Disclaimer: I do not own Fairy Tail. Hiro Mashima owns the series. This story was just made for fun.
Prologue, Part 5: Graduating With Specialties In Feigning Emotions, Harsh Breakups & Playing Victim! Mai Kinoyama's Penmanship Reveals The Truth!
The next two weeks of April went by quickly, the cherry blossoms staying on the trees until they began falling off at the very end of the month, and all of the students who attended Magnolia Academy were now experiencing the month of May. This particular month wasn't just the month for all of the students to study hard for final exams that would occur before summer break, but May was also the month when the third-year students would officially graduate from Magnolia Academy. They would even attend a graduation ceremony that would be held at the school, as a way of celebrating how they completed all of their classes, and many people would watch them graduate.
Lucy was one of the people who would be in the audience, but she needed to handle something very important before getting to the school. Lucy had a look of urgency on her face while running down one of the sidewalks, her legs moving as fast as they could, and Lucy was glancing at the shops that were on this street. One of them was a flower shop, which unfortunately sold all of the bouquets of pink flowers that Lucy thought about giving Mai as a graduation present, and another prominent shop was the dessert bakery that made delicious cakes for its customers.
Lucy had been able to buy a cake that she even requested to be decorated in a very cute way for her and Mai to possibly both enjoy it, but she wasn't looking for another dessert to eat on Mai's graduation day. Lucy was searching for a nice present to give Mai to after the graduation ceremony ended, and that present would be Lucy's way of showing Mai that she was glad to have romantically given the love in her heart to someone who deserved it for always being such a great girlfriend. Mai would hopefully love the gift, and Lucy would be happy to give Mai a celebratory kiss today.
Not only was today important because of Mai's graduation, but this day was the five-month anniversary of Lucy being in a relationship with Mai. They had been through so much together in the past five months, and they had great chemistry to where their heartbeats probably occurred in unison with each other when they had feelings of romance. The gentle thought of placing her hand on Mai's chest to cutely feel her heart beating was something that caused an item in the window of a nearby shop to get Lucy's attention, and she entered the magenta pink building with a happy smile on her face that was slightly blushing light pink.
"Excuse me, but I'd like to buy that item you have on display." Lucy told the shop owner, who was a woman with bubblegum pink hair in a ponytail.
The shop owner who wore a pink sweater vest and ruby red jeans matching her apple red eyes simply replied with a nice smile on her face, "The price for that item is 5,000 jewels, Miss."
"I'll be happy to buy it, then." Lucy responded with a happy facial expression, glad that she could easily purchase the item.
Lucy pulled out five-thousand jewels from the left pocket of her orange dress, and she handed the money to the shop owner. The older woman silently counted the money, before putting it in the pocket of her sweater vest, and receiving the exact amount of cash that she needed was enough for her to walk over to the item that sat on the display window's pink ledge. The item that she took off of the ledge appeared to be a heart-shaped box in the deep shade of hot pink, but opening the box made Lucy start to gasp in awe.
She gasped at the sight of how the top half of the box was raised upward like a makeup compact to display a mirror that had a light pink frame in the shape of a heart, the mirror being in that same shape, and the bottom half of the box contained two red roses that had a cute red heart placed in between them. The heart may have been created from glass that was painted beautifully to be in a plain shade of red, but the roses seemed to be like porcelain glass that had been in the color of ruby red. When sunlight shined through the window to hit the roses, they shined brightly to make ruby red rays of light slightly emanate from them. Lucy viewed this item to be quite beautiful, and she politely bowed her head to thank the shopkeeper for selling it to her.
Lucy proceeded to put the heart-shaped box in the right pocket of her orange dress that was strapless, and she ran out of the store to continue going towards Magnolia Academy. Lucy wondered if she would be one of the people who got to be in the front row for her to be very close to her girlfriend when she received her certificate of graduating from Magnolia Academy, since she viewed herself to be going to the school at a decently early hour for her to not be there when the room would be crowded. After all, Lucy didn't want to miss anything important.
"If Mai ends up giving a speech on anything, then I definitely need to be there for it! After all, she's the most popular and beautiful girl at Magnolia Academy." Lucy thought to herself with a very happy smile on her face, feeling her cheeks blush light pink at how the feeling of love made her run faster.
Lucy ran down the sidewalk at a fast pace, before turning a corner, and she soon found herself running into the school's entrance. The entrance to Magnolia Academy was bordered by two grey statues of Mavis Vermilion, the original founder of Magnolia Academy, and those statues of her simply smiled in a cheerful manner as if her spirit would always be cheering for all of the academy's students to do well in their classes. Lucy ran into the school's large and rectangular building that contained many of those classes, since her eyes could see people such as Erza entering it on this special day.
Lucy hastily ran towards the line of people who were heading into the school to see the graduation, which would take place in the auditorium, and hearing some people mention things about the auditorium made Lucy go to that room in the school. The auditorium now seemed like a special place for Lucy and Mai, since that was where Lucy got to witness one of Mai's plays that was well-received by her Theater Arts teacher and the audience. Lucy would be an audience member again, but Mai would probably be acting very genuine instead of putting on a show for people.
If Mai would cry genuine tears of joy from graduating, though, then Lucy would be glad to cry happily with her. After all, this was a momentous occasion where they would need to celebrate together and share emotions like a wonderful couple. In fact, Lucy giggled cheerfully from having the slight thought of how her decision to attend Mai's graduation would be just as great as Mai hopefully attending Lucy's eventual graduation ceremony at Magnolia Academy in two years. After all, their romantic chemistry made Lucy feel like she and Mai always cared very deeply about each other.
One hour later, in the auditorium...
Lucy watched Mai go up to the podium while she wore an orange graduation gown with an orange graduation cap to match, along with gold medals that had been pinned to the front of her gown to represent her achievements in academics and theater. Mai looked out into the audience to see Lucy smiling at her, prompting the older woman to only smile back for a moment before her eyes glanced at other people who were in the audience. Mai got to see that college recruiters from Sekichiku University were in the front row of the audience, along with some people who seemed to be dressed with specific and important familiar logos on their clothes as if they belonged to modeling or acting agencies.
Mai happily smiled at those people, liking how they attended this graduation for the chance to see how someone as smart as her could benefit them while those individuals would seemingly help her be on the easy path to fame. Mai definitely wanted them to help her become famous, and she proceeded to pick up her brown diploma from the principal while making her face display a proud smile that looked very authentic. She even proceeded to walk back to the other top graduates in a calm and poised manner, as she walked like a model who wanted to be in the fashion world.
The recruiters from the fashion agency seemed to be somewhat impressed, taking note of how that girl's name had been announced as Mai Kinoyama by the principal, and even the people from the acting agencies seemed like they would want to have a little chat with Mai after the graduation ceremony to discuss possible programs or contracts that she could take up for her to be an even greater actress than she was now. Mai merely smiled with the feeling of delight in her eyes from how she could even manipulate a graduation ceremony to her advantage, and it seemed like everything was going perfectly.
Mai soon heard Lucy applaud loudly for her, seeing the younger girl smile cheerfully with joy from witnessing how her girlfriend put on that interesting performance, and hearing more of an applause occur to somewhat drown out the sound of Lucy's clapping only made Mai feign a very appreciative smile directly at Lucy. Mai truly appreciated the crowd recognizing how she deserved her spot as a top graduate with great skills, but genuinely having any feelings of actual appreciation for Lucy herself only made Mai frown at her for a split-second. The frown that soon displayed Mai's distaste for Lucy quickly became replaced with a happy towards the crowd, since more graduates would be announced. Lucy felt curious enough to not pay full attention to them, however.
"Did I just see Mai try to hide a frown that was on her face, or was I just imagining that she frowned?" Lucy asked herself, as she began to look a bit concerned about her girlfriend while Mai started whispering something to Minako.
Lucy began to have a frown on her face, wondering if Mai was disliking the fact that she would be leaving Lucy all alone at Magnolia Academy. Lucy would be without Mai and her clique of girls, who were all popular people that even kept Lucy from dealing with any instances of bullying from other students, and Lucy also thought about how she would have to make herself be part of a new social group. That could be a bit difficult, since Lucy had only spent the first half of the school year hanging out with some first-year students until that fateful day where Mai had asked Lucy to be her girlfriend.
Without Mai around at Magnolia Academy, Lucy would have to just socialize with different people. Upon looking at Mai to see her still quietly chatting with Minako, Lucy wondered if she would end up being approached for dates by another third-year student when next autumn would make her be a second-year student. Even if she would be in her second year, Lucy would still be fully loyal to Mai in their relationship. She felt like Mai would also be completely faithful to her, even if Mai had to go to a different town to attend a university or do work for her job.
From Lucy's perspective, Mai's graduation wasn't going to ruin anything for their relationship. In fact, she began to softly smile in a comforting manner at the thought of how Mai just needed to hear Lucy's words of encouragement about how her departure from the school wouldn't cause their love for each other to also fade from both of their hearts. Lucy strongly believed that she and Mai had a fantastic relationship, which was the type of relationship that would hopefully never have its final day of happiness before only experiencing horrible days. As Lucy started to look at Mai with determination in her narrowed cocoa brown eyes, a very nice thought entered her mind.
"Mai, I swear that I'll make sure that we always experience happy times. In fact, you'll probably very happy on our upcoming date." Lucy thought to herself with a serious look on her face while looking at Mai, not minding that Minako was briefly watching her.
Minako quietly whispered to Mai in a very playful tone, as she smiled from seeing Lucy look like she was deep in thought, "Mai, it looks like your little girlfriend is viewing your graduation as an immensely serious occasion. Maybe she has something on her mind for you to be very impressed by her tonight."
"I wonder if she worked hard to plan out her little surprise in great detail, since I've certainly got a surprise that she won't even be thinking about. Lucy always seems so in love with me, but our fake relationship really has nothing left that's very exciting for us to find any enjoyment. In fact, maybe I'll only enjoy brushing my teeth later to get the taste of her kisses out of my mouth." Mai replied to Minako in a soft whisper, before giving her pink-haired friend a very devious smirk for a few seconds.
Seeing Mai smirk deviously only made Minako softly smile at how she seemed to be plotting a scheme again, and she turned away from Mai to look back at Lucy. Upon seeing the blonde-haired girl begin to look optimistic about something possibly pertaining to her date with Mai, Minako began to remember something important that involved Lucy's relationship with Mai. Mai was always having to deal with Lucy planning out activities for their dates, only being able to improvise on picking certain activities just to manipulate Lucy's thoughts and emotions.
Minako felt like it would be good for Lucy to know how it would feel to always have to go along with detailed plans of what her partner wanted to do, even if those plans wouldn't involve Mai making Lucy have sex with her, and Minako felt like there would only be one girl with a broken heart at the end of Mai's scheme. Letting Mai mostly create that plan would seem like a good idea, since she had the most experience when it came to the amount of time that each girl in the clique had individually spent with Lucy, and Minako felt Mai could easily manipulate Lucy into making her heart take in more happy feelings of romance before making their relationship come to an end.
Mai had actually been thinking about the best way to end her relationship with Lucy, since she hoped that their breakup could occur in a way where she could see Lucy's facial expressions and reactions be very amusing. Mai felt like it would be great to get a nice laugh out of this scheme that had gone on for months, a prank that finally resulted in Mai getting her hands on that treasure to sell it for riches, and Mai feigned a grateful smile towards Lucy while remembering that this was also the day of their five-month anniversary. No matter what Lucy wanted to do after graduation for them to be celebrating, Mai's eyes were filled with some sadistic delight at how she'd be the one to feel happiness from just playing along with the idea of truly enjoying a date with Lucy after the graduation ceremony ended.
Five hours later, near a shrine...
Once the graduation ceremony came to an end for Mai to briefly just exchange phone numbers of the people who were from fashion agencies and acting agencies about possible job offers, she met up with Lucy later in the part of Magnolia Town that contained a path of grey stairs leading up to a shrine. The girls walked up the stairs to see that the shrine was a large building in the color of scarlet red, the wooden building having many small plaques in different colors on it, and the building's pitched roof was in the mahogany shade of red.
Lucy got to see how the roof's color interestingly complimented many plain red ropes that hung from the shrine while several of them held the plaques in midair, and there were even ropes with golden bells on them. Lucy walked over to one of the ropes that had a golden bell lightly swaying from a passing breeze, the small sound of its chime being quite cute, and Lucy proceeded to firmly put her hands on the rope. She lightly rang the bell while silently praying for herself to continue being in the happiest relationship of her face, and Lucy quickly bowed her head.
She stepped away from the bell to go pick up one of the blank plaques that rested on cherry red rectangular tables that were in front of the shrine, and Lucy felt like she just needed to make sure that her wish of being in a happy relationship with the escalation to marriage would also come true. She briefly turned around to cheerfully smile and giggle at Mai, who walked towards her while casually passing by grey stones that had some prayers permanently engraved on them for the good luck to seem like it would be continuous, and Mai merely faked a nice smile of kindness towards Lucy.
When Mai got close to Lucy and saw her use the black marker to start writing her short wish to be in a very happy relationship for the rest of her life, Mai gently grabbed Lucy's wrist to stop her from putting down either of their names. Lucy was shocked to see Mai use her other hand to put the small square-shaped plaque on one of the ropes, making that wish officially be made to the shrine without Lucy fully completing it. This confused Lucy, who wondered if Mai was in a rush to make her own wish, but Mai hastily held hands with Lucy for them to walk away from the shrine. After they reached the steps and quickly went down to the street that was made from cobblestones in different shades of orange, Lucy watched Mai pull something out of her form-fitting dress that was in a dark green color.
"Mai, you couldn't wait until tonight to show your gift to me? Well, I really hope that you'll like my gift because it also shows our love for each other. Happy anniversary, Mai, and I hope that next month will be-" Lucy asked Mai in a curious manner while blushing at the sight of Mai presenting her with a hybrid rose that had its petals be like a fusion of pink's various, before speaking happily until Mai suddenly cut her off.
Mai told Lucy with no remorse in her violet eyes, stepping back a few feet before she proceeded to viciously crush the rose under one foot right before she spoke with distaste in her voice, "I don't recall next month's anniversary being in my plans, Lucy. If it isn't obvious as to why I didn't want you putting our names on that wish, it's because I'm breaking up with you."
"Wait, what do you mean? Mai, are you seriously breaking up with me on our five-month anniversary?" Lucy asked Mai with a very concerned look on her face, hoping that her girlfriend was just joking around again.
Mai explained to Lucy in a blunt tone, after the feeling of joy was in her eyes from seeing the younger girl look so worried, "Well, I can't say that we're actually breaking up because of how our entire relationship was just a prank that I played on you. Wow, Lucy. I wish you could see how you look so concerned, and even possibly shocked. Maybe you'll also feel shocked at how you've outlived your usefulness to me. I never loved you, and playing this trick on a first-year was so easy."
As Mai proceeded to laugh at her words and even pretend to look worried for Lucy while blushing, Lucy felt her body become numb from the shock. Her entire relationship with Mai was just a joke to the older woman, since Mai practically told that to Lucy, and the immense shock from seeing Mai feign emotions of being worried was also very surprising to Lucy. She couldn't believe that Mai had been playing her for a fool while they were together, not having any true feelings for her, and seeing their relationship go from seemingly happy to descend into just being a prank also made Lucy's hand drop her gift.
She couldn't stop the heart-shaped box from hitting the ground, hearing it instantly break into many pieces like how Mai had just broken her heart, and Lucy watched Mai laugh at her even more. Mai started to have a pleased facial expression, noticing how Lucy was stressed enough to have small tears in her eyes from having to process that she was just manipulated and used for reasons that Mai wouldn't disclose to her right now, and her giggle of pleasure even made Lucy want to cry more while her body began to tremble.
All this time, Mai had never cared about her. Even when Mai was comforting her, the comforting words were all lies. Lucy couldn't even look at Mai without more tears coming from her eyes, as a sob escaped from her lips with tears falling past them to hit the ground, and Lucy felt quite saddened from how her mind replayed Mai's words of outliving her usefulness to her. Lucy did not want to believe that she was like a dispensable tool deemed to be useless, not wanting to believe that Mai's true nature involved the cruel prank of having the audacity to be very fake when it came to their love. As Lucy tightly clenched her fists in anger, she remembered something important about their relationship.
"Mai, I... I trusted you so much! I even trusted you with taking my virginity, but that didn't even seem important to you! You're such an uncaring and disgusting person, Mai, and you're an absolute liar!" Lucy exclaimed to Mai, as she felt quite angry in this moment from how this all seemed like it was part of Mai's nasty plan.
That prompted Mai to respond with a smug smile on her face, as she was aware of the overall circumstances, "You can go around calling me a liar, Lucy, but no one will believe you. To anyone at Magnolia Academy and the townspeople, I'm one of the nicest girls in existence. If you try to tarnish my reputation, you'll only be making yourself look like an idiot."
"You're about to look like an idiot for lying to me, so don't be surprised if I give you a black eye!" Lucy shouted fiercely while running to Mai, wiping away the tears as she stretched out one of her fists to make Mai pay for messing with her feelings.
Mai yelled in a worried manner with tears forming in her eyes, as she made herself look like she was feeling threatened, "Lucy, stop trying to abuse me! I don't want you to hit me anymore! Just because I won't be your girlfriend, you have the nerve to raise your fists at someone as nice and cute as me! You're so mean!"
Lucy looked quite angry and confused at Mai's words, seeing her to just be acting again, but she was soon restrained from behind by someone who had been walking down this same path to visit the shrine. That person was Minako, who had Naomi standing next to her while they respectively wore a pink dress with ruffles at the bottom and a strapless blue dress. Naomi chose to frown at Lucy in an appalled manner, pretending that she was completely unaware of Mai's prank, and she folded her arms at how Lucy was so being so immature.
Minako also viewed Lucy as being highly immature right now, and the pink-haired girl even acted as if she lost respect for Lucy from how she was now trying to abuse Mai. Mai merely maintained her façade of pretending to be the victim, even putting her hands in front of her body to distance herself from Lucy while she sounded as if she was now crying from pure fear. Upon hearing Mai cry more, Minako turned Lucy around to face her while giving her a scolding frown with harshness in her eyes. Lucy was still emotional, feeling frazzled as she tried to explain herself, but Mai's act of crying would overshadow any claims that Lucy would try to make against her.
Even though Lucy wasn't able to defend herself against Mai's claims, she wouldn't go back to her apartment and cry without getting some sort of victory in this situation. That perceived victory came from Lucy purposely picking up one of the largest shards from the shattered box, and she ran straight towards Mai. Mai quickly got up to try and grab it, thinking that Lucy would stab her, but Lucy simply grabbed Mai's dress with one hand before slicing off a piece of lower half of it like she had a blade in her hand. Lucy merely threw the dark green fabric down at Mai's feet, before walking away and feeling glad about how Mai couldn't return the fashionable-looking dress that was now damaged. Even though Mai was now glaring at Lucy in a way that showed anger at how an underclassman like Lucy seemingly wanted to get payback like that, Lucy merely dropped the shard and looked annoyed from how she just wanted to get away from a stressful situation that would probably get worse if she stayed anywhere near the path to the shrine.
One hour later, in a different part of Magnolia Town...
Lucy decided to go all the way to a street that was close to her apartment, since being in this part of Magnolia Town would make her be far from the sacred shrine, and she merely had a depressed look on her face. Lucy felt quite sad that she was officially single, especially disliking how today was supposed to be a day where she could express happiness from being in love with someone. She felt heartbroken from having no one to romantically love her, and Lucy also felt like she wanted to just scream from how today's events destroyed her future plan of marrying Mai.
She really cared for Mai, and Lucy was always so nice to her before they had that heated breakup. Even though Mai revealed that she played a horrible prank on Lucy, there was still a thought in Lucy's mind that made her wonder about why Mai specifically wanted her to be the victim of the prank. If things were ever really boring between them in the first two months of their dates that Mai never really enjoyed, then Mai could've just broken up with Lucy before pretending that they had truly developed chemistry. Mai's fake emotions made Lucy start to think about Mai had been playing around with her from the first moment that they met at Magnolia Academy, since Mai was quite a talented actress.
Questioning every word from Mai's mouth to either be truths and lies caused Lucy to immediately have a frustrated look on her face, stressing herself out from how she could not distinguish Mai's words and actions of fake sincerity from any words or actions that seemed to actually be genuine. Lucy was upset enough about finding clear examples of Mai's fakeness to where she thought that a pastel yellow building with a gold awning above the front door was actually an adjacent coffee shop that had a back door for her to get home quicker than simply going all the way up the street.
Even though Lucy didn't see the back door and sighed at how she made this impulsive mistake by accidentally entering the jewelry store, something seemingly familiar immediately caught her attention. Lucy noticed some green sparkles that were glittering off of an object in a rectangular glass case near the center of the store, and she headed over to that piece of jewelry. When Lucy saw the item that was classified as a gem, her heart nearly stopped from the shock while her eyes widened in amazement at this particular gem. Lucy couldn't take her eyes of of this gem, which she nicknamed to be her Celestial Fragment, but a familiar voice soon caught her attention.
"Welcome to the gem shop, Lucy! If you've got a gem in mind that you want to buy, then just tell me!" Natsu Dragneel told her with a happy smile on his face, before glancing down at the book that his boss kept on the counter to always track records pertaining to many gems.
Lucy asked her friend in a calm tone, as she looked at the Celestial Fragment with curiosity in her eyes, "How much are you charging for this gem, Natsu?"
Natsu responded nicely while seeing Lucy point down at the star-shaped gem, after he saw the new information pertaining to how much it would cost for anyone to buy it, "If you're talking about the Verdant Mint Star, Luce, you'll need at least 700,000,000 jewels."
Upon hearing Natsu inform her of the price, Lucy looked very astounded. The gem that was stolen from her apartment was now being sold to her at an extremely expensive price, and Lucy didn't have that amount of money right now. In fact, she started to have a thought about how it would take many years for her to even come anywhere close to having all of that money. The gem wouldn't be given to Lucy for free, even if she did tell Natsu or his boss that it had been stolen from her, and she had no way to prove that the gem belonged to her.
From the perspective related to the store policy that was created by Natsu's black-haired boss, the gem could only be given back to the rightful owner who sold it to the store and also returned all the money that they received in the transaction. Lucy didn't recall ever telling this jewelry store that she was the gem's owner, due to how it mysteriously disappeared from her apartment, and whoever sold it to this store would've probably used the money to hire people who could help them conceal any evidence of their thievery.
At that moment, Lucy simply let out a loud sigh of disappointment at how the thief wouldn't have to literally pay for their crime. They got away with the theft, and Lucy wondered if the thief even used a fake name when they came to sell the gem to the jewelry store. This place would still keep records of all the types of sales that occurred in this particular business, and Lucy watched Natsu start to turn pages in the book for his eyes to move away from the section that only focused on the store's selling prices for gems. He turned to the page where the boss organized transactions involving gems being sold to the store, and Natsu's eyes soon became filled with the feeling of confusion.
"Mai Kinoyama sold the Verdant Mint Star to the store last month? Man, how did she get my boss to pay her so much cash?" Natsu asked himself aloud with a perplexed facial expression, wondering how a popular person like Mai also seemed very lucky.
Lucy told Natsu with a very grim look on her face, the pupils starting to vanish from her eyes that became filled with an immense amount of shock, "Natsu, I.. I seriously hope that I clearly heard what you said. That... that name. Natsu, Mai couldn't have also been putting on an act when she wanted to help me look for the gem. She seemed to want to find the gem, which has nothing to do with her prank. It's... it's unrelated."
"Luce, I'm allowed to let you at least look at the list of customers. Maybe the Mai Kinoyama who sold the gem to this store is also that popular girl, so they would technically be related." He responded to Lucy while starting to look at her in a calm manner, before seeming a bit confused about Lucy's words involving a prank happening.
He watched Lucy slowly move towards the counter, her legs taking slow steps as if she didn't want to possibly see some handwriting that would reveal a very shocking piece of information. Even though Lucy wanted to see that information, every step that she took to get past a glass case had been quite slow. The slowness came from her feeling of anxiety, fearing the worst-case scenario where she was pranked in a vicious way by upperclassmen for them to literally gain something good from the prank, and Lucy closed her eyes when the feeling of fear went throughout her body in waves.
She tried to make herself push through the fear, the feelings of love for Mai still lingering in her heart like she wanted to be able to deny that she ever dated an unremorseful girl who doubled as a thief. Lucy didn't want to view Mai as a crafty criminal who found a good way to steal Lucy's personal treasure, but opening her eyes to just glance at the part of the page where Natsu had his finger positioned right above the spot where Mai's name was written allowed Lucy to unfortunately see the horrifying truth. Even if Mai would try to verbally lie to Lucy about how she didn't take her treasure or even sell the gem, her handwriting told Lucy the truth about Mai's actions.
Having to process all of this shocking information caused Lucy to slowly walk out of the store without even saying goodbye to Natsu, since her mind and heart were respectively making her thoughts and emotions occur at high speeds from how Mai's smart deceptions left Lucy in utter shock that was mixed the feeling of disbelief. She felt incredibly shocked that Mai was just leading her on and lying to her for months, which was very sadistic in itself, and this immense shock of Mai being the burglar who stole from Lucy was something that made Lucy start running back to her apartment. Even though she would need to go home and rest to be relieved of so much stress, Mai being untrustworthy enough to steal from Lucy was something that the two girls would definitely need to talk about with each other.
How was Chapter 5? The fifth chapter of this prologue heightened Lucy's happiness in her relationship with Mai, before Mai broke up with Lucy and shattered her heart by admitting that their whole relationship was a prank on Mai's side of things. Also, this chapter exposed Mai's true nature to Lucy for them to definitely have a major conflict in the rest of the prologue. This chapter only featured the first time that Mai pranked Lucy, so the second prank will come soon. In relation to that prank, all I can say is that Lucy might end regretting her choice to tear off a piece of Mai's dress. I'll update as soon as possible. :)
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