When university began for her, I often visited the campus. After all, having lunch at home by myself would have been dreadfully dull and it wasn’t like I had anything else to do.

So I also came to know some people on her course—and they knew me.

“Clara! Waiting for Osca?”

I closed the book on my lap and turned with a small smile, a habit from whenever I heard her name. “Yeah, we’re gonna go for a burger,” I said in their language.

Junip and Hue were two of the rather few girls on Oscara’s course and, while they told me that they wished to be Oscara’s friends, well, she was a rather shy sort, so I played “matchmaker”. I couldn’t imagine how she couldn’t be their friends, though, such sweet girls.

“Oh I love your outfit today,” Hue said.

Smiling, I stood up and gave them a twirl, pinching the skirt as I did. Oscara liked to buy me these elaborate dresses, similar but easier to wear than the ones of our world, the main difference that these tended to come in black, sometimes with parts in red or dark purple. Fortunately, she didn’t insist on the style of old makeup—my complexion in this world would’ve required a lot of work to make so pale.

“Oscara got me it for our birthday,” I said.

Junip frowned at that and said, “Our—as in, both of yours?”

“Oh yeah, we were born, like, a minute apart.”

Hue found that fairly funny, her smile amused. “And you were neighbours?”

“Yeah.”

Junip’s turn: “And now you live together?”

“Yup.”

They turned to each other and, after a second, both burst into giggles. I waited patiently for them to finish. Once they did, Junip asked, “And you’re really not dating?”

I sighed, such a strange question to be asked. “No.”

Saving me from any other questions, Clara arrived, saying, “Hey, sweetie.”

“Hi,” I said, smiling brightly.

Of course, once she reached me, she pulled me into a hug and gently kissed me, careful not to smudge my purple lipstick.

Apparently, that helped Junip overcome her fear of Oscara as she blurted out, “Clara told us you’re not dating.”

Oscara chuckled and kept holding me tight, swaying from side to side, then let me go, our hands ending up joined. “I used to think we were, but then I found out we’re just really close friends,” she said.

“What? That makes no sense,” Hue said.

I rolled my eyes while Oscara laughed again, squeezing my hands. “It only has to make sense to us,” she said.

Although I had needed to explain it to her, we were on the same page about that. This wasn’t our world of strict castes and arranged betrothals. So I had always acted on how I felt, let that define the relationship between us. After all, the only relationship that mattered to the government was marriage, anything else up to our discretion.

Of course, if she wanted to put a name to her feelings, I wouldn’t have minded. However, after I told her my thoughts on the matter, she smiled and agreed with me—but asked that we tell our parents we’re engaged.

Remembering that, I idly touched my ring. The meaning of something could change and so the promise our rings represented had changed too.

As wonderful as it was to live in a world that let us define and redefine things ourselves, that didn’t mean there were no problems. Her course had a lot of boys; I made sure she always looked pretty in the mornings—thus trouble.

Towards the end of her first year, I waited for her outside the library. She had exams to study for, so I gave her space during the day, but meals were something I always wanted to share with her when feasible. The weather rather nice, I had made a picnic. Sandwiches were something within my very limited culinary reach as they didn’t really require any skill beyond using a knife to spread—and some experience to know how much and which ingredients went together.

Well, I borrowed Oscara’s experience and wrote it down in my own little “cooking” notebook.

Anyway, I waited for her, a little annoyed she hadn’t come yet. It wasn’t like she was in a lecture and at the professor’s mercy. Not to mention, she usually arrived early when within her control. But I knew that nature sometimes called or the dreaded computer wasn’t printing or she was overly focused.

It turned out to be a much worse reason: a boy.

“Come on, I’ll treat you,” he said.

“I have plans.”

“Nah, I asked around and you’re not dating anyone. So come on, we can go as friends—no pressure.”

In the time it took them to get through the funny barrier things—why a library needed that, I didn’t know—he had said far too much for my liking. So I marched right over, gave her a good kiss, then scowled at him.

“She doesn’t need a friend like you.”

Without waiting for an answer, I strode off, dragging her behind me. However, my steam soon left and we just walked side-by-side to a quiet and grassy spot we liked. It was beneath a large tree for shade and the trunk gave a measure of privacy from the others on the grass.

Although I wasn’t upset with her, she pampered me until my sourness left, giving me little kisses and caressing my cheek and whispering sweet nothings. I repaid her with another kiss, this one lingering perhaps a little too long for where we were and leaving a purplish smudge on her lips. She sat obediently while I cleaned it off.

Making small talk as we ate, I said, “By the way, Fen and Ayana are engaged.”

“Really? To anyone we know?”

I waited for her to take a sip of tea from her weird bottle before saying, “To each other.”

She didn’t reward me with a splutter, simply swallowing and then saying, “Oh.”

Well, I couldn’t always get what I wanted. “They wish to meet up once your exams are over.”

“Sure.”

The wind gently blew, sun trickled through the leaves, and I could eat lunch with my Princess. A good day in the end.

As nice as having her all to myself would have been, the end of her exams saw her devote her days to part-time work again. I didn’t mind it as much, though, the time we spent in the mornings and evenings fulfilling enough, and I could sit quietly near her while she worked. What she did still eluded me, just that it apparently involved a lot of typing and, at times, muttered cursing.

Still, I looked forward to the day we returned “home”. When that day came, it was exactly what I knew it would be: cuddling with her on the train.

She was a rather introverted person who I believed could easily spend her entire life inside without issue. I could put up with staying home when I had her to cuddle, but otherwise preferred going out. It wasn’t that I even wanted to do anything particular when out, just the feeling of movement and space; modern buildings often left me feeling stifled.

So I looked out the window while she did whatever on her phone, saying whatever thoughts came to mind, often saying nothing.

At the other end, my parents picked us up. An onlooker wouldn’t have known which of us was the real daughter.

“How are my daughters?” my mother said, pulling us both into a hug, then she turned to Oscara. “Has Clara been behaving? Not making too much of a mess? Does she cook for you? I’m sorry, I tried to teach her, but—”

Thankfully, my father stopped her. As for Oscara, she giggled at the questions, then turned to me. “She’s perfect.”

That moment would have been wonderful if my mother hadn’t snorted. Covering her mouth, she said, “Hay fever.”

I rolled my eyes and kissed Oscara to show off. Childish, but my mother deserved it for doubting me.

We had lunch with my parents in town, then dinner with her parents at her home, then back to my home to sleep. I would have been fine staying at hers, but she had always told me my bed was more comfortable. To be honest, I thought she just liked that she was sleeping in my bed, but I never said anything as I liked the thought of her sleeping in my bed.

The next day, we met up with Fen and Ayana in the afternoon. They looked really happy. I was happy for them.

From what they told us, when I started to spend more time with Oscara, they grew closer to each other and, in some ways, grew envious of us. However, the spark that had joined them was more serious.

“I, um, had a pregnancy scare,” Fen said quietly. “The guy, he just told me to get an abortion. But I was… I felt like I was supposed to have my baby, so I talked to Ayana and the first thing she said—”

“I’ll raise her with you,” Ayana said, gazing at Fen with such loving eyes.

Fen burst into a cute smile and lowered her head. “We, we knew she’d be a girl, and we were gonna call her… Peace.”

“Gosh, that’s a gorgeous name,” I said.

They both smiled at that, then looked at each other and, well, I could tell they were resisting the urge to kiss. After a pause, Fen turned back to me and Oscara. “My period came a couple days later, but I remembered how… right it felt—having a child with Ayana. And when I told her there wasn’t gonna be a baby—”

“I said we’ll just have to adopt one,” Ayana said, ending with a giggle.

A shyness overcame Fen, but she still looked so happy. “We decided that, well, we should get married first, really. And we maybe joked about the wedding night… and drank a lot of wine—”

“And everything felt right,” Ayana said, and Fen nodded.

I waited to make sure their story had reached its end, then said, “I’m—we’re so happy for you.”

They both thanked us, then began needling us on when our wedding would be—Oscara answered, “When I graduate.” After that, there was some gossip about our old classmates. That mostly consisted of who had “come out” and Ayana eventually explained that there was a queer scene starting up in the nearby town that they were a part of.

“One thing, and please stop us if you don’t want to say—” Fen said.

“But we love talking to other sapphics about what sex with women is like for them,” Ayana said.

Although I didn’t particularly mind sharing, I turned to Oscara and saw she looked hesitant. “What if I, like, say what I feel?” I softly said.

“Sure,” she said.

Such a kind Princess, I gave her a kiss, much to Fen’s and Ayana’s delighted squeals. Once they settled down again, I spoke.

“It’s, like, sometimes I don’t even know we started. We just kiss and, you know, it’s not enough, so we keep going. But sometimes, I feel a bit lonely and want her to spoil me. And that’s, um, the way I like it. It’s not really about, like, getting off, I just want her to… I want to be her world. So when, you know, it’s not just about me, but when she’s, like, spoiling me, I tell her what I feel like I need. Kisses, or touches, or sometimes just cuddles.”

Focused on trying to speak coherently and elegantly in their language, I didn’t take much notice of their reaction, lost in my head. So I almost jumped when they both suddenly said, “Aww.”

A bit flustered, I turned to Oscara again, only to find her with a rather gentle expression, making me feel awfully self-conscious. It wasn’t exactly that I was embarrassed about my feelings, just that I wasn’t expecting such a reaction. After all, to me, they were perfectly normal.

They probed me a little more on my feelings before the topic moved on, the conversation meandering for a while longer. Then Oscara and I returned to my home for dinner.

Silence was not unusual between us, very much a necessity with how much time we spent around each other; however, I worried that I perhaps had said too much earlier, hard to articulate my feelings without touching on what she did to me.

Alas, I worried for nothing.

Darkness blanketed my old bedroom, the two of us snuggled close to fit on the bed that was no longer quite big enough, which rather exasperated how summer’s heat lingered into the night. Yet neither of us had suggested sleeping any other way, foolish as we were.

“Duchess?”

Her whisper sounded so loud in the silence, close to my ear. “Yes, my Princess?” I whispered back in our language.

“What do you think about… having kids?”

I smiled to myself and squeezed her hand resting against my stomach. “Long ago, I thought it would be nice if, after we both married men and had children, we then lived and raised our children together.”

“Do you still want to do that?”

A rather difficult to answer question, unclear what exactly she was asking. So I addressed everything. “If you are interested in having children of your own, I would be supportive, but I do not wish to share your intimacy with someone else. As for myself, I… if it could be your child, I would have her. As that is not possible at this time, I would like to adopt a child one day.”

Having said a lot, I did not find the silence that followed unexpected, patiently waiting for her to think through my words.

Sure enough, she eventually spoke. “Just one child?”

Smiling, I squeezed her hand again. “Two would be nice. It can be lonely growing up without a friend.”

“You think you’ll be a good mother?”

I pinched her for that, pleased at the little gasp she let out. “As you will be busy working, I shall learn to cook and keep the place tidy and they will utterly adore me,” I said.

For her revenge, she kissed the back of my neck, sending a shiver down my spine. “They definitely will.”

In that moment, I felt such peace, and in my heart of hearts I vowed that even death wouldn’t dissolve the ever-changing promise I made to her.

End of Arc.

mialbowy

Long spoiler for “What if Clara became a VTuber?”

Spoiler

This isn’t part of the story, but I can totally see “Duchess” being a popular VTuber. Super arrogant, talking in something like a valley girl accent. If anyone says she doesn’t sound like nobility, she tells them it’s her second language and threatens to ban them. Though people try to insist she isn’t really a duchess, she can go into such detail on countless traditional high society topics that many joke she is a reincarnated duchess. Of course, she denies that—she was only a duke’s daughter and not even close to inheriting.

There are also those who say her avatar isn’t very “authentic”, either regarding the more gothic lolita style of clothing or her darker skin tone / not-English features. She bans the latter group and chides both groups for being stupid—“Like, I am a duchess, so this is what duchesses look like. If the Queen of England wears a tracksuit or gets a tan, are you gonna tell her she’s not a queen?”

Her fans call themselves maidens as she is very explicit that there are no boys in her chat. Any time she mentions a chatter by name, she uses female pronouns—unless they use one of her pronoun emotes, in which case she respects that. As such, there are maybe some fans who try to get her attention for some gender affirmation (“Look at John286, she knows what I mean.”)

She often slips into her first language, especially when talking about her “Princess”—and she bans anyone who ever says anything bad about her Princess, no mercy. People sometimes say it’s not a real language, but she and Princess do “tests” to prove it is now and then. Some people claim they’re cheating at the tests and those people are banned, while others pick up on some of the words, turning them into catchphrases (notably selata, which Duchess likes to use in the literal meaning to tease Princess).

Of course, she’s terrible at video games. If too many people are criticising her, then she drags Princess to take over; Princess isn’t actually that much better, but anyone who says she’s bad gets banned, so everyone overly praises her.

People will often ask Duchess what her relationship is with Princess, and she always says friends, but freely talks about how they sleep together and kiss and how beautiful Princess is and how they’re eventually getting married and adopting children. When people say that’s called lovers or girlfriends or fiancées, she goes off on a rant about other people labelling her feelings and that, to her, “My Princess” is the only label needed.

When they adopt, there’s sometimes homophobes who try and shame her, saying she’s not a real mother / they’re not really her children / two women can’t make babies. That sets her off on such a rant.

“Are you stupid? If I go outside with my babies and you shout at me like that, you’ll get arrested and everyone will think you’re crazy, so why are you doing it here? Did your dad give birth to you—isn’t he your parent? So what if me or Princess didn’t give birth, I have the papers that say they are our babies, or are you saying the government is lying? And there are enough babies already, so who cares if people can or can’t make babies. Are you going to go attack straight couples that adopt? Are you going to accept gay parents if one has a dick and one has a pussy? Don’t come here and tell me our feelings aren’t real. They’re our daughters and we’re their mothers and you saying stupid shit doesn’t change how we feel.”

Needless to say, the maidens make sure to drown out anyone who tries to set Duchess off on another rant as they joke that it hurts to see someone so thoroughly beaten over and over.

Oh and, of course, on stream, the daughters are called Countess (the older one) and Baroness, both around the same age.

Anyway, that’s just some silly thoughts I had after thinking of what “job” Clara could have. I don’t know how to write an interesting story about streaming, but I’d like to write about these two again if I work out how.

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