Coming through the bedroom's door was someone that Luke could only describe as an older copy of Sakura.

She had black eyes, black hair, and pristine white skin, just like Sakura. He guessed she was an older sister. She wore a white and red tomesode—a traditional Japanese kimono for married women.

There were five other people wearing traditional kimonos behind her, all ancient Japanese people, four males and a female. Three of them, two women and a man, had beautifully crafted wooden canes just like Mr. Akira's, and all males were as physically fit as Mr. Akira was, despite their advanced age.

Now that Luke thought about it, the females were also fit. They just didn't have muscles as big. It seemed working out was part of Akira culture.

When Sakura heard the voice, her eyes widened in surprise, then she pivoted to her supposed-sister, clasped her fists before her, and bowed low in silence. The newcomers acknowledged her with a slight nod before turning back to Luke.

"Sorry?" Luke asked, confused by the intrusion.

"The fire. How did you do it?" Sakura's sister said.

Sakura, who had finished bowing, looked confused at him. "Fire?"

Luke smiled awkwardly. "I cast a spell a couple of hours ago. A tiny floating flame. Nothing big."

"You created fire out of nothing?" she asked, dumbfounded. "Really?" She put her hands together close to her body and started clapping just his fingers excitedly. "Can I see it?"

Luke's smile became one of amusement. He wasn't sure he was ready to use spells in front of strangers yet, but that boat had sailed when he did it on camera. Also, how could he refuse Sakura when she acted that cute? Fortunately, he had already accumulated enough mana to use another spell, though it would give him some fatigue and give him a small headache.

"Sure," he said. "Let me focus."

He closed the eyes this time. He could feel mana with eyes open, but he couldn't focus on everyone looking at him. Even with his eyes closed, he felt quite self-conscious, but not enough to prevent him from casting the spell.

The fire rune came even more easily than before, and the spell was cast faster, in less than ten seconds rather than the almost one minute it took the first time. In his first attempt, he had been afraid of failure and doing something new, but he didn't have those issues now. In fact, his confidence had been boosted by casting a spell on his first try.

He opened his eyes at the same moment he let the rune and his will upon it activate.

The small flame appeared in front of his chest at once, and he pushed it away. He moved it around—not too much, as doing it spent mana and would make the flame disappear sooner—and the eyes of everyone followed it with different feelings written all over their faces.

Sakura was absolutely elated. She seemed even happier at seeing magic than Luke had been. He guessed that no matter how much she wanted to believe him, seeing the spell with her own eyes make many of her doubts disappear. If the magic was real, the other things he had told her might be true, too.

Her eyes also contained sheer marvel at what she was seeing. Luke's memories had tinted his own reactions, but she was seeing a person create fire out nothing for the very first time.

It was a magic wonder, something out of fairy tales, a veritable miracle happening right in front of her.

Marvel could be found in the faces of the other people too, though in different amounts and accompanied by other emotions.

The old lady was crying and whispering to herself in Japanese, "It's real. Magic is really real." A male was laughing loudly. Another elder was clearly afraid of the spell and had stepped back. Yet another elder stared at it as if assessing a threat, wondering how he could protect himself if it was used against him.

At their old age, seeing something that would change all they knew about the world stirred many emotions and was incredibly impactful—though one man looked at the fire as if it was a boring TV show. He even yawned.

As for Sakura's sister...

At best, she looked at it like a circus owner from one hundred years ago might've looked at a real fairy. At worst, like an evil scientist might look at a new discovery that would revolutionize the world. She was impressed, but also clearly wondering how to use it to her advantage.

The flame died too soon, the mana spent, but that had been enough for Sakura.

"Oh, my God! That's awesome!" She was smiling brightly. "And we recorded you doing that two times? One of them now, in front of the elders? This is such splendid news! You have no idea. It'll make things much easier, and your status in the clan—"

"Enough," Sakura's sister said with a low, but demanding voice, and Sakura stopped talking at once. Her eyes were still shining bright though.

An uncomfortable silence befell them. Sakura's sister looked at Luke for a while, and he could almost see the gears turning in her mind. She was considering how to react to what she had just seen.

Almost a full minute later—it seemed taking long silences to think, as Sakura did, ran in the family—she finally spoke.

"As the clan head, I accept Akira Sakura's request," she said in Japanese. "The duel between Luke Kells and Sato Minato will be held in one month at the Blood Arena. I have spoken." Without further ado, she turned and left, all elders in toil, though the crying lady hesitated for a moment before also leaving.

Luke watched them go, completely dazed.

"Blood WHAT now?" he asked.

"You understand Japanese?" Sakura asked, her excitement visibly decreasing at the clan head's words.

He nodded and was about to say he had a skill for that before remembering they were being recorded. He nodded at the camera. "Can you turn that off?" She nodded and took her smartphone from a pocket. Many taps and a call later to confirm her identity, she said they were clear. "I have the Universal Linguist skill that lets me speak any language," he explained.

"Wow. That's... It makes me feel like an fool for all the time I spent learning other languages."

Luke was curious about how many languages she could speak, but there was something much more important for him to ask about right now. "Why do I need to fight a guy called Sato Minato in a place called Blood Arena in a month?"

Sakura bit her lower lip so hard he worried she might hurt herself. Then she sighed and said, "That's what I wanted to talk to you about, the decision I made without asking you first... I... I mean..." She shook her head. "To explain it, I have to start from the beginning.

"The Sato family is not as strong as ours, but they have had some connections we don't for the past few dozen years. My elders wanted the connections, but the Sato always refused our offers because, frankly, they weren't that good. The elders always offered to absorb the Sato, not become allies, and that can be humiliating depending on many factors.

"However, when I was five years old, the Sato made enemies too powerful for them to fight back. Powerful enough that they couldn't find anyone to help them with it. In the end, they had no choice but to negotiate with us, one of the few who could stand against said enemies. However, the Sato would rather die out than become just a minor family of the Akira clan. The final agreement was to have them join the Akira clan through marriage with me, which would give them some status."

She bowed. "I'm sorry for not telling you I'm engaged before. I didn't know how to breach the subject."

"Wait, what?" he asked, now even more confused than before.

Sakura was engaged?!

He didn't even know what to think of it.

"I don't like Sato Minato," she said quickly while raising her head. "I have nothing against him, but what I feel for you... This is real, not the words on a contract made when I was a child. I want to be with you, not him, as I have told the elders repeatedly. I never intended to make a fool of you or him."

Luke gulped. That still felt very, very weird. She was engaged—the word sounded terrible in his mind. Were rich people even allowed to form engagement contracts for their children at this day and age? How backwards were they? What world did they live in?

He understood Sakura though. She had told him there would be obstacles, and that was just one of them, wasn't it? He could also guess how difficult it would be to talk about it. Also, she had been about to talk about it when her sister interrupted, and she had apologized about deciding things for him beforehand.

As she had said, she really wasn't perfect, was she?

But strangely, her mistake only made him like her even more. It made her human, relatable. The chasm between them didn't feel so insurmountable anymore.

"It's alright," he said.

"Thank you," she said and smiled, then continued the story. "So, the Akira and the Sato have a contract, and we can't just call the marriage off without repercussions. Both clans have to reach an agreement. There are a lot of intricacies involved and some more story in there, but in the end, we must show anyone we have a contract with that they can trust our word, or at the very least the compensation we're willing to provide should we not honor the contract. Likewise, we have to show everyone what we expect to gain in case they break a contract with us.

"This means we must the Sato a hefty sum to cancel the marriage contract and it would leave us without the connections we so wanted. We have nothing to gain and a lot to lose from breaking my engagement."

She sighed again. "Yet my family couldn't just sell me to someone I absolutely wouldn't want to marry. Oh, they repeated to me my entire life how important the marriage was and how terrible it would be to not go on with it, but they also explained how I could avoid it. I only had to find a candidate so much better than Sato Minato that the elders would have no choice but to accept him. And the way to prove you're better than Sato Minato is through a duel. The Blood Arena is just a grand name for an old ceremonial arena we use for some things."

Luke was dumbfounded.

But more than that...

"So I have to beat a guy I have nothing against just because your family says so?"

Luke was used to obeying. So what if he would have to obey someone again? It's just that... he didn't want to become another Jackson. That felt way too much like bullying someone for them to give up on something they wanted, even if the Sato family would get paid after he won.

It just felt wrong.

"I'm sorry. The elders were very vocal about their opposition to our relationship, and I had no choice but to remind them of the duel. But I understand if you don't want to do it. We can..." She swallowed. "Once I'm of age... If we're still together... I can give up on my inheritance... And we can just... Leave..."

It was damn obvious how much of a sacrifice that would be for her, how much it hurt her even to suggest it. It was also obvious how much she was willing to do for him to say those words.

To be honest, that was a bit crazy for him. Sakura was the kind of girl who really gave her all to someone she was interested in, no half measures. She threw herself, body and soul, into a relationship. He had heard of people like that, and knew how that could backfire.

Yet she was doing it for him.

As usual in this relationship, there was Sakura doing her best, sacrificing herself for him, and here he was acting like an idiot who only thought of himself.

He really hated himself sometimes.

"Of course I'll do it for you," he blurted. "It just sucks. I don't want to hurt a person I have nothing against." The guy might even like Sakura—she was Sakura, after all—and it wasn't his fault they had put him in that position.

She smiled. "Thank you. If it makes you feel better, you might not need to fight him. The duel comprises five challenges, and you only have to win four. You can choose the first, the Akira chooses the second, Sato Minato chooses the third, his family chooses the fourth, and only the last challenge is a fight to first blood... with katanas."

"Katanas?" He asked, surprised. "Real ones?" She nodded. "Gosh, your clan is so crazy." Luke had no doubt he would win the fight, but using a real sword against someone would be awkward, to say the least.

"Sorry again for putting you in this situation," she bowed slightly.

Luke took a deep breath. "Sakura... You're obviously doing a lot for me, and this is the least I can do for you. But... Could you explain everything to me? What you're doing, why you're doing it? That thing you started talking about my status in the clan before the clan head cut you off?"

She shook her head while looking down, ashamed. "Family rules. I can only tell you everything if you win the duel and we..." She blushed. "Get engaged." The last word came out so low he almost didn't hear it.

His brain froze right then, right there. He would get engaged to her if he won, wouldn't he? That was the entire purpose of the duel. Yet, he hadn't thought about it before he actually said it. He had probably been in denial.

Luke... He loved Sakura. That wasn't even a question. But was he ready to get engaged to her?

Hell no.

They barely knew each other. Marriage wasn’t just about feelings, there was a lot more involved. They were also way too young for something like that. She might not realize it because she had been engaged for her entire life, but he sure as hell did.

"You don't need to marry me later," she said quickly. "We just need to get engaged so we can date freely."

He wanted to say she was worrying about nothing, that he would marry her any day of the week, but he didn't want to say those words without meaning them.

An awkward silence befell them. He coughed lightly and changed the subject in a much brighter direction, surprising even himself. "Are... Dating... Are we... Can I call you..." He took a deep breath. "Are you my girlfriend now?"

She smiled brightly, and the heavy atmosphere became one of sheer joy. "Are you asking me if I want to be?"

He froze. He, Luke Kells, asking someone to be his girlfriend? Was that even possible to happen?

His phoenix heart pumped, and he found courage in the wave of warmth. “I am,” he tried to say firmly, but his voice shook. “Will you be my girlfriend?”

Luke hadn’t known that was possible, but her smile became even more dazing. “Yes," she said way too quick and blushed a little. "Yes, I will.”

He felt awesome hearing that. Not as awesome as when she had kissed him, of course, but close enough. A tiny part of himself whispered he was being selfish for tying her to his pathetic boat, but he shut it down. If he wasn’t worthy yet, he just needed to work on that.

That’s what a warrior would do.

"Good God, I can finally tell those pricks I have a boyfriend that I live very much, thank you," she said with a big smile. "You have no idea how annoying it is to say you're engaged, hear back, 'but do you like him?' and be unable to say you do.”

His happiness decreased a little. Of course, there were all kind of guys surrounding her. He knew he should be happy she had chosen him, but he had just found out he was the jealous type. He didn’t like the idea of other guys making a move on his girlfriend.

Time to change the subject.

"I think I know what part of my memories we should reveal to the world," he said.