Master Ilya

"Thank you for the meal!"

Sitting around the square table was Ilya, Eliana and her two sisters. They earlier introduced themselves as Emma and Anna, both identical twins, their seemingly only difference being a different hair clip, one a white flower, the other one black.

"So, Ilya! How did our dear little sister feel?" It was Emma, with the black flower. Ilya instantly chokes on her food, face flushed red. She chugs her glass of water, finally pushing her food down. "I-I don't know what you're talking about..." She responded nervously, giving a completely transparent lie. "Emma! That wasn't very nice..." Anna scolded her twin. "Hehe, but that was as good an answer as any~" she smiled fiendishly, looks at Eliana. The girl sighs with a blush. "I-I suppose we weren't being completely silent...I guess you also know we made the contract?"

This time it was the twins' turn to choke on their food. "Y-you did what!?" They said it in complete sync, almost comically. They both suddenly go next to Ilya and Eliana, checking their temperature on their foreheads and examining their eyes. Asking for the mark, Ilya moves her shirt to show it, while Eliana embarrassingly had to unzip her pants. Satisfied with the check-up, they sit back down, relieved. "Thank the gods nothing went wrong..." Anna spoke as if a miracle just happened. "W-what do you mean? How would it go...wrong?" Ilya was worried, seeing them look at her. "Don't you know the consequences of a failed contract are? You are a Sage, right?" "I-i really don't know...I'm trying to understand all of it myself, since I only found out this morning.." The twins give each other confused looks. "Then how did you make a contract if you didn't know anything?" "I don't know, Eliana's the one who initiated it"

"Huh? But..." Emma looks at Anna, thinking. They start whispering to each other. "Maybe....but...its possible....no way...they couldn't be...really?...is that...no other possibility..." Their words sounding like gibberish, they finally turn back to Ilya and Eliana. "There's no easy way to say this, but..."

"You're both completely and whole-heartedly in love with each other!"

"..or so I thought" Anna's sentence was finished by an impatient Emma, making the other two look down and blush. "No contract could've been made unless their feelings did it for them." The two concerned girls look at each other, embarrassed at the implications: they're contract apparently meant that they truly loved each other.

"Umm...I've been wondering...why do you all know so much about Sages?" Ilya asks them a question that had been on her mind for a little bit. "Oh, well, another one can here years ago, but he was on a wayyyy different level!" "Yea, he had, like, a five girl harem of servants...kinda sleezy and nasty if you ask me." "I understand wanting more servants for more power, but geez, those girls were allll over him!" The twins continued making remarks of the man, before finally answering the question. "But yeah, after we asked Mama about it, she told us what she knew, and to be careful around him."

"Hey, Ilya, what kinda things are you into? Any hobbies?", asked Anna "H-hobbies? Well...I guess you could say I'm an amateur apothecary. I can mix herbs and stuff into decent balms and medicines. Oh, that reminds me, there's a small forest out back, right? Is it...safe to go in? I'd like to see what kind of plants there are." "There usually isn't much danger, unless you went at night. It'd be better to ask one of us along just in case", Emma answered. "Then Eliana, would you mind coming along?" "Sure~ "

Ilya and Eliana clear the table,  and then get ready to leave. They also decided that she might as well use their spare bedroom instead of a regular inn room. "Don't get too 'busy' ou there~" Emma calls out, giggling.