After Instructor Aphon finished explaining the mental cultivation technique to the Initiates, he ended the class.
’I wonder what I should buy at the cafeteria today.’
Just as Simon had this thought and got to his feet, he suddenly felt a frigidly cold glare shoot toward him.
He shivered slightly, then he looked at Sunless.
’Oh right. I forgot about her.’
"Don’t tell me you forgot about me?" She said, making it seem like she could read his mind.
Simon’s lips twitched. "I’m not stopping you from following me."
Sunless scoffed. "Don’t think you can give me that cold attitude today. You’ll treat me warmly you hear me?"
"Warm...ly." She repeated.
Simon released a soft sigh while shaking his head.
"Let’s just go."
Sunless’ lips twitched behind the mask, but before she could say anything, Simon was already waking down the steps.
"Bastard." She cursed softly underneath her breath.
She then stood and followed after him, and their fellow first years had wide eyes seeing this.
"Yo. Yo. Yo. Are they actually a thing now? Are they dating?"
"Fuck no. They can’t be dating. How can the number one of our class date a slave?"
"Well...he is the king of our class after-"
Pa!
"Want to die? How dare you call him the king of our class? Don’t you have any shame?"
"What a fucking idiot."
"I can’t imagine those two dating. Many men fucking want her and she decides to go for a slave?"
"And his background is the worst of the worst. A fucking backwater tribe in the Wildlands."
"They must not be dating. If they are, a lot of our classmates would be displeased."
"I heard even some Second Years and some Third Years are interested in her."
"Hmm... I sure wish a Third Year can kill him. I hate him."
"Same."
Conversations like these flew across the classroom, and Simon and Sunless became the hot topic of their class.
Meanwhile, Simon himself was staring at his table which was filled with so much food that could feed a family.
’Demonic roasted pork. Multi-eyed fish. Eight-legged demonic crocodile, and like eight other foods.’
’What the hell?’
’Everything is approximately two hundred merits and that means I have to pay approximately six hundred merits.’
’The hell?’
Simon shifted his gaze from the food on the table to Sunless who was sitting opposite him.
He could not see her face, but he had this gut feeling that there was a smirk on her face at the moment.
He knew that this was revenge for what he did to her, but he didn’t think she could do something like this.
’And I cannot feign being poor since everybody knows that I’m not some poor slave.’
’Sigh.’
’And she wants to do this three times today. That’s a lot of wasted money.’
"Can you even finish the food?" He asked with a dark expression behind his mask.
Sunless ’looked’ at him, then she tilted her head.
"And what if I cannot? What are you going to do? Trick me into protecting and fighting our seniors?"
Simon’s lips twitched.
"You shouldn’t waste food."
She immediately snorted. "Like as if you care about something as pointless as that."
Simon released a deep sigh, then he shook his head.
"Even if I have some money now, you shouldn’t actually waste food. You don’t gain anything by doing this."
"See." He gestured at the demons watching them.
"They’re giving us strange gazes."
Sunless indifferently picked up a fork and pierced into the plate of demonic roasted pork.
"I still don’t think this is enough for not only endangering my life, but for also making me to expose far more than I wanted to."
She raised her mask slightly, exposing her slightly red small lips, then she ate the portion of the pork.
"Until you buy all my meals today, that’s when I’ll just be slightly satisfied."
Simon looked down and held the space between his brows while releasing a frustrated sigh.
"Fine. Whatever."
He decided to give up and just enjoy what he bought.
He began to eat the boiled eggs of a demonic falcon.
There was silence between them for a while, and after about three minutes, Sunless broke the silence.
"Hey. The agreement was for you to not give me a cold attitude."
Simon looked at her with a raised a brow.
"How am I giving you a cold attitude?"
Sunless pointed her fork at him. "You’re not talking to me."
Simon immediately scoffed and shook his head before looking back at his food.
"I have nothing to say to you, and don’t try to force this... friendship thing. It’s not going to work."
Sunless frowned behind her mask, and what she said next baffled Simon.
"Was it really your parents that named you Blackmooon? Or you named yourself Blackmoon?"
Simon paused as he was about to drink the blood of a demonic python. He lowered his spoon slightly and spoke.
"My parents."
He decided not to go into details by telling her that he had no father, or to be more specific, that he had never met his father.
Sunless tilted her head slightly. "Why have you not changed your name? It’s a terrible name. I don’t know what your parents were thinking giving you this name."
Simon’s lips twitched, and though he agreed with her since he had such thoughts in the past, he would not admit it to Sunless.
"I’m not changing it because it’s the name I was given. There’s no point in changing it. Let the whole world know me as my birth name."
Of course Simon lied about majority of what he said.
He had actually thought about changing his name since there was nothing stopping him from changing his name, but then he thought about it and decided not to.
Why?
Because of his mother.
If his mother was still alive, he wanted a situation where his mother would hear of his name when he rose in power and influence.
There was a strange satisfaction he would feel if his mother began to hear the name of her son whom she betrayed for a pitiful sum of money.