My wish would be to see my son alive and well again, to redo all my mistakes, to fix this between us. A second chance. But what would they take away from me? What do I stand to lose?

"What do you want? What are you?"

"Again, I'm Ete. And it's not about what I want. It's about what you want. I can bring you back to before you both died. Doesn't that sound good?" Their face stays inches away from mine, smile growing wider and wider.

"That's too vague for me. This isn't my world, and I'm not who I should be. I'm already dead. Where is this, and what was going on earlier? I want this written down."

"Yes, yes. A book your son was reading before he died." At my expression, Ete cackles. "You think it's silly? But he likes them. Don't blame him too much--Elisa got him started. They share it together."

I had never known that about either of my children. "Why a novel?"

"That's not important." Ete swirls themself around me, spinning in circles above my head, playfully. "Just know if you don't say yes, I can't help you, you know? And I'm very capable."

"Capable how?"

"I'll bring you both back to life. I'll revive you at the moment you arrive at the school."

I frown. "Why not earlier?"

I throw the chair at them instead of answering, chest heaving.

Ete squawks as it passes through them. Suddenly the room lightens.

The doorknob is there, so I turn on my heel and twist it open. I storm out of there into the sunlight.

"Where are you going?" Fingers and tendrils immediately circle my arms and shoulders, only to be sent scalding away by the sunlight. Ete wails behind me. "Lee Huang, don't you love your son?"

I stride quickly down the hallway, hearing the swoosh of the horrific being following after me. Ete catches up quickly. That eerie form shift back, hidden under skin, bone and clothes. In the hallway mirror, a human visage sprouts on his--their? its?--face as we round the corner, but Ete doesn't huff and puff with effort either. Each footstep hits the carpet in time with mine as if the only person walking is me.

Henry...

Forgive your foolish father, Henry.

We eventually stop at the room. I test the doorknob--locked. My hands tremble. "Key."

"I don't want to," Ete says, sliding their back flush against one of the doors, pouting. What a stupid face. If they were one of my children, I'd have knocked the sense upside their head. "You walked out on me."

"Give. me. the key."

"Say yes first."

I grab Ete by the lapel. One hard shove against throat, and then I pin it. I grab the key myself from their pocket.

"Hmph." Ete pushes themself off, eyes rolling, as I unlock the door. "You're such a human."

Henry's ragged face looks up. The relief pulls the sigh from my chest, even if the guilt remains.

"Hen--"

Ete smiles pleasantly and unthreateningly, popping their head over my shoulder. "Young master! We've returned!"

I try to close the door on them. "Leave us," I snap, but this damn thing slips through the crack like a cat. I yank it back it by the collar.

Henry has stood up.

"Not you. Sit down."

He sits, eyes down on the ground, shoulders hunched up.

"It's almost funny how he well he's listening." Ete leans into my space, face mischievous and trouble-making. "If you say jump, will he jump?"

I risk it; I grab them by their wrist and start dragging them towards the door.

"Wait-!" They're pounding on the door, trying the handle. "Wait, wait, wait, wait!"

I open the door. "Be quiet," I tell Ete in measured tones. "I will speak to my son first, and then I will deal with you later." They open their mouth. "Since 'wait' is your favourite word right now, wait for twenty minutes. If you can't, then I won't bother with you."

This will surely lead to trouble, but to my surprise, Eve calms down. They blink at me slowly. "...just twenty minutes? And you'll say yes?"

"Twenty minutes and I will...listen with more attention," I confirm.

Eve tilts their head without blinking, and then looks over my shoulder at Henry pointedly. "I could eat him right now."

Panic fills me. "I'll be asking you for details later. Just go."

They smile with teeth. "Go~ing~"

I don't care to think about what I've implicitly agreed to. After I close the door and turn back, Henry's face--whatever emotion it had on it--filters into something neutral and unreadable as he stares at his hands on his knees.

The tightness in my chest returns. "Look at me."

He doesn't.

"Henry, I said look at me." 

When he does, the position mirrors the one he chose when we were back in that car, but the expression is different.

I'll admit, it disorients me. When Henry was three years old, he cut his hands on the broken shards of a glass cup his sister had dropped. Henry's expression as he had looked up at me, extending his cut hands, stumbling forwards in my direction--when had it stopped?

When had it stopped that my son had stopped looking to me to fix things? To help him? He had grown up to not rely on me, but this one...

I put a hand on the edge of the sofa to steady myself. "Henry, explain to me what happened."

"It's not my fault," he begins.

"Whose fault?"

"This time it isn't my fault," he corrects, and then stops. "I'm sorry, father. I know you work hard. I know this isn't what you wanted from me. I know...I'm a disappointment."

I sigh heavily through my nose. "Just tell me, Henry. Ba will help you no matter what."

It's a parent's job to raise and look after their children, to help them be strong after hard lessons.

I regret...that I remembered that too late.

In the end, this is what Henry tells me, and is what I can understand of this world and of where we are and its circumstances:

Before everything, we were a merchant-class family. Eventually, the king elevated us to success through our ties with the trade and the kingdom. Henry, my only child, went to the Academy where he fell in love with a girl.

"A girl," I say slowly. I ruminate too on the fact that none of my other children exist here. Not Elisa with her sense of responsibility and ambition, not David with his ever sly, diplomatic nature, and not Peter who always boldly calls it all like it is.

Henry flinches, looking ashamed at the same time as wistful. It's a new expression on his face, one I've never had the chance to see that isn't shut off. Whatever the relationship Henry and I have back in our old world, it isn't the same here.

Still, we'll go nowhere and everywhere at this rate. "Keep explaining." I have to wonder if the reason Henry was in that office in the first place was also over a girl.

This girl, Lily, is the type to play very nicely with everyone only to scheme for her own ends. Henry's explanation of her is that of a delicate flower--the opposite of Elisa's constitution and nature, but no less than her in ability. She was a weak child and hardly went outside of her family's mansion and grounds. Her parents expected she would die of sickness at a young age.

"She's strong," he says, and Henry's eyes seem to sparkle. His expression softens, and love fills it at every angle, and a small smile spreads on his face. "And she's incredibly smart, father. She makes me want to become a better person."

The conversation continues on and on.

Knowing her limited abilities, Lily Evanheart made good on her resources. With smarter person as her partner, perhaps she would go on to do greater things, but for now, I can see she has been taking advantage of my son.

As self-declared enemies in the higher noble circles, Henry and the crown prince have been matching egos for weeks since they entered the Academy. Constantly scheming or trying to sabotage one another for her attention, Henry has used my connections to his advantage: Gifts of high monetary and resell value; introductions to the unsavory black market, its sellers and wares; promises to do things for her happiness. A small smile and a gracious appearance is all she needs for Henry to have fallen head over heels, while she dances another dance with the crown prince.

She's officially the crown prince's fiancée, and Henry is a fool in love.

The so-called poison slipped to her was supposed to be an elixir, a part of Henry's birthday gift to her. How it had been misconstrued and replaced with poison, however...I can understand now why Henry believes he's been framed.

"Are these my files?" I ask, eventually, trying to understand it all. This Henry is not my Henry, and yet he shares so willingly with me. Was this man whose body I have a better father to him here, or just as bad as I?

"Yes," Henry says, after hesitation. He's still restrained, but he's more willing to share as he keeps speaking. As if the dam breaking loose has allowed him to express what he has needed to for so long. I know he has friends; in any place and any time, Henry has been always known as the sociable one, and I don't doubt this for this world either. But with the hierarchy as it is...

Wordlessly, I turn a page, then another. Dipping my head to read it, before squinting.

This room is apparently my study. From the drawer, I pull out a set of spectacles.

Split between hovering over me while standing and remaining seated, Henry gets up and changes his mind several times before he decides to settle by standing in front of the desk, hands clasped in front of him.

It reminds me of the earlier years, when the children were starting to get report cards. I'd have them show me what they had received that year. David had tried to falsify Peter's grades, and I'd punished them both for it, but overall they had learned my expectations quickly. Henry had been the youngest of the four--he'd been born when Elisa had been nearing the end of elementary school, so a good ten years' difference at least.

"You can sit down," I tell him, distracted, but Henry seems to prefer to stand. In my files is a notarization of missing items from the treasury. Costs. Messages from my servants sent about my son's whereabouts. It appears I have a sizeable spy network.

"I know you were looking into...the things I've done. I promise none of them would ruin the family name." In other words, there are things I would have reason to be furious about. "I wouldn't go that far," Henry says. "I know--"

"Let me look," I say, pushing the spectacles up my nose. Henry closes his mouth.

I glance down, trying to find the best angle to look through--they're half-moon, much smaller and harder to keep on than my usual pair, but eventually I manage.  

There is a page about the elixir--except it wasn't. It was only ever ordered as a medicine. Odorless, tasteless, that would numb the sensations to a person's nerves. Pain would be muted to a much more tolerable level. Too much would mean an overdose, but it was powerful enough I could see how my foolish son had been mistaken to think it would've fixed everything. It seemed she had only mentioned it offhandedly to him.

That girl had been more or less cognizant at the party. I couldn't tell at all if she was condoning or aware of what had happened, but if she's as smart as Henry tells me she is, her stance seemed clear enough.

I remove the glasses. "Was this Miss Evanheart taking medicine at the time?" Maybe there had been a reaction with Henry's choice of gift. In this case, it'd have been self-sabotage out of ignorance rather than deliberate attempted murder.

"Yes. She's tried pretty much everything. These days, I think it's stuff that bastard--"

I glance at the door. "Who?"

Henry scowls. "Crown prince Roland." Even the title sounds like he's holding charcoal in his mouth.

So she would've maybe known or recognized this medicine. "Mm," I acknowledge, looking through the rest of the papers. Here's one of Henry's allowance--what is the currency exchange here?

"And I know she doesn't like him," Henry continues, a little bolder. "She says it all the time. He's overbearing, he doesn't listen--"

"She likes that you listen?" I ask, absentmindedly, reraising the spectacles to my face. This is quite a sum.

"Yes! She's said it too. I listen better, I'm more thoughtful, I notice her moods so much better--"

"And if it wasn't for him, she'd have chosen you?"

"Ye--" Henry stops, cold. "That's...not it."

I don't say anything, more focused on the fact that it seems I was working on a trade deal with the neighbouring kingdom about the mass imports of coal. It seems in this world, there is no clean energy resource. At the same time, there is also trade on what seems to be mana crystals--I don't know what mana is. I should find out eventually.

"That's not it."

"Mm."

Henry's voice grows hoarse, and more panicked. "She's not--she's not like that. Lily is perfect!"

I set the papers down firmly. "Don't raise your voice at me."

My son's chest heaves. Colour and fury, all familiar things I know like the back of my hand face me. The defiance, the fighting--he looks like he wishes to strike me. This angers me to the point I stand. "Say what you're thinking."

Henry stands firm. "She's better than either of us."

I haven't even said anything. "What do you get from defending her?" I ask, coldly. "If she's not going to be with you or marry you--"

"Our connection isn't like that! She's--you don't understand how she is."

"I don't think I need to."

"Father-!" Henry shuts himself up, too angry to speak.

"She didn't defend you. I was the one who pulled you out of there." This is the truth. If she really was such a good friend of his, would she have simply stayed silent, content to be held in someone's arms? She knows.

"You don't understand her position. If she says one wrong thing, her family is doomed." What the hell is wrong with this boy? Doesn't he remember who raised him? Who fed, clothed, and made sure he had enough to live by? Who...!

"The 'crown prince's fiancée'," I repeat the strange words on my tongue, and Henry flinches. "Henry, I am not here to fight with you."

"I'm going."

"Henry-!"

He's already stormed out of the room.