I addressed the girl adorably blowing on her hot cocoa.

"Yes?" she responded after a quick sniffle.

"As I recall, Ammy's grandpa said you have no ID right now. As in, not just that you don't have papers, but that you don't exist in any registers. Is that true?"

She gave me a questioning look, probably wondering where the question came from, but after a short while she nodded in the affirmative.

"We really need to fix that if you want to stay over," I told her before taking a sip from the mug in my hand to collect my thoughts, "Or rather, considering I kinda already took responsibility for it in front of Lord Grandpa, 'I' have to fix that."

"You reap what you sow," Judy spoke like she just said something really profound, but then she cocked her head to the side and added, "Also, did you just call the local arch-mage 'Lord Grandpa'?"

"I sure did," I answered her with an irreverent smirk, but then I shifted my attention back to the other girl. "I was wondering where you got your papers when you and your brother came out of the Abyss in the first place. Did you go to a government office?"

"Um..." Snowy hesitated for a moment, though instead of unwilling, she seemed to be rather unsure. "I don't know," she finally admitted and averted her eyes. "After we arrived, we went to the hotel right away, and then brother left on the next morning. When he came back, he just handed me the cards. I know he talked with someone, but I don't think he was a government official."

"If that's how quickly he got them, I can pretty much guarantee he didn't go through the legal channels. Maybe he contacted some kind of document forger?" I ventured a guess, but she only hung her head even more in response.

"I don't know," she repeated in an apologetic voice. "I really don't know. Brother didn't tell me anything that wasn't strictly necessary to accomplish the tasks he gave me. I don't even know who he—" At this point she abruptly paused with an expression that said she just received some kind of revelation. "Wait, I have an idea! Uncle Brang was with him, so he should..." she began, but then her sudden enthusiasm just as quickly wilted as she finished with a crestfallen, "Oh, right. He went back too. Sorry, I didn't think it through."

"Nah, don't sweat it," I told her with a reassuring pat on the back.

"Right," Judy readily agreed with me while she patted her head in turn. "Contrary to how silly he usually acts, Leo's actually really resourceful. He'll figure something out."

"Yep. Listen to Judy, and don't worry about a thing. I only asked in case you knew a shortcut or something, but I will do something about your situation no matter what."

"I'm sorry for troubling you again," she muttered, prompting me to rub her back even harder.

"Come on, Snowy! How many times do I have to tell you to stop apologizing for every tiny little thing?"

"Sorry," she said reflexively, but then she raised a hand to her mouth and looked at me apologetically, so I let out a light chuckle in response.

"We have a long way to go, huh?" I directed a question at my girlfriend, who lightly shrugged her shoulders and began to rustle the supremely embarrassed Abyssal girl's hair with renewed vigor. I let out another chuckle and then took another sip from my mug while thinking that this kind of peaceful atmosphere wasn't half bad at all.

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