“Has anyone ever told you that you’re handwriting looks like chicken scratch?”

“Shut up. I’m concentrating here.”

The morning where everything boiled to a point came and went. Somehow overcoming all their confusions, the two Phoebe’s managed to come to a sort of agreement and scrambled themselves to try to appear normal in front of others. Secret signals between the two were agreed upon as their way of communicating. A tap on the leg was for yes and two for no. A touch on the nose means “I don’t know” while scratching her nose means “you are wrong.”

They came up with all manners of signals just to be able to get past breakfast without looking like a mental patient. It went well with no one noticing the change within Phoebe and the outside Phoebe managed to get out of her daily lessons for that day under the pretense of “feeling sick”. Breakfast would have gone perfectly if outside Phoebe didn’t twitch every time other Phoebe complained about the taste of the food or begging to have another taste of the bacon.

“Please I beg. The bread is too hard and the eggs are over salted. The bacon is literally the only thing that taste good. Please grace me with them oh powerful duchess.”

Two taps.

“Noooo! Don’t be so mean! Think of my taste buds!”

It was an awkward breakfast to say the least. Never before did either Phoebe’s felt this overwhelmed. Their mind was never empty since they had each other to fill in the empty gaps. Thankfully, other Phoebe picked up the sense that there was too much going on and quieted down to only making simple remarks or give advice. Only when the two were dismissed from breakfast and returned back to outside Phoebe’s room did they start talking again.

“Okay. Let’s start writing out what we know and figure out our game plan.”

“I’m doing that right now,” Phoebe spoke, walking over to her desk drawer and flipped through several different journals for a blank one. Unable to find any, she just decided to use her drawing journal instead. Phoebe was right about to rip out the pointless pages but the other one stopped her.

“Hold on. It would be a shame to rip this perfectly good journal up. If anyone stumbled on this and just look at the first couple of pages, they might get tricked into thinking that it’s just a regular journal. Let’s doodle some more pictures at the end in case they check from the back.”

“Good idea,” Phoebe agreed. She nodded her head and climbed onto her tall chair and set her journal on top of the desk. There was an ink and quill already set up. All she needed to do was to start writing. “Okay. Let’s start out with the events of the book.”

“Er, actually. Can we start with the issue with our name. As much as I love being called “other” all the time, it’s kinda dehumanizing.”

“Well, I see your point. What do you propose?” Phoebe asked, humoring the other Phoebe. She placed down her quill and waited for the other to speak. Despite each girl quirks, they’re very accommodating and reasonable girls to deal with. 

“How about nicknames. You can just call me Phi,” second Phoebe suggested. This caused the first Phoebe to raise an eyebrow. Quite frankly, she liked the sound of that nickname as well. 

“Why do you get the nice nickname?” Phoebe asked.

“Please let me have this one thing,” second Phoebe asked. There was a ting of sadness in the second Phoebe’s voice that caused the first one to recoil just a little. A sense of shame fell over the first Phoebe as she realized that she was probably taking a little too much. Considering the second’s position, the nickname was the only thing she can own besides her own thoughts.

“I’m sorry. I was being too selfish,” the first apologized.

“It’s alright. Disagreement can happen but I do have an offer which I didn’t finish explaining. My nickname is Phi while yours is Bee. How does that sound?”

A flash of memories cross through the first Phoebe’s mind. It was her memories of her friends and family calling her “Little Bee” during her childhood. It was a childish nickname that went away when she went to the academy. It’s a bit cheesy but the first Phoebe found it endearing. 

“Bee… I like it. Good idea.. um Phi,” Bee acknowledged, a bit flustered in complimenting her counterpart. It was the first time that the villainess compliments someone out of genuine admiration and not out of selfish wants. But it doesn’t seem like Phi noticed, or maybe she doesn’t really care.

“Well! Let’s get to actual business then. Since I read the story and all of the stupid bonus chapters, I can fill in the blanks for you,” Phi spoke, rolling the ball right along and keeping the two girls on track. 

“Sure. You talk, I write,” Bee said, nodding her head along. She picked up the quill once again and got to writing in the journal as Phi talked.

“Okay. So the story begins with Alaine first attending the Royal Academy and getting the attention of her harem… as well as you. But chronologically, the events of the story started out when Alaine was 13. Prior to her becoming a baron’s daughter, she was actually the poor daughter of a seamstress. But due to being considered a genius both in academic and magic, her birth father, Baron Westwood adopted her. If you haven't figured it out by now, Alaine was a product from the Baron’s affair. He brought her home once his legal wife passed away. Life was a bit brought but her father loved her. One night, Alaine heard a knock on her window and she opened in to find a red apple. Completely ignoring the fact that she lived on the third floor and this was mysteriously found outside her room, she ate the apple because she was feeling kinda hungry. Mind boggling but go off I guess. Anyways, she got cursed and her family found out. They told her to attend the academy once she turned 18 and learn how to break her curse. So she was stuck with the seed for like, five years before attending. There she fell in love with Claude and then passed you the seed after you told her how unprofessional it was to flirt with promised men. By the way, did I mention you were my favorite character before getting curse? You were the only reasonable person in the goddamn story but comments kept on complaining about how annoying you were since you were getting in the way of their OTP even though Alaine was a shit person. But really it was a matter of perspective. Since Alaine was the protagonist, of course people would root for her since she was the audience’s window. If it was the other way around, they would be rooting for you and hating Alaine. Really, people are so simple minded and forget to look outside of the box…”

Bee couldn’t help but sweat a little as Phi went off topic. She her cheeks turn slightly pink as Phi praised her as “the best female character” in the story while ranting about Alaine. It was really touching and was happy to know that she had someone on her side all this time but it was getting to be a little too much.

“Phi. Back on topic please,” Bee spoke, clearing her voice a little as she halted Phi’s rants.

“Ah, sorry about that. I’m really passionate about books,” Phi said, sounding surprisingly flustered and now lowering her tone to a reasonable level. She took a deep breath and jump back into explaining.

“Where was I? Ah! So then Alaine passed you the seed during one of your confrontation and you disappear for awhile because you were on probation for bullying. A bunch of random villains and nonsense before you came back and tried to ruin Alaine. Your schemes went to the roof and you even tried getting Alaine raped.”

“What?! I did?!” Bee cut Phi off, caught off guard by the drastic change from her past self. While confronting Alaine sounded like the sort of thing she would do, trying to arrange her to get raped was a line she would never cross. Bee held her head as a migraine struck her mind as she tried to recall what happened after she returned home. Her memory was hazy at best and she could only remember bits and pieces.

“Ow ow ow. Stop overthinking. If you can’t remember, then you can’t,” Phi grumbled, reeling in pain as Bee had a migraine attack. It felt like her spirit moved along with Bee’s and end up holding her head as well. 

“I’m sorry. I just couldn’t believe I would do something so awful,” Bee admitted. She calmed herself and cleared her mind for both their sakes. It was like a weight lifted off their shoulders and both girls let out a sigh of relief. 

“Thank god,” Phi said out of relief. She found this experience to be an interesting fact but decided to just stay on topic for now. “Anyways, I agree that it was out of the norm for you. No offense but you're a bit of a muscle head since you attended the academy to become a battle mage. Prior to the curse, you confronted Alaine and challenged her to duels but that’s about it. It was after you were cursed did you start coming up with wild schemes. I have a theory that it was the Flower of Evil that was corrupting you. Inside out… which then brings up the question: was Alaine the same and was corrupted by the seed. Hence why she was fine in passing her curse along to you with no complaints? Well, it’s an interesting theory that the author never explored.”

“Well… if that’s the case, If we prevent Alaine from eating the Seed of Evil then all this would never happen,” Bee added, looking at the root of everyone’s problem. 

“Easier said than done. Alaine is currently six like us but we don’t know what village she is from. Her backstory was written so vague that you have an easier time spotting a ghost in the dark than figuring how what town she’s living in,” Phi said with a bit of a dismissive attitude. “I already considered our options here. Ideally, stopping her from eating the seed is our best plan. But we have to consider where she is and when the Baron adopts her. Obviously we won’t know where she is. She’s from a far off town from god knows where and peasants aren’t documented. We’re going to need a master spy for that but seeing how we’re six, that chance is out the window. Our next bet is when the baron adopts Alaine. But the thing is, we don’t know what season he grabs her and he won’t announce her to noble society till after a year… way after our time limit. Obviously, spying is out the window once again and we can’t just drop in at a baron’s home at random either. There’s also the fact that someone wanted her to eat that seed. Don’t ask me who. The author never bothered to expand on that.”

Bee’s face went grim as she thought about how in the world they could track Alaine before she ate the apple. She leaned her head against her hand and pondered about the situation. Phi was right. Finding Alaine before she eats the seed would be a near impossible feat with their current resources. Even if Bee were to entertain the hypothetical of hiring a group of spies, having them searching for a peasant was just ludicrous. Alaine wasn’t exactly a woman who stood out either. If they were to order these spies to look for a woman with brown hair and eyes, the net would be too broad. They weren’t looking for a needle in a haystack but a particular piece of hay. Yet the most frustrating thing would be that despite their efforts, someone wanted her to swallow that seed and they know nothing about this person to combat them.

To waste time looking for Alaine would be a detriment to both her and Phi. A waste of resources and a waste of chances. This was a situation that caused Bee’s head to spin with all the pros and cons.

“I have… another thing for you to consider,” Phi spoke, clearing her figurative throat to catch Bee’s attention. She wanted to give her partner a chance to digest the circumstance before dropping an ultimatum.

“The question is… do you really want to save Alaine from her destiny?”