Sei and Yuji, Sei and Yuji, Sei and Yuji, Sei,...

 

One of them was a flirtatious and vain young master, who applied to be the student council president just to chase skirts, while the other was an academic genius but too serious for his own good.

 

They were the sole reason I could drag myself to school and put up with teachers who seemed to be more proficient at hypnotizing students into sleeping than doing their jobs. The short break hours for lunch, the after-school hangouts, the exciting class events, they are the ones I treasured and looked forward to the most after this tasteless spring vacation.

 

If only…

 

‘’******”

 

“***...***”

 

“***...**...*?”

 

It’s no use, huh?

 

“No matter what, it just won’t come out...”

 

“Eris-sama … what are you saying? I cannot understand at all.”

 

Seemingly disturbed by my cryptic monologue, Nora who was sitting on the seat next to me could not bear it anymore and interrupted. At the moment, she was examining my arms by turning it upside down, over and over to check for any mark or bruises. Her expression was frozen in place, but her actions were done with such haste that could be mistaken for a doctor in emergency cases.

 

“Rather than that, haven’t you been kind of weird today? First, you zoned out a lot and forgot all your preferences when we tried to do your morning routine. Then, you suddenly got all cozy with a human trash that you nearly got hit by my blade blocking it for him, had my reflexes not been trained enough. There was a lot of trash there, so I did not pursue any further, but, ...”

 

She drew her face closer to mine, while her eyes were scrutinizing my face as if to kill on the spot any anomalies should they appear.

 

“You need to keep your image, princess, especially when all around us are enemies.”

 

The distance before our skin touched was becoming a little bit too close for comfort, so I awkwardly repositioned myself a bit close to the car window.

 

If you do care about public image, then please don’t swing a real sword at someone you have just met…

 

I heaved a large sigh.

 

“Nora.”

 

Realizing that she was barely an inch away from me, Nora quickly straightened back her posture to a perfect ninety degrees, while her hands were neatly placed on top of her thighs.

 

“Your servant is always here, Eris-sama.”

 

I turned to my left and looked at her in the eyes. It was a pair of richly textured lapis lazuli, as beautiful as a starry night sky. Surely, the standard maid uniform had its own merits, but if she could get her hands on a proper set of clothes, I’m sure her sharp features would be even more charming.

 

“Have you ever ... dreamt?”

 

A flash of surprise crossed her face, but she quickly regained her usual coldness.

 

“I used to have dreams when I was young and my sleep hours were long, but life on the battlefield did not allow us such luxury. We often had to go through weeks with only half an hour of sleep per day, and ever since I have had next to no night dreams.”

 

So she was in the military? The war that I was told about, perhaps it was the one she directly partook in? It seemed to be a very brutal one, if even a maid like her had to fight.

 

My eyes dashed through her face to see if there was any emotion surfaced from her battlefield memories. I read somewhere in the net that war veterans often had flashbacks when their past trauma was mentioned, but her face was as calm as a pond on a windless day. 

 

“You know, Nora, this morning I dreamt that I was a boy, a boy as young as the students in this high school.”

 

“Were Eris-sama a demon prince, I think you would be very beautiful just like you are right now, even though I would prefer to serve a princess more.”

 

“That’s not it, Nora. In my dream, I was ... a human boy.”

 

Her facial muscles faintly twitched.

 

“Then… what did you, no, the human see in your dream, princess?”

 

“I was… I mean, the boy in my dream was very confused. He just woke up from a long dream where he also dreamt of being an entirely different person, one whose life was vastly different from his, and objectively speaking, maybe in the way he has always desired. He loved the dream and that made him reluctant to accept the reality around him immediately. He thought, ‘what if this is also a dream’, and everything in this word was only a reflection of his mind?”

 

“Then, he thought, ‘maybe if I could meet my friends, then they could confirm for me whether I am in a dream or not’. As a result, he first tried to call his childhood friend, but the number he dialed was not available,” I stopped for a moment “, afterward, he decided to come over to pay his friend a visit, but what greeted him when he arrived there, was only a barren field of nothingness. There was no trace of his friend’s bright red rooftop that he was so familiar with, or the small garden filled with various cute plants on which they used to play from morning till sunset, there was nothing.”

 

Nora looked at me with eyes that contained a slight glint of puzzlement. After much silence, she muttered.

 

“Uhm, then, that was only a dream of the… human brat, isn’t that right, Eris-sama? There is no way that brat’s friends would suddenly vanish like that, I think.”

 

“... yes, gladly, that was only a dream. And the friends he wished to see so much were still there when he woke up, it’s just … let’s say his emotions were messed up, and he acted impulsively, without caring that his actions could hurt his friends.”

 

As I finished speaking, I could hear the sound of metal being griped resonating in the car. Nora, who was listening closely to me, now turned to face me eye-to-eye.

 

“My lady, I have lived most of my life wielding my sword and following orders, I don’t know very much about human emotions like you. Or rather, I loathe everything about them.”

 

A bit extreme, but that’s Nora for you. Her cold face and personality matched so well, it’s kind of scary.

 

“But I cannot imagine the day when I could not see you or Clara anymore. Thinking about any further harm that could be done to her, or you makes me feel … restless. Those humans ….  Eris-sama, they are vicious beasts, not even one of them harbored any good intention. They feared us, they envied us, and these barbarians would not miss any chance to put us down.”

 

Nora’s face twisted in disgust. I naively thought that a tough person like her would not have any battle trauma, but it seemed that my words just invoked some bad memories in her. She has always been cold and indifferent about many things since our first met, but certainly, she was not void of emotion as she seemed to truly care about me. 

 

Such a warm feeling… Had it not been for the fact that she tried to kill Sei, I would have glomped her by now. Her distaste towards humans in this world seems to run deep. I wonder what she really had to go through?

 

Still, if ‘I’ had such a precious acquaintance, then, ‘I’ should be more responsible towards her, right? 

 

Come to think of it, what kind of person was ‘I’? The cozy atmosphere between her and I right now, perhaps, could afford that kind of question. I really need to know more information about ‘me’. 

 

“Tell me, Nora. What was I like?”

 

Even the atmosphere has soothed it by a bit, I could still see the visible confusion on her face. It was quite a dangerous bet.

 

“Eris-sama? What do you mean by that?”

 

“Last time, we talked about demonkind history, right? Now I want to know more about me, or rather, me in the eyes of others. How do you feel about my treatment up to this point? Don’t sweat it too much Nora, just think of it as a harmless employer’s survey.”

 

“Well, during the first time I and Clara had the opportunity to meet you, we saw you as someone who was very beautiful and gentle.”

 

Okay, that might not be very hard... 

 

“Your movements were graceful, and your demeanor was befitting of a princess. We could only stare at you in awe.”

 

Up to this point, I think ‘my’ muscles’ memory has been working well. Those elegant and feminine actions, even though my male mentality was not used to and they are more embarrassing than I thought, I could passably perform them.

 

“Your knowledge is also very respectable. My magic is not as good as my swordsmanship, so I often consult you about magic-related problems, and you always gave me a satisfactory answer. All-in-all, I could not expect a better master to serve than you, princess. You are the beacon of hope for we demons in this hostile world.”

 

Nora’s eyes glinted with heavy respect, that look was exactly the same as mine when Sei solved for me a Math problem in five minutes when it took me five hours.

 

This might be a problem.

 

I tried to search for anything magic-related in my mind, but nothing came up. While me in my imagination was furiously scratching its head, Nora clapped her hand together, as if she remembered something important.

 

“Ah, talking about magic, I faced a problem last night when experimenting with body-strengthening technique. Could you give me some advice on that, Eris-sama?”

 

As I looked at Nora whose expression was still freezing below zero, save for her eyes which were, in total contradiction with the rest of her face, glittering with expectations, I could only let out a stifled cough.

 

This could be a serious problem.