“Congratulations on your one-month anniversary,” was what Sarah said to start their illicit meet up. She smiled as she handed him a small gift-wrapped package.
Sam groaned. “I knew you had a hidden agenda when you told me that we’ll walk to breakfast together. Well, at least your premature gift is funny,” he said after savagely tearing into the beautifully wrapped—for the purpose of disguise, he soon realized—round object. It was a small replica of the Eiffel Tower, or “la tour Eiffel,” as the plaque underneath the model denoted. Felix was right. Sam really has been a corrupting influence on Sarah.
“It’s not premature at all. Today marks one month since your return.”
“No…” Sam got up from placing the gift in his backpack, and they started making their way towards the mess hall. “Today only marks four weeks since my return. A month doesn’t pass until you arrive on the same date you’re counting from in the following month.”
“So you’re saying that it takes until March 30th for a month to pass after January 30th?”
“No, that’s idiotic. Allow me to change my baseless metric. A month is thirty days. Four weeks aren’t thirty days, ergo, a month has yet to pass.”
“Are you trying to argue this because you want another gift?”
“No, I didn’t even want this one gift. Although, thank you very much for it. It’s lovely. I’m going to keep it on my desk and then have a mental breakdown during my first day of Military Training when I realize that I forgot to bring it with me. No, I’m arguing because definitions are important. Accurate measurement of time using those definitions is important. That’s what society is built upon. Despite what the Buddhists might have you believe with all that talk about living in the present and making a mockery of time-keeping with how they define aeons and how many of them have there been in history.”
“Alright, so if that’s the case, that means this Saturday is your one-month anniversary. So consider the gift an early one, just in case I wouldn’t have been able to give it to you in two days.”
“Yeah right.” Sam laughed. “What are the chances of that happening?
“Same chances of me not celebrating your one-month anniversary.”
“Please tell me that the celebration starts and ends with you finishing your workout early so you could come and pick me up from spear practice so that I wouldn’t have to walk all the way to breakfast alone.”
“That was the plan… But since you’ve convinced me that the anniversary isn’t until Saturday, I’ll have more time to cook up something even nicer.”
“What? Like walking me both to and from my lesson with Lin?”
“That’s certainly an idea. I’ll consider it. And how was your session with Lin today?”
“Pretty good. We’ll be adding slashing and cutting into the mix starting from next week.”
“That’s great! All that in less than a month. So how long before we can start sparring with you?”
“Why are all of you so gung ho about sparring with me?”
She shrugged. “It’s the only part of training that I can feel like I could help you with anytime soon. You have Dan for everything related to magic. And you don’t need help with any non-magical subject.”
“Whoa! Them’s fighting words. You’re giving me way too much credit.”
“Am I? The only time you’ve asked for help with your studies was from Yvessa last Saturday. And you didn’t even need her help.”
“According to her.”
“You made it to through the entire first trimester’s material in less than three weeks. Are you seriously trying to tell me you needed her help?”
“Nah. But I did need to make sure that I didn’t misunderstand some of the important concepts, contexts, and events.”
“And did you?”
“No… But it’s a reasonable worry to have. What? Was I simply supposed to assume that learning about the history of magical aliens was anything comparable to learning about regular history? How was I supposed to know that it’d be that easy?”
“Ergo, my point.”
“Don’t ‘ergo, my point,’ me. I’m the guy who ‘ergos, my point,’ and you’ll do very well to remember that on my four weeks… Surely anniversary isn’t the right word. Isn’t it specifically for the passing of a year?”
“Yep.”
“So technically it can’t be my one-month anniversary on Saturday?”
“Nope. It’ll be the first mensiversary of your return. I had the same line of thought as you, so I looked up the word.”
“Oh… it’s awful. You aren’t going to use it, right?”
“Nope. That ship has already sailed when we celebrated your one-week anniversary and I decided not to call it a weekiversary.”
“That’s a good call. I’m not a big fan of the whole not yearly anniversaries—not that I’m a big supporter of celebrating even the correct form the of the word, mind you—but I’d hate it even more if each celebrated milestone had its own word.”
“Well, whatever your opinions on celebrating it, we’re going to celebrate your one-month anniversary in one form or another. You agree with me, right?” she asked Felix and Yvessa as they sat down to join them.
“Whatever you say, boss.” Felix nodded, having lost the power to resist.
“Good, so let’s—Wait!” Sarah whirled on Sam. “What do you mean that you don’t like celebrating even regular anniversaries?”
“Pretty much what it sounds like…?” Sam stared back at her.
“It sounds like you don’t like celebrating birthdays.”
“Yep… Birthdays certainly are the best examples for that type of yearly celebrations that I rail against. Especially as I haven’t experienced many other events that were worth commemorating after a year’s time.”
“What, like your own, or other people’s?” Felix asked.
“Only my own, I guess. Even I’m not so much of a grouch as to resent other people celebrating their own birthdays.”
“Aren’t you?”
“Hmm… I don’t know, maybe I am. Try telling me again about your own birthday party and how you had so much fun with all your friends and family there to celebrate your achievements and shower you with love. Really try to emphasize being happy with where you were in life and that you didn’t feel even slightly depressed for yet another year having passed without you meeting the arbitrary, ill-defined goal that you’ve set yourself a year before.”
“Yeah… I’m not going to do that. I have my own arbitrary goal for the coming year of not being murdered by Sarah.”
“Lucky bastard. That’s such an easy one to meet.”
“You seriously don’t like celebrating your birthday, Sam?!” Sarah asked, violating his personal space.
“Let me put it this way… hm… I don’t have a funny answer. Let me think about it for a minute and then come back to me.”
“How about giving a serious answer, then?”
Sam was saved from having to do that just yet by Yvessa coming to his rescue. “I sort of understand where he’s coming from,” she said. “I’m not a big fan of celebrating my birthdays either.”
“Was that from before you met me?” Felix asked with a smirk.
She gave him a middle finger. “Having to share a birthday with you certainly put another damper on the prospects, but no. I just didn’t particularly enjoy my birthday celebration. My parents always had to make it into an official event—the requirements of maintaining social status with the nobility.”
“That doesn’t seem fair,” Sam said.
“It is what it is. I don’t begrudge my mother for doing what she had to do in the execution of her office.”
“No I wasn’t talking about that. I was talking about your reason for disliking celebrating your birthday. It’s actually grounded in rational reasoning. It’s making me sound like a whiny asshole when my sole reason for hating mine is that I keep comparing myself to Spinoza and obliviously coming up short.”
“And the real reason?” Sarah asked, her index finger hovering ominously behind Sam’s nape—a cruel innovation of her physical abuse, tracing the tip of her fingers to exert zero degrees C.
Sam gulped. “Do you truly believe that threats of minor discomfort provide the best facilitator for a healthy and engaging discussion?”
“Don’t try pinning this one on me. It’s what you best respond to.”
“Maybe… I’ll have to think about that.” Sam turned back to his plate. Jolting straight once his attempted diversion had failed and Sarah’s attempt at maintaining her deterrence succeeded. “Sheesh… alright. So, my reason for disliking celebrating my birthday is that I rarely feel like there’s something to celebrate. ‘Oh great, I’m older by a year, and still living at home, unemployed, friendless…’ you get the picture.”
“You aren’t any of these things now…”
“I know. I chose them specifically so that you’ll get off my case. And it’s not like I was either of those latter two a year ago, yeah? But you still got the gist, right? I’m honestly appalled that after all this time knowing me, I still have to explain such basic facets of my personality to you.”
Sarah waved him off. “Be appalled all you want. The only thing I wanted to know was that there wasn’t any real reason why we shouldn’t celebrate your birthday. Now that I know that there isn’t, I can start making plans.”
“Look, you can have celebrating my birthday or you can have celebrating my actual anniversary of being returned. Not both.”
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“I’m going to have both. What I’ll give you instead is not celebrating the half-anniversary of your return.”
“I’ll take it!”
“Good. It’ll be around the end of the school year anyway, so we’ll just celebrate that instead.”
Felix laughed. “Can’t believe you fell into that one.”
Sam looked at him with pity. “What are you laughing about, birthday boy? You’ll be a subject of that celebration as well.”
“Yeah… so?”
“Hm… I haven’t thought that through.”
“When is your birthday, by the way? We should make sure that nothing else is planned around that date, so we could maximize our amount of celebrations.”
Sam leaned back and smiled smugly. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”
“Not really. I can always just ask Sarah. So?”
Sarah furrowed her brows. “I… I don’t know.”
“Checkmate,” Sam said.
“How come you haven’t told me when your birthday is?!” Sarah turned on him.
“It’s not just you. I haven’t told anyone.”
“What do you mean? You had to put your date of birth of the forms they had you sign as a Taken.”
“Really? I just put the date it was three days before that.”
“You didn’t… Let me see your ID card.” Sam handed it to her. “You really did. And they just took it at face value.”
“Wait, Sarah,” Felix said, “does that mean that your date of birth has you as being born in the 5th century?”
“No, of course not. But everything besides the year is true. I can’t believe no one called you out on this!” She returned Sam the card with a frown.
Sam shrugged. “Maybe they just didn’t want to interrogate the guy who had his birthday ruined by finding out that his world has been destroyed.”
“It wasn’t your birthday.”
“Wasn’t it? And how would you know? More importantly, even if I give you a different date now, how will you know that one’s real?”
“Maybe I’ll just turn you in to the authorities. Tell them that you lied on your forms.”
“There’s no way they would care about that.”
“Isn’t there? And how would you know? More importantly, how could you claim to be a moral person if you lied to the government for such a reason and in such a fashion?”
They stared at each other in tense silence. “What are you smiling about?” Sarah narrowed her eyes.
“Ah, but my coup de grace, of course. Can’t you guess it?” She didn’t answer.
Yvessa did in her stead. “He’ll just tell them that he didn’t lie, as he considers the date of his return to also be his birthday, because he got a new body or something like that.”
Sam nodded. “Nine points. Perfect deduction, but I think you could’ve put it a little more eloquently.”
Sarah grumbled. “There’s no way we’re ending this day without you telling me when your birthday really is.”
“I’d love that. Having today stretch on for forever? That’s goodbye to worrying about not being able to graduate in two and a half years.”
“I have an idea, Sarah,” Felix said, “why don’t you just pick a date, any date, and decide that’ll be when you celebrate Sam’s birthday? This way might even be better than him telling you the truth, because you could pick the date that you want his birthday to be. For the purpose of maximizing the opportunity for celebrations.”
“That outrageous!” Sam objected. “You’re not allowed to do that!”
“Why not? We can just say that for this or that reason we can’t celebrate your birthday at its actual date, so we’ll be celebrating it early, slash, late. After all, it’s just the celebration. It doesn’t have to be on the actual date, does it?”
“That’s so incredibly conniving. I have never respected you more. You know… all this talk of birthday parties has reminded me of a funny story from my childhood.”
“Oh?” Felix rubbed his hands. “Do tell.”
“How have you not learned your lesson by now?” Yvessa asked Felix.
“Relax.” Sam waved her off. “It’s a good one, fun for the whole family, and it’s super short because I was really young and I don’t really remember the details. May I have the stage, please?”
“All of a sudden, you need to ask for permission?”
“Good point. So, a little background for the story. I was in… third grade, I think. I’m not sure, but it must’ve been around that time because I’m pretty certain that by fifth grade I was already in my elementary school social pariah stage and didn’t have any friends.”
“Jesus Christ…” Sarah rubbed her eyes.
“I hope that’s all for the backstory,” Felix said. “Because so far it’s not really short.”
“It’s short by my standards!” Sam said. “You should all be aware by now that I’m not one for brevity, especially when levity is at play. Anyway, so I was around third grade, and the other bit of the backstory you need to know is that, by that point, I never really had a non-family birthday party. Don’t know why, I blame my parents because any blame I lay at my nine-year-old feet will just have to revert back to them, considering my age.
“But, my parents came in clutch, and did do something in order to remedy their progeny’s social isolation from his peers during his birthdays. They concocted a plan to join me to a birthday party of two other kids who were born around the same date as I was. Now, I don’t know the specifics or the behind the scenes; where it was held, who was paying, who came, none of that shit. Hell, I don’t even remember if I ever went to the fucking party. What I do remember, is that in the days before the party was to take place, I got into an argument or a fight with one of my fellow celebrants. And this is where it gets spicy. Because I remember the kid threatening me that he’ll have me… removed, I guess is the right word, from the party unless I backed down or something. Now, I don’t know if his threat was credible—like I said, I don’t know anything else about that event—but going by my later perception of the memory, I assume that meant he, or more likely his parents, were doing me a favor by adding me to their son’s birthday party and that I was reliant on remaining on his good side for me to remain in the party.”
“That’s awful…” Sarah said. “I can see why you might hate celebrating your birthdays after something like that.”
“What?! That’s not the reason why I hate celebrating my birthdays! That’s a just a funny story. Besides, Yvessa’s the one who hates celebrating her birthdays, I just hate the birthdays themselves, celebration or no celebration.”
“How is that a funny story?”
“I don’t know… Because it shows kids are dumb little assholes? It’s just funny. You guys think so, right?”
Felix shrugged. “Eh… maybe you just didn’t tell it right.”
“And you, Yvessa?”
“I guess I can see the humor in it. I’ve got a similar story. Only I was the dumb little asshole kid. And I threatened not to come to someone’s birthday, so I had even less of a leg to stand on.”
“Were you at least more popular than the other kid?”
“I was a Terran child in the Sarechi court. Of course I wasn’t. And it’s not like my parents were really going to let me skip on Erianna’s party. They would’ve dragged me there kicking and screaming.”
“Now, hold on a minute,” Felix said. “That’s a plot twist. Making your story already way better than Sam’s. You got into a fight with your future best friend—”
“She was already my best friend at the time. Which was, or at least I’d like to think so, the main reason why my parents didn’t allow me to rescind my acceptance to go.”
“Right… and how old were you?”
“I think I was six or seven. There’s really not much to tell. We got into a fight one day. More than a month before the party was to take place. I didn’t visit her for a couple of days. But then we met up again and made up, both of us apologizing. By the time her birthday actually came, we had already forgotten about our fight. It wasn’t until like a decade later when her older brother reminded us of that happening, and it’s become something of a running joke ever since.”
“Really?” Sam asked Felix. “That, is better than my story? That heartwarming story about a cute dimpled-cheek little Yvessa and her best friend getting into a fight and making up after three days? That’s like a half a chapter, at best, from a slice of life manga starring a friend group of four quirky girls.”
Felix shrugged. “Her story was also shorter. And she didn’t try to make us feel bad by feeding us bullcrap about how sad and lonely her childhood was.”
“What?! That’s outrageous! I wasn’t trying to make anyone feel bad about me or my childhood. That stuff just comes out of me naturally. And also, I want to reiterate this, it was a funny story. If there’s any sadness in the background information, it only serves to enrich the comedy.”
Sarah cleared her throat. “So now that you’ve got your sad background information and funny anecdote from your childhood out of the way, will you please tell me when your birthday is?”
“As long as you promise not to have a party for me.”
“I will only promise to start planning it a week prior and discuss with you its size, length, and invitees.”
“Do I have a final say in the discussion?”
She paused in consideration. “Fine. But you have to agree to some of my suggestion. You can’t say no to everything.”
“Oh… Wow… That… I don’t know about that. I don’t think that putting a limit over a person’s ability to reject something is going to fly in the current social climate.”
“Sam…”
“Fine, I’m willing to agree to those terms.” He told the table his real date of birth. Minus the year, of course, that wasn’t part of the negotiation and he wasn’t about to give it up for free.
Sarah narrowed her eyes at him. “And this is the real date? You’re not just telling us a fake date in order to make sure that I’ll abide by the terms?”
“I have thought of doing that. But I didn’t. This is the actual date. I assure you. Make with it what you will.”
“Good. Now, for Saturday—”
“Surely just dinner, and maybe a non-alcoholic toast, will do for Saturday, right? No need to do anything too different.”
“Don’t look at me, mate,” Felix said. “She had me in her pocket the minute she said we’ll be having fancy drinks.”
“Fancy drinks?” Sam turned to Sarah. “You’ve already made plans?”
“Yes. And I took into consideration your weekend schedule so you can’t complain that I’m taking away some of your work time. We’ll have dinner, order in from a pricey restaurant, and drinks, bought from a pricey liquor store, in your room while watching a movie.”
“How does that take into consideration my weekend schedule?”
“By moving dinner later in the evening so that you’ll have your post-dinner study time brought forward. And since we’ll be meeting in your room, you don’t even have to waste time going to the mess hall and back.”
“This sucks! I can’t argue against that logic. Yvessa, you’re the only one who hasn’t said anything. You have to save me! Surely you have something to argue in disfavor to this decadent event?”
“Nah, it’s fine with me. I don’t care.”
“What if I pick a fight with you and you disinvite yourself from the event?”
“I think in that case, Felix and Sarah will be playing the role of my parents by forcing me to play nice with my best friend’s future second in command.” She smiled sweetly.
“Ugh! Fucking Farris and his stupid jokes! Always coming back to bite me in the ass. I knew only bad things could come from not immediately rejecting the prospect of being subordinate to a woman. Fine! Whatever. I gotta go,” he said with a sigh as he got up. “Going by yesterday, today’s lesson with Dan is going to be stretched for time, so I’m heading in early and I’ll probably finish a little late. Felix! Make sure to make a joke about me already being subordinate to Sarah’s whims in my stead. Text me the joke so that I could rate you on it.”
“Not doing that,” Felix said as he left them. And it wasn’t until dinner that Sam learned that he meant both parts of the order, and not just the request for a text.
He did end up being late for dinner. Thankfully, his friends took his words to heart, so they pushed their dinner meeting by twenty minutes. Unfortunately, Sam was late by thirty-five. But at least no one could complain that the conversation during dinner focused on Sam and his personal life. Because Sarah would’ve glared at them, of course, not because there was no basis for that, as they mostly talked about the basics of magical theory that everyone else at the table but him had already graduated from. Although, judging from the fact that all of them were enthusiastically engaged in the conversation (or, at least, just Felix and Yvessa, as Sarah’s level of enthusiasm wasn’t a clear signifier of that), the knowledge wasn’t that far removed from them as to completely bore them with its infantility.
The fact that his study time encompassed two meals today (as Dan also joined him for lunch, and this time for a change, chose to keep up the lecture) made Sam feel better about the danger of losing some of his study time on Saturday. He wasn’t convinced by Sarah’s “plan” to accommodate his unsanctioned modification of her original schedule. She had ulterior motives, and at this point, they were crystal clear to him.
Not that he wasn’t happy about having a celebration. OK… maybe he wasn’t happy about having a celebration. But that was only because he had an aversion to celebrating stuff that had to do with him. But he was definitely happy about getting to spend his Saturday evening with friends, eating nice food and avoiding fancy drinks that weren’t worth the calories. Now if he could only reconcile that happiness with the great pangs of unwillingness that he felt whenever he had five more of anything to go during the workout that evening.
Still, happiness carried the day. What with workout being the easiest (of the cardio ones) he had all week—both during and after—and with the rest of his evening passing smoothly. He had to stretch his self-studying time by half an hour because he wanted to finish an extra section. Which meant pilfering half an hour from his untouchable hour and a half block of free time, as he didn’t want to lose out on his cultivation. But he did all that without feeling a tiny bit bad about it, so he went to bed and fell asleep without the slightest trouble.
That sense of self-satisfaction and complacency with his given efforts persisted through Friday as well, with him taking his shortest breaks yet while working out and using all that time (less than ten minutes, as he did take a longer shower by accident) in order to cultivate. He might’ve been able to cultivate for five more minutes even, but he and Yvessa got into a discussion about the differences between seeking and holding techniques, which lasted the group all through breakfast (even sliding, at points, into subjects unintelligible yet to Sam, and thus forbidden by Sarah, without her immediately shutting the conversation).
Lessons with Dan carried on as was routine at this point of the week, and this time he was only late to dinner by five minutes (but still twenty-five to their usual meeting time) and with the rest of the evening wide open afterwards, he powered through his usual Friday night lethargy without trouble. Using his knowledge of tomorrow’s planned event to satisfy his lack of any extra free time today. He went back to studying magical theory from the highschool level textbook for the first time since starting his lessons with Dan. And he even ended the day with a first. He was able to complete a whole five cycles of cultivating through his (admittedly much longer than usual) shower.