The world turned into a burst of colors she had never seen before, floating around the hearts of the people around. Autumn colors and winter ones, between ash, metal, and flame. It was beautiful to her, in a way she couldn’t explain. Had it always been this way, or was she just hallucinating? Had she already died, and she’d finally rejoined the River of Souls? Oh, but Kal would be sad. Well, at least she died happy, right?

“Page?” Kalender said. “Are you okay?”

“Huh?”

It wasn’t just colors. She heard something else in Kalender’s words. It was like something echoing … something smelled. It smelled sweet—and friendly?

Why did Kalender call her out, anyway? Something was wet on her cheek. She touched it, and there was a trickle of tears. It could’ve only been tears. Her eyes were wet, too.

“I’m…” The colors she was seeing were indescribable, and the echoes of her surrounds, too. The words of people—strangers, bystanders—were all laced with those weird echoes again!

Her head swam. She looked to Kalender with eyes pleading to understand, but she froze when she saw him. He was like a person made of sun, but it did not burn, and she did not wince.

Instead, a smile crept up her lips. She quickly looked away, hiding the blush that came from seeing what she realized was a visualization of just how Kalender felt about her. Wait, how’d I know that? Perhaps it was implicit knowledge that came from whatever magic had graced her. She’d heard stories where magic was something like that.

“Earth to Page, hello?” Kalender’s voice finally waded through the thick thought-soup in her brain.

“Ah! Sorry, um”—Page scratched her cheek—“I think … I think something happened to me?”

Kalender squinted. “So that magic did do something to you, didn’t it? Hm?”

Page avoided meeting his judging eyes. “I didn’t think it actually did anything, okay!” She fezzed her hands around in the air between them.

Kalender chuckled. He chuckled, but it didn’t rid him of his concern. “We’ve got a lot of time. I think it’s better if you take it from the top.”

Should she really? She shook her head. She still wasn’t used to the weird echoing going on in Kal’s voice. She looked to him, and, well, he really was nothing but patience incarnate.

They were already here. Might as well.

“Alright~ Exhibit A~”

***

[Seed of the Wisdom of Three]

Shroud not your worries, lay bare your fears

Home will arrive, loneliness effaced

If in him, your faith, will relegate

***

“So, that’s what it said,” Page continued. “It’s nothing, right? Right?!”

Kalender shook his head, just barely not throwing his arms up. He sighed, keeping himself from raising his voice any further. “You should’ve said something.”

The softness—the apprehension of his voice plucked a hearstring in Page. She felt guilty now.

“O-okay, yeah, I guess … I guess it is,” she said. She looked at Kalender. The light in him had taken a blue tone. She fezzed her hands around again. “K-kal!”

He looked up.

“Don’t … don’t show me that face,” she said, her voice trailing off by the end.

Kalender paused, then finally realized what face he’d been making. “Sorry,” he said. He held out a fist—just something to break the bad air. Page eyed it with puzzlement.

“You’re supposed to bump it,” Kalender said.

Figuring this was a reincarnator thing, Page mirrored his gesture and put her fist in front of his. He lightly bumped it.

She swore, glitters wafted off the point of bump-contact for a moment there.

Kalender’s light-feel took back its yellow-orange glow, to Page’s relief. Wait, why am I inventing weird terms all of a sudden…

“You’ve been making weird expressions. What’s that about?” Kalender asked.

Page was stunned. “Are you sure you don’t have a Skill for that thing you do yet?”

“What?”

“It’s like you’re reading me like a book!”

“That’s because you’re too easy to read.” Kalender chuckled. “So?”

“Ah—erm…” She looked away as his light seemingly also squinted at her. “I can … I can see colors in people.”

“Colors?”

“Yeah, like”—she pointed at him—“you’re yellowy-orange.”

“So, what, you can see my feelings or something?”

“That’s the easy explanation, huh?” Page chuckled. “You’re not freaking out?”

“This isn’t something to fret over, I think,” he said. “It’s just like one of my other Skills, you know?”

Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.

“Oh? I don’t think we’ve ever talked about your Skills.”

“Really?” Kalender cocked an eyebrow. “Huh. Well, I’ve only got two. You already know about the language one. The other one’s Interpersonal Bubble.”

“Woah, a rare skill…”

“Wait, so it exists?” He slapped his lap. “Darn. Here I thought I was special.”

“Oh, no no!” Page fezzed her hands around again. “This is my first time hearing about it! It’s just, if no one’s ever heard of it, then it’s automatically ‘rare.’ ”

“I guess that makes sense.”

“What’s it do, anyway?”

“ ‘Know the distance between you and someone else,’ apparently.” Kalender laughed. “It sounds so dumb, but it’s actually pretty amazing. Lets me know whether or not I’m invading someone’s personal space.”

“You can invade my personal space any time~”

Kalender squinted and met eyes with Miss Mischief beside him.

“What the heck.” Kalender laughed. Page laughed with him, too.

“Ahh~” Page deflated. “Somehow a lot of things just happened, huh?”

“Yeah…” Kalender offered her a smile, the softest he could manage. “Wanna start walking? There’s this place I went to with Minimine back when we met with the Priest. Maybe we can stop by before finding the others.”

Page beamed. “Let’s!”

***

Arpeggio played the damsel-in-distress in a dark back alley.

“S-Seldi? Where are you? Seldi?” she called out in a disgustingly cute voice. She wanted to punch something, and soon.

On cue, two Backalley Bandits showed up with grins plastering their faces. One of them was small for a woman, and the other, much larger.

“Look, Softie, it’s a free piggybank fattener,” the smaller one said.

Softie played with a surgical knife in her hand. She huffed and called out in a gruff voice, “Hey! Rich kid! How many kidneys ye have?”

The two laughed.

Arpeggio palmed her face. “Don’t you fools know that the kidney market is oversaturated? Not to mention the latest magical treatments could basically regrow entire kidneys. It’s just a matter of time before the spell spreads around, and then the both of you are out of a job.”

The two fools couldn’t believe what this Princess was saying. If what she was saying was true, then they’d have to rethink their Occupational choices.

“T-then your liver—”

“Huh? No one buys those anymore.”

“But—”

“Softie, she’s right. I-I wasn’t able to sell off the haul from our last side job.”

“What?! Bigga, why didn’t you say anything sooner!”

Arpeggio sighed. She really wanted to punch the two of them—and she would’ve by now, if it weren’t for her royal sensibilities.

It was a rule, codified and with precedent in their legal system, that royalty should never make the first move. It was a point of pride and a statement superiority.

“Are we going to fight or not?” she flatly stated.

Softie slowly turned to her, astonished. “You wanna what, mate?”

Arpeggio took to a brawling stance. “Come on, you two-fathered hooligan!”

Softie and Bigga took a moment to process how that insult worked. Once it clicked, they were more impressed than anything that such a prim-and-proper rich kid could come up with such a creative way to call someone’s mother a whore.

“This one ain’t worth it,” Bigga said.

Softie huffed in agreement. “We’re not gonna get by doing this any much longer, anyway. Come on, let’s turn our lives around or somethin’.”

The two Backalley Bandits left the scene, leaving Arpeggio despondent.

“I just wanted to fight…”

She sighed. It’s been like this for the past couple of hours. She’d squeezed out a few fights out of the first few encounters, but they were utterly basic and boring. All the Bandits are so low-leveled! Shal-yen’s pruning his town’s black elements too nicely. Hmph.

Eventually, boredom set in, and she rejoined proper society on the main streets. She ordered five meat skewers from a nearby vendor. The vendor, however, caught a glimpse of Arpeggio’s royal headband under her hood. Her eyes widened, realizing the girl in front of her was someone high-ranking—but Arpeggio shushed her, placing a sweet-smelling finger to her lips. Wait, why does it smell like bl—

“I’ll make it ten,” Arpeggio said, somewhat of a bribe, and somewhat of a reward. Royalty were forbidden from completely removing all signs of their royalty-ness. Arpeggio chose to keep her headband, a fine ornament of gold wires twisting among themselves like snakes. She actually preferred the silver one, but gold blended in better with the golden blonde she oft used in disguise. It took quite an observant person to spot it—so yay for the vendor! Notes for you!

She happily walked away with the mystery meat skewers. Supposedly, they were chicken, but most things tasted like chicken—especially true of the beasts from the Monster Wall, she’d know—so you couldn’t really tell.

“Put your weapons down!”

Such a threat echoed so excitingly, and townsfolk fled from down the street. Arpeggio grinned, then devoured all ten meat skewers at once—scaring the vendor who’d happened to look her way—before she wielded the bamboo skewers themselves, five in each hand, and rushed in the way of danger.

She wove between the rush of bodies, cleared it, then came to see the front of a bookstore.

It was two Guards against five Backalley Bandits, accompanied by a Black Librarian.

Intellectual property theft was a multi-million-Note black industry in Arpeggio’s kingdom. She couldn’t quite fathom how someone came up with the idea to profit from stealing not the books themselves, but the contents, and making a profit from it—that lady must’ve been a genius.

After all, there were no intellectual property laws here. Although trespassing and theft were illegal, the transcription of books was not. The thieves would steal the books, transcribe the contents, then sell the transcriptions to a gray IP broker, who would then sell them to a publisher, far away elsewhere.

This was the bane of all authors everywhere: “IP laundering.” If only mother would recognize the threat this practice represented!

… But in front of her, right here, right now, she could nip it in the bud.

“Attention all who dare commit such an unsightly display!” Arpeggio announced. Her raw oratorical skills captured the attention of both the Guards and the Bandits. “Surrender now, and be sent on your way to the mines! If you resist, I will welcome all of you to the domain of pain”—she smiled—“before sending you to the mines! Now, what will it be, all you Backalley Bandits … out of your alley?”

One of the Bandits who had an Appraise Skill tried to warn the others, but they moved before she could. While two of her comrades confronted the two Guards, the other two attacked Arpeggio with clubs.

Those two only managed to take a single step before their pressure points were skewered. Forget the exacting precision of needles—Arpeggio annihilated those pressure points and expanded them into strain circles. The two Bandits fell to ground with shouts, ones that pleased Arpeggio. They hoped that their comrades would hear them, but their comrades were also shouting while they charged the Guards.

After another six skewers, all the Bandits were down. They were all tearful and crying in beautiful torment, or so Arpeggio hummed in her mind.

“T-thank you,” one of the Guards said. She flinched when Arpeggio, still smiling from the wonder of subjecting others to nonlethal pain, made eye contact with her.

Arpeggio waved in dismissal. “It is of no object.”

The Guard wondered how that reply even made sense. She was but a mere commoner, but, really, what was an “object”? Why was there none of it? Why not “You’re welcome” or “No problem”? That was what she’d meant, right?

“Wait, where’s the other one?” the other Guard said.

Arpeggio didn’t have time to lament her laxedness. She scanned the surroundings, her eyes skipping over the faces of witnesses who had flocked to watch the scene.

Blasted. She couldn’t find the Black Librarian.

Instead, her eyes landed on a different Librarian. It was quite a coincidence to find two Librarians in the same place. This one was with a man who looked to be an adventurer—or an applicant to the Company, more likely.

It wasn’t the man who caught her attention, though, but the Librarian. She was staring unblinkingly at … someone. Arpeggio followed her gaze, until her own landed on a hooded figure, someone just an arm’s reach away from the Librarian.

The figure’s head turned towards her direction. It was the Black Librarian. The fear and panic in her eyes said so. A short Appraise confirmed it.

The Black Librarian lunged for Page.