Chapter 238: Even if You Call Me Daddy, I Won't Let You Off
"Bibbi-labu."
"My Sword and Shield?"
Amidst the bustling, colorful campus of Origami University, certain miraculous subcultures always managed to spawn in the most unexpected corners.
"Have you heard? A new transfer student just arrived! And rumor has it, she has an entirely unspeakable relationship with the acting principal!"
"An unspeakable relationship? With the acting principal?! For real? Hurry up and spill the tea! I live for this kind of gossip." The listening student leaned in, her eyes practically sparkling with the thrill of forbidden knowledge.
"Ahem. You absolutely cannot tell anyone else about this! I actually heard it from a friend of a friend!"
"Got it, got it. I know the rules. I pinky-promise not to breathe a word to a single soul."
However, as the unwritten laws of the universe dictate, pinky-promising not to tell anyone else is the exact equivalent of pinky-promising to broadcast it to the entire galaxy. These were merely universal disclaimers. It was exactly like seeing a glaring red FBI warning or a high-risk danger prompt on a digital terminal—everyone acknowledges it, and then immediately forces their way inside anyway. Let me in.
"Then I'll just say it..." The girl sharing the gossip leaned closer, dropping an absolute bombshell. "Actually, Principal Rekka used to have a secret girlfriend. And her name... was Sparkle!"
Despite not having the faintest clue who this 'Sparkle' person was, every student on campus knew exactly who Principal Rekka was.
The female student receiving this explosive news blinked, tapped her chin thoughtfully, and then sighed with a hint of genuine regret. Decisively, she raised a hand to cut the rumor mill short. "I'll pass. I ship Principal Rekka and Secretary March 7th way more."
"Sorry, but if it's not a ship I actively support, I'm simply not listening to the lore."
Haha, well, that's certainly a stance.
"Eh? No! Wait!" The gossiping girl—who was, in fact, Sparkle in disguise—flailed her arms. "Don't you love listening to gossip? You were so invested just a second ago!"
"I do like it, but I have standards. I only consume gossip about the pairings I actually like. This whole trope where a 'heaven-sent' mystery girl drops out of the sky just to break up the established childhood-friend dynamic? It's incredibly boring."
Sparkle's eye twitched. Excuse me?
No, sister, you do not understand true art.
"Fine, fine, let's pivot." Sparkle crossed her arms, refusing to accept defeat. "What if we frame it differently? Do you think there's romantic potential between the acting principal and a mysterious, eccentric noble young lady from another planet?"
"A mysterious noble young lady from another planet?" The student adjusted her glasses, her tone flat. "Doesn't sound very compelling."
Sparkle gritted her teeth and launched a rapid-fire follow-up attack. "Then... what about Principal Rekka and a high-ranking executive from the Interstellar Peace Corporation?"
"The Principal and an IPC executive? Are you joking right now?" The student scoffed, unleashing a merciless verbal assault. "That cliché plotline of an overbearing CEO clashing with an equally overbearing female executive went out of style three Amber Eras ago. It's incredibly old-fashioned. Honestly, your taste is severely lacking."
Hiss...
Sparkle scratched the back of her head, genuinely baffled by this amateur's ironclad standards.
"Then exactly what kind of dynamic do you ship?" Sparkle demanded.
The female student tilted her head, her gaze drifting toward the sky as if visualizing a masterpiece. "If you want to write about a secret crush, you can't just blatantly write about a secret crush. You have to write about her obsessive love for plushies, her quiet adolescent pining, those fleeting, lingering gazes across a crowded hallway. You have to write about a romance blooming for a single, fleeting season, followed by a loneliness that stretches across an entire autumn."
She pressed a hand to her chest, entirely lost in her own narrative. "Write about her sudden, clumsy mistakes when he's near. Show how she becomes increasingly endearing. Focus on the single, worn-out photograph they took together, and the crumpled little notes passed back and forth during lazy afternoon classes. Until finally, with a cruel twist of the pen, you write about one of them standing in silence before the other's gravestone..."
"Stop! Stop right there!" Sparkle waved her hands frantically, cutting off the morbid monologue. "So that's the kind of garbage you ship?!"
Why did everything have to end in a tragedy? Sparkle loved a good joke, and she didn't mind a bit of chaos, but she absolutely despised these suffocating, regret-filled 'Bad End' fantasies.
"Your taste is way too heavy! Isn't it nice to just be alive and have fun? Does someone literally have to die for your story to be satisfying?!" Sparkle complained loudly.
"You simply don't understand." The female student pushed up her glasses, the lenses catching the sunlight with a deep, almost philosophical glare. "Tragedy is the ultimate, eternal romance. Comedy makes people laugh, sure, but they forget the joke the second the laughter fades. Tragedy shatters the heart. And the jagged shards of that broken heart stay lodged in your chest forever, bleeding every single time you remember... People who don't appreciate tragedy have fundamentally poor taste."
Sparkle stared at her.
I don't understand?
Are you seriously lecturing ME right now?
Me? Not understanding tragedy?
Every single Masked Fool in the cosmos had to face their own agonizing, deeply painful past. Fools took that raw, bleeding pain and twisted it into a punchline to share with the universe, transcending their suffering just to mock the inherent cruelty of existence.
"My taste is lacking? My taste is lacking?!" Sparkle pointed a trembling finger at the girl. "You—"
But the words died in her throat. She just stood there, hands planted on her hips, completely utterly speechless.
Forget it. There is absolutely no reason for me to blow my cover and get angry over a delusional student.
After all, this wasn't the first time she had suffered a critical setback. She had simply run into a Shipper with obnoxiously picky tastes.
"Exactly," the student continued, completely oblivious to Sparkle's internal crisis. "Look, the plots you just pitched—the heaven-sent rival, the mysterious heiress, the overbearing IPC executive—they are all incredibly superficial character settings. It's not that the tropes themselves are inherently bad, but they feel entirely forced. So, that 'Sparkle' person you mentioned just sounds like a—"
"Wait, wait, hold on." Sparkle formed a massive 'X' with her arms. "You don't even know who Sparkle is! How can you automatically assume she isn't a perfect match for the principal?"
"Because Secretary March is already right there," the female student stated, as if explaining basic mathematics to a toddler. Then, her eyes lit up. "Oh, by the way! There's actually a brand-new Shipper faction that popped up on the campus forums recently. I'm actually quite fond of their work. But you clearly don't appreciate high art, so I won't bother explaining it."
"What ship?" Sparkle asked, morbidly curious.
"Obviously, it's Rekka x Dan Heng!"
Sparkle froze, her brain momentarily short-circuiting. "Ah... what did you just say?"
"Rekka x Dan Heng. Don't you think the dynamic between a cold, aloof, handsome guard and a gentle, accommodating principal is just..."
The female student kept talking, her words blurring together as Sparkle's mind descended into a chaotic storm of confusion.
"Oh! And there's also the 'Principal's Office Door x Principal' ship! Supposedly, when the office door was kicked off its hinges yesterday, the principal was absolutely devastated. Rumor has it he even screamed out for the door in agony..."
What in the Aeons is this person talking about?
No one can save this planet. It needs to be glassed.
"Rekka, I feel like I am no longer Elated."
Sparkle lay flat on her back on the plush sofa inside the principal's office. She had kicked off her shoes, crossing her hands neatly over her stomach like a corpse prepared for a wake. She stared blankly at the ceiling, looking entirely ready to pass away.
"So, what happened this time?" Rekka didn't even look up from the paperwork on his desk. "Why did you sneak into my office just to act like a deflated balloon?"
"I just don't think I have enough Elation left in me." Sparkle sighed, her voice dripping with dramatic melancholy.
On this particular day, the great Masked Fool had been reduced to a depressed squid.
"I understand," Rekka replied smoothly, finally setting his pen down. "After all, sometimes even when a seasoned professional racks their brains, they are simply no match for the sheer, unhinged inspiration of a talented amateur."
Sparkle felt that truth pierce her straight through the chest.
It was just like her recent disaster. She had accepted Silver Wolf's commission to bring Firefly along for some fun, only for Firefly to get completely intercepted and kidnapped by that damn Memokeeper, Black Swan.
That damn, ridiculously stacked Memokeeper.
And that damn, equally stacked Firefly.
"Huge assets are my mortal enemies!" Sparkle suddenly sat up, slamming a fist into the sofa cushions. "I'm going to expel every single busty woman from this campus! Every last one of them! I'll curse them all to become flat boards!"
She raised her chin, proudly declaring her new, flat-chested supremacy manifesto.
"I don't want flat boards. I absolutely refuse to accept a universe of flat boards. I want the huge assets."
Rekka pushed his chair back and stood up, his tall frame casting a shadow over the desk. He walked slowly toward the sofa, a dangerous, knowing smirk playing on his lips. "So, let me get this straight. You spent your morning running around my campus, trying to spread fake romantic gossip about you and me. Is that right?"
"Oh my~ what does that matter?" Sparkle instantly dropped the depressed act. She leaned back, crossing her legs and flashing him a sickeningly sweet, charming smile. "Don't be mad. I can even let you call me Mommy to make up for it."
Rekka didn't miss a beat. He leaned over her, trapping her against the armrest.
"Even if you call me Daddy right now, I am not letting you off."
His tone was dry, predatory, and entirely unapologetic. Before Sparkle could even formulate a witty comeback, his hands shot out, pinning her in place.
"Wait—hey! Ahhhh! Let go of my face!"
A chaotic flurry of flailing limbs, muffled shrieks, and merciless tickling ensued, echoing loudly through the halls of Origami University.
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