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Yui Yuigahama looked as if she wanted to say something but held back.
Asakura could probably guess what she was thinking: she likely felt that his words just now sounded like he was excluding Yukino Yukinoshita, but as a novice who had just entered the world of Magic, she was also afraid that involving Yukino rashly might harm her.
"If I hadn't seen it, so be it. But now that I know the truth of the world, how can I bury my head in the sand like an ostrich and pretend not to know?" Yukino Yukinoshita, however, looked at Asakura and said seriously.
"No, you are wrong."
Asakura also looked at her just as seriously, speaking in an undeniable tone.
"I," the girl bit her lip, unconsciously gripping her left wrist with her right hand, her expression desolate, "just don't want to live in a muddle. Even if it's fleeting, I want to find the real thing..."
"Yukino-chan..." Yui Yuigahama looked at Yukino Yukinoshita. Although they hadn't known each other for long, in the girl's impression, Yukino had always been that proud and confident, as if nothing could stump her (except teaching herself how to bake cookies).
With a beautiful appearance, excellent grades, and seemingly good family background, in Yui Yuigahama's eyes, Yukino Yukinoshita was born to be on the side of success.
She just hadn't expected that someone so perfect in her eyes would actually show such a fragile expression.
Or perhaps, the other party had always just been an ordinary girl, merely disguising her feminine weakness and fragility with everyday indifference and assertiveness?
This made Yui Yuigahama feel a pang of heartache.
Just as she couldn't help but want to plead for Yukino Yukinoshita, Asakura spoke first.
"Ostriches often lower their heads, but most of the time, they are just picking up small stones on the ground to aid digestion. The so-called ostrich mentality of burying one's head in the sand to await death is just a rumor."
"'Wrong' refers to that? No, was the focus of Yukino-chan's words just now such irrelevant trivia?!"
Yui Yuigahama couldn't help but loudly retort, "Who cares about that!"
"It's precisely because of your unclear academic attitude that the Oviraptor carried the name of injustice for seventy years," Asakura said righteously.
"That kind of thing should be blamed on archaeologists!"
Yui Yuigahama first said loudly, then as if remembering something, she immediately fell silent and cautiously glanced at her pocket.
After showering, the golem little Snake had also crawled into the pocket of her newly changed clothes. At this time, the girl probably hadn't figured out how to get along with this little Snake, so she was afraid of waking it up.
After confirming that the little Snake in her pocket was still, the girl breathed a sigh of relief and said in a low voice, "And that's not what we should be talking about right now, is it?"
Upon hearing this, Asakura turned his head to look at Yukino Yukinoshita.
It was clear that the Service Club president was extremely nervous at this moment; she hadn't even noticed that she had pinched her own wrist purple. She just tried hard to feign composure while looking at Asakura.
Like a criminal standing on the execution platform, awaiting the final verdict.
"No matter what I say, it's useless," Asakura sighed helplessly. "So sometimes, people have to see it with their own eyes and experience it firsthand to coexist peacefully with the ordinary and despair."
Honestly, if Asakura had a Magic like Obliviate or a pen that could make people lose their memory with a flash of light, he would definitely use it on Yukino Yukinoshita without hesitation.
Before he met Gokou Ruri and found the correct way to open the system reward, he had already dealt with Yukino Yukinoshita, so he naturally knew how stubborn and difficult her personality was.
Even if he tried to reason with her, she probably wouldn't accept it—otherwise, Hiratsuka Shizuka wouldn't have such a headache with her—and the girl herself wasn't a bad person, so Asakura naturally couldn't face her with an attitude of 'I'm too lazy to reason with you, you're not worthy of listening'.
So in the end, Asakura could only try to make her retreat in the face of difficulty.
"Generally speaking, no one would want to coexist peacefully with that kind of thing, right…?" Yui Yuigahama muttered softly.
"So you're still far from good enough, girl~" Asakura said with an expression of 'Ma da ma da da ne' (Note).
"Ultimately, even if Magic really exists, and you are a Magician, aren't you essentially still human like us?" Yukino Yukinoshita said, "Then there shouldn't be any talk of qualifications or not qualified…"
Perhaps because her academic performance was always at the top, Yukino Yukinoshita seemed to have an extraordinary confidence in the act of 'learning' itself.
"Are they really the same?" Asakura, however, smiled noncommittally, then wiped his face with his hand, and his originally normal eyes suddenly became eerie.
His eyes turned golden, with a vertical slit-shaped black pupil in the center. His expression was no different from when he was fooling around just now, but coupled with these eyes, it was chilling, giving off an inexplicably creepy feeling at first glance.
"Asakura-kun… are you a lizard person?!" Yui Yuigahama exclaimed in surprise.
"Lizard your head!"
Asakura looked at her speechlessly, his eyes returning to their human form.
The girl, who was being stared at intently, let out a somewhat guilty dry laugh and quietly retreated behind Yukino Yukinoshita.
"Is this also an application of Magic?" Yukino Yukinoshita asked with some surprise.
"To be precise, it's just an application of scraps."
Asakura said indifferently.
Just as Gokou Ruri's Magic [Cat] could make her grow cat ears, Asakura's Magic [Snake] could naturally grant him Snake-like infrared vision.
Although the main reason he was able to find Yukino Yukinoshita and Yui Yuigahama embedded in the pillars so quickly in that space was that the space itself wasn't large and was basically a straight path, the Snake-like thermal imaging vision still greatly helped him determine their life and death.
"Even the form of life can be changed…" Yukino Yukinoshita murmured.
Fortunately, her worldview had already been shattered into pieces over the past two days, so although she was still very surprised this time, she didn't lose her composure too much.
Asakura waved his hand at her, not commenting on the girl's words.
He didn't linger much, only briefly warned Yui Yuigahama about some common sense taboos, and then, like a phantom thief, declared, 'When we meet next time, I'll thoroughly inspect your body, hehehehe,' before quickly leaving the Yuigahama household.
Although Yui Yuigahama knew that Asakura's body check was probably just a joke and empty talk, she still very honestly, with a shy and timid expression, agreed.
Note: The catchphrase of the protagonist Echizen Ryoma in "The Prince of Tennis" when tennis had not yet evolved into a killing technique. The pronunciation is roughly 'ma da ma da da ne', meaning 'you're still far from good enough.'
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