Your Girlfriend Calls Me Daddy-Chapter 52 | The Logistics Of Sharing An Essentia Battery With A Demon

Chapter 52: 52 | The Logistics Of Sharing An Essentia Battery With A Demon

She spent the entire class thinking about Rome D’Angelo.

Specifically, she spent the entire class watching him from the corner of her eye while pretending to take notes on Solana’s announcement about the Battle Trials. Her pen wrote words her brain did not register. Something about three versus three format. Something about Friday morning. Something about random team draws.

Rome sat in the back row with Mera Cross.

They were not touching right now. That was something. Rome had his elbows on the desk, listening to Solana with the casual confidence of someone who had not slept in a strange bed and broken multiple academy regulations in the past twenty-four hours. Mera was actually taking notes, her tail curled loosely around one leg of her chair, her black hair in its high ponytail. 𝚏𝐫𝚎𝗲𝕨𝐞𝐛𝕟𝚘𝐯𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝗺

The marks on Mera’s neck were visible from the front of the room.

Everyone had seen them when they walked in. The entire class had seen them. Hae-Won had seen them, standing outside the door, watching Rome hold Mera’s hand and walk past her like Hae-Won was furniture.

Like she had not been in that storage room with him yesterday. Like he had not put his hands on her. Like she had not—

Hae-Won’s pen snapped in her grip.

She looked down at the broken plastic. Set it aside carefully. Took out a fresh one.

Behind her, she heard Rome say something quietly to Mera. Mera’s tail flicked with irritation under the desk. Then stillness.

Hae-Won’s ability picked up the faint pulse of Rome’s signatures. Still three layers. Still that deep unclassifiable resonance underneath everything else. Her own reserve level was normal this morning. Fully recovered from whatever he had taken yesterday.

She needed to know if the incomplete exchange was the reason she had felt nothing afterward. No amplification. No warm residual energy. Just her own Essentia returning to baseline and the ghost of his hands on her skin that had kept her awake until three in the morning.

This was science. This was data analysis. This was—

Rome turned his head and looked directly at her.

Hae-Won snapped her eyes forward. Her neck went hot.

She had been staring. How long had she been staring.

On the board, Solana wrote: SPORTS FESTIVAL, EIGHT WEEKS. Underlined it twice.

Hae-Won wrote the same thing in her planner under today’s date. Pressed the pen too hard. The paper indented.

Fine. Fine. She could investigate this properly. She was Cheon Hae-Won. She had graduated top of every cohort she had ever been in. She had tracked Essentia signature anomalies since she was thirteen years old. She had built an analysis system from scratch using nothing but her own ability and a color-coded spreadsheet.

She could figure out what Rome D’Angelo was without ever touching him again.

She just needed one more data point.

She found Mera in the girls’ bathroom between second and third period.

Hae-Won had tracked her through the corridors using her ability, following the spatial resonance of Mera’s signature to the second-floor facilities in Building A. She walked in, checked that the room was empty except for Mera at the sink washing her hands, and let the door close behind her.

Mera looked up in the mirror. Yellow eyes met Hae-Won’s grey ones. Something shifted in Mera’s expression. Not surprise. More like she had been waiting for this conversation and had decided she was not going to bother pretending otherwise.

"Panda," Mera said.

Hae-Won’s eye twitched. "Do not call me that."

"Why not?" Mera dried her hands, turning to lean against the sink. She crossed her arms, the school uniform’s white shirt straining in ways it was clearly not engineered for. "Rome does."

"Rome does a lot of things he shouldn’t."

"True." Mera tilted her head. Her tail moved slowly behind her, unhurried, like she had all the time in the world. "You following me?"

"I need to ask you something."

"Clearly. You walked into the bathroom two seconds after me, so I figured it wasn’t a coincidence."

Hae-Won set her tablet down on the counter. Took a breath. "What is Rome D’Angelo’s actual Essentia?"

Mera blinked once.

"I know you know," Hae-Won continued. "His signatures overlap with yours. Your output increased after contact with him. You spent the night at his apartment and came back with his marks on your skin and a fifteen percent Essentia boost." Hae-Won held Mera’s gaze. "You’re not just his girlfriend. You’re his source."

The bathroom was very quiet for several seconds.

Mera’s expression did not crack. But something behind her eyes went sharp and still, the way a door looks right before it locks.

"That’s a lot of conclusions from public information," Mera said.

"I’m thorough."

"You’re obsessive. There’s a difference." Mera pushed off from the sink and stood at her full height. She was shorter than Hae-Won by two inches but she took up considerably more room. "And I’m not telling you anything about Rome’s ability."

"It’s a drain type. Contact-based. It copies abilities through intimate exchange." Hae-Won kept her voice level. "I already know the mechanism. I experienced it firsthand."

Mera went very still.

"He used it on me yesterday," Hae-Won said. "In the storage room near the library. I tracked the signature shift after. Compared timestamps against my reserve log." She folded her hands in front of her. "My Essentia dropped twenty-three percent in four minutes. No return transfer occurred."

Mera’s tail stopped moving entirely.

"I want to know why. Specifically, I want to know the conditions under which the transfer becomes bidirectional. Your output increased after contact with him. Mine did not. What is the variable."

Mera stared at her for a long moment.

Then, slowly, she started laughing.

It was not a mean laugh. It was the laugh of someone who had just had something confirmed that they already suspected, and found the confirmation both funny and deeply inconvenient.

"Oh no," Mera said quietly, mostly to herself. "You poor thing."

Hae-Won’s jaw tightened. "I am not asking for sympathy. I am asking for data."

"That’s not what you’re asking for." Mera’s laughter faded, replaced by something more complicated. She looked at Hae-Won the way someone looks at a problem they recognize. "You’re asking me to explain why Rome didn’t give you what he gave me. And that is not a data question."

Hae-Won’s chest tightened. "It is a mechanistic question about ability function—"

"He kissed you." Mera’s voice was flat. Not accusing. Just stating a fact. "He touched you. And you felt it, same as I did." She paused. "And then you spent the night alone trying to convince yourself his ability manufactured everything you felt."

Hae-Won said nothing.

Mera picked up her bag from the floor. Slung it over one shoulder. She stopped next to Hae-Won on her way to the door and looked at her directly. Up close, her eyes were genuinely striking. Yellow and slit-pupiled and reading Hae-Won like a spreadsheet she had already finished.

"The transfer is bidirectional when both people are fully present," Mera said quietly. "When neither of them is performing and neither of them is running away." She held Hae-Won’s gaze for exactly one more second. "You bolted. That’s your answer."

She walked out.

The door swung shut.

Hae-Won stood alone in the bathroom, her tablet on the counter, her hands clasped in front of her, staring at her own reflection.

The girl in the mirror looked exactly like her. Perfect posture. Perfect uniform. Light blue hair pulled tight. Grey eyes sharp and controlled.

She looked perfectly fine.

Hae-Won picked up her tablet. Walked to the door. Pushed it open.

She needed to get to third period.

She needed to stop thinking about this entirely.

She needed to figure out what Rome D’Angelo’s ability actually required, and whether that requirement was something she was capable of giving.

Not because she wanted to.

Because she was thorough. Because incomplete data bothered her. Because twenty-three percent of her Essentia reserve had left her body in four minutes and she wanted to know exactly where it had gone and what it had done when it got there.

That was all.

That was absolutely all this was.