Lilia's Tale: Freyja's Endeavor

Chapter 46: Cassandra

I woke up the next morning, oddly sluggish. A quick look out the window told me I had slept longer than usual, so I quickly got up, dressed and went to eat. The common area was already packed, so I hurried up and went to class.

As I expected, a fair few students already arrived, including Sayuri. I went to my seat and greeted her as I sat down. She seemed weirdly uncomfortable, so I had to ask:

"Is anything wrong?"

"Ah, no, no, it's just..."

She kept fidgeting. I was growing increasingly confused but my questioning was cut short by the bell. Did I really sleep that much?

The first class started out uneventful. However, as Tanaka-sensei left after the bell rang, he said one last thing:

"By the way, starting tomorrow we will start learning about potions and runic magic. Take the day to decide which you want to learn first, it will be a class-wide decision."

My first thought was that I would have to get everyone's answers myself. However, the next teacher also told us that Koko-sensei would be doing that after her class. I was relieved, and nothing else happened during class.

As I went to get lunch with Sayuri. She went from fidgety across the morning to...weirdly enthusiastic. I really had no idea what was going on with her. Until we had our lunch and she darted over to a specific table.

Mark, Koko-sensei Tanaka-sensei and Lynn were all together at the table. Sayuri also sat down with them without saying much else. I knew she had good relations with the teachers, but that seemed excessive.

They offered me to sit with them, so I did. And before I could start eating, I finally got my answer.

"Oh, by the way Lilia. Happy birthday," Mark suddenly said gently.

I looked at him in shock as the others also said it gently. Sayuri instead almost screamed it, like she finally let out something she had been holding in for months.

"...Today is my birthday?" I asked once everything had settled, including the attention from everyone else after Sayuri's shout.

"Yeah. The twenty-fourth of March, isn't it?"

"Uh, yeah I think that's the date today. I didn't know that was my birthday..?"

"I actually asked your father in that regard. He said it was the day he found you and decided to make it your official birthday."

"Oh. Yeah that seems like something he would do," I commented after a short pause.

"Did he never tell you?" Sayuri asked.

"It never came up. I don't really care about it, truth be told."

"Do yokai not have birthdays?"

That was quite a rough question seeing as I am in no way a yokai. However, since I had to come up with something, I said what first came to mind.

"I don't know. I sure didn't have one back when I was a slave."

Everyone suddenly turned gloomy. It wasn't quite what I eas hoping for, but it did turn the topic away from the question.

"Well, at least now you cab have one!" Sayuri said in an attempt at cheering me up.

"I guess that's true. So, what do we do on birthdays?"

We ended up talking together about various festivities they'd want to do during their birthday. The adults mostly recollected what happened during theirs instead, but overall it seemed like everyone had a good time. We ended up staying a long time at the cafeteria, but eventually spread out to go to our own occupations.