Playing the victim

“Why do you say that?”

Flora was stunned, and asked instinctively.

Ryan, however, immediately understood the reason.

After this incident, that Stella Yaros would definitely be jealous,

And ask Ryan why he invited Flora but not her.

If Ryan answered that it was because he couldn’t find a female companion and had to use a maid to make up the number…

Then Stella would definitely beg Ryan to bring her along the next time he had such an event.

Once he agreed to Stella’s request, even if Stella caused trouble, it should be aimed at Flora.

But since yesterday at noon, Ryan had increased his attention on Olivia, coupled with the fact that they had been practicing together multiple times… it was hard not to make people associate them.

Flora was inexplicably a little slow in this regard, or even could be said to have lost her mind, or perhaps she trusted Ryan and thought that Ryan was just examining the talents he needed to recruit, so she didn’t notice it.

But Olivia’s two friends didn’t have such a filter, nor did they get carried away, and soon realized something was wrong.

They didn’t know Ryan’s intentions, they only knew that Stella might cause trouble, and they wanted to avoid affecting Olivia as much as possible…

You ask them why they have such a prejudice against Stella?

In fact, this is a normal reaction,

Based on the information Ryan has currently gathered, Stella’s reputation in the Royal Academy is actually very bad.

This bad reputation has little to do with the bad reputation of the Blue Lion family, after all, after those things happened, their influence was still very great.

Even though the head of this family was only a count, in reality, they had thirteen Silver-grade powerhouses for company,

Normally, even if people gossiped, they would probably only say it behind her back… not to mention there was also Serenity, the respected old third.

But Stella Yaros’s behavior was really annoying to the point where they didn’t even want to give her the most basic respect.

In the early years, when Earl Ligian Yaros was still alive, the Blue Lion family, although did not suffer defeat, was obviously in a bad position, but their remaining prestige still remained.

She was addicted to being willful and wayward, and anyone who mentioned the bad things about the Yaros family and the Blue Lion would be suppressed by her and her followers.

She was like the queen of the academy.

Even two years ago, when Liguman committed suicide to atone for his sins, she was still arrogant for a while, bullying many students to vent…

Until a year ago, her elder brother, Earl Reinhardt Yaros, committed a major crime and was confined to his home, and her arrogance finally subsided a bit.

But in this year, she still heard many rumors of her secretly attacking herself.

She became so weak in this semester.

And on Flora’s roster, Ryan also took a look and found that there were many people who publicly scorned Stella, who used to be Stella’s followers, or simply people from the Blue Lion family.

Although according to the previous analysis, the Blue Lion family now has signs of hollowing out the Yaros family, and after Reinhardt committed the crime, many people were ashamed to associate with the Yaros family…

But if you think in a bad direction—couldn’t it be that Stella was deliberately selling her misery, and was even specifically showing it to Ryan?

After all, that old man valued being together appropriately, and he even planned to cultivate being together appropriately as the second rising star in his life…

Wouldn’t it be a bit unreasonable to fall out with the Yaros family at this time?

But Ryan only wanted to understand the implication.

Because before, when he raised this question, Flora’s speculation was that the students were too blindly worshiping the Azure Sky, so they were deliberately suppressing the Blue Lion…

This explanation seemed to be no problem, but the tendency to defend the Blue Lion, to defend Stella, was too obvious.

It didn’t seem at all like the Flora who would consider multiple possibilities at the moment,

〖I can’t give you a promise now, but I will have a good talk with Olivia later.〗

So he couldn’t give a clear answer immediately.

The three women also knew that Ryan probably needed to discuss this with Flora, so they left with Olivia.

But Flora was only sitting around, and wasn’t a fool.

After the three women left in worry, the two returned to their seats, and after thinking about it, she said belatedly:

『Your Highness… are you testing Miss Yaros?』

『That’s right.』

『Can I hear the reason?』

Ryan tried to inform Flora of the information he already knew.

Of course, this was also mentioned on the roster.

『I don’t think it’s wrong to protect the family’s reputation. Being arrogant and willful, that’s just because the former Earl Yaros had been out fighting, which led to a lack of discipline…』

Flora didn’t deny it, but she was trying to find reasons and explanations for Stella as much as possible.

She looked like she thought Stella could be reformed and changed for the better.

『I hope that’s true.』 Ryan could only say, 『But we also need to guard against it.』

After all, she had been persecuted by people from the Blue Lion family, and that was also a fact.

『Okay.』

Flora wasn’t ambiguous about this kind of thing, and immediately started making a response plan.

But after Ryan looked at the simplified plan, he gradually tasted some strangeness.

The main theme written on the plan was to avoid getting involved with the Blue Lion family as much as possible.

If a situation really arose, just catch the culprit and that was all, don’t escalate it to the entire Blue Lion family, or unreasonably associate it with anyone.

At first glance, Flora seemed to be still using the right to benefit Ryan and find opportunities to absolve Stella.

But after Ryan thought carefully, he found that Flora essentially only intended to maintain the status quo… because it didn’t mention what to do if they guessed wrong, and Stella was really hated.

You must know that even Olivia and Flett, who hadn’t even said they would work for Ryan, she had shown a very obvious tendency to want to help them.

But facing Stella, who was likely to become Ryan’s fiancée, she was so passive… she mainly focused on just letting Ryan not blame Stella.

This was really inconsistent with her usual behavior style, and also obviously did not match the expectation and trust she had shown for Stella just now.

(Could it be that she saw that I didn’t like Stella, but she didn’t want the marriage to be terminated so quickly, so as not to cause a crisis for the Blue Lion family?)

Ryan thought more and more about the possibility, and it also conformed to Flora’s pursuit of doing the best of both worlds all along.

Moreover, they had only made a marriage contract, and the real marriage was still a long way off.

Maybe when the family crisis was resolved, they would have no need to consider it at all.

As long as Ryan didn’t raise some kind of dissolution of the marriage, then Flora wouldn’t be so sad.

Most importantly, after Sophia and Hana pointed it out, Ryan also felt that he was just testing Stella, but he was a little lacking in consideration for Olivia’s safety.

So after class, Ryan and Flora together called Olivia to a less crowded balcony, cast soundproof magic, and informed her of his previous plans.

During this process, Flora very consciously withdrew from the scope of soundproofing.

Obviously, she realized that she had been showing a bit too much bias toward Stella, so she adopted not to interfere with Ryan’s conversation and scheming as a way to make up for it, in order to prevent him from getting angry.

To be honest, if it was before, Ryan might really have been very unhappy.

But now… what he was thinking in his heart was that it didn’t matter if Flora knew about it, and on the contrary, Flora’s being so conscious and considerate made him feel a little too estranged.

“So that’s how it is…” Ryan put it, please continue to make use of me, it doesn’t matter.

Perhaps wanting to repay the favor, Olivia struck a pose to face the challenge.

But in Ryan’s view, this was at most a kind of avoidance.

“No, let’s just drop this matter, I’m very sorry that I didn’t inform you before doing so… but if you really want to repay me for what happened before, then tell me, in your eyes, what kind of person is Stella Yaros?”