Chapter 7: After the Contract

"You change so much from your last appearance" I said to her.

Her hair changed length and it is now below her knee. Her eyes are red and she looked a little pale now too. She has the same height as me right now.

"This is what I really look like" She said.

"You need to sleep now and you have classes later." She said and pushed me down on my bed.

The contract is done when it's already early in the morning so I have only a little time left before classes would start.

"Wake me up at 7" I said to Charlotte and take a nap.

I felt someone shaking my body and calling out my name.

"Auburt" it came from a mellow voice of a girl.

"Hmmm" I woke up seeing an unfamiliar girl inside my room.

"Who are you?" I said while still half asleep.

"Don't be an idiot and get up" she started getting angry at me and slapped my face so hard that I'm more awake than before.

"What was that for!" I shouted at Charlotte.

She didn't say anything back at me and went outside my room.

I followed her and we both went downstairs.

"They can see you if you continue going down" I said started worrying that they might see Charlotte and say something strange about me having a stranger walking beside me.

"No worries, you're the only one who can see me right now" she said still continued on walking.

My worry faded when Leone run towards me, hugging me without noticing Charlotte beside me.

"Good morning big brother" he said giving me his cheerful smile in the morning.

"Morning" I said back to him and smiled.

"You only smiled to your brother huh" she whispered.

I ignored her and continued walking towards our kitchen.

I ate breakfast and prepared myself to go to school.

When I'm finally at my school, Charlotte is still following me wherever I go.

"Why are you following me?" I said to her and good for me that it's still early when I went to school because there're less students

"I'm your shadow so it's only natural to follow you" she answered in a monotone.

It looks like she doesn't really like to be my shadow. It's only natural because I was the one pushing her to be mine so she's definitely frustrated by now.

Class started and it was a normal session again, nothing extraordinary happened.

When class has started, Charlotte is roaming around the room, sneaking a peek to someone writing or to students who are trying to hide their phones under the chair.

She also make fun of the teacher while lecturing, it's not funny so I didn't laughed.

Class ended and Lance called me to have a study session again.

"Look" he said giving me his math test.

"You're always dumb" I said to him looking at his 0 grades at math.

"Don't be like that" Lance loss his motivations. "Please teach me" he said.

Because Charlotte is with me, she's examining Lance while he is trying to persuade me to teach him again.

"So he's an idiot like you" She said and hearing it made me pissed off.

"Auburt are you mad because I was forcing you to teach me" Lance started to get worried.

"I'll teach you. Something just came up to my mind" I said reasoning out.

I ignored everything that Charlotte is doing. She's distracting me so I can make mistakes in teaching. Good thing that I can focus only in one thing so I survived in the end.

It's already late when we went home. The reason is Lance can't catch up to the topic I was teaching. And also, Charlotte was there distracting all the time so my face probably tells how I was irritated the whole time and Lance seems to be bothered by it.

"Could you stop doing those things?" I said to Charlotte when I'm already inside my room.

"It's pretty interesting for someone like you to keep his face from changing expression. And also Lance was bothered because he thinks he's bothering you" and Charlotte laughed.

I ignored her and went to the bathrooms to change my clothes.

When I'm already done changing, I talked to Charlotte about the things I really wanted to do after having a contract with her.

"Tell me when are you going to start on making my parents suffer?" I asked her and she only gave me her unamused look.

"I thought you could do everything what I desired so why not start on doing some things I want?"

I didn't expect for her to pinch my cheeks while she's gritting her teeth. She's irritated of how I toned my words.

"Do you believe it's easy for me to that" and she's still pinching my cheeks.

"That's what the book said" I said to her and she stopped pinching my cheeks.

"Did I forgot to tell you that us being like a genie is false?" that's when I thought I made a wrong move of having a contract with her.

"Then how could you help me?" I started to get furious about this situation.

If she can't give me what I want then how could she help me to what I'm really pursuing.

"This is so frustrating" I said to myself as I can't think of any solutions.

"But that doesn't mean I can't give you what you want" my frustration vanished when she told me there's another thing I can do.

"But first I need to correct you. Shadows can give you anything what you desire IF what you are really pursuing is connected to mischief. We're evil so we used our power to help the humans with our contract to pursue their evil desires" Charlotte is trying to correct everything I misunderstood.

"If only genie existed then I probably have manipulated them to get what I want to, shadows have desires too that's why they tend to stick with a human to get what they wanted" Charlotte leaned forward and touch my chin with her fingertip.

"I didn't agree to be your shadow just because I want to help you but because I want to benefit this situation" Charlotte stood up straight and looked at me with seriousness.

"I'll give you everything you want but in exchange, you need to do me a favour" she said.

Shadows are like dogs that will wag their tails to their master. They would do the things you wished for. The only thing that dogs and shadows aren't similar with is shadow can betray you anytime they wanted. They can also use you whatever they wanted to.

If they are done using you then that means they'll eat you alive but that's not the case here because Charlotte is different from the shadow that Auburt encountered before.

----- End of Chapter 7

Updated: November 7, 2018

(not edited)

-----(A/n)-----

I'll admit that I'm still not good on writing my own story so I hope you liked it.

I want to deliver everything what's on my mind precisely but I know what my mistakes are. I still had a long way to go after all.

All I wanted is to share what's on my mind and welcomed you to the world that I made. 

I hope it fits to your taste.

~HatSuKumi