With Friday, the mock exams are finished! I mean, it was only the accounting exam left (and that was super easy), so it was mostly a normal day. It’s actually unfortunate, really, since we’ll be getting homework again next week. Oh well.

On the bright side, Evan doesn’t have a reason not to come to embroidery club, so we’re walking there together. It wasn’t exactly lonely on Monday without him, but I ended up thinking way too much. Even though I know I’m kind of a serious person, it’s easy for me to lose sight of what’s important and talk around in circles, growing more depressed by the minute.

While we wait for Ms Berks outside the room, I look over at Evan. “Is something the matter?” I ask.

He winces. “That is… the exams… were maybe more tough than I expected.”

“Oh don’t worry, they’re only mocks,” I say, resisting the urge to pat him on the head.

He sort of pouts at that, and I can’t help but think he wanted to brood and now he’s upset I’ve said something sensible. It’s probably not that, but I like to amuse myself.

Ms Berks comes along shortly and lets us in and we go about our usual activities. For me, I’m idly sewing patterns onto handkerchiefs, practising different stitches and seeing how they look in different colours and alongside other stitches. Evan is still learning the basics. Spirit magic does help, but it’s, like, a multiplier rather than an addition. If his skill level is two, then spirit magic can double it to four, but double zero is still zero. In other words, spirit magic just helps him make mistakes quicker until he gets better.

As always, Ms Berks is reading.

I was ready for that to go on for the whole hour, a few bits of conversation here and there, maybe asking him more about the accounting exam (we’ve chatted the rest of the week about the other exams already, sitting next to each other and all).

However, there is knock on the door.

I pause, and look around, and I can definitely see both Evan and Ms Berks in the room. My gaze lingering on Ms Berks, she looks up from her book and gestures to the door with her eyes.

Trying not to smile, I can’t help but think she’s perhaps chosen the wrong career, even if she’s been very helpful to me. “You may enter,” I say, speaking up enough to hopefully let whoever it is hear.

Through the small window in the door, I can just see hair. At my words, though, the person moves and the door opens, and someone a little familiar enters.

“Sorry to interrupt,” she says—Lady Horsham.

I’m not sure how true it is in general, but I would say half the ladies in the junior year are somewhat chubby. It varies from a bit of a chubby face to somewhat fat, mostly the former and just a few of the latter. I think it’s probably a lot to do with being spoiled and just being something grown out of—as in growing taller and adopting an “adult’s” eating habits. Even here, you can go to the dining hall between meals and be served tea and cake. (Maybe that’s actually the cause….)

Anyway, Lady Horsham is one of those ladies with some chubbiness to her face, and is still on the shorter side. I want to reiterate that I’m not calling her fat, but I do want to pinch her cheeks. Otherwise, she has fairly long, brown hair, which she keeps tied in a side ponytail and has a plain-but-golden hair clip for her fringe. Not wanting to stare at her too intensely, it’s hard to judge her eye colour, but it seems a normal enough brown; she has some darker streaks to her hair that probably matches the shade of her eyes. Her nose is cute, small and upturned. Nothing else about her really stands out.

Since she didn’t attend Queen Anne’s—the finishing school most of us ladies at King Philip’s went to—I don’t actually know much about her, other than she’s now friends with Violet. Well, I guess she came to the café. Can’t say I learned anything from that.

“This is the embroidery club, yes?” she asks.

“It is. May we be of assistance?” I ask in reply, thinking she might want us to fix something.

She reluctantly steps inside, not quite letting the door close behind her. It looks like no one else is here with her. She can’t possibly be here… to join the club? I shouldn’t get my hopes up, right?

“I… heard that spirit magic can help with braiding hair?”

Ah, right, that happened.

“I suppose it can?” I say, feigning a little innocence. “Would you like me to try? We could certainly do something quite nice with your hair, long and well-kept as it is.”

She hesitates.

I don’t.

On my feet in an instant, I take her hand and lead her to a seat, having her sit before she gets second thoughts. Without a brush on hand, I comb through her hair with my fingers. “You normally wear your hair to the side, so a side Dutch braid would like rather nice without changing your look,” I say, more to myself. “Although a French braid would be more flashy, I think small steps, yes?”

Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

She can’t exactly nod, so she softly says, “Yes?” sounding only half convinced.

Smiling to myself, I start by getting the parting in the right place, and then lightly pulling up a bunch of hair, splitting it into three. On purpose, I do the braiding by hand at first before letting out an, “Oh.” Pausing the braiding, I chant, and I slowly feel the faeries’ magic tug at the hair, eager to pick up where I left off.

“It seems you can use spirit magic for this,” I say to her.

While I could go quicker, I fumble now and then, making a mistake, keeping the pace slower. Of course, I don’t compromise the quality. Each bunch of hair thick, it still doesn’t take all that long to finish.

“There we go,” I say, using her small ribbon to neatly tie the end. “How wonderful—it really does suit you.”

We don’t have a mirror on hand, but she can see some of my handiwork since it is a side braid and it’s long. Her gaze lingers on that bit at the end, and it would have stayed there for longer if I didn’t interrupt.

“Lord Sussex, what do you think of my lady?”

As if only now realising there’s a man in the room, she jerks, and then seems to tighten up, her nerves on full shown. Well, it probably is embarrassing for her to have been seen with her hair down—I should have thought of that earlier.

Never mind. You live and learn.

Evan doesn’t look much better off than Lady Horsham, as he has spent all this time until now staring straight down and blushing at the slip of fabric in his hands. Whether he actually did any sewing, I can’t say, but probably not since he didn’t prick himself.

His gaze reluctantly raising, he only gives her the shortest look before looking down again. “Oh, um, yes, it looks lovely.”

“You hear that? How nice,” I say, not entirely sure it’s a helpful thing to say.

“It, it does seem so,” she says, competing with him for who can mumble the quietest. Fortunately, I’m right next to her.

Expanding on hair, we ladies are still at an age where we are “children”, and so it’s acceptable for us to have our hair however as long as it’s tidy. Once we have our debut, or if invited to a formal event, then we will have to wear our hair up in some fashion, and adorn it with combs and flowers and whatever else is popular. That’s another reason why (like with complicated dresses) I’ll be more reliant on maids in the future, the sort of styles that are fashionable inevitably demanding, impractical for one person to do herself.

Since commoner women also have hair, they generally loosely follows high-class fashion. In her teenage years, she’s expected to start braiding her hair, and there’s all sorts of wishy-washy things like single women of marriageable age wearing a certain flower in her hair. Which flower, or what colour, are prone to change depending on who you ask and what week it is.

Anyway, that really just means that Lady Horsham has a youthful style, especially when paired with the somewhat childish (slight) chubbiness to her face.

“You should go find a mirror and see if it is to your liking,” I say. “A maid can easily do this for you, so it can be your new look if you so wish.”

For some reason, those words depress her. “Yes,” she whispers.

I think. As I said, she’s new to me from this year, so I don’t know much of her. Helena Horsham, an easy-to-remember name. I don’t precisely know her status. Rather than in the county of Kent, I believe Horsham is in Sussex. It’s fairly big, but not exactly, Horsham district large from incorporating little villages and hamlets around it while Horsham town only covers a small part. That much I know from the area being popular for horses.

Of course, we wouldn’t dare go so far as to ride horses for fun, but they’re viewed as noble creatures, treated well in compensation for the work they provide.

It’s likely far from the truth, but, if I make an educated guess, I would say that Lady Horsham’s family is “on the up and up” but not quite “up” just yet. Maybe she’s a baron’s daughter, maybe a count’s, and she’s maybe at this school to make some useful connections. Not that that’s an actual thing, but it’s like gambling, or an investment with a risk. You send your daughter to where other noblewomen are and see what happens. We’re all in the upper-class, so any friend can be an avenue for business ventures or into social circles.

I say all that, really I just mean to say she might not have a luxurious life at home. If her father is more focused on money, then maids and footmen are certainly costly, especially personal maids. (Someone still has to cook and clean and such.)

Smiling to myself, I put that “gossip” away, and rest my hand on top of hers. “Say, would you like to learn braiding? It can be a fun way to pass time without being idle.”

She really does wear her heart on her sleeve, clearly showing every emotion as it comes to her. Warmer now, she says, “I… would rather just learn the magic.”

“I am afraid magic doesn’t do everything for you, merely helps. However, braiding is easy to learn and easy to practise, so let us take the first step before the second one,” I say, shuffling over to the embroidery club’s shelf.

While the threads are for sewing and thus thin, they’re not unreasonably fiddly. I pick out a shade of red along with a pink and orange to complement it. Even if it’s only for practice, we can make a cute strap to tie onto her bag.

“All you really do is go from the outside to the middle, left then right then left then right,” I say, slowly showing her the basics.

She watches me before awkwardly trying herself, finding it hard. Her fingers on one hand get in the way of her other hand’s fingers, the thread often slips loose, her nails making it tricky to pick it up from the table. Different but similar to when I was teaching Evan, and still just as much fun.

There’s a phrase on the tip of my tongue, something like: A person is clever, but people are dumb. Whatever the phrase actually is, I’ve found the same is true for kindness. Or, rather, that hate seems to mostly be a group behaviour. No matter what horrible rumours floated around about me, my old roommates never said a word to my face when we were alone in the bedroom. My things only went missing from classrooms. And even now, Lady Horsham was all too happy to glare at me over Violet’s shoulder, yet acts so meek by herself, letting me boss her around without offering any resistance.

That’s why I find it hard to actually blame any of them. I mean, everyone is stupid in their own way, and teenagers locked together in a school are especially stupid about these things. As far as I know, I haven’t done anything (yet) to actually make someone hate me, so I don’t think anyone actually hates me, so what’s the point in hating them?

Whatever. There’s no need for me to justify myself.

In the end, she makes some progress, but not enough to actually braid her own hair. She’ll hopefully practise in her free time to get better and then I can teach her how to do her hair.

Well, if she comes back.