"I'm sorry for your loss," Lance said honestly. He would love to have a nice grandma, and he could even care for her. However, he had to care about an adult in the body of a teenager, behaving like a toddler.
Paige just nodded to say she was sorry, too, before the system warned her with a light electroshock.
She thought of it as the system caressing her lovingly, making it less painful.
Natasha saw that she had turned the mood bad and apologized immediately.
"Don't apologize randomly. It is not your fault. Paige and I just don't have much family to call our own." Lance randomly said, not knowing what to say next.
Juno ate in silence, an absolute contrast to her behavior at the beginning or when alone with her best friend Natasha.
Lance asked the system
[Do you have a text I can read down?]
The system calculated, and 'Let's make a family together!' was projected before his eyes.
He sighed. 'I will never ever say that..... what the fuck is wrong with you!'
Lance gave up on any prepared texts and endured the female lead's pitying eyes because of what he had just said.
He asked himself if there was a possibility of asking her to leave after cooking because he would get indigestion when every dinner would be this way. But he wouldn't bring himself to do that anyway. As long as the female lead did not act out of line- which he somewhat started to hope for he could do nothing but endure because she was a victim like he was.
If it was worse to be aware of their acting or not, he didn't know.
After they finally left, Lance waited about five minutes before yelling at Paige
"How could you!!!"
Paige felt as if she was cheating with a girl and was caught by her wife.
"How could I?" She looked at him cluelessly.
"How could you let her cook?"
"The cooking of the female lead is yummy and you have to bond anyway, you can just bond while eating."
"Shame on you!"
"Is this a soap opera? Stop talking like this. You have to marry her anyway."
"Don't think that after we marry you will eat her food, I will make you starve and take away your hazelnuts!" He was furious.
"Can you even do that? I will not live with you two, so can't I do what I want?" she asked, raising her brow.
'Ah, right....' He went silent.
'What the hell?' Naturally, he knew they had to part in a few years, but them not living together anymore... He somehow didn't want that.
He suddenly felt down and forgave Paige, kind as he was, knowing she just did as being told, going to his room to sleep.
"Good night." He mumbled.
Paige looked at her phone. Wasn't it just six o'clock in the evening?
Lance felt depressed, and with every breakfast made by the female lead and dinner with her, he realized more that this would be how his life would look. He felt exhausted but had to mechanically eat food and make small talk at dinner while Paige didn't care.
When it was finally Friday evening, and the day Paige had to be beaten, he looked already emaciated, lying on a couch and pondering about life. He discovered that his tolerance to this shit was not much higher than Paige's was.
Every day he had made sure that Paige would shower, dry her hair, and put the fucking cream on her face, then he had dragged her to school, nearly getting a sadistic joy of seeing her suffer too.
On Thursday, he started throwing pens at her when she wanted to sleep in class, prolonging the time she had to listen to the teachers while laughing evilly on the inside.
Paige could not feel the spot on the back of her head anymore, which was struck every time accurately.
It was finally Friday, so she was freed from pens and showers, despite being forced to meet Meier and get beaten.
So, she would be struck another way, which was presumably a lot harder than a pen.
While Lance lay half-dead on the couch, she got the parcel she had ordered and flew to her room.
In the parcel was a kevlar vest, she put it on and was satisfied.
[You are cheating!] The system complained.
"That's not cheating; that's being clever," she said. The vest was really thin, but it was durable and would absorb the hits on her stomach and chest. This would not help with the slapping part, but she would be kicked for sure, too. At least that was not much of a problem now.
She wanted to put on an oversized shirt that read, " Attention! Fragile," but the system forced her to dress up.
So she put makeup on, which was manageable as she looked through a few tutorials in her last life, covering the already healed but still scarring acne spots. She wore an oversized black satin dress shirt with ripped-tight jeans and high heels. Most of the stuff was from the original Paige, with the exception of the jeans. She had ordered them to go out without wearing the school uniform, which was never done.
Her eyes had black eyeshadow, and her unruly hair was tamed with gel.
She casually took her backpack, only to be yelled at again by the system, and went for a small black handbag.
Going down the stairs, the half-dead Lance returned to life immediately after seeing her dressed up.
'Wowwowwowwow' ran through his head, feeling his heart speed up.
She looked a bit more unruly, as if she would kick you the second she saw you- but made you want to subdue her and lure her into smiling at you only.
He was dazed until she stood before him and snapped her fingers before his face.
"Lance? Someone in there?"
Feeling annoyed at her motioning, he swallowed the compliment he wanted to say.
"The meeting Meier plot?" He asked while pushing her hand away.
"Yes. See you later."
"Na, I come with you." He stood up to get his Jacket and shoes.
"No," Paige said while the system simultaneously screeched [NO]