"Alright, Aura, enough idle chatter. If you won't come to me, I'll come to you."
Fíliya suddenly reached out and touched Aura's shoulder. At the unexpected contact, Aura's body visibly trembled, fearful of what strange, new tormenting magic this person had devised.
But after several seconds, Aura noticed nothing particularly unusual, only that her body temperature seemed to have risen slightly.
A fluorescent light glowed from Fíliya's palm, and Aura could clearly feel a faint mana, like fine silk velvet, being injected into her body, yet its effect was remarkably subtle.
Finally, Aura could bear it no longer and spoke up.
"Uh, what are you doing?"
"Hm? You don't feel it, Aura? My magic should have taken effect by now."
Fíliya said with a light chuckle.
This only confused Aura further. There was no abnormal reaction in her body, but her temperature seemed to be... rising for some reason. Her forehead was starting to sweat, and she even found it a little difficult to look the person in front of her in the eye.
"What... What did you do to me?!!"
It was only when the various physical abnormalities became obvious that Aura belatedly realized what was happening and quickly backed away.
"Hiss... Ouch."
Yes, in her haste to create distance, Aura had quite naturally introduced the back of her head to the wall in an intimate encounter.
"Heh heh, is it starting to take effect? Aura, are you feeling nervous? Are you feeling hot? Is your heart racing?"
Fíliya wore a teasing expression as she fired off a series of questions.
"A... a little, maybe. So what on earth did you do?"
Aura had wanted to be stubborn and deny it, but then she considered that if she didn't tell the truth, this person might pull another stunt. So she answered honestly, hoping to get rid of her sooner.
"That's right! This is my newest mind magic, 'Magic to Forcibly Make Others Fall in Love with Me.' Once you're hit by this spell, Aura, you'll never be able to leave my side for the rest of your life. The sound of your heartbeat is the proof."
Miss Fíliya announced this arrogantly, but soon discovered it didn't have the effect she had imagined.
Aura simply looked at her with a calm expression.
"Do you think I'd believe that?"
There was only one reason Aura could be so rational: she could feel that she held no such thing as what humans define as 'love' for the person before her. This human was, at most, a rather unique and talkative individual she had met in her long life.
"Eh? How did you get so smart, Aura...? No fun."
Fíliya let out a small sigh, disappointed that her fantasy of Aura falling off the bed in shock hadn't come to pass.
"What do you mean, I got smart? I was never dumb to begin with."
Aura glared at Fíliya, annoyed.
"Yes, yes, Aura isn't dumb. Not dumb at all."
"Don't look at me like that!"
"Oh? Aura, is that how you speak to your 'Master'?"
"Tch."
In the end, this meaningless conversation concluded with a disdainful click of Miss Aura's tongue.
"So what did you actually do?"
This was the third time Aura had asked. Adhering to the 'three strikes' principle, Aura swore that if this human spouted any more witty nonsense, she would add five teaspoons of salt to her tea later today.
"Hm... It's simple. I used water magic to accelerate the flow of blood in your body, Aura."
"That's impossible!"
Aura immediately retorted.
"If you were a member of the Demon Race, I might believe you could do it. But you're a human... Unlike humans, the magic of the Demon Race doesn't need to follow logic or principles; our magic is as natural as breathing. But for a human to do something like accelerating blood flow, they would have to understand how blood, or rather water, is distributed within the human body. They would have to comprehend the mechanism by which blood functions in a living organism... A human could never do such a thing."
Aura spoke eloquently, her eyes filled with disdain.
"Oh? You've made progress, Aura. It seems my and Solitär's time tutoring you on human knowledge wasn't wasted. That you can say such a thing makes me very pleased, you know?"
...Tch.
Aura pursed her lips in annoyance again. She truly couldn't understand how this person, who was so much weaker than her, always carried herself as if she were the more powerful one.
Are you my teacher or something?
Aura really wanted to voice this retort, but she ultimately kept the words to herself. Because she really wasn't dumb; she knew perfectly well how valuable the things Fíliya had been teaching her were.
"Aura, why question something that has clearly already happened right before your eyes?"
Seeing Aura's skeptical expression, Fíliya gave a helpless smile.
"Doesn't your own body's reaction prove that I really did it? True, for other mages, such a thing might be unimaginable... After all, others don't get the chance to get close to, much less dissect, a member of the Demon Race."
...Wait a minute?
Aura felt as if her brain had taken a heavy blow.
Did this person just say something incredibly terrifying again?
What does she mean, 'the chance to dissect a member of the Demon Race'? Don't we demons turn to ash the moment we die...? Where would she even get a corpse to dissect? Don't tell me...
"That's right. Dissecting them while they're still alive. After all, it's the only way to understand the biological structure of the Demon Race. I'm quite dedicated to it, you know."
...This person really is a devil! We demons at least kill humans before we eat them. Who tortures them while they're alive!
Terrified, Aura tried to shrink back again, but her back was already flat against the wall. There was nowhere left to retreat.
"...You're a human, aren't you? Why would you do something so horrific?"
She asked subconsciously.
"Hm? I am human. As for why... haven't I already explained? But you don't need to worry. We have a fair trade. Generally, I dissect her once, and then we switch, and she dissects me. We get along very well, and it's very fair, you see."
Huh?
Aura's brain short-circuited for a moment. Of course, this was unavoidable, given how Fíliya always managed to say things that defied all common sense.
"Wait a minute?!"
Aura belatedly put it together.
"The demon you said... the one you play at mutual dissection with... it couldn't be..."
"That's right. It's Solitär."
Fíliya answered as if she had anticipated Aura's words.
"Hiss..."
In that instant, Aura felt an indescribable sense of the absurd spreading through her mind.
"Hm? Aura? Hey, can you hear me?"
Seeing Aura's vacant expression, Fíliya immediately waved a hand in front of her eyes.
"...Never mind."
Aura's tone became somewhat dejected.
"I should have known. Is this the attraction between perverts...? You two should just get shackled together. For the love of god, don't go out and inflict yourselves on anyone else."
_____
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