Maybe losing is not bad

Aria looked at Joseph and asked, "You drink?"

Joseph said nonchalantly, "Yeah, why?"

Aria: "You're fifteen."

Joseph chuckled, "Don't tell me the rule breaker is afraid to drink before she's of age?"

As compared to what Joseph expected, Aria did not get angry or offended. She said, "I actually never had a chance. And my first time drinking, I would rather not be in a 24-hour restaurant full of strangers."

Joseph did not know why, but he felt a hollow feeling in his heart upon hearing Aria's sentence. He said, "Strangers?"

But his voice was drowned by the various people who had come to their table to talk to Joseph.

Joseph laughed merrily with everyone as he and Aria ate. He only thought of going back when Joseph looked towards Aria and found her sprawled on the table, fast asleep.

Joseph chuckled as he said, "So now I must take my leave, because my companion here seems to be very tired."

That was when all the attention was fully focused on the sleeping Aria, who, Joseph has to admit, looked rather beautiful even when asleep. A girl who had been sitting close to Joseph looked at Aria and asked, "Joseph, who is this?"

Joseph looked at Aria with a gaze that he would never have dared to do if Aria was awake, and it made most of the girls around very jealous, because Joseph was quite handsome.

He said, "She's my rival."

A girl with long plaids inched closer to Joseph as she said, "Rival? I doubt there's anyone in the whole kingdom strong enough to be your rival. Let alone such a little girl."

Joseph got up and went over to Aria. He said, "You will be surprised at the amount of things you don't know." He then lightly tapped on Aria's shoulder and said, "Hey, sleeping beauty. How about you get up now?"

Though this was supposed to be a pun on Joseph's side and Aria fully understood it, she was shocked to wake up to so many unknown faces looking like she owed them something.

As Aria got up, running her fingers through her hair, Joseph said goodbye to everyone with a lot of promises to come back again, and the two flew back to the castle.

Once they climbed back in Aria's room, Joseph said as he stood on the doorway, "It was fun."

Aria yawned and said, "It won't be so much fun tomorrow when we have to get up."

Joseph chuckled, said goodnight, and went out, and Aria locked the door after him.

As he descended the stairs to his own room, Joseph muttered, "I guess losing sometimes is not that bad."

Aria settled in quite nicely in the academy very soon. Despite the many, many stares she got as she progressed further and got more famous, this was hardly a source of annoyance to her.

But she stayed true to her roots. Aria was polite and never arrogant even with her overwhelming power. This was the reason that though people were envious of her powers, most could never bring themselves to hate her.