Chapter 14: Yandere vs Yandere

Glass tinkered and cutlery clunked, acting as fillers for the soft notes that spilled from the pianos and the violins. Their music enhanced by the scent of fresh wine and the wafting teaser of appetizers that were coming the guests' way.

Golden chandeliers lit up the vast hotel room and some of its light even fell into the VIP brackets a floor above, reserved for the richest of the rich that enjoyed looking down on the other diners or preferred not being looked at while dining.

In one such VIP seats, the scent of freshly picked chrysanthemums spread wafted through the room, merging with the aroma of the musk pomander.

Check one, the lady of Kaiser seemed to order a lot of chrysanthemums. Flowers of grief and death.

Paintings of wizards battling knights filled the sides. Their bold, straight strokes told skewed tales of wimpy wizards bringing the knights down.

Check two, per her aide, the lady also liked wizards.

The one sitting at the side of the room, with his hands on the pristine white table and his chin resting on the back of his palms, tapped his feet on the ground. Lifting them up by a millimeter and a half and bringing them back down every three seconds.

Unfathomable nervousness!

His heartbeat was up by five entire beats per minute. Were he just slightly calmer, the young wizard would have long since noticed just how absurd this room was decorated, but sanity was a distant dream for one in love.

He had already been sitting here for three hours.

The promised time neared.

From three to two, and then Isaac was placing his feet back on the ground every one and a quarter seconds.

The crowd below filled up.

And soon, a knock resounded on the door.

Isaac's eyes widened as he straightened his posture.

He faked a cough and practiced his words, then, he spoke out loud.

"Come enn. Ahem."

He flubbed it anyway.

The door swung open, taking it with Isaac's sight. The moment the person standing behind the door entered his sight, he felt as if his heart would jump right out of his mouth and guide her inside by itself before fucking right off straight into the horizon out of sheer joy.

His delusions stopped making sense.

Her exquisite hair draped over her back, their locks like the rivers of Achelous. Her glimmering ruby jewelry, made with the finest of gems still fell short of her eyes. The bold, red dress that showed barely any skin, making her seem like the formatio of humble sensuality.

Isaac was enamored, enraptured, enthralled.

He got off his seat, his mind blanking over when he saw the faint flush of pink on her beautiful cheeks.

"Did you wait too long?"

Asked the one who had waited!

"No," Kristine answered. "I just got here too."

Clearly so.

Isaac fumbled a bit more. His cold face was stony as ever to anyone else, but Kristine, who saw his face every night before sleeping and every morning after waking up, would have surely noticed his mood, would have, had she been sane herself.

Isaac pointed at the chair in front of him.

"Please take a seat!" Kristine said.

"Yes."

Isaac sat down. Then stood up again so as to not sit before the lady.

***

"Hm, what an intense battle of nerves."

Peeking down from the ceiling of the VIP room, the old butler of Athenus County, Joel, glared at the woman that had stepped inside.

"Truly, they are sounding each other out."

Joel, startled, raised his gaze and found a young girl with auburn hair staring down as well.

"Hah!" He exclaimed in a hushed tone, a feat only the most secretive of angry people could pull off. "You're the filthy aide of that knight girl!"

The girl, Reley, and behind her Johan, was startled as well at the sight of the old man, who seemed less like a spy and more like a pervert.

"Y-you… who are you?"

"Unbelievable! I am the personal butler of the great supreme masterful splendid merciful smart handsome young master Isaac!"

"Woah, pervert."

"Shush! Reley!"

The voice of reason hushed the two idiots, tears streaming down his face.

Though, reason was the last thing on his mind.

'If the young count finds me here, he'll feed me to the fishes!!'

***

Kristine et Kaiser had merely stepped into the room and had lost all sense of reason.

If the butterflies in her stomach were farmers, then Isaac's golden eyes were their sun. If the butterflies in her stomach were desert-dwellers, then Isaac's beautiful face was their lake. They had skipped the part where they were supposed to flutter in her stomach and had straight up started raving.

Awkward, it was way too awkward.

As if hearing the prayer of her soul, Kristine was given a saving grace that brought her back to her sense.

Kristine's eyes fell on the stems of chrysanthemums, and then on the paintings all around. Her head cooled down as an apocalyptic scenario unfolded in her head.

This was.

Intimidation.

Her eyes almost teared over when she looked at the person in front of her again.

Intimidation? Did he hate her? He hated her??

Those thoughts blasted away the moment she saw his face. Oh, how pretty could a man be? Did those maids of hers compare him to adon-something? As if any being under the skies or above them could ever come close to her love.

As Kristine sat and stared at Isaac, basking in his face from the front row, she understood why the butterflies in her stomach had gone straight to a rave. In such a fit, she didn't notice that her partner too had been temporarily pulled out of his reverie.

Her shoes held the pattern of a rose, the symbol of Athenus country, and her garbs were those fitting of a wizard more than a knight, a getup that seemed almost as if she was looking down on him.

It was intimidation town down here, and it only made them fall deeper in love.

With his head blanked out completely, Isaac did the only thing that his poor monkey brain could think of.

"Lady Kristine," he called out. "I believe I am in lo—"

The door swung open! Fate wasn't out to kill Isaac yet.

In came a waiter with the menu in his hands and a smile on his face. Both Kristine and Isaac glared at the poor waiter with flames in their eyes.

'I was about to say something.'

'He was about to say something!'

'Oh, my god! Are these the scions of Athenus and Kaiser? Together!?!"

The waiter's life flashed before his eyes.

He gently placed the menu on the table and did a ninety-degree bow.

Isaac harrumphed and took the menu in his hands. Thinking of it now, that Joh-whatever aide didn't mention the kind of food that Kristine liked.

"Uh…"

"Yes? My lord!"

"Bring everything on this menu."

"Yes?"

"Yes?!"

Kristine and the waiter both stared at Isaac in surprise.

Isaac merely nodded.

He didn't want to be disturbed, and he couldn't go wrong with everything if he didn't know what she liked. It would just dip into five years of his savings, nothing else.

The waiter bowed and rushed out.

Taking in a deep breath, Isaac readied his mind for round two. He had already prepared stuff to say to her. Unfortunately, when he saw her again, all of it left his mind.

It was his turn to be attacked, though.

"Lord Isaac," Kristine called. "I really lo—"

A crashing sound thundered all over the room as a cloud of dust fluttered in. Straight from the ceiling dropped a group of three. One butler and two knights.

Cunning, the butler immediately got on his feet and pointed at the two knights.

"Young master! I knew it! These Kaiser's were spying on you!"

Reley's mouth fell open at the sudden accusation. Well, two could play the game.

"My lady! This butler was the one spying on you!"

Of course, the lady and the lord didn't think twice about their words.

'I was saying something!'

'She was saying something!'

Not now. They couldn't give up after coming this far!

Isaac and Kristine ignored them all and turned to each other. Their breaths almost overlapped as they spoke at the same time.

"Lord Isaac."

"Lady Kristine."

""I am in lo—""

"—EEEK! Bandits!"

Fate was on both their sides tonight.

The wizard's eyes turned cold, and the knight's heart was set on fire.

"Please excuse me for a moment," she said, bringing out her blade.

"Hah… I would have to ask for the same," he answered, brandishing his wand.

In the deep night of the empire, two demons were let out on a troupe of bandits. It was a night when the goddesses of fate had smiled upon her subjects and brought them peace.

And thus began.

The story of the fiery-hot knight and the stone-cold wizard.

The geniuses of the grandest empire, the rising stars, with the greatest of achievements and the worst of sociability.

From families that held a history of animosity, from occupations that held a tradition of enmity, all kinds of events stood in their way, but their grandest obstacle toward their love remained themselves.

This was the tale of the sanest of loves.

This was the count of the craziest of obsessions.

This was the story of…

'You damned bandits dare interrupt! I'll chop off everyone's tongues, then only Lady Kristine would speak!'

'I'll kill every human in the world, then no one can bother Lord Isaac and me!'

… Yandere vs Yandere