Chapter 56: You Do What You Gotta Do

"Moooorning~!" Lily called out. She woke up before me, as usual, and had just come back from her morning jog.

[Such a diligent heroine!]

Now she was checking to see if I’d woken up... or if I’d escaped into the darkness in the night.

I hadn’t. Instead, I had finalized my plan in my head. And Lily was witnessing it now as she walked into the room.

"You... Oh." She stopped, eyes widening as she took in my attire. "Uhm... You’re..."

"Yes~?"

"You’re gonna fight in that?"

Indeed, I was.

What she was referring to was my crop top, thighhighs, and incredibly short skirt combo.

"It’s within regulation," I said. "I checked the rulebook twice last night. There’s a minimum coverage clause, and I am four inches above it."

"That’s not what I asked."

"You asked if I was fighting in this. Yes."

Lily stood in the doorway with her towel still around her neck. She looked at the crop top, then the skirt, then the thighhighs, then back up to the crop top, and I watched her decide not to comment on any of them.

"Kohaku... S-Serena uses ice! You’ll freeze!"

"I’ll be freezing either way," I waved a hand. "A lil’ bit of padding doesn’t stop a hailstorm."

"But, I... I don’t get it. Why fight in something like that?"

At that, I could only turn and pretend like I was looking for something in my drawers.

[I can’t tell her the real reason.]

Lily doesn’t know, after all.

Serena Frostfall was not fully human. Indeed, she was a half-beastkin, wolf side, sealed by her family because the Frostfalls would rather die than admit a wildfolk affair. She doesn’t know. Everyone in the story doesn’t know. It comes out in a very dramatic scene later.

But the blood is still in there.

And beastkin react to display. I wrote that rule myself, back when I was giving the beastkin a bunch of lore I’d never use. Chest, thighs, tail, a bit of skin at the correct angle.

A wolf, even one who doesn’t know she’s a wolf, would see this package and howl at the moon!

[Cleavage. Thighs. A tasteful amount of ass... That’s my strategy.]

Pathetic? Yes.

But, realistically, I have to do something underhanded like this. I’m Rank C, going up against Rank SSS. No amount of last-minute training, or even luck, is gonna carry me through this ordeal. I either win through questionable methods, or I don’t win at all.

"Kohaku."

"Hm?"

"..." She didn’t say anything, but she didn’t have to.

I walked over and put my hands on her shoulders.

"Relax. I’m not get into any trouble."

She sighed.

Then, Lily crouched in front of me and pulled the left thighhigh up two inches so it matched the right one. She did it while looking away.

"There. If you’re doing this, do it properly."

"Aw, you do get me!"

"No I don’t! I think you look..."

"Yes?"

"You look..." Her face got progressively redder. "Whatever!"

"Hehe, well, in any case, there are four thousand people out there, Lily. Someone has to give them a show."

She didn’t answer. She just went and picked my practice sword up off the bed, then held it out to me with both hands, handle first, the way you hand a sword to someone when you’ve decided to take them seriously.

"Come on, babe. Time to make some wolfgirls swoon."

---

I walked out of the tunnel and took my sweet time crossing the sand toward the competitor benches, because if I was going to commit to this, I was going to commit properly.

[Chin up. Shoulders back. Tail high.]

I heard a whistle from somewhere in the upper rows, and then another one, and then the entire Wildfolk section started stamping their feet. A boy standing by the rail turned his head to keep looking at me while he was still walking, and he hit a support pillar with his entire face.

"Ohhh." I winced and waved at him. "Sorry about that!"

He gave me a thumbs up from the ground.

[Casualty number one, and the match hasn’t even started.]

"Well, well, well."

Marisol came down from the noble seats and fell in beside me, giving me a slow look that started at the thighhighs and worked its way up.

"Morning, partner."

"Marisol."

"So," she said, leaning in close enough that I could smell her perfume. "What’s the play?"

I blinked.

"There’s no play. I woke up, I got dressed, and here I am."

"Kohaku," she leaned in, smirking. "You can drop the act in front of me."

"I’m serious," I replied, shrugging. "This is just... what I chose to wear."

"... Okay, don’t tell me yet. But whatever the plan is, I’d very much like to hear about it before eleven o’clock this morning."

"Why eleven?"

"Because that’s when the books close."

[This girl. This absolute menace of a girl.]

"You’re betting on me?"

"I’m betting on the operation. There’s a difference, and it’s an important one."

"Marisol, gambling is bad for you."

"It can be. Which is why it would help me enormously," she went on, perfectly calm, "if you’d tell me whether that was clever of me or extremely stupid of me."

"Absolutely not. Suffer with the rest of them."

She pouted at me, with the lip and the eyes and everything, and then she walked past me and put her hand on my ass and squeezed on the way by.

"By the way," she said over her shoulder, "love the outfit~"

"HEY!"

She kept walking and didn’t look back, which I think she practices.

[I’m going to have a very serious conversation with that woman one of these days. Probably never, but one of these days.]

The horns went off across the arena, and Prue climbed up onto the announcer’s platform.

"GOOOOOOD MORNING, STELLARIS! We are DOWN to the final four, ladies and gentlemen! Two matches today, TWO, and I am telling you right now that the committee has cooked up something special for your breakfast! FIRST UP! From the Mage Course, the man, the mystery, the coat: CASSIAN HOLLOWAY! And standing across from him, your second-year sensation, RODRIK VELL!"

I glanced over at the far bench. Cassian was sitting with his arms crossed and his eyes on the wall, and he didn’t so much as blink when four thousand people shouted his name.

"AND THEN, FOR YOUR FEATURE BOUT! The strongest first-year in this academy, undefeated, unbothered, and un-BEATABLE, the Ice Queen herself: SERENA FROSTFALL!"

The whole arena screamed for her, and I felt it in my teeth.

"VERSUS! Our little underdog, the fox who put a PRINCE on the floor, KOHAKU SAKANAAAAA!"

They screamed even louder for me, which surprised me until I remembered how gambling works.

I stood up on the bench, waved with both arms, and blew a kiss at the Wildfolk section, and they lost their minds so thoroughly that two of them had to be sat back down by a chaperone.

[Good. Keep the noise up, everyone. The louder you are, the more embarrassing it’ll be for her when she notices where she’s looking.]

Then the air around me got cold, and I turned toward the far tunnel.

She was here.

Serena came out of the far tunnel with her arms folded, and the moment she found me across the sand, I put two fingers to my lips and blew her a kiss.

She stopped walking.

It only lasted a second before she started again, but I saw it. I saw her jaw go tight, and I watched her stare very hard at a point about six feet above my head for the rest of the walk to her bench.

[There it is.] I nodded to myself. [My only advantage here is my knowledge of beastkin biology, since I’m the one who wrote it and everything. So I have to make the absolute most of it.]

I sat back down feeling much better about my chances, which had gone from zero to somewhere near two percent.

"What are you doing?"

"Just saying hi."

Lily dropped onto the bench next to me with two skewers from the food stalls and handed one over without looking at me.

"... Some would call that bullying."

"I’m not bullying her. I’m greeting an opponent. It’s respectful."

"You blew her a kiss."

"That’s how foxes say good morning."

"That is absolutely not how foxes say good morning, Kohaku, I’ve lived with one for two months."

She even pointed at me, as if to make it clear I’m the fox she meant.

The horns went again, and Cassian walked out for the first match with his coat still on. He probably slept in that thing. Rodrik Vell came out from the other side, and Rodrik Vell was a very large second-year with a very large hammer. Some people whispered, perhaps thinking he’d be a match for Cassian. I knew better.

"Who do you think wins?" Lily asked.

"Cassian. In under a minute."

"He’s a first-year."

[Yeah, he’s a first-year edgelord who could easily be a shounen MC. These are all points in his favor.]

The bell rang. Rodrik charged, Cassian raised one hand, and a beam of black light went through the air where Rodrik’s chest had been a half second earlier, which meant Rodrik had thrown himself sideways and was now rolling through the sand.

Lily made a small noise beside me and bit into her skewer.

"Okay," she said. "Under a minute."