Together, That's How It Starts

Evy grumbled, pacing back and forth across her room. She tapped her chest, tracking the rhythm of her rapidly beating heart. There wasn’t much thought behind her actions. She simply walked, trying to rearrange her mind from the shambles it was in.

Two hours had passed since she met up with Araldo. He hadn’t given her proposal a concrete answer, but she couldn’t imagine a reason why he would refuse. All she had to do was wait till tomorrow.

That’s easier said than done! She thought.

For a moment, Evy thought she had messed up while asking him. She’d accidentally snapped at him from how nervous she was. Thankfully, he didn’t seem to take it the wrong way. Taking it so far as to share some of his food with her.

…But that was an issue all by itself.

Araldo’s face flashed through her mind.

“Mmhh,” covering her face, she dropped to her bed. She landed on a giant plush octopus that was almost half her size. Its massive soft limbs were spread across her bed like vines racing down the sides. It had blank eyes that many would consider soulless, but Evy thought they looked cute.

She held the octopus close and buried her face onto its fluffy body.

This was Pluff, a stuffed octopus gifted to her by her dad for her fifth birthday. It had been bigger than her the day she got it which made it that much more enjoyable to sleep with. It was comforting being able to cuddle with it. Especially during the nights her parents would be out on business trips or nightshifts.

Although it made her feel a little childish still sleeping with a plushy at her age, she couldn’t really sleep without it now.

Sometimes, when she was sad or nervous, she would hug it like she was now. It helped her calm down when she had no one else.

It was like a giant, and cute, stress ball.

But unlike those times, this was the first time she hugged Pluff for a feeling she couldn’t fully understand. All she had to go by was a warmth in her chest and an odd feeling in her stomach.

She wondered what that was all about.

Her first guess was simple happiness. Having someone like Araldo around who didn’t hate her was a nice change of pace, but that couldn’t be right. Kokoro did the same thing, and so did Ina, so why did she only feel this way towards him?

She clutched Pluff closer to her chest.

Why is he so nice? she wondered.

Evy wasn’t used to niceness. It could’ve been that people were normally that nice, but she couldn’t think straight enough to even consider that.

Araldo was becoming, to her, a special exception.

She let out a deep sigh and closed her eyes. Her mind might’ve still been racing, but her body was reaching a point of exhaustion. Evy always slept at around 22 o’clock—the clock already read three. This marked the latest she’d ever slept.

And as such, her body began drifting off to sleep. Pushing past her feelings and bringing her to unconsciousness.

However, it was that same exhaustion that brought Evy to make a small mistake.

After a quick trip to the bathroom, a few hours after falling asleep, she sluggishly walked her way back to her room. In her drowsy state, Evy mistook her room for the one right next to it. The room that happened to belong to Araldo.

---

Evy was cute.

I could admit that much.

Not like I hadn’t before, but witnessing her small features combined with her innocent appearance while she slept was downright adorable—which thinking about it, was also something I’d called her before.

Whatever.

Her shallow breaths against my arm felt nice. My cheek tickled from her onyx hair brushing against my face. The horns on her head were, again, concerningly close to my eyes. At least this time she wore pads on the tips to prevent stabbing anything in her sleep.

In this case, to prevent stabbing me.

Oddly enough, I was really starting to get used to this. I wasn’t even noticing her chest against my side as much anymore…well sort of…

Wait, I can’t get distracted! I yelled at myself.

This wasn’t good.

Why was she here? How was she here? Could she have mistaken my room for hers? How does that even happen after living here for almost a week? That isn’t a mistake you do a week into your stay at a new house!

Alright…calm down…

I was getting ahead of myself.

She probably had a reason, but I had to get out of this situation before I could get any answers. That, however, was probably going to be harder than it might seem at first. Mainly because my left arm was squished behind her head, jammed right below her horn.

It was practically impossible to escape without waking her.

…So now what?

“…hm…” Ze’Seki groaned as she tightened her grip around me.

This was getting worse and worse by the second.

What would she do if she woke up?

…

..

—Wait a minute—

Just to make sure, I raised my head and looked around. As expected, there was a desk sitting next to the bed with a pile of books on top covering a laptop. A dark blue shark plushy sat at the far corner with its black eyes staring at me. And the walls were lined with shelves upon shelves of books.

“…This is my room…” I declared the obvious.

Why was I even worrying about her? She was the one breaking into my room. If anyone should’ve been mad, it should be me. I had no fault here!

A long sigh of relief left my chest.

But with that in mind—

I grabbed her small shoulder and shook her, “Hey, idiot. Get up!”

She squirmed, but her eyes didn’t budge. If anything, she was cuddling in closer. The complete opposite of what I wanted.

Her peacefully sleeping face was centimeters away from mine…

…Nor’s words flooded back to me.

…Get closer…Pretend to be her friend…

Right.

This was my assignment.

I had a reason not to be an asshole to her.

It’d been a while since I tried being friendly, but now that it had to be done, I was willing to do it. One could say I was rusty. But pretending was something I was good at.

I shouldn’t have an issue with faking a friendship with her. She probably didn’t care much about me. We just met anyway.

That much I could do.

Well…

Here goes nothing…

I sighed.

“Hey…Ze’Seki,” I whispered, gently moving her shoulder. It wasn’t much different, but it was a start, right?

She let out a few groans but wasn’t waking up. It really makes you wonder how someone could sleep through all that.

I shook her a few more times before deciding to poke her cheek. It was surprisingly smooth, and soft, but I pushed away those thoughts as I continued.

She groaned but appeared more annoyed than before. It seemed to be working. Finally, after a few more pokes, she slapped away my hand.

Her eyes began to pry open.

Just slightly, her golden eyes began to reveal—

“Eek!” she let out before letting me go and snapping the covers over her face. Only her horns were left peaking over the covers.

It wasn’t the reaction I expected, but at least she was awake now. And I even got to slip my arm out from behind her.

I’ll take that as a win.

“Wh-Wha—?”

“Good morning, did you sleep well?”

“H-Huh?! Tsu-Tsutsumi?!” She nearly yelled, “W-What are you doing in my bed?!”

Well, it’s actually my bed, but I’ll let her think that for now.

“Would you believe me if I said I was just curious?”

“C-Curious?! Curious of what?!”

“A girl’s bed, what else?”

“Y-You creep!”

Alright, that’s about as far as I should take it. I might lean into asshole territories otherwise…if I hadn’t with that alone.

“I’m kidding. Come on, do you really take me as someone who’d do that?”

“Yes!”

There wasn’t a single second of hesitation. Sucks.

I snickered, “Well, you say all of that, but it just so happens that you’re the one who sneaked into my bed. What does that make you exactly?”

“That’s—That’s not tru—” she stopped for a moment then turned side to side, evident by her horns. A single “Oh…” slipped from her mouth.

I guess somehow, she’d seen the truth. Well, I did tell her.

Ze’Seki clutched the ends of the covers. Her body shook lightly before whispering, “…S-Sorry…”

Her words were weak. Maybe afraid?

Afraid of what though?

“A-About what?” I tried to quickly say, stumbling over my words.

Ze’Seki didn’t answer. Whatever was coming across her mind, it seemed much more drastic than the situation actually was.

She could just say it was an accident and leave. It wasn’t that hard, right?

“…Ze’Seki…?” I asked, failing to get an immediate response.

Before long, she whispered in a low voice, “Do you…hate me…now?”

Huh? Why would she think that? That was quite more drastic than I would’ve imagined. I hadn’t said anything close to that this entire time, nor had I any reason to anyway.

“No…why would I?”

She twitched at my response. For a moment, she laid still, not a sound coming from her. Then out of the blue, she got closer to me and dropped her forehead onto my shoulder.

“!!”

This time it was no accident. It was something coming from her own volition.

She let out a small sigh.

“…Do you…Do you really mean that?”

…

Her question had a simple answer.

I liked to keep constants in my life. Keeping certain people under an umbrella.

Regardless of Nor’s assignment, I could never say I hated Ze’Seki. I wouldn’t consider her a friend, but that simply meant I’d keep an indifferent feeling towards her.

The current constants in my life were:

Kokoro was my only friend.

Ina, my uncle, and my parents were my family.

And…those people from back then…were the only ones I hated.

Everyone else, no matter what they did, wouldn’t fall under any label. Even if others hated me, I wouldn’t hate them back. I couldn’t blame people for treating me the way I treated them—badly.

Ze’Seki, obviously, would fall under that umbrella. The only difference was that she didn’t seem to hate me. If anything, she seemed afraid of me hating her. The reason as to why was a mystery to me.

But either way, no, I couldn’t hate her.

And that would never change.

“Of course,” I whispered back, “I could never hate you.”

Those were my true, honest thoughts…

…

…Thoughts that sounded much more intimate than I expected…

Quickly, I cleared my throat, “A-Anyway, we should start getting up, you know? Before Kokoro burst in the door or something.”

I tried staying as nice as I possibly could, masking my embarrassment at the same time.

“Um…” she started.

“What’s up?”

She pulled her head away from my shoulder, “I…I sort of can’t…”

“Huh? Why’s that?”

It’s not like I had her tied down or anything. She could leave at any point.

She let go of the covers with one hand and pointed at herself, “My eyes…” was all she said.

“What about them?”

“Y-You don’t even know that much?!” she snapped, but quickly added, “S-Sorry.”

Ignoring that, I really didn’t know what she was talking about. The only thing I knew about her eyes was that they glowed. Did that have anything to do with it? I always found it weird, but I never bothered asking.

“It’s just,” she continued, “I can’t handle lights without my lenses. My room has, um…special curtains of sorts that block all light from the room in the mornings. This room doesn’t have that…”

“I see, so you don’t have your lenses on right now?”

She shook her head.

Hmm, that made sense. I’d never heard of something like that before, but maybe it was something special to Terranyx. I wasn’t too well versed about her race—maybe I should study up on that.

But either way, I guess this was an issue.

I thought it over for a moment, then decided on a course of action.

Without a word, I sat up and got up from the foot of the bed. After standing, I walked over to the side where Ze’Seki lay.

“W-What are you—!”

Not waiting for her to finish, I put one arm under her legs and another behind her back, then lifted her. Thanks to her being light, and me having gone through hours upon hours of unwanted physical training, this was much easier than one would think.

Ze’Seki panicked at first but quickly wrapped one arm around my neck and another covering her eyes.

“W-Wasn’t there an easier way to do this?”

“Probably,” I nodded, “But this is the fastest, wouldn’t you agree?”

I readjusted my grip before making my way out of my room and onto the hallway.

With her room right next to mine, it was a short trip.

Once her feet touched the ground, she turned to me, eyes still closed, “T-Thanks…”

“No problem.”

Ze’Seki turned the knob and entered the pitch-black room. As soon as she turned to close the door, I opened my mouth.

“Hey,” I stopped her.

“Yes?”

“…About what you said earlier…”

Thump

Thump

It was hard to get the words out.

Was I nervous?

It wasn’t that hard. She was the one that asked me. I was just responding. I had no reason to be nervous.

I powered through.

“I think we should do the whole…you know, the study thing.”

Ze’Seki smiled. She took her hand off her eyes, revealing not the glowing ones I’d seen plenty of times before, but a similarly golden pair. Her real eyes. Even if they weren’t glowing, they felt, in a way, even more mystical than before.

With a nod, she said, “Okay…should…should we start today?”

I took in a deep breath, “Yeah, we’ll start today.”

From that moment, a bond had formed between us. Whether or not it was the way Nor wanted wasn’t important. At that moment, I wasn’t even thinking about him at all.

All I had in my mind was the girl with the mystical eyes.