The final test was about to begin.
It was the personal family interview, the last hurdle before the scholarship, the thing that would decide whether Elena walked through these halls as a student or walked away forever.
With one hundred families still in contention and no one willing to withdraw, the task before the judges was monumental.
One hundred interviews, one hundred families, one hundred futures hanging in the balance.
The Konuari family was escorted to Classroom D.
The hallway leading to it was lined with portraits of students who had come before, generations of children whose families had paid fortunes for the privilege of standing where Yuuta was standing now.
He tried not to think about them. He tried not to think about the scholarship, or the risk, or the hundred ways this could go wrong. He focused on Elena's small hand in his, on Erza's presence beside him, on the door that was getting closer with every step.
The classroom door opened, and Yuuta forgot to breathe.
The room was unlike anything he had ever seen.
The benches were carved from oak so old and so carefully polished that they seemed to glow from within, their surfaces reflecting the light that streamed through tall windows arched like something from a medieval cathedral.
The walls were paneled in wood that had been harvested centuries ago, when this building was still a palace, when the people who walked these halls wore crowns instead of uniforms.
Desks that had been sat at by princes and prime ministers, by children who had grown up to rule nations, by students who had come from nothing and become everything.
Elena gasped beside him, her eyes wide, her wings fluttering with excitement.
She had never seen anything like this, this room that smelled of old wood and old books and old dreams. She pulled her hand free and ran to the nearest desk, her fingers tracing the carvings on its surface, her face full of wonder.
"Papa! Papa, look! It's so beautiful!"
Yuuta smiled, but his mind was elsewhere. He was aware, suddenly, of Erza's hand in his. They had not planned to hold hands.
They had not discussed it, had not agreed to it, had not done any of the things that usually preceded two people walking into a room together.
But somewhere between the Dancing Hall and this classroom, their fingers had found each other, and neither of them had let go.
Erza's face was cold, the way it always was.
"I am only doing this because if I show any sign of anger, they will think this is a fake marriage, and your foolish chance will be lost," she said, her voice flat, her eyes fixed on the judges who were already settling into their seats at the front of the room.
Yuuta's face went red. He told himself it was the heat. He told himself it was the stress. He told himself it was anything but the feeling of her fingers intertwined with his, the warmth of her palm against his skin, the way her hand fit in his like it had always been there.
Her hand is so soft, he thought, and then immediately tried to unthink it. Why hasn't she let go? Maybe she, maybe she likes
He stopped himself.
No. She would rather kill me than kiss me. She is doing this for Elena. That is all. That is the only reason.
He looked at her. Her face was still cold. Her eyes were still fixed on the judges. But her hand was still in his, and she had not let go.
They took their seats.
Elena climbed onto the chair between them, her small legs swinging, her eyes still moving across the room, taking in everything.
The judges sat at a table facing them, three of them, their faces neutral, their pens ready, their eyes already moving across the family before them.
Yuuta's heart was pounding.
He tried to remember the things Erza had taught him. Sit straight. Do not fidget. Answer questions honestly, but not too honestly. Be yourself, but not too much of yourself. He had never been good at being anything other than what he was.
The judge in the center, a woman with gray hair and kind eyes, leaned forward. Her voice was warm, practiced, the voice of someone who had interviewed a thousand families and knew how to put them at ease.
"Elena," she said, "can you tell us what your favorite toy is?"
Elena did not hesitate. "Squishy!" She held up her hands to show the size. "He is a dragon. He is very small. Elena carries him everywhere. He sleeps with Elena. When Elena is sad, Squishy makes Elena feel better."
The judge smiled. "Squishy sounds like a very good friend."
"Squishy is the best friend," Elena said seriously. "Mama gave him to Elena. He is very old. Older than Elena."
The judge made a note on her paper. "And who do you like more, Elena? Your papa or your mama?"
Yuuta tensed. Erza's hand tightened on his under the table.
Elena considered the question with the seriousness of someone weighing the fate of nations. "Elena likes Papa more," she said.
Yuuta's heart soared.
"But Elena is more scared of Mama," Elena added. "So Elena is nicer to Mama. So Mama does not get angry."
The judge laughed. The other judges exchanged glances. Erza's face did not change, but her hand squeezed Yuuta's so hard that he had to bite his tongue to keep from yelping.
"And what is your hobby?" the judge asked.
"Elena likes to play chess!" Elena said. "Elena beat the Headmaster. He was very surprised. He gave Elena chocolate."
The judge's eyebrows rose. She looked at her notes, at the Headmaster's recommendation that had been attached to the Konuari file, at the notes about a four-year-old who had beaten their chess programs without breaking a sweat. "I see," she said. "And what do you do when you are angry?"
Elena demonstrated. Her cheeks puffed out. Her arms crossed. Her tail curled around her leg. Her wings pressed tight against her back. She sat there, a tiny, furious ball of silver hair and red eyes, and the judges stared at her with something that might have been amazement.
"I hold Squishy," she said, her voice muffled by her puffed cheeks. "Very tight. Until I am not angry anymore."
The judge nodded slowly, making another note. "And what do you do if you get lost?"
Elena's answer came without hesitation. "Elena finds an old man to ask for help. Old men are nice. They give Elena chocolate. They teach Elena games. They help Elena find Papa."
The judges looked at each other. The Headmaster's notes had mentioned an old man. A chess game. A child who had approached a stranger without fear and asked for help.
Yuuta felt Erza's hand loosen in his. He looked at her. She was watching Elena, her face still cold, but her eyes, her eyes were soft.
The judge turned to them. "Mr. and Mrs. Konuari," she said, "do you have anything you would like to add?"
Yuuta opened his mouth. Nothing came out. He looked at Elena, at her bright eyes and her silver hair, at the daughter who had changed everything. He thought about the interview, the scholarship, the risk. He thought about the year he had left, the death that was waiting for him, the future he would not see.
He looked at Erza. Her hand was in his. Her eyes were on his face. She was waiting.
He squeezed her hand.
"She is everything," he said. "She is everything we ever wanted. She is everything we never knew we needed. And we will do whatever it takes to give her the life she deserves."
The judge looked at him for a long moment. Then she smiled.
"That is all we needed to hear."
The judge looked at her notes, then at Elena, then back at the family sitting before her. Her voice was professional, measured, the voice of someone who had done this a thousand times and knew how to deliver difficult news without cruelty.
"The child has passed our evaluation," she said.
"We have tested her ourselves, and despite being only four years old, her mind is exceptionally well developed. We would place her cognitive abilities at the level of a nine-year-old child."
She glanced at the papers in front of her, the recommendation from the Headmaster, the notes from the chess programs Elena had defeated, the observations from the dining hall where she had sat quietly for thirty minutes while adults lost their composure around her.
She looked at Elena, who was sitting between her parents, her small hands folded on the table, her red eyes calm, her face patient.
"We also received a recommendation from the Headmaster stating that she is much more aware of the world than any child he has encountered," the judge continued.
"We tested this ourselves, and it proved to be true. She answered every question without hesitation. She showed no fear of strangers, something unusual for a child her age." She paused, a small smile crossing her face.
"Perhaps she is simply not afraid of anything."
The judges exchanged glances.
They had seen children like Elena before, bright, precocious, advanced, but never one who sat in a room full of strangers and answered questions about her favorite toy and her hobbies and her parents with the calm confidence of someone who knew exactly who she was.
They made notes on their papers, their pens moving quickly, their faces neutral.
"Now," the lead judge said, setting her pen down, "we will proceed with the parent interview."
Yuuta's stomach dropped. He had been so focused on Elena, on her answers, on the way she had charmed the judges without even trying, that he had forgotten about this part. The part where they asked about him.
The part where they asked about Erza.
The part where they asked about everything he had been trying not to think about since the moment they walked into this building. His palms were sweating. His heart was pounding. He could feel the weight of the past weeks pressing down on his chest.
He looked at Erza.
She was sitting beside him, her back straight, her face calm, her hand resting on the table beside his.
She was not nervous.
She was never nervous.
She was the Dragon Queen, and she had faced things far more terrifying than three judges in a classroom. She looked like she was waiting for a meal to be served.
The lead judge folded her hands on the table. "Mr. and Mrs. Konuari, we apologize, but we had to look into your background. It is standard procedure for all families being considered for admission. We found several things that do not line up."
Yuuta's breath caught.
"What do you mean, line up?" His voice came out higher than he intended, sharper. He tried to steady it, to calm it, to be the man Erza had taught him to be, but the old fear was crawling up his throat.
The judge's face did not change.
"Firstly, your age and your daughter's age. You are twenty-one years old. Your daughter is four. That means you had her when you were seventeen. Combined with the fact that we found no official record of your marriage in this country, we are concerned about the circumstances surrounding your family's formation."
Yuuta's leg began to shake under the table. He could feel it, the tremor running through his thigh, his knee, his calf.
He tried to stop it. He could not. He looked at Erza, hoping for something, guidance, anger, anything. But she was sitting with her arms crossed, her face uninterested, her eyes fixed on a point somewhere above the judges' heads. She looked like she would rather be anywhere else.
"Well, you see," Yuuta said, his voice cracking, "it's kind of personal, and I can't, I mean, we can't"
The judge raised her hand.
"Please understand, Mr. Konuari. We believe that a child's development is shaped by their parents. Their stability. Their commitment to each other. Without documentation of your marriage, without a clear timeline of your relationship, we have concerns about whether that foundation exists. We are not trying to pry into your private life, but we need to understand how your family came to be."
She paused, leaning forward slightly.
"If you cannot answer our questions, we will have no choice but to assume that your daughter was conceived in a way that does not align with the values of this academy. We will have to reject her application."
Yuuta's leg stopped shaking. His whole body went still.
The weight he had been carrying since the moment Erza appeared in his apartment pressed down on his chest.
The guilt.
The shame.
The certainty that he had done something unforgivable, that he was a monster, that he did not deserve the child sitting beside him or the woman who had let him live.
He thought about that night.
The dream he barely remembered. The way Erza had looked at him when she appeared in his room, cold, furious, carrying a child he had no memory of creating. He had spent weeks believing he had forced himself on her, that he had committed a sin so terrible that the only punishment was death. He had been waiting for her to kill him, and he had thought he deserved it.
But she had not killed him. She had given him a year. She had taught him to dance. She had let him wash her hair. She had held his hand.
He thought about what would happen if he told the truth. If he said the words he had been carrying in his chest for weeks.
I assaulted her.
I do not remember it, but I did it. I am a monster.
The academy would reject Elena. They would throw her out. They would take away her future because of something he had done before he even knew she existed.
He could not do it. He could not ruin her life. He could not be the reason she lost everything.
He sat in silence, his head bowed, his hands flat on the table, his eyes fixed on the wood grain beneath his fingers. The minutes stretched. The judges waited. Erza waited. Elena waited.
The judge sighed.
"Mr. Konuari, we cannot move forward if you do not answer. We understand that this is difficult, but we need to understand your family's situation. If you continue to remain silent, we will have to assume the worst and reject your daughter's application."
Yuuta's hands curled into fists on the table. His whole body was shaking now, trembling with the effort of holding himself together.
A tear slipped down his cheek.
He did not wipe it away. He could not move his hands. They were pressed flat on the table, useless, holding him in place while everything he had built crumbled around him.
The tear fell onto his hand, warm and small, and he watched it sit there on his skin, a tiny, perfect drop of everything he could not say.
The judge's voice was softer now, but no less firm. "We are sorry, Mr. Konuari. If this continues, we are afraid your daughter will be rejected."
Yuuta's head snapped up. "No. No, wait. Please. She did nothing wrong. She is perfect. She is"
He could not finish.
The words would not come.
He looked at Elena, at her red eyes and her silver hair, at the face that held his whole world, and he thought about what he was going to take from her.
What he had already taken. What he could never give back. His hands were shaking. His breath was coming too fast. The room was spinning.
Then Erza moved.
She slapped her hand on the table. The sound cracked through the room like thunder. The judges jumped. Elena looked up, startled. Yuuta stopped breathing.
Erza stood. Her chair scraped against the floor. Her dress caught the light from the windows, white and gold, and her hair fell around her face like a curtain of silver, and her eyes, her eyes were burning.
"Silence," she said.
The room went still. Her voice was ice, but it was not the ice of anger. It was the ice of someone who had made a decision and would not be moved. She looked at the judges, and for the first time, they saw something in her face that made them lean back in their chairs without knowing why.
The papers on their desks stopped rustling. The pens in their hands went still. The three judges sat motionless, their eyes fixed on the silver-haired woman who had been silent through the entire interview, who had let her husband stumble through his answers alone, who had sat like a statue while he fell apart.
She was not a statue now.
"You want to know about our relationship?" she said. "Fine. I will tell you."
Yuuta's blood went cold. His hands clenched in his lap. His heart, which had been pounding so hard he could hear it in his ears, seemed to stop entirely. This is it, he thought. She is going to tell them everything. What I did. What I am. The truth. And then Elena will be rejected, and it will be my fault, and I will have destroyed the only good thing I have ever had.
He could not look at her. He could not look at the judges. He could not look at Elena, who was sitting between them, her small hands folded on the table, her red eyes moving from her mother's face to her father's and back again, trying to understand what was happening.
Erza turned to look at him.
Her eyes met his.
And something in her expression shifted. It was small, almost invisible, the kind of thing that would have been missed by anyone who had not spent weeks learning to read her face. Her jaw loosened. Her shoulders dropped. The cold mask she wore, the armor she had built over centuries, cracked.
She looked at him, at his pale face, his shaking hands, the tears he had not been able to stop, and she saw something she had never seen before. Not weakness. Not cowardice. Not the pathetic mortal she had been telling herself he was since the moment she appeared in his apartment.
She saw someone who was afraid. Someone who was guilty. Someone who had been carrying something too heavy for too long and did not know how to put it down.
She saw someone who was waiting to be punished.
The judge named Disha leaned forward, her pen poised, her eyes sharp. She had been given this task for a reason. She had spent her career finding the cracks in families, the places where the truth hid, the things people did not want to say. She had seen the report on Yuuta Konuari, the orphanage, the missing records, the strange gaps in his history. She had seen that he had no birth certificate, no parents, no past before the orphanage. He existed, but there was no record of where he came from.
"We would like to hear from Mrs. Konuari," she said. "About the circumstances of your daughter's birth."
Yuuta's hands were shaking. His whole body was shaking. He pressed his palms together, fingers interlaced, knuckles white, and prayed to a god he was not sure existed. Please. Please let this pass. Please let her be merciful. Please let Elena have this chance. I will take whatever punishment you give me. I will accept whatever she decides. Just let Elena be safe. Just let her have this.
Erza looked at the judges. Her face was cold again, the mask back in place, but underneath it, underneath it, something was different.
"It is true that we are not officially married," she said.
Yuuta closed his eyes.
She was going to tell them. She was going to tell them everything. The night he could not remember. The child he had not known existed. The four years he had spent living his life while she raised their daughter alone. The sin he had committed, the punishment he deserved, the truth that would destroy everything.
"But it is also true," Erza said, "that Elena is our daughter. We had her five years ago."
Disha leaned forward. "May I ask how? And why there are no records?"
Yuuta's hands were pressed so tightly together that his fingers were going numb. He could feel Elena's eyes on him, confused, wondering why her father was shaking, why her mother was so cold, why everyone in this room was looking at them like they were a puzzle that needed to be solved.
He opened his eyes.
Erza was looking at the judges. Her face was still. Her voice was calm. She was not looking at him. She was not going to look at him. She was going to tell them everything, and she was not going to look at him when she did.
"Let me tell you from the beginning," she said. "How I met him. How he became the father of my child."
The judges leaned forward. Their pens were ready. Their faces were patient. They had been waiting for this moment since the interview began.
Yuuta stared at her. His heart was pounding. His hands were shaking. He was begging, somewhere deep inside himself, for a mercy he did not deserve.
Erza began to speak, and her voice was different. It was not the cold voice she used when she was dismissing something beneath her. It was not the sharp voice she used when she was correcting Yuuta's mistakes. It was low and steady, the voice of someone telling a story that mattered, the voice of someone who had been carrying something for a long time and had finally decided to set it down.
"Yuuta and I met long ago," she said. "In an orphanage."
Yuuta's eyes went wide. He stared at her, his mouth open, his hands frozen on the table. What is she doing? he thought. What is she saying?
"We were children then," Erza continued. "We played together. We studied together. We grew up together." She paused, and her voice softened, just slightly. "We fell in love."
Yuuta's face went red. Love? His mind was spinning, trying to follow the story she was building, trying to understand why she was building it at all. She was supposed to tell the truth. She was supposed to expose him. She was supposed to let the judges see what he really was.
She was not supposed to save him.
The judges were listening. Their pens were moving across their notebooks, their faces intent, their eyes fixed on Erza's face. They had heard many stories in this room, stories of wealth and power, of legacy and tradition, of families who had been sending their children to this academy for generations. They had never heard a story like this one.
"As the years passed," Erza said, "we came of age. We left the orphanage together. We rented an apartment together." She looked at Yuuta, and there was something in her eyes that he had never seen before. Something that looked almost like tenderness. "We were young. We were in love. We thought we had the rest of our lives to figure out the rest."
Yuuta's heart was pounding so hard he could barely hear her words. He was sitting in a room full of judges, in a borrowed suit, with his daughter beside him and his wife, his wife, telling a story that was not true and should have been.
The judges exchanged glances. They were no longer looking at their notes. They were listening, their pens idle, their faces soft in a way they had not been at the beginning of the interview.
"One night," Erza said, and her voice dropped, became quieter, more careful, "there was a full moon. I was young and foolish. I drank too much. I gave him a sign I did not mean to give. And he" She paused. "He misunderstood."
The room was silent.
"He crossed a boundary," she said. "One night. One mistake. And that was how Elena was born."
The silence stretched. The judges looked at each other. Disha, who had been so sharp, so certain, set down her pen. The other two followed.
Yuuta stared at Erza. He could not breathe. He could not think. She had just told a room full of strangers that he had crossed a boundary. She had just told them that Elena was born from a mistake. She had just told them the truth, and she had told it in a way that made him look like a fool instead of a monster.
She had saved him.
He pinched his arm, hard enough to leave a mark. The pain was sharp, real. He was not dreaming. Erza had just told a story that protected him, that gave the judges a reason to accept Elena, that took the sin he had been carrying and wrapped it in something that looked almost like love.
Why? he thought. Why would she
Erza's voice cut through his thoughts, cold and sharp, but not out loud. It was inside his head, the same way she had spoken to him in the shopping center, the same way she had reached into his memory and seen things he had not wanted her to see.
Do not get it wrong, she said. You disgusting, pathetic human. I am doing this because a queen's reputation matters. Because if they reject Elena, it reflects on me. Because I will not let your foolishness cost my daughter her future. Do not even think that I love you. The thought disgusts me.
Yuuta looked at her. Her face was cold, the way it always was. Her eyes were fixed on the judges, who were still sitting in silence, still processing the story they had just heard.
He smiled.
It was a small smile, the kind that came out when he was too tired to hide what he was feeling, when he was too relieved to pretend he was not. She had called him disgusting. She had called him pathetic. She had reminded him, in no uncertain terms, that she was going to kill him one day.
But she had saved him.
She had stood in front of a room full of judges and told a story that made him look like a fool instead of a monster, and she had done it because, because
He did not know why she had done it. He did not know if she knew why she had done it. But he was sitting in a borrowed suit, with his daughter beside him and his wife's voice still echoing in his head, and for the first time since this interview began, he was not afraid.
Erza saw his face. She saw the smile he was trying to hide, the relief he was trying to contain, the stupid, wonderful, infuriating hope that he could not seem to stop feeling.
She looked away.
Idiot mortal, she thought. But the words were not cold. They were not sharp. They were the words she used when she was looking at something she did not want to name, something she was not ready to feel.
The judges were still silent. Disha picked up her pen, then set it down again. She looked at her colleagues. She looked at the notes she had made. She looked at the family sitting before her, the young man with the red eyes who had picked up a steak from the floor, the silver-haired woman who had told a story that was too strange to be invented, the child who sat between them with her wings folded and her tail curled and her whole future waiting to be decided.
She nodded.
The final interview was over. The judges had asked about their relationship, and Yuuta had answered without stumbling once, how they met, how they grew together, how they had built a life that was strange and difficult and theirs. Erza had answered too, her voice cold but steady, and when they asked about their roles and responsibilities, she did not hide anything. She told them that Yuuta cooked for her, that he worked to earn the money that kept them alive, that he did things she did not know how to do. And when they asked what she did, she said, simply, "I am learning."
It was the truth. It was the only truth she had given them all day.
Now the Konuari family stood outside the Grand Hall, waiting with the other families for the results to be announced. The doors were closed, the judges were deliberating, and somewhere in the room beyond, the futures of three hundred children were being decided.
Yuuta was going to be sick.
His stomach was churning. His hands were cold. His heart was pounding so hard he could feel it in his throat. The test had been too simple, he thought. Too easy. Too quick. Three interviews, a dance, a meal, how could that be enough to decide who was worthy and who was not? How could a few hours determine whether Elena would have the future she deserved?
He was standing beside Erza, close enough that their shoulders almost touched. In front of them, a large screen hung from the ceiling, dark now, waiting for the names that would appear on it. Families were gathered in clusters around them, mothers holding children, fathers pacing, grandparents whispering prayers to gods who might or might not be listening.
Yuuta was not watching the screen. He was looking at Erza.
He had never felt love. Not really. There had been crushes, when he was younger, when he did not know what love was supposed to feel like. There had been Fiona, years ago, when he was too young to know that wanting someone was not the same as loving them. But this, this was different. This was not the pounding of a heart when someone beautiful walked past. This was not the nervous flutter of a man who wanted to be wanted.
This was something else. Something he did not have a name for.
His heart was beating in his chest, steady and certain, and when he looked at Erza, at her silver hair, her cold face, her hands folded in front of her, it beat faster. Not because she was beautiful, though she was. Not because she was powerful, though she was. Because she was her. Because she had stood in front of a room full of judges and told a story that protected him, and she had done it without hesitation, without expectation, without any of the things that usually made people kind.
He did not know what that feeling was. He did not know if it was love. He only knew that he was standing in a hall full of strangers, waiting to hear if his daughter's future had been decided, and he could not stop looking at her.
The Headmaster stepped onto the stage. The screen behind him lit up, bright white, waiting. The families fell silent.
"Good evening," he said. His voice was calm, unhurried, the voice of a man who had done this many times before. "This year, we had more qualified applicants than ever before. The interviews were difficult. The decisions were harder. In the end, we have selected sixty families for admission."
The silence that followed was not the silence of people waiting to speak. It was the silence of people holding their breath.
The Headmaster looked at the screen, and the first name appeared.
The Nakamura family erupted. A mother in a silk kimono burst into tears, her hands pressed to her mouth, her husband's arm around her shoulders. Their daughter, a girl of seven with hair as dark as her father's, looked up at the screen with wide eyes, not yet understanding what her name on that list meant.
The rest waited.
The second name flashed. The Patel family, a father in an expensive suit, a mother with diamonds at her throat, a son who looked like he had been practicing for this moment his whole life. The father punched the air. The mother laughed through her tears. The son stood very straight, his hands at his sides, trying not to smile.
The names continued. Ten. Twenty. Thirty. Forty. Fifty. Each name was a bomb, exploding in the silence, sending one family into joy and the rest deeper into the waiting.
The Okafor family. A father who had traveled from Nigeria, who had sold his car to pay for the application fee, who lifted his daughter onto his shoulders and spun her around until she shrieked with laughter.
The García family. A mother who had been a lawyer before she had children, who had prepared for this interview for three years, who held her son's hand so tightly her knuckles were white.
The Chen family. A grandmother who had come to watch, who pressed her palms together and bowed her head and whispered thanks to ancestors who had guided her granddaughter here.
The Kim family. The Williams family. The Singh family. The Rossi family.
Fifty-three. Fifty-five. Fifty-eight.
Yuuta's hands were shaking. His breath was coming too fast. His heart was pounding so hard he was sure the people around him could hear it. He was counting the names, watching the screen, waiting for the moment when it would end.
He started praying. Not to any god in particular, he had never been sure which gods were real, which ones listened, which ones cared about a boy from an orphanage who had done things he could not undo. He prayed to whoever was listening, to whatever power might be watching, to the universe itself: Please. Please let her in. Please let her have this. I will do anything. I will be anything. Just let her have this.
Fifty-nine.
The screen went dark. The families who had not been called were weeping now, holding each other, turning away from the screen that had given them nothing. The ones who had been called were celebrating, their voices rising in joy that felt cruel to the ones who were still waiting.
Yuuta was not celebrating. He was standing in the middle of the room, his hands pressed together, his eyes fixed on the screen, waiting for a name that was not coming.
Beside him, Erza watched. She watched his hands shaking, his face pale, his whole body tight with a hope that was painful to see. She watched the families around them celebrating, the ones who had been chosen, the ones who had futures that were already decided. She watched the screen, dark now, with only one name left to announce.
She looked at Yuuta. His eyes were closed. His lips were moving silently. He was still praying, still hoping, still waiting for something that was not coming.
She did not understand it. She had never understood it. He had been hoping all day, all week, all month, hoping for things that were impossible, hoping for things that should have been impossible. He had hoped she would not kill him. He had hoped Elena would remember him. He had hoped he could learn to dance in two days, to eat with the right fork, to be someone who belonged in a place like this.
He had been wrong about so many things. He had been wrong about the dance, about the etiquette, about the thousand small ways he had failed to be the person he wanted to be. But he had kept hoping anyway.
She did not understand it. She had stopped hoping centuries ago, had learned that hoping was for people who had something to hope for, that the universe did not care what she wanted, that the only thing that kept her alive was the cold certainty of what she was.
He was not certain. He was not cold. He was standing in a room full of people who had more than he would ever have, waiting for a name that was not going to appear, and he was still hoping.
She found herself speaking before she could stop.
"What is the point?" Her voice was cold, but it was not sharp. It was the voice she used when she was asking a question she already knew the answer to, when she was looking at something she did not want to see. "There is one name left. Fifty-nine have been called. The chances that the last name is ours are" She stopped. She did not know the number. She did not need to. "It is useless. You are hoping for something that will not happen."
Yuuta did not open his eyes. His lips stopped moving. His hands, pressed together in front of him, were still shaking.
"No, my queen," he said. His voice was quiet, rough, the voice of someone who had been holding something for too long and did not know how to put it down. "Even if I am going to lose, I still want to hold on. To the last hope. So that even if I lose, I can still say I held on. Until the very end."
She stared at him. She had expected him to agree. She had expected him to see what she saw, to accept what she had accepted centuries ago, to let go of something that was already gone.
He did not let go.
She looked at the screen. Dark. Waiting. She looked at the families around them, the ones who had given up, the ones who were already turning away, the ones who had stopped hoping when the numbers passed them by.
She looked at Yuuta. His eyes were still closed. His hands were still pressed together. His lips were moving again, silent, praying to a god she did not believe in for something she did not think would come.
She found herself watching the Headmaster. Not the screen. The Headmaster. She watched the way he looked at the last paper in his hand, the way his eyes moved across the name written there, the way he paused before speaking. And in the reflection of his glasses, she saw the name.
Her world stopped.
She looked at Yuuta. He was still praying, still hoping, still waiting for something that was not coming. She had called him stupid. She had called him pathetic. She had told him that hoping was useless, that it was better to accept reality, that he was a fool for thinking that wanting something badly enough could make it happen.
She had been wrong.
She opened her mouth to tell him. To stop his praying, to tell him that his hope had not been wasted, that the name on the paper was theirs, that he had been right to hold on.
She closed her mouth.
She would let him wait. She would let him hope. She would let him stand there with his hands pressed together and his eyes closed and his heart pounding with a hope she had thought was foolish.
She watched him, and for the first time in centuries, she let herself hope too.
The Headmaster looked at the paper, at the families, at the room full of people who had given up hope. He smiled.
"The last name," he said, "is the Konuari family."
To be continued...