Come back

"Hey, Aksel. Why do you have so little hair on your head?"

"Hey! I have plenty of hair on my head!"

"But it doesn't look like that?"

"Argh! Just be silent you brat, come here!"

"Hahaha! Please stop tickling me! Hahaha! I'm sorry! I'm... Hahaha!"

"This is what you get, you brat!"

As things calmed down, and Aksel stopped his ruthless tickling, he sat down in his chair once again and took up the newspaper he had been reading. Sadly, I knew that I wouldn't get to see him for a long time again, as he was about to go on yet another one of his trips, during which I wouldn't get to see anyone.

During this time, they only left food outside the door but made sure to never make contact with me.

"Aksel... How long are you going to be gone this time?"

Putting away his what he was reading, he smiled gently, "Hopefully not for long. A couple of days, a week at most."

For me, a week was painfully long. At least long enough that my mind often found ways to conjure a lot of dark thoughts, thoughts that I wasn't able to dispel by myself. Putting my arms around my knees, I curled up a bit, knowing that I would have no choice but to accept it.

"I see... I hope it's only a few days..."

Then, two big arms landed around my body, and I could smell the familiar scent of coffee coming from Aksel, "I will come back as soon as I can, I promise."

"You promise?"

"Of course! I always do, right?"

"Mm..."

==========

As we were eating lunch together, with today being Thursday, I felt as if my newfound friends weren't quite aware of their limits.

"You want to go out to the city after the tournament? I mean, sure, but are you sure you all will have the energy for it?"

"Yes! We all still feel bad about last time when you didn't even get to drink anything, so we figured we should go to one of the clubs!"

While the energetic Stella didn't seem to understand what I was getting at, Caroline quickly stepped in and explained their reasoning, "We were planning to go out on Saturday. As our tournament will be held tomorrow, we will have plenty of time to recuperate."

"Y-yes! T-there is no problem..."

As I couldn't make any trips anyway this weekend, with me pretty much obliged to attend the tournament, it didn't feel like it would matter much. Things were going well enough that I didn't see a problem in wasting some time.

"Hmm... Alright, if you say so."

"Also, I invited Sophie! She said she would think about it, and that she might join with Arthur if they weren't too exhausted after their duels."

'You did what?'

Out of nowhere, Stella dropped a bomb with a huge smile, not aware of how much stress her gift gave me. With no other choice, I just played along as if I was glad that she went out of her way to invite the giantess.

"Oh, is that so? That's great!"

A slight flush emerged on her face when she got hit by my smile, and she looked incredibly satisfied with her choice to invite the dragon. Meanwhile, I restarted the process of finishing my food while trying to calm my mind a bit.

'Nothing will happen. There's no way something will happen, we will just have a good time. Nothing else.'

==========

"Good work today, guys. For Sarah, I wish you luck during the tournament. Zero, I will see you tomorrow morning before the event starts."

"Thank you, Mr. Smith."

"I'll see you tomorrow then, Dr. Smith!"

*Click*

Leaving our healing teacher behind, me and Sarah both walked out of the classroom, both of us still feeling slightly awkward around each other. For me, the reason was obvious, but for Sarah, it was because she felt a responsibility to get along with me.

Not sure what to talk about, I just chose to make some small talk, "So, are you going out with Sophie and Arthur as well this Saturday?"

Her feet suddenly stopped, and although I didn't know how or why, if there was something I knew it was this:

'Ah, I fucked up.'

At this point, I couldn't act as if I knew what was going on, not that I knew about that anyway, so I tried to act as casually as possible, "Sarah? Are you okay? Did you get a tummy ache?"

'Wow! I am so smooth...'

My ridiculous words had brought her back to reality, and she quickly recuperated, "Oh, sorry about that. I'm fine. But no, I don't think I'm going out. Are you?"

Now continuing to walk forward, she bounced the question back to me, to which I quickly responded, "Probably. I think it will be fun, I have never been to a club after all. So I'm excited to see what it's like."

Flinching a bit, something about what I said once again made an impact, but this time I somehow felt like the right move was to take it a step further, "Have you been to one, Sarah? Oh, I guess as a princess you have probably been to a lot of places, haha."

"No, I haven't. I... I was supposed to go, once... but instead, we stayed in."

"Oh, I see. What a shame, but..."

"It wasn't a shame!"

She stopped once again, and her raised voice made me inadvertently stop as well. This time, she didn't care about how I viewed her reaction, instead, she kept going. "It was not a shame at all! It was... we... we had a great time. All of us..."

Looking at me, her eyes were filled with complicated emotions, and somehow I finally realized that even though I thought myself strange to have had such strong emotions about someone I barely knew, she had felt the same thing about me.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to make you upset... I just thought..."

When I made an attempt to smooth things over, her face went back to normal again, and an embarrassed smile emerged.

"No, I'm sorry. I know you didn't mean anything bad. Please excuse me for yelling, and... please forget about this..."

I could feel the James part of me struggling, wanting nothing else but to run away, to escape from looking at the pained girl in front of us, but we held back. However, in a time of weakness, I couldn't quite hold myself back fully.

"Hey, Sarah? I don't know if this is inappropriate, but I would be happy if you went out with us."

'But please say no.'

Once again, I had caught her off guard, not surprising as even during our time together during class, there was always an unspoken distance between us. Zero and Sarah were both aware of their positions, and even more so when the princess knew about the fact that Zero would someday disappear.

But it appeared that not only I was feeling a bit confused right now, "Go out with you and the others? Wouldn't that feel a bit weird?"

'Yes, it would. Absolutely."

"Aren't you friends with Sophie and Arthur? I think they would love it if you joined us."

"Friends... I'm not sure about that. Not anymore."

It was quite obvious that she forced herself to smile, a smile that once again brought back my weakness, "Then, why can't you become friends again? I think life is too short to live without lots of people around you! That's at least what I'm trying to do, making sure I have people that I like around me before..."

My verbal mistake clearly showed its effect on the princess in front of me, as Zero had somehow managed to squeeze in a couple of words in my confusion. At least I had managed to stop us from saying anything more, but I assumed that she would take it as me finding it hard to talk about. In other words:

'Ah. Yes, here we go again. Woohoo...'

Though I could see that my words brought a lot of anxiety to her, she held strong, making sure not to lose the presence of a princess, though it didn't quite hold up, "Zero, I'm... Haaa... Alright, I'll go out with you. But, I'm not sure if I'm the most fun person to go clubbing with..."

'This girl...'

It hurt to get to see the real side of the princess, a side I hadn't gotten to see in a long time. The weak and insecure girl who in essence just wanted to make everyone happy. The girl that I had found something more than just appreciation for.

Sadly, there was no way for us to go back in time, and James and she knew that there would be no happy ending to their story. Still, that didn't mean that she shouldn't be allowed to have a happy ending to her story.

Even if I knew that it would be embossed with struggles, challenges, and, unfortunately, death.