Erza raised her hand and knocked.
Knock. Knock.
The sound was small against the wood, almost timid, nothing like the authority she usually carried in her movements. She waited, her ear tilted toward the door, listening for footsteps, for movement, for any sign that someone on the other side had heard her.
Nothing.
She frowned and knocked again, harder this time, the impact sharp and deliberate. Still nothing. She could hear voices inside, Yuuta's low murmur, Elena's bright chatter, but neither of them seemed to register the sound at the door. They were too caught up in whatever they were doing, too comfortable, too normal to be waiting for her return.
The thought irritated her more than it should.
What is this mortal doing? she thought, her fingers tightening around the handle. Does he not care that I was late? That I said I would be back in an hour and it has been much longer than an hour? That something could have happened to me?
She caught herself and stopped the thought before it could go further.
Why would he care? I am nothing to him. A threat. A judgment hanging over his head. He would be happier if I never came back.
The thought settled into her chest like a stone, heavy and cold.
She shook it off and reached for the handle, meaning to knock again, to make more noise, to demand attention the way she always did. But the door gave beneath her fingers, not locked, not even fully closed. It swung open a crack, the darkness of the apartment visible through the gap.
Her heart stopped.
It was not locked. It had never been locked. All this time, she had been standing in the hallway, working up the courage to knock, to announce herself, to face whatever waited on the other side, and the door had been open the whole time.
She pushed it open slowly, the hinges groaning a soft protest, the light from the hallway spilling into the darkened entryway.
She could hear voices from the living room, Yuuta's voice, low and frustrated, Elena's voice, high and questioning, and something about the sound of them, so ordinary, so unconcerned, made her hesitate.
She paused with her hand on the doorframe, her borrowed clothes still damp from the night air, the blood still drying beneath her fingernails.
He always announces himself, she thought. He says 'I'm home' so that I know he is here. So that I am not startled. So that I am not afraid.
The memory came unbidden: Yuuta's voice, warm and tired, calling out as he pushed through the door after a long night of work. Elena running to meet him. The sound of his laugh, the way he always looked for her first, the way he always made sure she knew he had returned.
She had thought it was foolish. Weak. The habit of a mortal who needed others to know he existed.
But standing here now, in the darkened hallway of a home that was not hers, wearing clothes that did not fit, carrying secrets she could not explain
She wanted someone to know she was here.
She took a breath. The words came out softer than she intended, barely a whisper, barely audible even to her own ears.
"I'm home."
Her face flushed. The words hung in the air, foolish and small, and she waited, her heart beating too fast, her hands clenched at her sides, listening for footsteps, for voices, for anything.
Seconds passed.
No one came.
She could hear Yuuta and Elena in the living room, their voices rising and falling, too absorbed in whatever they were doing to notice her. She had said the words. She had done the mortal thing, the weak thing, the thing that made her feel exposed and foolish and somehow hopeful.
And they had not heard.
Her face went cold. Her hands unclenched.
"Look like this mortal is seeking death," she said to herself, the words clipped and sharp. "Today I will surely beat the shit out of him."
She walked down the hallway, her footsteps silent, her presence a storm barely contained. The door to the living room was cracked open, light spilling through the gap, voices carrying through the wood. She pushed it open.
And stopped.
The room was a disaster.
Books were everywhere, stacked on the table, piled on the floor, spread across the sofa like fallen leaves. Chips crumbs littered the surface of every flat space, the remains of some snack Elena had convinced Yuuta to buy.
Papers covered in scribbled notes and diagrams were scattered across the floor, some of them crumpled, some of them torn, all of them evidence of some frantic effort she did not understand. Pens and markers had rolled into corners, lost beneath furniture, abandoned in the chaos.
And in the middle of it all, Yuuta lay sprawled across the largest pile of books like a corpse washed up on a shore of paper. His head was tilted back, his mouth slightly open, his arm draped across a stack of documents he had apparently given up on.
Elena was curled beside him, smaller than the mess around her, her tiny body half-hidden beneath a blanket of loose pages, her face peaceful in sleep.
"What the hell is going on here?" Erza's voice cut through the room like a blade.
Yuuta jerked awake, his head snapping up, his eyes wild and unfocused. He looked at her, at her borrowed clothes, at her bare arms, at the dried blood still visible on her hands and face, but his mind was clearly still trapped in whatever nightmare he had been living before she arrived.
"What should I do?" he said, his voice cracked, desperate. "I can't help. I can't"
Erza crossed her arms.
"What," she said, her voice dropping to temperatures that should have flash-frozen the air between them, "is going on?"
The chill in her voice finally reached him. His eyes focused. His mouth closed. He looked at the chaos around him, at the books and papers and crumbs, at his daughter sleeping in the middle of a disaster zone, at the woman standing in the doorway wearing clothes that did not fit with blood still drying on her skin.
"I can explain," he said.
Erza's eyes narrowed.
"You have ten seconds."
Yuuta sat up straighter, his hands raised in surrender, his face a mixture of exhaustion and embarrassment. The books and papers were scattered around him like the aftermath of a small explosion, and he looked like a man who had been through a war and lost.
"So what the hell is this?" Erza gestured at the chaos around her, her voice cold, her eyes sweeping across the room like she was surveying a battlefield. "And why is the living room completely destroyed?"
Yuuta opened his mouth, then closed it, then opened it again. "Well, you see," he began, his voice rushed, desperate to explain before she decided to freeze him where he sat. "After you left, we had a long conversation about the school and their history.
Since we don't have the money to buy their official documents, the Headmaster gave me some materials to read, and I was trying to understand everything, and there was so much information, and Elena wanted to help, and then we ordered food, and the books kept coming, and I couldn't find a place to put them, and then she got tired, and I got tired, and"
Erza's hand shot up.
"Stop." Her voice was sharp, cutting through his rambling like a blade. "Stop explaining. You are making it worse. All of this" she gestured at the mess, at the books, at the crumbs, at the papers scattered across every surface, "is giving me a headache."
She stepped closer to him, stepping over a stack of documents, pushing a pile of papers aside with her foot. Her borrowed jacket shifted as she moved, and for the first time, Yuuta noticed what she was wearing. It was not her dress, the white and violet dress he had bought her was gone.
Instead, she wore a dark jacket that was too short for her, the sleeves ending well above her wrists, and beneath it, something that barely covered her legs, leaving her calves bare, her knees exposed, more skin visible than he had ever seen on her before.
His face went pink.
She was still moving toward him, her eyes fixed on his face, her expression unreadable. He could not look away from her legs, he tried, he genuinely tried, but they were right there, pale and smooth and completely exposed, and his brain had apparently decided that this was the most important thing happening right now.
She stopped in front of him.
Her hand reached out.
Her fingers pressed against his temple.
"Memory reading," she said.
The world shifted.
He was there again, sitting in the Headmaster's office, the golden invitation on the table between them, the weight of the decision pressing down on his shoulders. The Headmaster's voice filled the space, warm and enthusiastic, explaining everything the academy had to offer.
"We treat every child as an individual," the Headmaster was saying, his hands moving as he spoke. "Each student receives personalized attention, curriculum tailored to their strengths, support for their weaknesses. We do not mold children to fit our system. We build the system around them."
Yuuta's voice answered, small and uncertain. "And the cost? The scholarship covers"
"Everything. Tuition, books, uniforms, meals, transportation. Your daughter will lack for nothing."
The memory shifted. The Headmaster was showing him photographs now, children in crisp uniforms walking through halls that looked like palaces, gardens filled with flowers, libraries that stretched farther than the eye could see. A cafeteria with food arranged like art, the meals prepared by chefs who had trained in the finest restaurants. Buses that were more like private cars, each one assigned to a handful of students, designed for safety and comfort.
"We take security very seriously," the Headmaster was saying. "Each child has a personal escort from their home to the school and back. Background checks on every driver. GPS tracking on every vehicle. We have never lost a student, and we never will."
Another shift. The Headmaster was arguing with his assistants now, their voices rising, their faces tense. One of them was gesturing at a document, his expression dark. "This is unprecedented, Headmaster. Offering a direct scholarship without board approval? The other families will see this as favoritism. The student council will demand"
The Headmaster's voice cut through. "The student council can demand whatever they like. I have seen what this child is capable of. She learned chess in an hour and defeated every bot we put before her. She is four years old. Imagine what she will be at fourteen. At twenty-four."
"But the precedent"
"I am the Headmaster. I set the precedent."
The memory settled into its final scene. The Headmaster was writing something on a card, his hand steady, his face calm. "The interview will be held the day after tomorrow. Bring your daughter to the academy at nine in the morning. We will take care of the rest."
Erza watched the memory close, the images fading, the voices growing distant.
She was about to pull back when something else surfaced.
Yuuta's memory shifted again, unbidden, the way memories sometimes did when the mind wandered into private places.
The memory shifted, and Erza found herself watching him walk down a hallway she did not recognize, toward a door she had never seen. His hand rested on the handle. The door began to open. She could see the edge of a sink, the corner of a mirror, the beginning of something she had no right to witness.
Her face went red.
No, she thought, pulling back, trying to close the connection. I should not be seeing this. This is not, this is private. This is
The memory held her.
She couldn't look away. Couldn't stop. Could do nothing except watch as the door closed behind him, as the moment she had no right to intrude upon began to unfold.
Then
Yuuta reached for his zipper.
The faint metallic sound echoed far louder than it should have in her ears.
Erza froze.
Her mind went blank.
Heat rushed to her face instantly.
"…Enough."
Her voice came out sharper than intended.
She slammed the connection shut.
Her hand dropped from Yuuta's temple. She staggered backward, her breath coming in short, sharp gasps, her face burning, her heart pounding in her chest like a trapped bird. She dropped to one knee, one hand pressing against the scattered books, the other against her chest, trying to steady herself.
"Unbelievable…" she muttered under her breath.
Yuuta stared at her, confused and alarmed. His face was still pink, but confusion quickly overtook his embarrassment.
"What did you see?" he asked, his voice uncertain. "What was in my head that made you react like that? Did I think something wrong? Did I"
He stopped.
His expression shifted.
Slowly, realization dawned.
His face turned red.
"…Wait."
A pause.
"Wait."
He pointed at her.
"You pervert!"
The words burst out of him.
"You pervert queen! What did you see?!"
Erza's reaction was immediate, pure instinct, the kind that had kept her alive through centuries of battle.
Her fist connected with his head before she even consciously decided to strike.
Crack.
Yuuta hit the floor.
He lay there, one hand pressed to the back of his head, a bump already forming, his expression dazed and confused.
"W-What was that for?!"
Erza rose to her feet, her borrowed jacket settling around her, her legs still exposed, her face still faintly red despite her effort to control it. She crossed her arms, lifted her chin, and fixed him with the coldest look she could muster.
"You idiot mortal," she said flatly.
Her face was red.
And somewhere in the back of her mind, the memory of his thoughts lingered, refusing to fade.
For her.
Yuuta pushed himself up from the floor, still rubbing his head, still looking at her with that mixture of confusion and embarrassment that she was beginning to recognize.
"What did you see in my head?" he asked.
Erza turned away.
"Nothing," she said. "Your memories are as empty as your head. There was nothing worth seeing."
Yuuta knew, in that moment, that she had seen something in his memory. He could not prove it, would never be able to prove it, but the way her face had turned that particular shade of red, the way she had slammed the connection closed, the way she was now refusing to meet his eyes as she stood in the doorway of the ruined living room, all of it told him everything he needed to know. She had seen something she should not have. Something private. Something he had not meant for anyone to see, least of all her.
And if he pressed her on it, if he asked a single question, if he even looked at her the wrong way, she would beat the shit out of him.
He decided, very wisely, to let it go.
Erza sighed, still standing in the doorway, her arms crossed, her borrowed jacket pulling tight across her shoulders. She was pretending nothing had happened, too, her composure already restored, her face settled back into that familiar mask of cold indifference. Only the faintest trace of pink remained at the tips of her ears, and Yuuta was too smart to mention it.
"So," she said, her voice flat, "you made a mess of the room because of this so called interview?"
Yuuta looked around at the chaos, the books stacked in precarious towers, the papers scattered like fallen leaves, the crumbs ground into the carpet, his daughter sleeping peacefully in the center of it all like a tiny queen surveying her ruined kingdom. There was no point in hiding it. No point in making excuses.
"Yes," he admitted. "I was clueless about the interview. Completely clueless. The Headmaster explained so much, but the more he explained, the less I understood. So I tried to research. To prepare. To make sure I didn't ruin this for Elena." He gestured at the mess around him. "This is the result."
Erza surveyed the room again, her eyes moving slowly across the disaster zone. She saw the books piled high with markers and sticky notes protruding from their pages. She saw the papers filled with frantic handwriting, diagrams, question marks, entire paragraphs crossed out. She saw the empty chip bags, the abandoned pens, the way Yuuta had clearly been working himself into exhaustion long before she arrived.
He made this mess out of fear, she realized. Out of panic. Out of desperation to get this right for her.
She sighed again, softer this time, and something in her expression shifted.
"So," she said, "did you learn anything? About this interview you are so afraid of?"
Yuuta perked up immediately, grateful for the change of subject. "Yes! Yes, I learned a lot. The Headmaster explained everything. The interview is broken into four parts, well, technically four, but he said the first two are the most important."
Erza waited.
"First is family bonding," Yuuta continued, counting on his fingers. "They want to see how the family interacts. How we support each other. How we... work together." He swallowed, suddenly aware of how that sounded. "Specifically, they want to see the parents dance together."
Erza's eyebrow rose. "Dance."
"Yes. Dance. Apparently it's a tradition. They want to see if we can move together, coordinate, communicate without words. It's supposed to show how well the parents work as a team."
"Dance," Erza repeated, as if the word itself was foreign to her.
"The second part is etiquette dining," Yuuta pressed on quickly. "They watch how the family behaves at a formal meal. Table manners, conversation, how we treat the staff, all of it. They want to see if we can conduct ourselves properly in high society."
Erza's expression did not change, but something in her posture shifted. She was listening now, truly listening, in a way she rarely did when he talked about human things.
"The third part is family problem-solving," Yuuta said. "They give us a scenario and watch how we work together to find a solution. How we communicate, how we handle stress, how we support each other when things go wrong."
He paused, his voice dropping slightly.
"And the fourth part is the family interview. All of us together, talking about our lives, our values, what we want for Elena's future. They want to know who we are."
He looked up at Erza, suddenly nervous again. "That's it. That's all the criteria. Everything we have to do to get the scholarship."
Erza stared at him for a long moment. Then she let out a sound that might have been a laugh, if she were capable of such a thing.
"That's all?" she said. "Dancing. Eating. Solving problems. Talking about ourselves. This is what you have been destroying our home over?"
Yuuta stared at her. "That's all? That's, Erza, this is the most prestigious academy in the world. People spend years preparing for this interview. Years. And we have two days. Two days to learn everything we need to know, to become everything they expect us to be, to"
"To dance," Erza interrupted. "To eat. To talk." She crossed her arms. "I expected something difficult. Something that would challenge us."
She crossed her arms again.
"This is nothing."
Yuuta's face lifted.
Hope flickered in his eyes, bright, desperate, unguarded.
He had been so certain she would refuse. Had been preparing alternative plans, or pleas, bargains. Had been ready to beg if necessary. He had imagined every possible response she might give, cold dismissal, furious rage, mocking laughter.
He had not imagined this.
"So," he said, his voice careful, "does that mean you agree? You'll dance with me?"
The words came out faster than he intended. His excitement was leaking through the cracks in his composure.
He was worried she would reject him.
He was already preparing himself for the rejection, for the cold look, for the insult, for the door slamming in his face.
He did not expect what came next.
Erza's eyes narrowed.
Her arms tightened across her chest.
Her posture shifted from indifference to something sharper. Something more dangerous.
"Do you want to die?"
The words came out cold. Flat. Absolute.
Yuuta's brain stopped working.
"Ehhhh...???"
The sound escaped him before he could stop it. His face went blank. His hands dropped to his sides. His entire body seemed to deflate, like a balloon losing air.
He stood there, completely shocked, completely unprepared, completely unable to process what had just happened.
What??
Erza watched him.
She watched the confusion spread across his face. Watched his mouth open and close like a fish pulled from water. Watched the hope drain away, replaced by something she could not quite name.
Her expression did not change.
But something in her eyes
Something flickered.
"I said," she repeated, "do you want to die? Asking a queen to dance. Expecting a queen to participate in your human rituals. Assuming I would lower myself to"
The words came out flat, absolute, the kind of question that was not really a question at all.
Yuuta's brain stopped working.
"Ehhhh...???" The sound escaped him before he could stop it, a high, confused noise that seemed to hang in the air between them. His face went blank.
His hands dropped to his sides. His entire body seemed to deflate like a balloon losing air, all the hope and nervous energy draining out of him in an instant.
He stood there, completely shocked, completely unprepared, completely unable to process what had just happened.
What?
What did I say wrong?
I just asked if she would dance with me. For Elena. For the interview. For
Erza watched him. She watched the confusion spread across his face, watched his mouth open and close like a fish pulled from water, watched the hope drain away and something else take its place.
Her expression did not change, but something in her eyes flickered, something quick and sharp, there and gone before he could name it.
"I said," she repeated, her voice dropping lower, "do you want to die? Asking a queen to dance.
Expecting a queen to participate in your human rituals. Assuming I would lower myself to"
She Paused and said, "You should drop the interview."
Yuuta was still staring at her, his face pale now, his hands hanging limp at his sides.
"Are you serious, my queen?" His voice was quiet, almost a whisper. "You're actually serious about this?"
"Of course I am serious." Her arms crossed tighter, her jaw set. "You should drop the interview. This is absurd. You are absurd.
The whole idea is"
"No." The word came out sharper than he intended, cutting through her dismissal like a blade. "I can't do that. It's Elena's future. It's the only chance she has to"
"Elena's future." Erza's laugh was cold, brittle. "You talk about her future as if you will be there to see it. As if any of this matters."
She stepped closer, and Yuuta found himself stepping back without meaning to, his body reacting to the weight of her presence before his mind could catch up.
"What is wrong with you?" The words came out raw, frustrated, torn from somewhere deep.
"You don't even have a future. You are going to die in one year. One year, mortal. And you are still acting as if, as if you will be there to see her grow up, to watch her graduate, to" She stopped, her breath catching.
Yuuta stood very still.
Erza continued, her voice rising, the cracks in her composure widening. "I am staying in this world for one year. One year, because of your ridiculous promise about graduation.
After that, I will kill you and return to my world, and I will take Elena with me. So what is the point?" She gestured at the books, the papers, the mess he had made of their home trying to prepare for something that would not matter.
"What is the point of any of this? Why are you struggling? Why do you care? Why do you"
She stopped.
Yuuta was looking at her.
Not with fear. Not with the panic she expected. His face was calm, his voice steady when he finally spoke.
"I know I will die," he said slowly, as if the words were something he had made peace with long ago. "I know that. I've known it since the moment you told me what I did, what I'm responsible for. I'm not pretending I have a future. I'm not pretending I'll be there to see any of it."
Erza said nothing.
"But I want to be a good father to Elena for one year." His voice cracked on the word father, and he did not try to hide it. "I want to be the man who gives her the experiences she deserves.
Who takes her to school, who helps her with her homework, who makes her breakfast and tucks her in at night and tells her that she is loved."
He paused, and when he spoke again, his voice was lower, rougher.
"I can't imagine how she was raised without a father. I can't imagine what it was like for her, growing up not knowing why I wasn't there. I don't know how she doesn't hate me.
But I want to give her something. Something good. Something that will last." He swallowed hard.
"So that when I die, she remembers my sacrifice. So that when she looks back, she can say that I was good to her."
The words hit her like a wind she had not seen coming, strong and sudden, knocking something loose inside her that she had kept locked away for a very long time.
She had expected selfishness. She had expected fear, desperation, the frantic clawing of a creature trying to escape its fate. That was what humans did. That was what they had always done. But this, this quiet acceptance, this strange determination to use the time he had left for someone else
It made her chest ache in ways she did not understand.
Her mind caught on his last words.
So that when I die, she remembers my sacrifice. So that she can say I was good to her.
Something about what he said didn't sit right with her, but not in the way she expected. It wasn't anger. It wasn't disgust.
It was… something else.
Then her expression changed.
Her eyes narrowed.
Her fists tightened.
Her knuckles went white.
"So that was your plan." Her voice was cold. Colder than it had been all night. Colder than he had ever heard it.
Yuuta's eyes widened. "What plan? I don't"
"You make yourself a hero." She stepped closer. "A good father. A loving parent. You give her memories, experiences, happiness. And then when I kill you"
Her voice cracked.
She forced it steady.
"When I kill you, Elena will not see justice. She will not see her mother doing what must be done. She will see a villain. A murderer. Someone who took her beloved father away."
Yuuta's face went white.
"That is your plan," Erza said. "That is why you care so much. That is why you sacrifice so much. Not for her. For revenge. To turn my own daughter against me."
She laughed. It was not a happy sound.
"I knew it. I knew humans could not change. Selfish. Always selfish. Even in death, you find a way to wound."
"That is your plan, isn't it? To make me the villain."
Yuuta's mouth opened.
Closed.
Opened again.
"I... wait..."
His brain scrambled to catch up.
"That's not, I didn't mean"
He paused.
Then his eyes widened.
"But it does make sense, doesn't it?"
The words came out before he could stop them.
He slapped his hand over his mouth.
"Oh shit."
Erza stared at him.
The silence stretched between them, heavy and terrible.
Then her voice came, low and dangerous.
"You idiot mortal."
What happened next was too intense for the author to describe. The neighbors heard sounds that they would later describe as "a small earthquake" and "someone being thrown into furniture repeatedly" and "what sounded like a grown man begging for mercy in a language they didn't recognize."
When it was over, Yuuta lay on the floor among the scattered books and papers, a fresh bump on his head, his dignity in ruins, his plan, if it had ever really been a plan, thoroughly, completely destroyed.
Erza stood over him, breathing hard, her borrowed clothes askew, her hair wild, her face still flushed with something that might have been rage and might have been something else entirely.
"If I find out," she said, her voice still shaking, "that you have been trying to make me the villain in my daughter's eyes, I will not wait one year. Do you understand?"
Yuuta nodded weakly from the floor.
"I understand."
Erza stood over Yuuta's crumpled form, her chest heaving, her fists still clenched, her entire body vibrating with the effort of holding back.
She had pulled every punch, restrained every instinct, controlled every surge of power that had screamed at her to let loose, and it had been exhausting. More exhausting than any battle she had fought in centuries.
Dragon strength was not something that could be turned on and off like a switch. It was always there, always present, always ready.
The precision required to strike a mortal without killing him, to hurt without destroying, to punish without obliterating, it took more control than most beings could ever understand. Like an elephant using its trunk to pick a flower without crushing it, or a blacksmith shaping glass without shattering it. Every blow had been calculated, measured, restrained.
She let out a breath, long and slow, and pressed her palm against her forehead.
"Damn it," she muttered to herself. "That was exhausting."
Yuuta lay motionless on the floor, his face marked with the evidence of her restraint, bruises already forming on his cheek and jaw, a bump rising on his head where she had knocked him into a stack of books. He was breathing, which was more than most mortals could claim after making her that angry, but he was not moving.
He has no idea, she thought, looking down at him. If I had used even a fraction of my true strength, this entire apartment would have crumbled before he knew what happened.
She sighed again, longer this time, and crossed her arms.
"Fine," she said, her voice flat. "I will help you with this interview."
One of Yuuta's eyes cracked open, squinting against the pain. "Wait... really?" His voice was weak, uncertain, as if he was trying to convince himself that he had not misheard her this time.
"Do not make me repeat myself." She looked away, her jaw tight. "Only for this interview. Only this once."
She paused.
Then, slowly, a smile crept across her face. It was not a kind smile. It was the smile of someone who had just found leverage.
"If you help me with something first."
Yuuta swallowed, his throat working against nothing. "Help you? With what?"
She sighed again, the sound heavy with something that might have been embarrassment, though she would never admit it. "I want you to wash my tail and horns."
Yuuta stared at her.
"Pardon?"
His voice cracked on the word. He sat up slowly, wincing, one hand pressed to his bruised face, his expression a mixture of confusion and disbelief.
"Did I just hear that correctly? You want me to"
"I said what I said." Her voice was sharp, but her face was turning pink. "Do not make me repeat myself again."
Yuuta shook his head slowly, wincing as the movement aggravated his injuries. "No, I understand what you said. I'm just... confused. Why would the Queen of Atlantis need a mortal to"
"That is none of your business." She cut him off, her arms tightening across her chest. "I will help you with your interview, and you will help me with this. That way, we are both free of obligation. No debt. No gratitude. Nothing owed."
Yuuta studied her face, looking for the trap, looking for the angle, looking for whatever hidden cost she was not telling him about. He had learned, over these past weeks, that nothing with Erza was ever simple.
Every agreement had layers. Every deal had consequences. And the fact that she was offering this so casually, so quickly
It made him nervous.
What is she really after? he wondered. Is this some kind of test? Some kind of trap?
But Erza was not thinking about traps.
She was thinking about her horns.
Dragon horns were sensitive. More sensitive than any other part of a dragon's body. They were conduits for magic, channels for power, extensions of everything a dragon was and could be.
And this world, this filthy, polluted, dust-choked world, had been coating them in grime for weeks. She could feel it every time she used her power, every time she reached for her magic, every time she tried to sleep. The constant irritation was driving her insane.
She could not wash them herself. She could not see them properly, could not reach them without contorting herself into positions that would embarrass even a queen. And Elena, Elena was too small, too young, too likely to turn the whole thing into a game and leave her horns covered in chocolate or glitter or something worse.
So she had to ask him.
She bit her nail, a habit she had picked up in this world and despised. "Damn it," she muttered to herself. "My ruin has come. This is worse than anything. I have to ask a mortal to" She stopped herself,
Her face burning. "If Elena were older, I would have her do it. But her hands are too small, and she is... she is the mischievous type. I cannot trust her with something this important. That is the only reason I am asking you."
Yuuta watched her, seeing the discomfort she was trying so hard to hide, the way her cheeks had gone pink, the way her fingers kept twitching toward her face. And something in his chest softened.
"Okay," he said. "I'll help you. And you'll help me. That sounds fair."
Erza's shoulders relaxed almost
imperceptibly. "Good. Then we have an agreement."
She straightened, her composure returning, her face smoothing back into its usual cold mask.
"So," she said, her voice businesslike now, "I assume you know how to dance, mortal?"
Yuuta blinked. "Huh? No. I don't know how to dance."
He said it with a smile, as if it were nothing, as if his complete lack of preparation for the most important interview of their lives was a minor inconvenience rather than a disaster.
Erza stared at him.
She smiled back.
"Then let's drop the deal."
"No! No, wait!" Yuuta scrambled forward, grabbing at her leg, his panic rising. "We have two days! Two days is enough time to learn!"
"My ass you will learn in one day." She tried to step away, but he held on, his fingers wrapped around her ankle like a drowning man grabbing a lifeline.
"I can learn! I promise! Just teach me! Please!"
Erza looked down at him, at the bruises on his face, the desperation in his eyes, the way he was clinging to her leg like she was the only thing keeping him from drowning, and felt something twist in her chest.
She sighed.
"Fine. I will try. But at least tell me you know etiquette. Table manners. Which fork to use. How to address important people. Basic things."
Yuuta hesitated.
Erza kicked him in the face.
"You uneducated idiot!" Her voice rose as she kicked him again, and again, her frustration finding an outlet. "How do you not know anything?! What have you been doing your entire life?!"
"I'm sorry!" Yuuta's voice was muffled behind his hands, his body curled protectively on the floor. "I grew up in an orphanage! We didn't have etiquette lessons! We didn't have multiple forks! We were lucky if we had one fork that wasn't bent!"
She stopped kicking.
He was still curled on the floor, still covering his face, still waiting for the next blow.
She looked at him. At the bruises already forming. At the swelling around his eye. At the way he had not once, in all of this, tried to run.
She sighed.
"Get up," she said.
He looked up, cautious, one eye visible between his fingers. "Are you going to hit me again?"
"Not immediately."
He lowered his hands slowly, watching her, waiting.
She crossed her arms. "We have two days. In that time, you will learn how to dance without stepping on my feet. You will learn how to eat without embarrassing yourself. You will learn how to speak to people who think they are better than you without proving them right."
She paused.
"And I will let you wash my horns. My tail. If you do well enough, perhaps I will not kill you when this is over."
He stared at her. Then slowly, carefully, he smiled.
"I can work with that."
She turned away before he could see her face. "Good. Now clean this room. I refuse to practice dancing in a space that looks like a paper factory exploded."
She walked toward the hallway, her steps measured, her back straight, her dignity somehow still intact despite everything. She was almost to the door when Yuuta's voice stopped her.
"Hey, Erza?"
She paused. Did not turn. "What?"
"So... when I wash your tail... do I need special soap? Or just regular shampoo? Because I have this stuff from the convenience store that's supposed to be for damaged hair, but I don't know if that works on scales, and"
She turned.
He was smiling. Actually smiling. Like he was enjoying this.
She picked up a book from the nearest stack and threw it at his head.
He ducked.
"Shut up and clean!"
She disappeared into the hallway, her face burning, her heart pounding, her tail, which she could not see, which was covered in filth, which she had just agreed to let him wash, twitching behind her in a way she could not control.
She heard him laughing as she closed the door.
She was going to kill him.
Not in a year.
Tomorrow.
To be continued...