After some time, enough passing that her father had brought her back to his estate and for the rest of the day to fly by, Lizu snapped back to her senses.

  Only now did she register how close it was to dinner time. In the silent embrace of her lavishly furnished bedroom, she sat huddled by the head of her bed, bundled up with her arms around her. She raised her head from behind her knees to meekly watch her grimoire lying at the foot of her bed.

  "It's still shocking this thing was made by Inkaro. But if Father said so, I doubt it's untrue."

  The sight of the grimoire's pristine pink cover shone in the light of the late evening's sun, reminding the girl of its superiority and disapproval of being ignored. The grimoire's quality reminded her of the other day; during one of her classes, a noble girl was bragging about getting a grimoire from a well-respected and royal-approved grimoire shop.

  The act in itself didn't tick off the dragolyte girl, heck, she'd have done the same thing if she had her grimoire that day. But, despite sharing a similar reaction that the dragolyte girl would have had, there was one thing about the girl's bragging that tickled Lizu the wrong way: the noble girl boasting about her father spending extra money to get some spells pre-written into her grimoire.

  The thought of that girl showing off her high-grade spells she hadn't created herself oddly angered her; a rising rage bubbled up in her very core as she scurried over to her grimoire and snatched it to her person.

  A faint snicker escaped from her as the tantalising idea of bragging to the bratty kid at school by revealing her grimoire was made by Inkaro. But, as she let the idea ruminate in her mind, Lizu slumped her head, dismissing the idea, mostly because she told Inkaro not to go around saying that very thing.

  "Hmph! If I'm going to brag, then I've got to write some of my own spells first."

  Swinging her grimoire open, she paused on the inside of the grimoire cover, eyeing the taped-on tracking spell syntax paper with a glint of guilt affixed to her eyes.

  She slumped back onto the folds of her bed, groaning lightly as she reached for her nightstand and plucked her birch mana ink pen from its top.

  "..hope he isn't mad. What am I saying? It felt like that boy was incapable of feeling a single negative emotion, so why should I care if that dummy doesn't?"

  Lizu huffed with a swipe of her head and bunned-up hair, considering the possibility Inkaro was one of those golden-hearted and ability-oblivious main characters from those novels and manga she's read in the past. "Not that I would complain, it'll make my life... does this count as complaining?"

  She continued to ponder about her future while she worked; she twiddled away at her syntax scripting, casting some sneaky, that seemed somewhat longing, glances at Inkaro's tracking spell.

  "Dummy...," she whispered, frowning faintly as she caught herself 'cheating'.

  Back in his bedroom, Inkaro twiddled away, much like his new friend, letting his oak mana ink pen drift across the magi-crystal paper in front of him. Its reflective surface shone, revealing a faint sparkle as the boy imparted text onto it with the golden-bordered dark cyan ink of his pen.

  His speed of writing would be something to praise under normal circumstances, had it not caused his entire desk to be overtaken by ceiling-tall towers of magi-crystal papers.

  "You seem to be enjoying yourself, Inkaro."

  The boy's face beamed, not from Karuoe's return but from finishing his final syntax script for the evening.

  The ghost frowned at being ignored.

  "Oh, Teacher, you're back."

  Karuoe huffed in silence, letting a chilling breeze fill the room.

  Inkaro felt himself shiver slightly from the drop in ambient temperature. He gazed up at his floating teacher and cheekily giggled.

  "You certainly like riding that tightrope of death, don't you, boy?"

  Inkaro tilted his head inquisitively. He wondered what hidden meaning layed beneath the ghostly guy's statement. However, the true meaning became abundantly clear as he spotted the time on his wall-mounted clock: twenty-three and forty-seven.

  His blood ran cold, turning his naturally pale complexion whiter than the paper he'd been writing on. "Now Lizu's going to have to find a new study partner."

  The boy moped on the floor, gently clasping at its carpeted form, as he murmured about how his life was over.

  "Aren't you being pedantic?"

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  Denying the thought, the dreading Inkaro shook his head adamantly. "No, if my mother catches me up again, she'll ground me from anything grimoire for a whole day."

  "My... how dreadfully likely," Karuoe whispered with a barely hidden snicker; Inkaro whimpered at hearing the guy's snickering, feeling betrayed that his teacher wasn't as worried as he was.

  "Teacher, this is serious."

  "Serious enough to be telling me how serious it is, instead of, you know, going to bed?"

  The retort struck at the grimoire lover, leaving him in a silent mumble as he fanned his mouth up and down. "Okay...."

  The following morning, Lizu mustered the strength to wake up early for a second day in a row. The sight of the usually mid-day weekend arising girl came as a pleasant surprise to her father, especially so when she demanded that her father take her to Inkaro's family house.

  However, upon reaching the fabled realm that was a boy's bedroom, Lizu was left gobsmacked.

  Said feeling was followed by her getting smacked in the back of the head by a towering stack of Inkaro's syntax writing falling on top of her, after she'd barged into the room with the force of a small car.

  "Why am I even shocked?" Lizu muttered in a delated tone, mildly enforced by the weight of the paper pile pressing down on her.

  Hopping over, Inkaro grabbed her by the hands and slowly dragged her free from the paper pile's clutches. "About what?"

  "Two things."

  "Two... things?"

  "Yeah, karma striking again, and," Lizu stated before swinging her arms at the paper pile that once restrained her, "This! What is all this? And, before you give a practical answer, I'm being rhetorical... I think that's the correct word."

  The dragolyte girl stood in silence as she and Inkaro loomed over the small paper pile before she slumped her head disheartedly.

  "And here I was, happy about finishing three spells last night."

  "I wouldn't recommend comparing yourself to Inkaro, he's what you'd call an anomaly after all. Writing that much is impressive even for teenagers, kiddo," Karuoe chimed in, wishing to keep the tone of the room on the positive side.

  "I appreciate the words of- eh?". Lizu paused in the middle of her sentence as she turned her heavy gaze behind her, only to lock onto the wall through the ghostly guy's see-through body. "Of course, he has a supernatural teacher."

  "Heh, I liked that show."

  "Huh?" the two kids mumbled lostly, especially Lizu, since she's watched the first episode of every TV show with the ghost tag and she'd never seen one by that name before.

  "Nothin', just a show from my original world."

  The two kids nodded together in understanding as they uttered, "Ooh."

  "So, you must be the girl Inkaro mentioned consistently while making this concentration of economic ruin."

  "She is, and she likes grimoire just like me."

  "I'm not obsessed like you," Lizu quipped poutfully, "I have a sophisticated relationship with grimoires, I'll have you."

  "That's what all you grimoire obsessives say."

  "Hey!" the grimoire lovers exclaimed before Lizu slammed her tail against the floor with enough force that it toppled over all the remaining paper towers; the duo were buried under a mountain of paper, leaving the ghost college student unfazed thanks to his ghostly state.

  Muffled by the paper that covered her, Lizu shouted in bewildered shock, "Is this a syntax script for a flying golem?"

  Equally as muffled, Inkaro retorted, "Umm... I think so? But I haven't finished that one yet, still need to fix the error where moving downwards causes the turtle to spin like a whirlpool."

  A short pause of silence filled the bedroom, a particular silence I was all too familiar with: tha calm before a tsundere's torrential wrath.

  "Curse you, Inkaro, you cute dummy!". Lizu bursted out of the magi-crystal paper mountain, harnessing her deep-rooted passion for cute creatures to empower her; she clutched the five clipped-together papers in her tiny palms to keep them from getting lost.

  Inkaro bumbled out in a puzzled tone, "What did I do?!"

  With the rage of someone betrayed by their party, Lizu dramatically pointed at the doodle of a cute turtle above the first line of Inkaro's syntax script.

  "You're going to finish this thing, so I can see this goofy creature with my own eyes!"

  Heh, I didn't think Inkaro's first friend to share his grimoire passion would be a tsundere. Hah, Hector would throw a fit if he knew I not only got isekaied, but also met an MC and their childhood friend.

  Karuoe wore a contented and satisfied expression on his see-through face. His reaction to the kids' antics when unnoticed by them as Lizu passionately shoved the floating golem papers in the boy's face.

  "Now-now, Lizu. I like a cute animal as much as the next person. But creating a life-like creature with golem magic is...."

  Lizu cut the ghost off by shoving the papers in his face instead of Inkaro.

  Well, she tried to, but given her vastly inferior height, the best she could do was reach his waist.

  "Well, Inkaro said the only issue was the spinning thing, so clearly the visual aspect of his spell is fine!" the little dragolyte voiced, slapping her tail against the floor as lightly as possible to not cause another paper tower fall, while still using enough force to get her point across.

  Karuoe raised an eyebrow at the little girl's explanation and felt compelled to borrow the bundled paper and check over the syntax script, just to be sure.

  "...you accidentally included the turn control in this line of the descent section, I warned you about copy and pasting, Inkaro."

  "Oh...."

  A sense of catharsis swept over Lizu, basking her in the enveloping feeling of camaraderie with Inkaro. "He's just like me."

  Don't say "for real for real", that'll take way too long to explain the meaning and backstory behind.