Chapter 3 -Highschool Sweethearts
Syra is the standard jealous teenage villain. She's the most one-dimensional character in the entire book. She hates Lily because she loves Leon, and her entire personality revolves around trying to get Leon's attention. The book Iris was reading at the moment was filled with characters lacking depth, but Syra took it to the next level. The author made no attempt to give insight into her motives or to make her likable. And yet it was this sort of character that Iris would be completing the task for.
In the book, as soon as Syra notices that Leon and Lily are starting to become closer she immediately starts antagonizing Lily. She embarrasses Lily over and over again so that Leon can save the day at the perfect time. She eventually gets in touch with Finn, the second male lead. She sees that he has a grudge with Leon and strikes a deal with him. He would approach Lily and attempt to make her fall in love with him to distract her from Leon. Naturally, this doesn't go as planned as Finn falls in love with Lily's lively and endearing demeanor. He goes behind Syra's back and tells Lily about the plan between him and Syra. Lily quickly forgives him for his transgressions and they form a genuine friendship. Up until this point in the story Lily has been tutoring Leon for a while and has fallen in love with him, but Leon has yet to realize his feelings. Seeing Finn suddenly stick to Lily becomes a catalyst for him to come to terms with his love, he then confesses to her not long after. Apart from one other small plot point with the trip he goes on during the summer, the book ends very quickly after the confession.
It's a short book about innocent school love with very little twists or turns. Syra is a simple backdrop to develop the main lead's emotions.
As Iris finished the book, she flipped to the last page where there was a very short list written in the same handwriting as the dedication.
'Tasks-
Prevent Leon and Lily from getting together
Make Leon fall in love with her
Sabotage Finn'
Like most everything else so far, her instructions were very vague. There was much that was left to her own interpretations, especially the task of 'Sabotage Finn'. There were far too many ways that Iris could sabotage someone.
She considered what to do for a while but then turned her attention to the other tasks. The first task would be very easy. She didn't have to consider for long on how to execute it. However, the second task made her furrow her brows. She adopted a resistant expression as she thought about how to get around it.
Iris was completely oblivious to emotions. It was the one area of life she was completely incapable in. It would be an understatement to say she was inexperienced. It completely opposed her usual direct way of dealing with things. She knew fully well that she wasn't going to fall in love with some random character in a book, and didn't think herself capable of faking it.
She tossed the book on the bed beside her and got more and more annoyed as she thought about it.
When making the deal earlier, there was no mention of punishment if she failed a task. So if she failed to complete one of the objectives could that mysterious being do anything to her?
She would have to find out, because she wasn't about to seduce anyone.
After Iris read through the book a few more times she saw the time on the nearby phone and saw it was late. She would have to start going to school from now on, so it would be better to go to sleep on time. She reached for the phone but quickly realized a problem she hadn't considered before.
She did not have the memories of Syra. She was relying on the story given to her to complete her tasks. And despite being the main villain, there was little to no background information about Syra. Iris was lucky that Syra didn't have a password on her phone, but that didn't help her very much in actually dealing with Syra's life. She had no idea how to interact with Syra's family or friends.
This development would only make Iris's already nonexistent acting even worse.