Nat's breakdown

***Tadkarian Camp, 2 miles south of the battlefield***

"Next!" An old lady in glasses raised her head from a thick stack of documents piling up on her desk.

"It's your turn, pretty lady," a cheerful young boy nudged Nat's side. "I heard we will get candy there!" he added, likely in an attempt to cheer the girl up.

"Thanks," Nat smiled, standing up. Just a single step forward revealed how shaky her legs were.

The girl looked up. Even though they were in the middle of the camp with soldiers and servants rushing about all around, she didn't feel safe at all. Yet, it was the road ahead of her that scared her the most.

"Come on, I won't bite," the old lady smiled as she noticed Nat's hesitation.

"Y-yes," the girl muttered, pushing her hesitant legs to move. One step. Another step. Soon, the momentum itself carried her forward.

"I'm going to ask a few simple questions so that we can figure out where you come from and how we can help you, okay, darling?" the lady asked, gracing Nat with another, gentle smile.

"Y-yes," the girl repeated herself. 'Where is he?' she thought, barely stopping her head from looking around. After hours of doing so, the chances that Kilian would randomly appear were at an all-time low.

"First off, what's your name, sweetie?" The old lady lowered her head and readied her goose's feather by dipping it in a flash of bloody-black ink.

"I'm Natalie. My friends call me Nat," the girl replied, only to change her reply the second she voiced it out. Her voice was low, as shaky as her legs.

'Just what in the world is this place,' she cried out in her soul, refusing to accept the reality surrounding her.

"Nice to meet you, Natalie," the lady replied, yet, she didn't bother to raise her head anymore. "Now, can you tell me how do you call the place you came from?"

"Eh?" Nat hesitated when she heard the question. "An Earth?" she replied, unsure if that's what the lady was asking about.

"Darling, every other person here believes that they come from the earth," the old lady sighed before fixing the position of her glasses. "Let me rephrase it. What was the last thing you were doing before coming to our world?"

"I-..." Nat hesitated. 'Just what am I supposed to answer here? Should I even be honest in the first place?' she doubted, unwilling to accept the kind attitude of the old lady for a good sign. If anything, she knew very well how a kind face often was nothing but a fake mask. 'No, that's not it,' she thought, tightening her hands into fists. 'Maybe if I will be honest, they will help me find Kil?' she thought, coming to a decision and raising her chin a little. "I was in the schoo-... No, I was in the classroom. We were in the middle of a history lesson," she replied, allowing a small ray of hope in her soul for the first time since the disaster happened.

'Now that I think about it wasn't he pretty close to me when it all happened?' Natalie thought, recalling her last moments in the class. 'Didn't he... try to pull me somewhere? Or was he trying to throw me out?' she thought, sinking deep into her hazy memories. 'If only I paid more attention to him back then,' she thought, biting through the delicate skin of her lips.

"Oh?" The lady raised her eyes a little before moving them down and pushing papers around for a short moment. "Gravel, Jack Taharsky, Syhtren Sebetrian, Poaulin, Peter Lordy," the lady listed out a few real and fake-sounding names alike. "Does any of those names ring a bell?" she then asked.

'Wasn't Jack the class president?' Nat thought before quickly nodding her head. "Jack, Jack Taharsky," she replied as a small bit of relief spread through her body. 'At least, I'm not completely alone in this place,' she thought, trying her hardest to find some positives about the situation.

"Good." The lady scribbled something on the paper in her hand. "You need to go past my station. Then, go seven alleys deep, turn right and go for another three alleys. You will find a tent with..." the lady took a small pause as she pulled out a small piece of paper and drew something on it, "this mark. Go and wait there. Once your group will be completed, someone will come to explain everything to you," the lady said, passing the drawing to Nat's girl only to move her head up and say, "next!"

With nothing better to do, Nat swallowed a mouthful of saliva before following the directions. And soon enough, amidst a sea of other noises, she picked up a familiar voice.

"I'm telling you, this is all one big scam!" someone said from within the tent she was designated to go. Encouraged by the feeling of familiarity, Nat reached for the entrance and pulled the tent's cloth away.

"Huh?" all the voices in the tent silenced when Natalie appeared at its entrance.

"NAT!" A sudden shout overwhelmed the girl as one of the bodies suddenly rushed at her. Following her instincts, she attempted to dodge, only to be wrapped by someone's arms. "I was so worried about you!"

'Pavlo?' The girl thought, feeling the disgust welling up in her insides. "Get off me!" she shouted, trying to free herself from the lock of the man's arms. The memory of his attempts at feeling her up was still fresh in Nat's memory. So fresh that she couldn't help but recall what happened right after.

'Kil...' the name appeared in her thoughts on its own. 'Kil, where are you?' Nat asked as tears started to well up in her eyes. 'Normally, this would be the moment when you would intervene!' she wept in her soul, knowing from the bottom of her soul that this time would be different.

"I'm sorry." Those two words slipped out of Nat's mouth. For some reason, her breaking voice worked like a bucket of cold water on Pavlo, making him relax his hold over her shoulders.

"Excuse me?" he asked, unsure how to react. Yet, as soon as he let go of the girl, Nat fell down to her knees, breaking down in tears.

'If only...' she thought, feeling how guild and misery exploded in her soul. 'If only...' she could even form a single thought. "If only I was honest with you, none of this would have happened!" she screamed through her tears, not even realizing how she actually voiced her thoughts out.

"Don't be silly," a new, foreign voice suddenly entered the tent. Raising her wet eyes, Nat saw a terrifying-looking man standing right above her head. "How can you be at fault for what happened?" the man asked, looking at the girl as if she was a naive kid. "There are people of all kinds here, from all kinds of worlds. How can you be so arrogant to believe they were all summoned here only because of some love trouble of yours?"