"Silence is the best answer to someone's hatred." -Cloud Elf King

I knocked on the bathroom door to give Kasai the clothes and yelled,

“I’m coming in to leave your new clothes here!”

“…” Nothing was heard… but of course, she wouldn’t say anything.

“Knock on the wall three times if you heard me!” I heard the three knocks. “Alright, I’m coming in then.” I opened the door, and the first thing I see it’s Kasai completely naked in the bathtub looking at me with her usual blank expression, sadly- I mean, thankfully she used the bath shampoo, so the tub was filled with soap and I wasn’t able to see her body except for her head, it was actually a pretty cute scene. “Well, you went ahead and helped yourself… just don’t move ok? I’m just here to leave the clothes.” After I said that, I walked out. Damn its awkward talking by myself… I really want to hear her voice.

I decided to wait in my room for her to finish bathing. I dropped on my bed like a whale belly flopping into the ocean. Man… I keep getting more and more responsibilities every day; the other day I got the position of class president, and now I have a person to watch out for. Well, I guess adulthood is around the corner for me.

I picked up a book that Shizuka recommended me to read when I have nothing to do

Which is about improving my spiritual singularity magic, it mostly talks about meditating, meditating, and meditating. I threw the book away and said out loud, “This crap is boring.” But I knew I had to improve my magic in case something happened in the future. As far as I know, the word “magic” is used as a classification of both materialistic, and spiritual singularities.

Materialistic singularities or “M.S” are a specific magical item that you are born with that no one other than you can touch, if they do, they will faint.

For example, a rifle with unlimited bullets is a materialistic singularity because it’s something touchable, or organic. You can only have one M.S in your entire life. Only the military knows how to activate the M.S, but since our parents have access to classified data, they gave us the books to learn how to unlock it.

Shizuka’s M.S is called, “Wisdom-World” a book that gives her all the information of an object, location, plant, or beast that she is touching. It can also tell if a person’s singularity is materialistic or spiritual, but it doesn’t work on people’s backstories I think.

There are also spiritual singularities, “S.S” you are automatically born with both singularities, but for some reason, humans always develop the M.S first, while cloud elves and other races develop S.S first. We learned about the existence of S.S by cloud elves, 118 years ago we believed that only M.S existed before, since cloud elves are the only ones that knew how to unlock the S.S, so basically there was a long war between materialistic and spiritual singularities, but now both races know the existence of both types of singularities.

Since Shizuka used Wisdom-World to check my singularity, it said that it’s both spiritual and materialistic… basically, a hybrid singularity, so that means I have to train for both. Now, I know this might all sound very confusing, and trust me, I was also as confused as you are when I first heard all of this. Anyways… I should probably stop overthinking about it, and perhaps start thinking about my future.

I started thinking of the actions I should take to achieve my goal… well, what I want is to graduate to set up my future, so my grades are looking pretty good, but I feel empty inside… is it love I need? Maybe… or perhaps I just need another goal that I actually enjoy working towards. Well since I was a kid I always wanted to be a King, but you need royal blood for that, and I have none.

Well, since I was locked up in the orphanage I always wanted to get out in the world and explore; maybe I can be an explorer? Going for adventures and slaying beasts, hunting sacred treasures, talking to other races… yes! That’s what I want to do! After all, the humans and Cloud Elves made the peace treaty 118 years ago, so the Cloud Elves told us that there is a lot of land out of our borders yet unexplored because they are too afraid to venture into them. Can’t wait to graduate… I yawned while looking at the ceiling; sometimes I think it gets to a point which school starts getting pointless.

I was starting to get sleepy, so I decided to think about this tomorrow. I changed, getting ready to go to sleep, sat on my bed, then, I heard the door open. It was Kasai, and she had the dress on instead of the pajama.

“Uhm, Kasai, you have to put the pajamas on, not the dress.” She nodded and started taking off the dress right in front of me. “W-wait, don’t you feel uncomfortable changing in front of me?” She looked at me and shook her head.

“Really...” I started realizing how low her self-value was. What has she gone through? Does she have any family left? All these questions were running through my head as she was changing. You know, now that I think about it, I never got why some girls want to show off their amazing bikinis that barely cover anything, but when it comes to underwear that covers more than the bikinis, they get all embarrassed… I tried to look away as she was changing as much as a teenage boy could. It’s not right taking advantage of someone that has no self-worth and has no idea of what they are doing.

I need to get close to her if I want all those questions about her answered. I need to act more like myself and let her see that she can rely on me. But first, let me check one last thing. She finished changing into her pajamas and then looked at me yet again with her emotionless expression. “Hey Kasai, can you drop the dress on the floor?” She nodded and did so. “Pick it up.” She picked it up. “Now drop it again.” She did so again; I continued doing this for the next minute and started to realize that she does everything people tell her to do. “Ok, you can stop.” I sighed and said, “Hey, are you hungry?” she shrugged. I imagined our parents already gave her food.

“Hey Kasai, why don’t you want to talk to me?” She slightly frowned then looked down. “Sorry if you think I’m too much up in your business it’s just, seeing someone this broken coming from an orphanage… I’m surprised you’re still here and didn’t…” I was surprised that she didn’t kill herself enduring all this pain. At that point, all I wanted to do was to help her forget about her past and live a happy life for once.

“Hey, want to play a card game? I promise it’s fun!” She looked at me confused but then nodded. “Here, sit beside me.” She sat on the bed, and I started looking for my playing cards, from there on we spent hours and hours playing card games and watching a couple of movies on my laptop, she seemed to really enjoy both, as she never seemed to have watched a movie or played card games in her whole life.

It was 2:30 AM. She was starting to get comfortable with me, not enough to make physical contact but, that was a bit too soon for it. We were in the middle of watching the last movie for the night because I was starting to get really sleepy; I usually sleep at 1 AM, but I decided to put a bit more effort into being with her for a while. We were both sitting on the back of the bed, resting on the headboard, while out of nowhere she gently rests her head on my shoulder.

Oh my god! This is too much! Did she fall asleep or something? Is she doing it on purpose? No, why would she? My poor heart started racing like crazy, I was never this nervous with any other girl my whole life… I know it may sound sad, but I only feel nervous with Shizuka time to time. I was just starting to barely get used to that feeling of the oxytocin (also known as the "cuddle hormone") being released by my brain. In the orphanage, I was only hanging out with a bunch of bros and male teachers so cuddling, hugging, and all of this was never really a thing; the bromance wasn’t that hardcore, soon after I left and joined the private high school was when I started to get into relationships that didn’t make my heart race.

Should I wake her up? No, I probably shouldn’t, I’m going to finish this movie. By the time I finished it I slowly closed my laptop and noticed that she was asleep this whole time. I need to tell her to go to her room to sleep; she can’t sleep here, because if she does then, I won’t be able to sleep at peace… either Shizuka or my hormones are going to kill me.

I lightly poked her shoulder and quietly said,

“Hey, Kasai… you should go to bed in your room if you’re tired.” She quickly jumped back and started blushing like crazy. Well, what a surprise, I guess she is not used to it either… Wait, that’s why she doesn’t feel comfortable touching people! She is not used to it! I lightly chuckled on how cute she was and said, “Don’t worry, it’s fine. Sometimes when I’m riding the public train, random people just do it because they are exhausted.” But it’s never a girl… She looked down, frowned and shook her head.

“Hmm? You don’t want to go?” She shook her head again. “Well, I’m sorry but…”

I really, but really didn’t want to send her away, but… “If Shizuka sees me sleeping with you day one then she will surely kill me.” She walked up to the door and locked it. “That will just make it even worse!” I sighed, jumped off my bed and pulled another mattress from under it. “I usually save this for some friends when they want to sleep over, but if you really don’t want to sleep alone then you can sleep here ok? I know my bed is a queen size, but I really can’t allow you to sleep beside me.” She smiled at me and nodded. I took some other bedsheets and prepared the bed for her. “Good night Kasai.” Then we both went to sleep.

I slept completely fine that night, and she did too. How do I know? Well…

Next day I woke up with her right next to me lightly hugging me. Her beautiful long crimson hair across my bed, her angel-like figure just existing right next to me, her soothing aroma filled my sense of smell like a sponge being filled by water… wow, this is better than I thought… her head barely resting against my chest… her soft d-cup sized chest lightly pressing against my abdomen- wait, what?!

“That’s right… Shizuka almost has no chest so when I hug her I barely feel anything, but with Kasai, it’s a whole different story!” I thought out loud. From the corner of my eye I noticed Shizuka in front of the door holding my breakfast, then suddenly stopped at the sight and hearing of what I said… ‘That’s it for me…’ I thought. Timed stopped… my heart stopped… I knew this was going to happen… I’m fucking dead.

I had no idea of what was going through Shizuka’s head at that moment, I barely just woke up, so my vision was still a bit blurry. I-

The whole breakfast was slammed into my face, scrambled eggs, a slice of toast, and the beacon was all over me.

“Rukito! What the in the actual F-… What are you doing?!”

“Shizuka! I know this might sound cliché but, I CAN EXPLAIN!”

“I don’t want to hear it! Here I am trying to be nice to you, and this is what I get to see? AND HEAR?!” Kasai was lower, so she didn’t get food all over her, she quickly got up and started blushing like crazy.

“Kasai? I told you this was going to happen!” She seemed very confused, almost as if she didn’t do it on purpose. “Come on Shizuka, maybe she sleepwalks!”

“Why is she in your room in the first place?! Ugh, actually, why do I care? Do as you please.” She turned around and stormed out of the room. Kasai looked at me with a perplexed face.

“Welp… now you’ve done it. Don’t be surprised if she doesn’t want to talk to you for a couple of days now.”