Positive little sun, magical girl, I am awesome

"Koro, what's that sound?"

In the dead of night, Fred was awakened by a throbbing pain in his ribs in his bedroom. He heard a soft noise outside and groped around in the dark, only to find that half of the bed was empty.

There was no response; only the ticking of the old grandfather clock echoed in the silence.

"Oh, damn it..." Fred groaned in pain, pressing one hand to his ribs. He called out again, this time with obvious impatience.

Finally, light footsteps came from the direction of the kitchen, and the door was gently pushed open. The beautiful wife stood in the shadows, holding an iron in her hand.

"I can't sleep, so I'm ironing your dress," she explained softly, as if afraid of disturbing the tranquility of the night. "You said you'd wear it tomorrow."

Fred frowned. "Just let the washerwomen in town do it."

"But I did it better than them..."

Ironing clothes in the summer is no easy task, and Koro's face was flushed from the steam. She used to do this, and in order to get jobs, she always did it more carefully and meticulously than others.

The air seemed to freeze. Fred looked away, turning his face to the deep night outside the window.

This self-proclaimed gentlemanly husband never hits or scolds his wife, but when he is dissatisfied with her words or actions, he expresses it in this way, making her feel guilty during the long period of neglect and prompting her to reflect on her actions.

Chloe stood in the doorway, the iron still steaming slightly. In the days leading up to the banquet, Fred had repeatedly emphasized that they should never bring up the past when they did manual labor again.

In the past, she would have apologized immediately and tried to break the suffocating silence, but tonight, perhaps it was the late night that made her tired, or perhaps it was the many things that had happened during the day that made her forget her husband's instructions. Koro just stood there quietly.

She was distracted.

There was no response. Feeling bored, Fred softened his tone and said, "I work hard every day to earn money so that I can give you a better life, a decent life. And bring me some of those potions left behind by the magicians."

Chloe snapped out of her daze: "But Miss Jaina said that while Feline's potion can relieve pain, it is very addictive."

"...They must have done it on purpose!"

Today, everyone had their own tasks to clean up the mess. Lilith and Catherine went to the Sheriff's Hall, while Jaina and her partners carried Fred back home in a chaotic mess.

However, she clearly remembered that Fred had once shouted on the street that all the potions made by Gladys students were inferior products, and after giving him a hasty treatment, he even made a point of emphasizing that the potion was bought on the street and was not an inferior product produced by the academy.

But he drank it anyway.

"Once we move to Highgarden, we won't have to put up with these magicians anymore." Fred said angrily, twisting open the bottle and drinking it all in one gulp.

“We will have a better life. You’ll understand when you see those beautiful, clean white houses in Highgarden. That’s real life.” Thinking about the future, the man felt his pain lessen considerably, and he talked to his wife about the good things to come.

Perhaps Miss Lilith's assumptions were wrong? Fred was clearly still planning his future with her—Chloe quietly busied herself around her husband, tidying up all the chores before turning off the light and lying down again.

"Of course, we still need to go to that manor. I'll go once I've recovered a bit."

Fred stopped complaining and began to think about his business again in the darkness, unaware that Chloe's back, lying on her side, was gradually stiffening.

"Why?" the woman's voice was soft and gentle. "We've already missed the banquet, why should we go?"

"Because..." Fred's words suddenly became unclear, "We, we were invited with great difficulty, but we broke our promise. This is extremely rude, and we should apologize to the host of the banquet."

"We are just commoners, Chloe, but those present are all prominent figures in Highgarden, including nobles..."

“Lord Hingis is very approachable, I don’t think he’ll mind missing an appointment by accident.” Chloe said, her back to her husband, her eyes wide open, staring into the darkness in the corner.

"Hingis? Not Hingis."

Fred then remembered having afternoon tea with that gentleman while with his wife, but Hingis was just a down-on-his-luck nobleman who called himself an artist and made a living by painting for important people and restoring church murals. That was merely one of his "ladders," through which Fred had met him—

“It’s Earl Spencer. That’s the Earl’s estate. That gentleman is a very good person. The estate also has many hunting dogs for the autumn hunt. Don’t you love animals? You’ll like it there…”

The potion was starting to work, and Fred wanted to continue describing the non-existent illusion to his wife, but his eyelids were already drooping uncontrollably.

"Sleep well, Chloe, sleep well. Prepare well. The banquet won't stop; we'll always have a chance to attend..."

Chloe's tears silently flowed into the pillow.

……

"Shh... He'll never be able to attend the banquet again, what a pity."

The bright moonlight generously embraced the earth. While the common people were already fast asleep, the rich were still enjoying the beautiful midsummer night. The luxurious manor on the outskirts of the city was brightly lit, laughter could be heard from the gardens, and ambiguous breathing could be heard from the shadowy corners.

But the hunting dogs, who should have been sleeping, smelled an unsettling odor as they panted. They whined as they approached the manor's flower-walled maze, where they encountered an unfamiliar guest behind the high walls that blocked their view.

But the newcomer merely raised a hand in a shushing gesture. The animals let out a few low growls, then tucked their tails between their legs and retreated, lying on the ground watching the invading shadow from afar, and—

Their owner, who had already stopped breathing.

“I was worried you wouldn’t dare to make a move… So it was him you wanted to kill.” Aryan dismissed the fierce dogs in the garden, turned around and looked at Lilith’s rather cowardly way of hiding on the wall, and said speechlessly, “I thought it was that Fred.”

At his feet lay a man who looked like a mountain of flesh. If Fred were there, he would recognize him as Earl Spencer, whom he had been so eager to curry favor with.

At this moment, the count had become a gradually stiffening corpse, his incontinent excrement spreading across the ground, and the air filled with the stench of death.

“Fred?” Lilith jumped off the wall after the hounds had run far away. “Why would I kill him? He’s just a greedy clown. He’ll behave for a while after a beating.”

She glanced down at the corpse at her feet, her eyes, visible beneath the mask, held a coldness Aryan had never seen before.

"But the root cause of this filthy trade, which makes those 'Freds' think that selling their wives is a shortcut and that they can get away with it, is these maggots at the top who are not bound by the law."

Aryan remained silent for a long while, then laughed silently. He had initially thought it was just a small game of revenge, but it turned out to be a righteous act carried out in the shadows.

Lord Zephyrion is really stupid. The Mother Goddess is the Mother Goddess. Why would she need to turn back to her original form?

but--

Aryan, hands on hips, exclaimed, "You killed him, so what? But why are you dressed like this, while I have to dress like this?!"

Beneath the flower wall, Lilith was completely wrapped in a black bodysuit, revealing only her pair of bright blue eyes. She was almost invisible as long as she pressed herself against the wall, a standard assassin's attire.

Aryan, in a long, moon-white silk dress, her strong arms concealed by puffy sleeves, appeared from afar—

What a beauty!

"Hehe, just a bit of a wicked sense of humor."