A Series of Unfortunate Events

He felt it. Terrance's heart was about to jump out of his chest. Her scent was all over his surroundings. It was on the soft pastel sheets bundled up in his fingers. It was on every stuffed toy sitting next to his place on her bed. It was especially strong around her wardrobe. His fingers twitched. He was so tempted to pull them open, revealing to him the most sacred treasure he could come across, the stuff of his dreams.

But he held back. He was there to study. They were there to study. His senior offered to tutor him as she always did on Fridays, even though he knew more than her in all the subjects she insisted on teaching. He never bothered to mention that, though. To be invited to her home, to be spoken to in one of her gentler tones was a privilege not many stumbled upon.

Not to mention, he already had an ample amount of her clothing in his special storage at home. He did his best to keep them clean, but the trails of her ownership had started wearing down, replaced by his own body's scent. He really should stop cuddling with her shirts and using her undergarments for... other things. But alas, he couldn't control himself.

Maybe opening her wardrobe wasn't such a bad idea. He could call it restocking.

He didn't have time to put the thought into action, however, as Ambrosia— Rose walked in with a rather filled tray, two glasses of orange juice, his favorite, shaking along with a plate of chocolate chip cookies, her favorite.

He was quick to help her out, setting down the tray on the nightstand beside her king-size bed.

"Are we ready to study?"

He nodded enthusiastically, "Mhmm."

Her eyes brightened, and Terrance felt like he was about to implode. Whatever good he had done in his past life must've been plenty impactful because how could he, out of all people, be deserving of such a celestial expression? He accepted it with a smile of his own, his heart melting with the rest of his body. How could anyone keep themselves together in the presence of the sun itself? He simply couldn't understand them. He couldn't understand her acquaintances, her classmates, her close friends. How could they stop themselves from getting on their knees and worshiping her every second she graced them with her presence?

But a part of him was grateful. It would be easier to make himself her most essential devotee if there was no competition.

Ambrosia turned to her "work set-up" or, in other words, the mess of a desk that sat beside her bed. Scratch that, calling it a mess was an understatement. There were papers scattered everywhere, mistreated stationary covering all four corners, and a few leftover glitters still glued to some surfaces of the table. He found it charming, incredibly so. But as he'd found out from his frequent rummaging, none of the objects there had any informative value. Nothing in her bedroom revealed anything he didn't already know.

No diaries, no incriminating thoughts, no passed notes, not even posters hung from her walls, which was something Terrance wholly expected from her. He was a bit disappointed.

His senior was easy to read. Rose was nothing short of expressive when it came to her facial expressions. She had no filter when it came to her words. But at the same time, she didn't let anything go, nothing intimate, nothing vulnerable, nothing embarrassing, nothing... that told him of her feelings.

It raised some suspicions from Terrance. He knew nothing about normal teenagers, but there was something strangely void about Rose's room, something strangely empty about the faces his senior showed him. Terrance wanted his senior to trust him with her secrets, her problems, her little crushes that he'd eventually have to.. deal with. But in the months that they've been inseparable, practically in each other's houses every other day, he'd heard nothing, he'd seen nothing, and he'd received nothing but complaints about homework.

It infuriated him a bit. It was unfairly easy for him to bear his most vulnerable parts to her. They sat and often spoke about the future, the past, the present, but it was most often about him, what he'd gone through, what he was experiencing, and what he wanted for himself. Was he untrustworthy? Undeserving of her "true self?"

He usually searched her room in his free time, for anything at all, taking advantage of his senior's forgetfulness and going in through her unlocked windows while she dozed off. He couldn't quite find what he wanted to find, though. Every single time.

Ambrosia turned to her junior, eyebrow raised as she observed his dazed expression. Seemed like he was deep in thought again. Usually, it was fine with her. If he needed space to think, she'd give him the space he needed. But now was not the time! He had a very important test coming soon, and she wanted to show off as a good senior.

"Hey, Terr. You alright there?"

His face turned red, stammered responses flying from his lips as she leaned in impossibly close, eyes carefully observing the shift in his face. "Y— Yeah. Sorry. Just thought of something."

"Are you sure? You look so red, though. Are you alright?" She placed her hand on his forehead, and he felt like he was burning against the soft touch of her palm. He did his best to inscribe the feeling of her fingers into his brain, saving it for daydreams of their marriage life.

"Shit. You're burning up. Are you having a fever?" She asked with a voice of concern, removing her hand from his face. If he had been any weaker, he would've whined from the loss of contact. He needed to hold on to whatever dignity he had left, however.

"N— no, senior. I'm fine."

"How long do you plan on calling me that? I told you, Rose is fine."

"S— saying your name doesn't feel right." He turned away from her, face still glowing in timidity. His voice lowered to a whisper as he felt Rose burn holes into the side of his head.

"I really don't get you and your formalities." She deadpanned, standing up from her place on the bed to go straight to the bathroom. Terrance heard the bathroom cabinets open, and he assumed the girl had pulled out her first aid kit from the mess of noises that followed afterward.

She walked out of the bathroom door with a bottle of pills in hand. "I think I have medicine for your fever. I've been reading up on this kind of stuff since we first met, hehe."

His face flushed a deeper crimson, realizing that he was the reason she was so adamant about learning medical aid in case of emergencies. This wasn't one of those emergencies, though. It was more of a matter of the heart which was humiliating to admit, so he turned to her, head shaking 'no.'

"I'm fine, I swear."

"Explain the look on your face then— Oh! OH! Were you thinking of your crush?! ARE YOU FEELING SHY???" She exclaimed, pills completely forgotten, as she pounced on the empty spot next to Terrance.

His soul almost left his body when he felt her body press so closely against him.

"Oh my god! Oh my god! My baby Terry is experiencing the whims of young love!"

The girl crushed him with a bear hug, and he felt like he was suffocating despite her considerably weak grip. They were so close to each other, too close, closer than what he could handle. He wanted to savor the moment and wrap his arms around her in return. But as fate decided, nothing came easy in the young Hunton's life, so he froze, letting the girl pull away and begin their studying session.

At some point, his eyelids had managed to be heavy, the long day taking a toll on his body. He took one last glance at his senior before letting the dark envelope his body.

--

When his eyes fluttered open once again, he was met with the face of an angel, barely a breath away from his.

"Senior—!" He jolted into a sitting position, head almost butting Ambrosia's. If her reflexes were any slower, both of them would've gotten a concussion.

"Oh, sorry! You were mumbling in your sleep, I got curious, hehe." She admitted, tone full of mischief. "I thought I could catch your crush's name at the very least, but I couldn't make sense of what you were saying."

"W— wha—"

"Oh, sorry. Is that too invasive? You just woke up too. Maybe I'm crossing a few boundaries—" She rambled, hands creating nonsensical gestures. It was entertaining trying to decipher what she was gesturing to, but Terrance decided that it was too cryptic to comprehend.

"N– no, it's not a problem. It's just that I'm.. not used to..."

"Proximity, right? I'm sorry. I'll be more careful from now on."

"...Thank you."

"Are you sure you didn't fall asleep because you're sick, though?" She asked him again, and the worry reflecting off of her eyes made him want to both hide from the world and, at the same time, devour it whole—again, what had he done to deserve this much attention from her?

"No." He looked at her, unable to remove his eyes from the concern that emanated from her face. He felt guilty but, at the same time, shamelessly pleased that her attention was all on him.

"You're right, I was thinking about my crush..." He confessed, and it wasn't untrue. It was his crush that took up most of his thoughts, even though he was sure it was more than a silly crush at that point. He just left out the fact that he had feelings for the very person he was talking to since the first day they met.

"Oh— oh my gosh! Who is she?? Or him or they? Man, now I regret not getting to know more of my juniors."

He frowned, he didn't like the sound of that, he didn't like the idea of her spending less time with him to fraternize with his classmates. But he decided to play along, realizing that Ambrosia discovering his feelings for her at a time when there was little to no chance of her reciprocating them was a worse fate than her introducing herself to his classmates, searching for his crush.

It was an opportunity to probe a reaction from her. Perhaps he'd find what he's been looking for. "Y— you're right. You might not know them."

"Awee! At least give me a name, Terr!" She urged, oblivious to the loudness of her voice. She swung his frame forward and backward, and the touch would've made Terrance lose his inhibitions once again had the situation not been so... strange.

"I'm afraid I can't, Senior." He said, voice void of any emotions.

"But whyyyyy–? You're usually more obedient than this. What happened?" She whined in response, giving him those absolutely torturous and, at the same time, undeniably effective puppy eyes of hers. It was clear she wanted something from him with the pout that was stuck on her face. It usually worked, usually, but these weren't one of those easy situations where he could just give her what she wanted.

He couldn't tell her, not yet. No matter how badly he wanted to crash his lips against her much softer ones.

So he tried making up an excuse, a flood of possible alibis crossing his mind before he settled with the most logical one. "Because. Because I'm scared you'll embarrass me in front of her."

"Oh." The enthusiasm on her face disappeared all of a sudden, and for some reason, that sudden shift made his heart skip a beat. Her face looked deadly, murderous, and uncanny, which could mean she was... jealous. For a moment, he felt like he was getting a glimpse of her "true self," but just as quickly as it came, it disappeared, a wide grin on her face. "She must be very important to you, then! That's good. I'm still curious, though."

"You're gonna have to keep being curious, then." He snorted, a bit disappointed. Had he imagined that expression on her face? Regardless, he needed the aching in his heart to disappear. So he turned to her desk, arranging the papers she had prepared.

He didn't expect anything to happen after that, but something did. She placed one hand in front of him and another on his cheek, tilting his head to face her.

"For some reason, I felt awful when you confirmed that you had a crush on a girl from your year." She confessed, eyes uncharacteristically narrowed.

He wanted to bite himself, verify he wasn't still unconscious. Terrance didn't know what he'd do with himself if all of these things were just happening in the confines of his imagination. But he felt the skin of her hand on his face and the almost painful way his heart was thumping against his ribcage. He wasn't dreaming. If he was, fate was truly cruel.

"Maybe this is what big sisters feel when their younger siblings start dating..." Rose added, shrugging her shoulders. The thought crushed Terrance more than any heavy boulder could, his fists clenched tight enough for his knuckles to turn white.

A voice called from outside Ambrosia's room. "Rosia! Come down here and help your sisters set the table!"

The girl's head snapped away from looking at Terrance, and he let out a breath of relief, realizing that she didn't have to see him as he wallowed in his brokenheartedness.

"Oh shit, I have to help them out. I'll be back."

As she stepped away from him, he grabbed her wrist, an important question still lingering in his head. "Does that imply that it's time for dinner?"

"Yeah, you passed out for a really long time."

"O— oh."

As she left the room, her scent remained. It was the strongest around her wardrobe.

Realizing that that was his chance, Terrance gave in to his impulses, not wanting to feel his disappointment any longer. He opened the doors to it, the entire place packed with designer clothing and rather flashy ones, too. She didn't have a set style yet. Her clothing had been inconsistent, ranging from comfortable to straight-up costume wear. Some were unique, some were trendy, but most had been colorful, like someone unsure of themself.

His hands reached for a strawberry sweater, used and thrown on the ground with the rest of her dirty laundry when something caught his eye.

...He hadn't noticed that before. Not in the multitude of times, he's snuck into her wardrobe. In all fairness, it was dark every time he snooped around her clothes in the past, so it was easy to miss.

His hand pulled on the tiny knob and just like that, a small compartment hidden in the walls came to an open.

He was mortified.

His senior, the vice president of the student council, and the most well-beloved scholar of the academy, the renowned Hugh Windsor who stole everyone's heart, he was... he was everywhere. And not in the way he usually was. Photographs of him, some professional, some candid, what he could only assume was his hair and his sweaty shirt neatly arranged inside the compartment laid in front of Terrance's eyes. Horrifyingly enough, some of the printed photographs had blood smeared over them.

He would understand if someone from their school had developed an obsession with him. He was basically the entire student body's golden boy, and he attracted girls and boys everywhere he went, but what was this uncanny shrine... doing in Rose's room?

His hands shook in denial. Head splitting as overwhelming pain sourced from it.

And for the second time that day, he fainted. The clattering sound of a bat falling against the floor was the last thing he could comprehend before his world turned black.