Calista made a face that revealed how helpless she felt at that moment.
"Ask me anything but this, because this secret isn't mine to tell. This secret belongs to her alone and she should be the one to tell you. The next time you see her, go ask her yourself. That poor child has gone through a lot. It might help her if she actually had someone who could understand her."
Zavier could see how worried Calista was about her student so he didn't persist in getting that answer.
"I understand. I will ask her myself when we get back."
Calista nodded in approval at his understanding.
Before the conversation could continue any further, Dahila rushed towards him and pulled him away from the crowd towards the back of their tent.
Neither Valerie nor Calista inquired into the situation since they were both teachers and it wasn't very becoming of a teacher to prod into the personal matters of their students.
They looked at each other in tacit agreement and acted as if they hadn't seen the two going somewhere privately nor the usually chirpy Alissa who was smouldering right beside them with jealousy apparent on her face.
"Do you want to know why she acted that way?"
"Who are you talking about?"
Zavier was confused as to who she had been referring to. All of them were girls and he didn't know who she was talking about.
Dahila grew irritated and all icy in an instant.
"Who do you think? Weren't you asking about her from Calista just now?"
Realization dawned on him and he understood why Dahila was flaring. She had pulled him over to answer his questions that he had asked from Calista earlier.
"Oh…yes yes…sorry…I mean sorry that I didn't get it earlier. So, do you know the reason for behavior that day?"
"Yes."
Zavier could tell that Dahila was back to her miserly behavior towards words.
"Can you tell me then?"
"Hmm."
Zavier waited with his ears at the ready while standing on his toes in anticipation of the secret that even Calista wasn't privy to tell.
He was wondering how Dahila had gotten her hands on that information but he decided not to irritate her before getting the answers that he was looking for.
"Have you ever heard of Yamata no Orochi?"
Zavier prodded the dusty memories left behind by the previous Zavier Adam and found the answer to the question.
"Yes, the mythological serpentine creature in the myths with eight heads and eight tails, right?"
"Yes, then you must also know the person who defeated it in the myths?"
"Susanoo?"
"That's right. Orochi was first defeated by Susanoo but the second time he escaped from the moon, he was defeated by Yamata Takeru and Oto. They used Yasakani no Magatama to suppress Orochi once again."
Zavier was confused as to why Dahila was giving him a history lesson.
"How is this all related to Shiranui?"
"Because Shiranui is the descendant of that Yamata family and their guardian heritage is the very same Yasakani no Magatama."
Zavier didn't say anything but his eyes revealed the shock that he was feeling at that moment. He urged Dahila to continue with his eyes.
"The Yamata family holds the Yasakani no Magatama, one of the three imperial regalia that hold immense power.
Shiranui has an older sister named Yamata Kyouko who was once hailed as the greatest genius that the empire had ever seen. She had a talent that could only be found once in a century.
From a young age she had been groomed as the heir to the Yamata family but her ambitions lay further than anyone in her family could have imagined.
She didn't just want to be the family head; her desires had grown beyond the bounds of what was plausible. She wanted to take the Yasakani no Magatama for her own. Since everyone in the family opposed her idea, she set out to get them out of the way. One day when Shiranui was away from her family, she murdered all who got in her way including her parents, relatives, friends and family.
The Yamata family was eradicated in a single day by the talent that they had cherished.
The sole survivor of the incident was Shiranui. When she came back and heard of the terrible calamity that had befallen her family, instead of crying and wailing, she held her head high and vowed to kill Kyouko with her own hands in order to bring honor back to her family.
She swore that until she beat her sister, she would not lose to anyone ever again. It was a kind of shackle that she had bound herself with, so as to stay strong and not deviate from the path that she had set for herself."
Zavier was dumbstruck. He had never imagined that the girl was bearing such a burden all alone. No wonder she wasn't willing to concede at all.
"I could never have imagined that she was so pitiful."
Dahila nodded at his words. She too had been taken aback once she discovered the truth about her and had wondered if taking her own revenge was the right way forward given the situation.
Zavier looked at her questioningly and asked her: "How do you know all this? Teacher Calista wasn't willing to tell me. Who did you hear it from?"
Dahila had a smug expression on her face, or at least Zavier felt that she looked quite smug at that moment. The reason being that there was hardly ever a change in her expression no matter the kind of situation they were in.
"I have a habit of knowing everything about all my opponents. Since she beat me, I gathered all the information that I could find about her. Oh, I also did the same with you."
Zavier's mouth turned into the shape of a giant O. He looked at her like she was quite interesting.
Before he could say anything, Dahila continued talking.
"I have to say, amongst you two, I am interested in finding out more about you. There is no way someone can improve this fast. I am almost sure that you have been hiding your strength all this time. I still have to commend you on the fact that you haven't left any traces behind at all. I had a hard time trying to look into your life but hardly found anything interesting, just the things that you wanted others to know."
Zavier burst into laughter thinking the girl was a serious piece of work. It was just a school competition, why did she have to get so competitive? She had even scoured through his past.
"Hoh…so you have done your homework. I must say you are quite meticulous about this."
"Of course, you have to know your enemy more than yourself if you want to win a battle."
Zavier raised his eyebrows before he shrugged his shoulders in helplessness. He didn't want to be involved in such a rivalry since he knew that his enemies were far more powerful than this but relented in the end in order to bring some semblance of normality back to his life. He deserved to live the way normal people did. Wasn't that why he had come to this world filled with magic; to experience it all?
"Yeah, it might just be more fun this way."
Zavier almost didn't say the sentence that was about to be spat out from his tongue but lowered the volume so that only he could understand what he had said.
"Huh…what did you just say?"
As expected, Dahila asked him about it.
"Nothing…I said nothing at all."
Zavier was busy smiling mysteriously while Dahila was trying to coax the answer out of him when Alissa came out from behind them. To her it looked as if the two were playfully flirting with each other. The jealousy that she had suppressed with much difficulty reared its head once again inside her.
Not only Zavier but Dahila too noticed the tsunami building up inside her. She was afraid that it would blow them both off the face of the earth based on a misunderstanding.
Only after seeing Alissa like that made Dahila realize how misleading her earlier action of pulling Zavier away from there had been. Not only had she conveyed a message to the others that there was something between the two, she had also managed to upset Alissa over it at the same time.
Dahila felt embarrassed but refused to admit it and chose to remain expressionless as she faced the fuming girl.
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