Alice blinked for a second, then let out a high, soft squeal. Her cheeks burned.
W-why is it that whenever it's Laurentina, everything feels so strange and embarrassing? I can't—this is making me weird!
Alice twisted her slender legs, wrapped in white thigh-highs, and felt her face flush even more. The dorm had fallen quiet; night pressed close outside, stars scattered across a moonless sky. Someone had returned to the next bunk. Cicadas sang on the balcony. The hall outside echoed with the click of the dorm supervisor's heels.
In this thick, nighttime hush, anything could happen.
Laurentina and Alice found their eyes locked, and neither could have predicted how the moment would play out. The clumsy, soft Alice felt like a slippery jelly — every bump against Laurentina filled Laurentina's palm with warmth.
"Come on, Alice. I'll fulfill your… filthy little wish," Laurentina teased, turning her head as if cool and aloof, pretending to offer herself up.
Huh?
The blonde froze, then her eyes widened, steam puffing comically from her head.
"W-what are you saying?!" she squeaked.
"You like me, don't you? I won't resist."
Purity and embarrassment crossed Alice's face. She scrambled away from Laurentina, flustered and indignant.
"Are you asking me out? Sorry—that's way too forward. This is awful; it can't be!" She babbled in a rush, hands on her hips, panting.
"Suga?" Laurentina breathed, pretending relief. Alice frowned, annoyed and mortified.
"I thought you were a pervert!" Laurentina teased.
"A pervert?!" Alice's face went scarlet. She tried to retort, but whatever she wanted to say lodged in her throat — after all, she'd been the one always tripping into these situations. The evidence was damning.
"Y-yes, I'm a pervert!" Alice whirled away, gritting her teeth. "So stay away from me!"
She pouted, arms folded, secretly glancing back at Laurentina, who was grinning. Alice's teeth clenched; she tried to shove Laurentina out the door.
"All right, enough joking." Laurentina hid her smile and handed over a small treasure box she'd prepared. "A gift for you."
"I don't need it!" Alice snapped, but her hands reached out and accepted the box anyway — the classic, age-old 'pretend to refuse, secretly accept' scene.
Alice opened the box slowly, pretending not to care — until she saw the yellow Devil Fruit inside.
This… this is…
"The Guardian Fruit," Laurentina said, eyes bright. "With this, no one will look down on you for baing a doctor."
Alice stared at the fruit, stunned, distant. Memories crept back — the cruel whispers and stares from the village:
"That clumsy girl left suture fragments inside Old Neil's wound."
"John's wife's condition got worse after she treated her."
"She's a demon! Get out of my sight!"
"Go! Leave our village!"
The last images were stones thrown from children, animal hatred in neighbors' eyes. The stones left no scars on skin, but landed heavy in the heart, crushing it to pulp.
Holding a Devil Fruit worth a fortune, Alice trembled. The memories stabbed like a thousand tiny needles. She had been labeled sick, ignored, laughed at — yet she'd kept walking forward, stubborn and alone.
A breeze stirred. Medical books rustled on the table. The moonless night still shone bright with starlight.
Tears spilled down her fingers and soaked into her sleeve.
Laurentina sighed softly and wrapped Alice in a hug. Her warm hand tousled Alice's hair until the shaking in Alice's shoulders eased.
"This is… some kind of bridge-effect, right? Such a crafty trick," Alice sniffed, voice bubbly with tears and embarrassment. Her tsundere was intact.
Laurentina teased her, ruffling her hair like a prankster. Alice wasn't just a blushing blonde tsundere — she was the kind of hopelessly kind person who would keep saving others no matter how they were treated. If her knowledge could help someone, she'd be glad. She kept helping even if there was no gratitude. She was incurably good.
Maybe that's what made a real doctor.
Laurentina couldn't stand for Alice to be a saint who let people suffer; she wanted to send the wicked to their end quickly. Still, maybe Laurentina's warmth lent Alice strength. Alice looked at this "bad influence" with the kind of focus that etched someone into memory forever.
"Eat it, quick." Laurentina urged, pushing the Fruit forward. "By the way, Devil Fruits must be eaten whole to gain their full power, right?"
"Really?" Alice nodded earnestly.
Crunch. The unlucky blonde bit the fruit in one giant gulp like a little fairy-dragon from a story.
…Then promptly turned very green.
The scene was ridiculous — Laurentina wiped helpless tears from her face, shaking with laughter. The image of Alice gagging rainbows flashed comically through her head.
Alice crouched, pale, and retched — a most undignified tableau. "Wah…" She grasped the bitten fruit weakly, eyes squeezed shut, voice full of hurt and hope. "Do I really have to finish the whole thing?"
"Yes!" Laurentina tried to sound solemn but could not hide a smirk.
Crunch, crunch — Alice forced it down, and after a stilted string of gag noises, she straightened, breath trembling.
"Do you feel it?" Laurentina asked, tone teasing but gentle.
Alice looked at her hands. Heat flowed from her chest along her vains into her limbs. In the center of each pupil bloomed a tiny cross-like star.
"Power… it's flowing," Alice whispered, eyes wide and shining. "I might finally stop baing shunned as a doctor…"
She lifted her face under that starlit sky. She didn't know if the white-haired girl before her was her moon — but for once she felt bathed in moonlight.
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