Chapter 189: Sit

Giselle froze.

Elias was right.

One pass meant one seat. It did not technically mean only one person could enter. If they wanted to, two people could share the same spot.

The thought had barely formed before Giselle realized she was seriously considering whether it could work. She had not even rejected it on instinct.

Then common sense caught up.

Putting aside the practical problem of how two people were supposed to share a single auditorium seat, sitting that close in public would be enough to start rumors. A man and a woman pressed together in front of half the school would draw eyes no matter who they were. With Giselle, it would be worse. She was already the kind of person people stared at even when she did nothing.

Elias seemed to know exactly what she was thinking.

Her lips parted. Before she could speak, he looked up at her and said softly, "We’re Besties, aren’t we?"

The refusal caught in her throat.

Giselle stayed silent for a long time. At last, she frowned and gave a small nod.

"Yes."

The moment she agreed, Elias wrapped himself around her arm again right in front of Liora, his touch intimate enough to make the answer feel like a display.

Liora only smiled.

The boy glanced back at her, and his eyes carried a little flash of triumph, almost as if he were telling her: See? That was easy.

Then he leaned into Giselle and walked into the auditorium with her, leaving Liora standing at the entrance alone with the heat gathering under her ribs.

She let out a slow breath.

There was a strange relief in it.

She had finally seen him.

Only after Elias disappeared from her side did Liora begin to understand how much space he had taken up in her world. Time had stretched while he was gone. A day remained twenty-four hours, of course, but the hours had dragged until they felt longer than they should have been.

Only then did Liora realize that Elias’s existence had already changed the way she saw everything.

[Liora Voss’s favorability has increased. Current value: 85%.]

Elias, meanwhile, was calm.

It was a tired old trick, but tired old tricks survived for a reason. He had used the same method on plenty of stubborn women before. Let another woman take him away, vanish for a while, leave no messages, give them ten days or half a month with nothing but imagination.

The ones with hard mouths usually stopped being hard-mouthed after that.

He and Giselle entered the auditorium and immediately found themselves swallowed by people.

The place was packed. Every section seemed full, rows and rows of students pressed beneath dimmed lights, heads packed together until the auditorium looked like a dark, breathing mass. Elias had never felt the scale of Westbridge University so clearly before. Day to day, campus spread people out. Here, every body seemed to have been gathered into one room.

Giselle looked at him. "Where?"

Elias snapped back to the problem in front of him and started searching for their seat.

He scanned row after row until the numbers blurred. Nothing. His eyes were about to go crossed.

A faint embarrassment crawled up his spine.

"Baby," he called inwardly.

[System Theta: Host, over there.]

Elias exhaled in relief.

Good thing he had a system. If his plan died because he could not find a seat, that would be too pathetic even for a trashy plot.

"Thanks, baby."

[System Theta: You’re welcome...]

System Theta paused.

It had gotten used to him calling it baby.

That could not be good.

Had the host already started working on it too? It did not want to be captured by him, then abused emotionally, then abandoned in a tragic mission file. Absolutely not.

If Elias had heard those thoughts, he would have smiled and corrected it kindly.

Relax. Taking you down wouldn’t count as strategy. That would be a side effect.

"There," Elias said.

Giselle followed the direction of his finger and saw the empty seat. Somehow, no one had taken it.

They walked toward it together.

Several students looked over as they passed. The shock came first, then the whispering. A few heads turned toward friends, mouths lowering close to ears.

"Is that Giselle Frost?"

"Who’s the guy with her?"

"I’ve never seen him before. Is he her boyfriend?"

Elias dismissed them all in his heart.

Boyfriend? How ignorant.

Besties. Did nobody understand Besties?

A campus full of straight-minded fools.

On his face, none of that showed. He lowered his head, loosened his hold on Giselle’s arm, and shifted to holding the edge of her sleeve with three fingers. He followed half a step behind her, quiet and obedient, his face flushing as if the attention had embarrassed him badly.

They reached the seat.

Elias was still thinking about how to make Giselle sit first so he could sit on her lap.

Before he could choose the right angle, Giselle turned, caught his shoulders, and pushed him down into the chair.

Elias looked up at her, stunned.

Giselle stared down at him and said, "You sit."

Then she stood beside him like a pine tree rooted into stone.

Elias’s eyes widened.

Everyone else was seated. Giselle was the only one standing, and with her silver hair catching the auditorium lights like moonlight in the dark, she became impossible to ignore. Almost instantly, attention swept toward them from every direction.

Even the girl sitting beside Elias could not handle the weight of all those sideways glances. She lowered her head and tried to make herself invisible.

Elias was surprisingly composed.

Being stared at by a roomful of students was nothing. On one old assignment, when he became consort to an empress, entire realms had gathered to witness it. The weight of those countless gazes alone would have crushed an ordinary soul.

Compared with that, this was a children’s recital.

Then, in the very next breath, Elias’s eyes filled with tears.

He looked so anxious he seemed ready to cry on the spot. "Giselle, please sit down. We agreed, didn’t we?"

He reached out and tugged at the hem of her top.

Giselle did not move.

Elias stared at her.

Oh?

Was little innocent Giselle getting bold now?

Fine. He was not in the business of spoiling disobedient students.

Time to cry.

Tears spilled from his eyes almost immediately. His voice trembled as he pleaded, "Giselle, please. I’m begging you."

His helplessness appeared again in that instant, fragile and exposed.

Giselle pressed her lips together.

For some reason, anger rose in her chest. She could not tell whether she was angry at his weakness or at the fact that Serena still had enough hold on him to make him act this way.

In the end, she sat.

Elias did not sit on her lap.

The two of them split one seat between them, each taking half. The arrangement looked awkward, but technically, it fit.

Unfortunately, the person beside Elias was a girl. As Giselle settled in, Elias pretended to be squeezed toward the side and let himself brush against the girl by accident.

"Um..." The girl’s face went red at once. A faint fragrance reached her, and she did not need anyone to explain where it came from.

Before Elias could say anything, Giselle noticed.

Her eyes turned so cold they were almost frightening.

Elias gave a soft gasp as Giselle wrapped an arm around him and lifted him bodily into her lap.

He instinctively threw his arms around her neck. Looking down at her from that position, his face flushed so beautifully that even under the auditorium’s dark lighting, he seemed touched by color.

"Giselle," he whispered, "maybe we should sit like before. This is... strange."

Giselle’s answer was immediate.

"No. Stay like this."

Elias smiled inwardly.

Perfect. Plan complete.

He finally got what he wanted and settled on Giselle’s lap. As he did, he made a private comparison. A young woman’s thighs were different from Yvonne’s. They lacked that mature fullness, but they were softer in a cleaner, lighter way, like sitting on foam floating over water.

Giselle looked unbearably serious.

Elias huffed in his heart, then started shifting in her lap. He wriggled just enough to make his protest believable and lowered his voice.

"Giselle, let me down. This is too embarrassing."

Giselle’s arms tightened around his slim waist.

"Sit still," she said, her voice low. "Don’t move around."

There was restraint in her tone.

Elias heard it clearly.