Mei stared at her computer screen where she kept a log of events up to this point. It had been a long, long time since she started this particular journal-- nearly a year now, wasn’t it?-- but her memory stretched back in time as she read back in the files. Oi. Why are we looking at this?

“I’m looking at this because I’m stuck.” Mei rubbed her eyes in irritation, then reached up to rub her temples. “There’s just been way too much information, and I have to remember. If I can’t figure out how to—”

We already know what we have to do. It's what we've always done.

“… The question is, how?”

And so it was that Mei began, unfortunately, at the beginning.

Where had everything started to change?

It wasn’t the first day of classes, April 12th. That had been an average day, for all it had been the first day of college—

Mei had already moved in a few days before, and the routine had already settled in by that point, an extension of her previous work during high school. It simply had a few extra steps now that her charge was in an apartment next door instead of merely another room.

Though no, the steps were simply different. She didn’t have to wake up in servants’ quarters, hurry through a cold breakfast, take a half hour with her instructor, and then go wake Ichigo up. She could just do it. That alone was a taste of simple freedom, even though habit and her paranoia grated at her, telling her on no uncertain terms

As such, a simple meal of miso would serve, and she took the time to set that up and take her own meal while she waited for Ichigo to stir.

This was not normally part of a bodyguard’s job description, but since Mei had a cover to keep, she did it anyway. Keeping him close protected him, after all.

Overall the process still took Mei some fifteen minutes, but by the end, Kaneko Ichigo had roused, thrown on a shirt and some pants, and come to join her.

Ichigo had dyed his hair black until he had learned he’d passed exams to get into national university, and so now his hair was showing his blond roots. Tanned, with an easy, amiable expression and golden eyes, he was very much the picture of a yankee-style jock. “Eh? Mei? What’s going on?”

“We have class, remember?”

The talk wasn’t even particularly new. Mei and Ichigo both consumed breakfast in relative silence until they took the way to classes at a swift jog.

Ichigo was 25 centimeters and 30 kilograms Mei’s better. His shoulder aligned with the top of her head. That said, it was easy to keep up with him; the fact of long practice and hard work Mei was still proud of.

Today was computer use and maths, and tomorrow was science and history; the classes were thick with standardization and students damn near sleeping through them.

After that was working on the coursework and cleaning up after the cooking Mei had to do.

It hadn’t even been a week since they’d moved to these apartments, and Ichigo’s place was still a total mess of unpacked moving boxes, rooted through as Ichigo needed items, other things gently strewn on the floor. She picked up the boxes of discarded convenience store food. “Ichigo, if I’m not cooking enough for you, you can just say so.”

“Ah— Well, that’s…” He bounced his head from left to right. “It’s a little complicated, you know?”

“Mm. Don’t forget tryouts are next week. We’ll be training until then.”

This mirrored Mei’s daily life from the last year of middle school onward. She could paint it in her mind’s eye as easily as breathing, because she had done it, easily as breathing, exactly as routine. The only thing different was where, and the distressing number of moving boxes still in place.

This was the shape that Ichigo’s parents had chosen for her life. To be a shadow for Ichigo. 148 centimeters tall. Black hair, red-brown eyes. Even with a bright red ribbon, unremarkable and unremarked, compared to the much more vivid and jovial Kaneko Ichigo.

In short, a perfect wife for a modern prince, and well Mei knew she’d been prepared for such. She was still prepared for such.

But in the present, when Mei looked at that entry, of ‘classes began. Otherwise nothing of remark.’, her hands twitched, and she almost closed the journal right then in remembered fear.

Deep down, she recognized, even then, that this shape of her life meant she was terribly unlucky.