Chapter 204

Chapter 204: Chapter 204

"You’re awake, Miss Mira."

"Mm... Virgo? You... where am I?"

"The little Master’s room. You weren’t feeling well earlier and fell asleep, so the little Master instructed me to take good care of you."

"..."

The memories from before she fainted came flooding back.

Mira, who had still been somewhat groggy, immediately flushed again and patted her cheeks.

"I-I’m fine! You can go back to whatever you were doing. I-I should probably leave too... Oh, right. Where’s Marshall?"

"The little Master is downstairs building a room."

"Huh?"

"He said he wanted to add a new laboratory on the first floor for researching Mr. Simon. It will also make it easier for other people to visit him."

"Simon? Oh... Erza’s old companion..."

Researching Simon?

Wasn’t Marshall supposed to be treating him?

Mira opened her mouth, then thought better of it.

Considering it was Marshall, there really wasn’t much difference between his idea of "treatment" and "research" anyway.

Back when he had tricked her into helping with his Body-Conditioning Magic experiments, she had suffered plenty.

More importantly, Mira still hadn’t figured out how she was supposed to face Marshall.

S-Suddenly proposing marriage like that was completely unfair! She hadn’t been prepared at all.

As for Levy and Juvia...

All right, Mira really was angry, but what made her angry was that those two had actually dared to jump the line.

She wasn’t particularly upset that their relationship with Marshall had become unusually intimate.

There were simply far too many little thieving cats in the guild who liked Marshall.

Mira had mentally prepared herself for that reality long ago, and there was no way she could realistically keep all of them away from him.

Rather than wasting her time scheming to stop every little thief from getting close to Marshall, it made far more sense to figure out how to make him fall completely in love with her instead.

The problem was...

Marshall had fallen in love with her.

He had even promised that one day he would m-marry her.

And yet he clearly had no intention of giving up on the other little thieving cats either!

So... did that mean Mira had won?

Or had she not won at all?

Mira found herself surprisingly troubled by the question.

...

Meanwhile, Marshall had once again returned to his old career in civil engineering.

At the base of Cake Tower, he constructed a new hemispherical laboratory.

Originally, he had planned to build two of them, but after giving it some thought, something felt wrong.

Two hemispheres beside one tall tower made for a combination that was just a little too indecent-looking, so he ultimately settled for building only one.

The main problem was that Marshall had absolutely no idea how to properly care for a patient, and the Gugas weren’t any better. In the end, he hired two nurses from Magnolia Hospital to handle Simon’s daily care.

There were far too many "secrets" inside Cake Tower itself to casually allow outsiders inside, so Marshall simply constructed a separate medical laboratory.

From now on, if anyone needed emergency treatment or long-term care, they could be placed here, and their friends could visit whenever they wanted without entering the main tower.

Marshall worked extremely quickly.

By the time Mira woke up, he had already moved Simon into the newly completed medical laboratory.

Erza, Millianna, and the others were there as well. After all, they were Simon’s actual friends and family.

Marshall, at most, could be considered his attending... researcher.

Neither Porlyusica nor the doctors at Magnolia Hospital had any idea how to treat Simon’s strange "condition." For now, everyone could only trust that Marshall would somehow bring them another miracle.

Millianna was sitting nearby with Ruby cuddled happily in her arms.

Ever since the cat-loving girl joined Fairy Tail, she had become completely obsessed with the guild’s three cats and wanted nothing more than to cuddle one of them to sleep every night.

Unfortunately, Happy was practically inseparable from Natsu, while Carla was far too proud to let anyone other than Wendy casually pick her up.

Ruby, on the other hand, had hit it off with Millianna almost immediately, and the two quickly became extremely close.

Marshall was perfectly happy to have someone volunteering to help raise his cat, so he had more or less dumped Ruby into Millianna’s care.

Because Millianna and the others had spent so many years isolated from normal human society, they were somewhat lacking in everyday common sense.

Fortunately, everyone in Fairy Tail treated them kindly.

They were Erza’s old companions, after all, and the Fairy Queen carried quite a lot of weight in the guild.

"Erza-chan~ I’ll definitely become a full member as soon as possible, and then I’m going to become the president of your fan club, nya!"

Erza rubbed her forehead.

"Why are you calling me that again? Then what are you supposed to call Ruby?"

"Ruby is Ruby-chan, nya!"

"Aye! I’m Ruby-chan, nya!"

"..."

Erza suddenly felt that Fairy Tail had accumulated far too many cats.

And unfortunately, that wasn’t merely her imagination.

She shook her head, then belatedly realized what Millianna had just said.

"My fan club?"

Erza blinked.

"What is that?"

"Eh?! Erza-chan doesn’t know?"

Millianna’s catlike eyes widened.

"I heard some of the girls in the guild say that every S-Class Mage has their own dedicated fan club... Oh, except that really mysterious one... Mys... Mystokrasngan?"

"Mystogan," Erza corrected her.

Then she remembered something else. "Right, I forgot to tell you about this. Mystogan looks exactly like Jellal, so if you ever see him in the future, don’t be too surprised."

"Eh?! Seriously?!"

"Well... I’ve only seen a photograph of him myself. Mystogan is always hiding away in his laboratory doing who-knows-what, so I’ve never actually met him face-to-face either..."

Erza paused, then abruptly dragged the conversation back on track.

"No, wait. That’s not what I was asking. What exactly is this fan-club business? How come I’ve never heard anything about it?"

"Haha! So there are things even doesn’t know!"

Millianna looked delighted.

"I heard the S-Class fan clubs were created to help newcomers integrate into the guild. Apparently getting signatures from ten people can be pretty difficult, but if you have a little group helping each other, it becomes much easier."

"I see. I never paid much attention to that sort of thing before, so I really didn’t know."

Erza nodded thoughtfully, then frowned.

"So why has nobody from my fan club ever invited me?"

"Eh? I don’t know."

Millianna tilted her head.

"I heard Miss Bisca is the president of your fan club. Want me to ask her?"

"...Forget it. It isn’t that important."

Erza started to wave the matter aside, only to freeze halfway through.

"Wait. You said every S-Class Mage has a fan club?"

"Mm-hm!"

"Then what about Marshall?"

Millianna blinked her catlike eyes and glanced toward Marshall on the other side of the room.

"Oh, Marshall? I heard he has four fan clubs! He’s super popular!"

Erza stared.

"Wait. Why does he have four?"

Seeing that Erza genuinely had no idea and was clearly becoming more interested by the second, Millianna enthusiastically told her everything she had managed to learn over the past few days.

When she finished, Erza frowned.

"Millianna..."

"Nya?"

"Do you think everyone dislikes me?"

"Huh?! Of course not! Erza-chan is really popular!"

"Then why has nobody ever invited me to any of these things? Why does it feel like I’m the only person in the entire guild who knows nothing about them?"

"U-Um..."

Millianna scratched her cheek.

"Maybe everyone just assumes Erza-chan wouldn’t be interested in this kind of thing?"

Erza’s expression immediately darkened.

"Hmph. Then they don’t understand me at all."

She made up her mind on the spot.

"No. This won’t do. I’m joining a fan club too!"

"Eh?"

...

Erza went straight to Marshall, who was still working on the laboratory’s interior renovations.

"Marshall, where’s Mira? I need to talk to her about something."

"..."

Cold sweat immediately covered Marshall’s forehead.

His hearing was far too good.

He had heard practically the entire conversation between Millianna and Erza while he was working, and a very bad feeling had already begun creeping over him.

Unfortunately, before he could mentally prepare himself, trouble had walked straight up to his face.

’Erza wants to join one of my fan clubs?’

’And she’s specifically asking for Mira?!’

’Dear God!’

He hadn’t even had time to catch his breath yet.

Had these women secretly coordinated this just to screw with him?

One crisis hadn’t even ended before another came crashing down on top of him.

Marshall still hadn’t figured out what he was supposed to do about Mira, and now Erza wanted to throw herself into the middle of it too?

If Erza ran into Mira right now...

Those two were going to demolish his house, weren’t they?!

Marshall sucked in a cold breath.

’Damn it.’

Was he really going to lie just because he was afraid of an incoming battlefield?

Was he going to try to bluff his way through the problem and hope it disappeared?

No!

That was cowardly thinking!

"Mira is... probably still in my room."

Marshall chose the scorched-earth approach.

If this war was already unavoidable, then he might as well step on every hidden landmine first and get it over with.