It's Not What It Looks Like. Seriously-

After a brief moment of hesitation, I grabbed onto Raisa's arms once more. She appeared rather jittery like she had been electrocuted. If her hair had all shot upwards, then it would've really made it convincing.

"Bryson? Start it! Come on!"

The side of my face twitched. I couldn't help but feel that Raisa was getting a little too excited about this. Not even after a second when I grabbed her, did she urge me on. Was there really a need for it to go this far?

There was a part of me that felt like I should probably stop here, but after thinking about it, I couldn't really think of a proper reason. But that also might've been my desire to learn how to attune mana taking over me more.

After taking a deep breath, I closed my eyes and attempted to wrestle the mana out of her control once more. As always, Raisa began struggling like she always did. The only difference was that she was already using her feet to push me away right from the beginning.

I tried to keep my eyes closed and just focus on trying to yank her mana, but it was admittedly quite hard to do so. It did take a while, but I was able to forcibly yank out some mana and push it into my own body. The resistance had immediately become several times stronger, as the moment the mana had entered my own body, it was pulled right back out.

However, while it was just a moment, I saw how my body attempted to attune that mana.

After she had wrestled control over her own mana, I worked on trying to yank it away once more, and in that brief moment I felt it in the palm of my hand, I attempted to attune it.

Raisa's struggle had amplified several times over. Just the muscles in her arms tensed enough to make me feel like I was holding onto two steel bars. At this point, I felt it was time to let go but-

"Raisa? What's wrong?"

The door had burst open, revealing Raisa's father. I immediately felt cold sweat form on my back.

"This isn't what it looks like."

I said that knowing full well we were on the bed while I was holding onto her arms as though to prevent resistance. As for Raisa herself, she was panting rather hard with flushed cheeks. She had collapsed onto the bed as though incredibly weak. There was also... a smile on her face that was somewhat suggestive.

As for Raisa's father, he looked at us blankly for a few moments, making me rather nervous. He probably wouldn't believe me even though that was the truth. I mean, if I was in his position, I wouldn't believe it either.

While bracing myself, I suddenly saw a strange smile form on his face.

"Ah, I see. My apologies for interrupting, please continue."

As he closed the door I saw his lips turn up sinisterly, just before his face went out of view.

He was definitely misunderstanding the situation. Chances are, he assumed Raisa was taking things into her own hands and trying to get a connection into that pale meat business that had shaken up the nobles.

...Her father would probably bring it up with her later.

I turned back to Raisa.

"Hey, did you see what happened just now?"

Her eyes glazed over as she began giggling.

"Yeah! I understand how to manipulate my mana now!"

My eyelid twitched. After letting her go, I sighed.

"No, not that, your father walked in just now."

Raisa gave a weak nod before looking around.

"Ah... why did he leave?"

...Well.

I cleared my throat.

"Um, he left because he misunderstood the situation, thinking you were trying to manipulate me with the new business I had conjured up."

She tilted her head to the side, a confused look making its way out past her misty eyes.

"Why... would he think that?"

Why did you have to ask about that part?

"That's not important. More than that, you're going to pretend that you were doing what he thought, or else there's going to be a bad misunderstanding."

The situation had already played out in my mind. Her father was going to bring it up and probably encourage her in some fashion while Raisa herself would deny that she was doing anything.

If she did manage to convince him, then this would spark quite a bit of conflict and try to force her. Chances are, if he couldn't force her, he would try to make use of it in other ways.

It would be much better if he clearly articulated any thoughts to Raisa, who could then relay them to me. That way, I could also get a better understanding of his personality. With that, it would be easier to negotiate around him and peel back a few layers of any secrets he may have.

She would unintentionally become my spy.

Raisa on the other hand, in her frazzled state, was oblivious to my thoughts.

"What? But aren't we friends? Why would I have to lie about that?"

I cleared my throat.

"That's the problem. I do want to be friends with you, but don't you remember how Jess was? She didn't believe it at all."

Raisa pouted. She looked rather childish, and her muddled state wasn't helping.

"It makes me sad that she doesn't believe..."

I nodded and put on a serious expression.

"That's because different ranking nobles aren't supposed to have a true friendship. Instead, it has to be one where the higher ranking one pressures the other."

Raisa let out an annoyed hum.

"What? But I'm not pressuring you, am I?"

I shook my head promptly before raising one finger.

"That's the problem. While I am fine with this relationship, and you are, other people won't be. You will have to pretend to your father that this is fake, or else he will try to break this relationship apart."

Raisa's eyes widened considerably.

"H-He will? But why?!"

I blinked a few times.

"...Nobles aren't supposed to have real friends. If you really want this to continue, then you will have to pretend that we aren't real friends."

Raisa looked somewhat despondent but nodded weakly.

"Ok..."

I took a deep breath. She was probably more easy to convince since she couldn't think properly right now.

"Your father will probably try to tell you to do some things. You should relay them to me so we can pretend that you did them when you really didn't."

Raisa nodded while blinking erratically.

"I-I will do it. I really want to stay friends."

It was at this point that she gradually began to recover and sat up.

"Let's do it again!"

The corner of my lip twitched. No, that could mean many things, I was just being weird here. Yes, that's it.

"We should stop here."

Raisa tilted her head to the side as a small frown formed on her face.

"What? Why?"

I then pointed to her hands. Her palms were bleeding badly from several cuts in the shape of her fingernails. In fact, even her bottom lip was bleeding, and pretty badly too. It was almost impressive that she hadn't even noticed.

"You're hurting yourself pretty badly. We could always do this at another time."

And the most important thing was that I already had a good idea on how to attune mana.

Raisa opened her palms and took a better look at them. Her eyes widened while her mouth was agape. In shock, she gently pressed against her lips with the tips of her fingers to see blood.

"When did this happen?"

I let out a soft sigh.

"It looks like we went too far this time. Did your magic control improve at least?"

Hearing that, Raisa sat up and began casting the fire spell once more.

This time I noted that it was actually quite easy for me to see her mana fluctuations as she casted. In fact, it almost came to me naturally.

And she was indeed faster once more.

After forty-five seconds, a small fireball had formed above her fingertip. Although it was smaller than the thirty-second cut from before, it got harder to continue to reduce casting speed the shorter it got. While smaller, this improvement was actually larger than the first one.

A wide smile spread out across Raisa's face. She was ecstatic that her magic control had suddenly improved by so much.

"W-We could do it just one more time, right?"

I let out a long sigh.

"I'm not sure if you realize, but our practice seems to leave you overly excited. If you don't calm down a bit, there might be other side effects to continuing on like this."

Raisa blinked a few times.

"But I feel amazing!"

My eyelid twitched.

"Well, your body doesn't agree with you. We can do this some other time."

She was still trembling faintly and panting rather hard. It was easy to tell that she was exhausted.

"T-Then when can we next do this?"

I scratched the side of my head. Honestly, I wasn't too interested in focusing on training this kind of mana control. My progress in dual-casting hasn't gone that far yet, so I wanted to focus more on that.

But now that I look at my schedule, there's almost no time whatsoever to do that.

"Um... maybe on Monday?"

Right now it was Wednesday, but it wouldn't be too long before Monday ends up rolling around. Raisa seemed to want it to come sooner but nodded anyway.

"Ok then."

From there, we just talked about random things. Well, while I say that, it was more Raisa talking, going from one subject to another, still riding the high she got from improving her magic control.

I didn't really have anything to talk about, so I didn't stop her, only letting out the occasional 'yeah' and 'uh huh' to indicate I was still listening.

It might sound like that would've been a painful experience, but I found it enjoyable.

After a while, she got embarrassed realizing she had been talking for so long, and sent me home. When I did get back, it just so happened to be the same time as when the servants that set up in the slums did as well.

Though, to my surprise, I saw Jess had stepped out of that carriage.

After a second, I pointed at her with my hand at my waist.

"You went there?"

Jess turned to look at me before giving a nod.

"I wanted to understand why you would go out like that every day. However, it feels like I've missed something. The only thing I had received were scornful gazes."

Hm. She didn't look ugly. Or perhaps was it the fact she was my brother that made everyone hate her?

"I guess nobody sat at the table then, right?"

Jess let out a long sigh. Hah, I guess it wasn't really my reputation, but the fact that I was a noble that drove-

"Only five people came down to sit with me."

...Excuse me?

"Um, did you recognize any of them?"

She shook her head.

"They were not any of the ones I had seen sitting with us before."

...Ah. So I was ugly.

"Why do you look so upset?"

"I'm not upset!"