“Dammit!” Iris yelled at herself while rubbing head. “Why did I have to wait until the last minute! The Day of Warmth is tomorrow and yet I have nothing to give him!”
Iris leaned against the wall in an alley after visiting twenty stores and yet she can’t find anything she wants to give him, and what she wants has already been sold out.
“I’m such an idiot!” she yelled while turning around and pounding her head against the wall. “I should have saved getting him a new charm for today.”
But he didn’t want the replacement charm.
“GAH!” Iris yelled and pounded her head again. She was at a complete loss and her emotions were still difficult to sort through. Bellona has been good about her timing when it comes to this but of course now she’s nowhere to be found to give her a hand.
“Iris?” a familiar woman’s voice called out. Iris turned and saw a very familiar and helpful blonde woman.
“Subaya!!” Iris cried aloud and hugged the woman. “Thank the gods you’re here, I need your help!”
“I’d be happy to help if you could let me go please!” Subaya pleaded while trying to pull the crying girl off of her.
After wrestling with her for minutes, the two women went to a nearby shop and Iris explained her predicament over tea.
“Ara~, so you finally realised you like him?” Subaya teased with an evil look in her eyes.
“Yes, go ahead and make fun of me,” Iris growled, already preparing for the insulting jokes to be hurled at her.
Subaya let out an obnoxious and yet addicting laugh as she processed what she was told. “I never took you to be like this. Oh the bittersweet kiss of young love.”
“He’s not that young,” Iris responded under her breath with a twitching eye.
“Eh? But he’s only twenty eight, right?” Subaya returned.
Iris opened her mouth and then remembered that Subaya is not in the circle that knows what Arylos is. She felt enough ridicule and didn’t feel like trying to explain all of this to Subaya.
“That’s still not very young,” Iris continued, trying to hide the truth.
“I guess you have a point,” Subaya rubbed her chin in thought. “He isn’t that much younger than me so I guess the two of you aren’t too young.”
Kill me, Iris thought, already tired of the charade. The idea that Arylos is ‘young’ built up a laugh in her that she was having issues to control.
Subaya took a sip of tea as she processed everything. “So, you like him and want to get him something that tells him that but you don’t know what to get since you’re still trying to figure it all out yourself. And you don’t know if he likes you the same way so you don’t want to come off too hard. Have I left anything out?”
“No, that’s pretty much it,” Iris responded, feeling the ridicule and the embarrassment now that her thoughts were summarised and spoken aloud.
“Have you made any moves on him?” Subaya asked with the cup of tea still to her lips. “I mean real moves. Like stealing a kiss? Told him you like him? Got him a romantic gift or something?”
Iris shook her head, the idea that she would do any of that honestly being difficult to imagine. “No, although I did grab his butt once.”
“Ohhhhh~?” Subaya’s interest was piqued.
“But it was only so I could take his wallet so he could stop fighting with the butcher,” Iris confessed.
“Ohhhhh…” Subaya’s interest was dashed. Her disappointment was immeasurable and her day was ruined. “You have no idea how disappointing that is, Iris.”
“I know, I know,” Iris waved her off. “But I never thought about him like that until very recently. Or at least aware that I think of him like that.”
Subaya sighed as she set the tea down and reached for a biscuit to snack on. “But do you know how he feels?”
Iris gripped the dress of her yokui, unable to find an answer for the question. “I don’t know, but I don’t know if I want to know.”
“What do you mean?” Subaya asked.
Iris let out a shuddered sigh. “He’s very emotionless and I don’t know what exactly he feels. I don’t know if he feels anything like that or if he even understands the concept of it. But I don’t want to know what he feels because I’m afraid that he’ll just laugh it off or say that he doesn’t understand. That he doesn’t feel the same for me.”
Subaya thought about Iris’s words carefully while finishing her cup of tea. “I’m afraid I can’t help you then.”
“Eh?!” Iris called out as if she got punched.
“If you don’t know how you feel, it’s very difficult for you to pick a gift,” Subaya explained while setting down some bills on the table. “You can’t pick a gift for someone who you don’t know how they feel when you also don’t know how you feel yourself. You might as well get one of those lucky bags; they’ll do you a lot better then.”
“How is a bag of random cheap crap supposed to tell him how I feel?” Iris asked while freaking out.
“What do you really feel then?” Subaya returned with a stern look. The look made Iris feel cold as she realised she didn’t have an answer. She wanted to give one answer, but it was so muddled with her other emotions and her confusion that she didn’t know what the correct answer really was.
“So you still don’t know?” Subaya asked, her voice soft and carried a sigh. “Look, stick with something simple like candies for now. You can’t confess to feelings that you don’t know if you have yet. Just give him a token to let him know that you care.”
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Iris understood, but she wanted to do something special for today. “But–”
“Shh,” Subaya silenced her with a finger to her lips. “The more uncertainty you throw at it, the worse it will get. He’s at least close to you and your friend. Give him a gift for that now. When you figure out how you really feel, give him a proper gift then. Don’t rush things.”
Iris slowly nodded. Subaya’s advice was spot on. Iris was so caught up in these new emotions that she was rushing through them without even thinking them through properly.
“Alright,” she whispered in agreement. “Lucky bags for now it is then.”
“Good girl,” Subaya answered with a cheery smile. “Thanks for the pleasant tea and the talk, and I do hope it all works out well for you.” Subaya’s face then twisted into a cruel smile. “And thank you for the delicious rumour material,” she added with a chuckle and ran off.
Iris gasped and reached out, conjuring lightning in her hand but then let her go, remembering she was still out in public and still had minor control of her strength. She looked at her hand with the sparks dancing around it and wondered if she could still control it. She wondered how long it had been since she had used her strength properly. What if she had gone rusty?
She got up and put her emotions into check once more. Subaya was right; she may feel something for Arylos, but she had other things to sort out. After all, she’s still chewing on the fact that he not only created their universe, but also ordered the destruction of her people, indirectly causing the Dragon Wars. She moved past what he did to cause the Dragon Wars, but she didn’t know if she forgave him yet.
Iris made up her mind and slowly made her way back home. On her walk, she remembered how Arylos told her about the first time he fell in love. How he fell in love with a star, a sun. She thought his retelling about how the star looked and felt was beautiful. She could tell he truly could love and he had before. It made her happy to know that he could experience such an emotion with such power.
But she wasn’t a star.
She wrapped her arms around herself. She remembered how strongly he felt about that and she knew that she couldn’t top that. She loved the sunrise after that, finding a new beauty in it, but that was not compared to how she felt for him. She realised that compared to his love for a star, she was nothing. There was no way he could love her like that; no one had ever loved her like that and she couldn’t justify that kind of emotion for her.
It was an otherworldly love, a love she could never experience.
Eventually, she came back to the front door of the house, empty handed and head heavy with concern. “I’m home,” she mumbled as she entered through the front door and closed it behind her and leaned up against the door.
“Welcome back,” Arylos called out with a happy voice as he entered the foyer from the kitchen. “Is something wrong, you look down, like something bad happened.”
Iris thought for a moment, trying to collect herself. She wanted to know how he felt but she would have to brace with the pain. She made up her mind; she wanted to know.
“I–”
She was cut off by a loud and desperate pounding on the door. Arylos quickly moved towards the door while also making a gesture to get behind him, to which she agreed. Arylos clenched his fist and opened the door.
Iris looked on as she watched Arylos move with such grace that it moved her heart. As the door opened, a bloody fist came through the doorway but was knocked aside by Arylos as he pulled the attacker towards him and slammed the door into the attacker. He then followed up with a brutal headbutt and grabbed the attacker by the neck and threw them into one of the foyer walls. The swift execution of the movement reminded her just how strong he really is and his grace reminded her of his capabilities.
It made her wonder if maybe the Titanic guard dog was househusband material after all.
She looked at the attacker and saw a pale and skinny young man with red hair and beard and spiralling tattoos covering his torso that was also lined with various fresh wounds as he bled on their floor.
“Fuck ya doing here, Baldr?” Arylos growled as he clenched his fist. “Did I not tell you to get lost?”
Baldr coughed and slowly rose to his feet, holding onto an injured arm. Iris wondered what was wrong with him; Arylos didn’t hit him that hard and many of his wounds did not look like what Arylos had done to him, recently at least.
“Do you know what you cost me?” Baldr howled as he limped forward. “Do you know what you’ve done? Do you have any idea what you took away from me?”
“I have no idea what you’re on about,” Arylos growled while shaking his head.
Baldr scowled and raised his fist but before Arylos could react, Baldr was knocked back to the floor in a flash of lightning and Iris stood above the beaten Templarian, still radiating white lightning and the embers of blue flames.
“Iris! That’s enough!” Arylos called out to her as he put his hand on her shoulder. As he did, he could feel the heat of her flames, the intense anger that burned within her was now pouring out. It was burning him, and he did not know how to control her now.
“This is Baldr?” she asked, her voice calm yet full of rage. “This is the one who almost killed you? The one who left you unconscious on our couch?”
Arylos knew what she was going to do and he needed to stop her. “Iris–”
He was cut off by Iris dealing a deafening punch to Baldr’s jaw, dislocating it but warranted nothing but a light groan from the man. “This is the one who almost took you from me?” she growled as she knelt down and pulled Baldr to face her by his hair.
“Iris, he’s beaten,” Arylos told her. “All you’re doing now is beating a broken man.”
“He should pay for what he did to you,” Iris growled as her other fist clenched tightly and her flames burned hotter. “He came back here and made a move on you. He brought this on himself.”
She raised her fist to strike but was held fast by Arylos, his grip sudden, cold, and biting. She looked over and saw a fire burn in his eyes. He was angry, but his grip on her wrist told her he was not angry at Baldr.
Iris brought her fires back under control and bowed her head and backed away. She felt shame for losing control like that. Arylos knelt down and watched as Baldr’s broken jaw popped back into place but none of his other wounds healed.
“Go on then, kill me,” Baldr coughed and groaned in pain. “Just get it over with.”
“Why would I do that?” Arylos asked.
Baldr laughed and sat up against the wall. “Because that’s what you do best. So just do it and make it quick.”
“I promised your mother I would help you if I could,” Arylos told the Templarian while kneeling down to eye level. “I’m starting to wonder if I can help you.” Arylos’s expression suddenly changed from soft to dark and cold. Arylos grabbed Baldr’s chin and looked inside and saw something strange in his mouth, something beyond Iris’s sight.
Arylos let go and grabbed Baldr’s arm and felt what was inside, his expression telling Iris something was wrong.
“They did this to me, man,” Baldr pleaded in a broken voice.
“How long has it been?” Arylos asked, examining the Templarian closely.
“They gave me a tooth when I was a boy,” Baldr explained cryptically. “Since then, I’ve never been able to feel nor reincarnate.”
“Then it progressed,” Arylos realised and quickly pulled Baldr up to his feet and wrapped his arm around his shoulders to help him walk. “Iris, we need to get him to Sentarus!”
“Why would you help him?” Iris scoffed.
“Please, this is not the time!” Arylos called out while looking towards Iris with a stern look in his eyes. “He doesn’t have long and we need to help him here and now.”
“But he tried to kill you,” Iris continued.
“But I promised!” Arylos howled, his eyes becoming desperate. “Just help me, please,” he whispered.
Iris felt something in her stir and she couldn’t deny him. She grabbed Baldr’s other arm to help him up, realising that Baldr’s a lot heavier than he looked. “It’s a long walk to the palace,” Iris reminded Arylos.
“I don’t care,” Arylos responded as the two set off into the twilight with the broken Templarian. Something was definitely wrong and Iris could feel it.