Relief slowly set upon my exhausted, wounded body as the doctor administered healing magic to my injuries. Evidently, whatever that ball of magic was that Emil had hurled at me had done some pretty bad damage, and it was going to take another short session of healing to completely set me on the path to recovery. The doctor said he would return in a bit and stepped out of the room, leaving me alone with Eva. She had been standing in the corner, watching as he worked on me, but she practically jumped into his rolling chair as soon as he left and rolled up to my bedside.

“You continue to prove me right!” she exclaimed, spinning in the chair.

“What do you mean?”

She stopped spinning, ceasing her rotation perfectly in time to face me head on. “I’m ready to tell you what your special skill is now!”

“Oh yeah, I almost forgot about that. So, let’s hear it.”

“Well, after training and observing you for a while, I can say with confidence that you are in fact a combat genius! The way you think on your feet is unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. In other words, your ability to improvise is your hidden skill, Shinsuke!”

I scoffed and shook my head. After all the teasing and hinting, hearing her say that was almost a letdown. Especially because it sounded, frankly, absurd.

“I highly doubt that, Eva.”

“It’s true!” she insisted. “That fight with Emil just proved it beyond doubt! Even if some of your methods didn’t work, you never stopped coming up with new approaches. And despite being at such a disadvantage with abilities and training, you outsmarted him and won the fight. That speaks volumes, Shinsuke.”

“It was all just panic, really.”

Eva laughed and waved my words away with her hand. “Nonsense!”

“That aside… We made a deal, remember? I won, so now you have to tell me what you want to do with the rest of your life.”

“Oh, that’s right.” She seemed taken off guard for some reason but nodded. “Yeah, we did have a deal, didn’t we?”

“Indeed, we did.”

She sighed and gazed off at nothing in particular, an unmissable yearning upon her features. “I’ve always dreamed of opening my own bakery.”

“A bakery?” I asked, taking my turn to be thrown off guard. “Are you serious?”

“Yeah, absolutely. I love baking. I always have. Is that silly?”

“Not at all, I’m just surprised is all. The great combat and magical prodigy wanting to be a baker of all things is just unexpected.”

“I can understand that. But it’s what I want, you know? I often think about living a simple life. I don’t care if it’s in some small apartment in the city or a beautiful house in the countryside. As long as I have my bakery, I’d be so happy…” Her blue eyes were alight with a glisten only dreams could ignite.

“That does sound wonderful. Do your parents—”

“Anyway!” she interrupted. “Enough about me! My turn to ask a question.”

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“Uh, okay? What is it?”

“Before, when we entered your dressing room, you didn’t look very happy at first. Are you not glad you won?”

Killian’s words echoed in my ears again. “It’s not that. It’s a lot to explain, but I was thinking about the way I defeated Emil. I can’t figure out if I should feel bad about it or not.”

“To be honest, I was pretty surprised about it all. I didn’t even know that Emil had some kind of trauma surrounding his mother. I got the sense no one else in the audience knew that either. Everyone was kind of reacting a certain way whenever you said those things.”

Everyone?

“I see. Do you think I’m a bad person for what I did?”

“Of course not!” Eva declared without missing a beat. “Life isn’t black and white, Shinsuke. Sometimes you need to do the wrong thing to do the right thing. And you did do the right thing. Emil isn’t a great person to begin with, but his intentions were problematic to say the least. Even beyond our personal stakes in this, if he won, nothing good would have come from it.”

I knew she was right, but there was still something eating at me. Maybe it was Killian’s sentiment or the fact that I still couldn’t bring myself to genuinely feel sorry for what I did. No matter what the answer was, something just didn’t feel right.

Eva frowned at me.

“What?” I asked.

“You still have that pouty face! But it’s okay, I know how to make it all better.” She hopped out of her chair and rushed over to the doctor’s desk and cabinets. “You were a good boy while he was treating your wounds, so you deserve a treat in return!”

Without a care in the world, Eva began rummaging through the doctor’s belongings in a messy, hasty fashion. Bewildered, I called out to her. “Hey, what are you doing? You can’t touch that stuff!”

“Aha!” she said, ignoring me completely. “I knew he would have one. Every good doctor does, after all!”

“A what?”

“A lollipop, of course!” She rushed up to my bedside and tried to stuff the snack into my mouth. “Say ah~”

“I don’t think so. That belongs to the doctor.”

“Oh come on, you deserve it!”

“That isn’t really for you to decide!”

“It is now!”

She tried multiple times to stuff the candy in my mouth, but I dodged every attempt.

“All right, that’s it!” She crawled onto the bed and mounted me with a determined expression. “Now you’re right where I want you!”

“E-Eva…!” I managed to utter despite fast growing panic and a distracting sensation in my cheeks.

We wrestled for a bit until she pinned me to the bed and smirked at me. That smirk was quickly wiped off her face, and a wide-eyed, embarrassed look befell her features. We just stared at each other like that in awkward silence until, in an unwavering whisper, she said, “close your eyes and open your mouth...”

What is going on?!

My mind began racing with all kinds of thoughts, none of them coherent enough to get from point A to point B. I had no idea what would happen if I did as she asked, but I found myself doing it anyway.

“Just like that,” I heard her say, quietly.

In the darkness of my eyelids, I lay panicking even more than before, with my heart trying to escape the confines of my chest for some reason beyond me. Eva didn’t make a sound, but I could feel her adjusting herself on the bed. It wobbled a bit, and I felt her knees secure themselves on both sides of my hips. I had expected to feel the candy enter my mouth at any moment, but instead, I felt what had to be the ends of Eva’s soft, pink hair draping down onto my face and tickling my nose as it fell to my cheeks. Soon after, I felt what I thought was her nose graze mine. And then…

Two harsh knocks and the sound of the doorknob twisting sent my eyes flying open just in time to find the doctor reenter the room, and witness Eva tumbling off the bed in a heap.

“Um,” the doctor stood in the doorway wearing a perfect look of confusion. “What just happened?”

I could ask the same thing!

Eva popped up from the side of the bed like a cartoon character. The lollipop was sticking out of her mouth, and she was laughing nervously. “Nothing, I was just leaving! Feel better, Shinsuke. See you when you get out of the infirmary!” With that, she dashed out of the room so fast she practically left a dust clone of herself in her own wake.

I sat up, stunned and in doubt of my own perception of what had just occurred.

Did she just try to… no, right?

“Was she eating one of my lollipops?” the doctor asked, answering his own question with a shrug. “Anyway, let’s finish your healing.”

“Actually,” I started, shaking off my still racing heart and persisting confusion. “Could I use the bathroom first?”

“Of course! I’ll be waiting here for you.”

I left the room and walked right past the bathrooms. I had another destination in mind, first.