Chapter 3 Strange Behaviors (1)

    On a bright morning, Lucy, dressed in her school uniform, had breakfast with her father. Duke Gracius always made time for breakfast and dinner with Lucy every day, rarely missing a chance to join at the table together. This morning's breakfast was an English-style breakfast: the Duke's plate included a tomato, a sunny-side-up egg, two sausages, three to four pieces of bacon, and finished with beans while Lucy's breakfast consisted of two to three pancakes topped with strawberry sauce, decorated with thinly sliced bananas, strawberries, and whipped cream. By the time breakfast was over, it was nearly late. Lucy took another car to school, as the Duke, worried after her recent fall, insisted on her wearing a gauze bandage wrapped several times around her head.

    Once out of the Duke's sight, Lucy removed the gauze to stash in her bag, refusing to enter school with it on her head.

    "Miss, about the gauze..."

    "Don't tell Father," Lucy instructed coldly, stowing the gauze in her school bag, silencing the driver. He hadn't intended to comment on the removal of the gauze but to inform her that the Duke had installed cameras in the car. Regardless of his silence, the Duke would know. Soon, they arrived at the school. Lucy grabbed her bag and stepped out of the car. Her appearance immediately drew stares and whispers from other students. Lucy slightly pursed her lips; she disliked the intentionally audible gossip. If only they'd speak directly to her. The old Lucy might have glared and screamed in displeasure, but now, she wouldn't react that way, especially since the old Lucy would end up sneaking off to take throat lozenges after such outbursts. Hmm, the life of a foolish villainess is indeed tough. Thus, Lucy's bag contained more lozenges than textbooks. Such a high effort!

    Ignoring those gossips, Lucy walked into the school. As a high-end institution attended by nobility and royalty's children, the school spared no expense in its design, resembling a small palace (though not so small). It boasted marble staircases with dark brown vine patterns and even an elevator, which was divided into levels of accessibility.

    The glass elevator, adorned with high-quality wood painted gold and carved with some vine design, was reserved strictly for royalty, forbidding commoners or nobility's children from using it. Lucy, too, avoided the glass elevator, feeling it lacked safety. She waited for her usual elevator, the gold one, painted gold with walls carved with various colored flowers, gold buttons, and embossed numbers. This elevator was meant for the children of the Duke, Marquess, and Earl, while the Viscount and Baron had a similar one, merely painted in silver. Just the elevators alone cost a fortune.

    Children of wealthy families without noble titles use the regular elevator. Even if they hold significant positions or reputations, without a noble title, they must use the regular elevator. This includes the student council president and even teenage celebrities and singers. Oh, this school doesn’t really discriminate much between social classes. How wonderful! After leaving the elevator, Lucy headed to her classroom. With her past self's intelligence, it's certain she was placed in the lowest-tier classroom. Here, classrooms were named after chess pieces: King, Queen, and Pawn. Every semester, students' exam scores were evaluated to promote or demote them among these classes to motivate learning.

    Lucy's initial goal was to move up to the King classroom. Of course, the King and Queen classrooms were the dream of every student, but not for the old Lucy. She desperately wanted to be in the same class as the Crown Prince, the student council president, and the popular duo, Ion and Dale, to the extent of convincing her father to donate large sums to the school to pressure the principal into promoting her. But would the principal really care? When Lucy entered her classroom, the others turned to look but then quickly turned away to continue their conversations. Lucy boldly walked to sit at the front row by the window, where the desk next to her remained empty, as it had been for the past four years. No surprise, given Lucy's self-centered nature, nobody wanted to befriend her.

    But even so, Lucy didn’t care and continued to obsess over the lives of the popular guys, leading a remarkably frivolous life. When the class time came and students gradually filled the room, the first teacher to enter was for Mathematics, a subject disliked by many, including Lucy. Actually, Lucy didn't like any subject at all. Opening her textbook and taking notes as the teacher instructed surprised everyone in the room and the teacher themselves. Normally, as soon as class started, Lucy would either zone out, yawn with boredom, or sometimes sneak out with her camera, disappearing until lunch. But here she was, attentively taking notes on the board, such an utterly astonishing sight.

    After the first class ended, as students waited for the next teacher, they started gossiping among themselves, undoubtedly about Lucy!

    "Do you think she's acting weird? I’m not blind; she actually opened her textbook and took notes along with the teacher."

    "Maybe she’s just doodling."

    "Doodling while simultaneously watching the board?" another girl retorted.

    "She’s just putting on an act, pretending to be attentive, but in fact, she’s not," her friend confidently replied.

     "How long do you think she’ll keep up this act?" a boy chimed in.

     "At best, just this period and the next, then she’ll sneak out as usual."

     "Right, her boy-crazy nature can't be changed; it’s in her blood," they kept calling me ‘that girl’, why don’t they just say my name directly? Lucy thought contemptuously. So, they dared to look down on me? Fine, let’s make them eat their words. Lucy set her goal to prove them wrong.

    At the end of each period, everyone saw Lucy focused intently on her notes, surprising both her classmates and teachers. After class, the teachers gathered to discuss Lucy's changed behavior with serious expressions.

    "Could it be a severe head injury that caused this?"

    "This might be a coma-like state."

    "What should we do? Should we take Lucy to the medical room for a check-up? There might be complications we're unaware of!" The student council president and vice-president, who had just entered the teachers' lounge, paused upon hearing the teachers' conversation about Lucy. The president looked particularly worried since he had been looking forward to seeing Lucy all morning.

    Every morning, it was usual for Lucy to sneak around and peer into his classroom, trying to catch glimpses of him and the Crown Prince. But today, he hadn't seen her at all, and now hearing the teachers speak like this, he felt even more concerned, his handsome face turning gloomy.

    "What's happened to Lucy?" the vice president, who was a close friend of the student council president, asked, patting his friend's shoulder.

    "It's Lucy, you know. She's been acting strange today."

    "How so?"

    "Well, um, like, she's been... attentive in class, I guess...? I don't know, but Lucy was actually opening her textbook and taking notes along with the teacher's instructions. Doesn't this sound like a serious condition to you?"