Chapter 115: Rehearsal

{Serena}

The script was garbage.

I was sitting at the desk in my room with the final scene spread out in front of me, and I had read the same page six times. Every line was worse than the last. Nobody in the history of the world had ever said "I would cross ten thousand burning seas for you" to another person and meant it. Whoever wrote this play had clearly never been in love, never been in a fight, and never been near a sea.

[And I have to say it in front of the Queen. In front of Hex.]

I put the script down and rubbed my eyes.

The worst part was that the play wasn’t even the real problem. My attention kept sliding off the page, and every time, it landed on Lily.

After Hanamura, we had finally started fixing things. It had been slow and awkward, but it was working. She sat with me at lunch. I helped her with her swordwork. Twice, she’d laughed at something I said, and it had sounded exactly the way it used to when we were six.

Then, she went out on the water alone, and the mutt dove in after her.

I’d arrived with Dawnlight in time to help kill the monster, but it was Kohaku who dragged her out of the water and breathed into her mouth on the sand. The next day, I had to tell Lily that Kohaku saved her life, because it was true, and because Lily deserved to know. I’d hated every word.

After that, things had been fine again, mostly. Then this stupid play came along, and now there was a kiss in it. Now, every time Lily looked at me, she turned red, and every time she turned red, I wanted to punch a wall.

In other words, the play had undone so much work in one week and I had nobody to blame but a fox in a maid dress.

Someone knocked on my door.

I knew who it was before I even looked up. My nose had always been better than other people’s, and it was better than ever since Dawnlight. I could smell her through the wood. It was the lavender soap she always borrowed from Kohaku.

I opened the door.

"Hi, Serena!" Lily was holding her own script against her chest. Her face was already pink. "I was wondering if you’d like to rehearse with me? Just the two of us? Since the final scene is so important, and I want it to be perfect!"

I looked at her for a long moment.

"...Fine. Come in."

She hurried inside and stood in the middle of my room, holding her script, while I closed the door behind her.

"Where do you want to start?" I asked, turning around. "We could start from the masquerade, if you..."

Lily grabbed my collar with both hands, pulled me down, and kissed me.

This time, it was just the two of us, with no rain bucket and nobody counting.

Her mouth was soft, and she pressed up onto her toes to reach me, and her fists were twisted so tight in my collar that I couldn’t have pulled away without ripping my shirt. My whole body went hot all at once. Every hair on my arms stood up. Under my skirt, something I had spent my entire life hiding responded instantly, and I was furious about it.

[WHAT!!! WHAT IS SHE DOING!?]

Lily let go and stepped back. Her face was bright red, all the way up to her ears, and her eyes were huge.

I stood there with my collar crumpled and my mouth still slightly open.

"... What was that?"

"There’s a kiss in the play!" Lily said quickly. "So, kissing you counts as rehearsal! It’s practice! I’m practicing!"

I stared at her.

Oh. This had Kohaku written all over it. Lily had never grabbed anyone’s collar in her life, and there was only one person in this academy who knew I liked that.

[I’m going to kill that fox and wear her tail as a scarf.]

However, the fox wasn’t here. Lily was, and she was standing in the middle of my room with her face on fire, waiting for an answer, and my body was still very obviously voting for her to do it again.

In other words, I didn’t know what game we were playing, but if I let this continue, I was going to lose it.

I cleared my throat and smoothed my collar down with both hands.

"... Let’s just rehearse the... ahem... the actual lines first, maybe?"

Lily nodded so fast her hair bounced.

"Y-Yes! Of course!" She flipped open her script so quickly she tore a page. "That’s what I meant all along!"

I sat down at my desk and very carefully crossed my legs.

---

{Kohaku}

On my way out of class the next afternoon, the underside of my boobs suddenly started itching.

The itch was right underneath, along the bottom curve, where I couldn’t scratch in the middle of a hallway without looking like a lunatic. I shifted my bag and tried to rub against the strap.

[Is someone talking about me?]

Back in my first life, I’d written that joke into at least six novels. A girl sneezes, and somebody across town is gossiping about her. I had never once considered that, in this world, the itch might show up somewhere else.

I was still trying to wiggle the itch away when a shadow fell over me.

"Kohaku Sakana."

I looked up.

Prince Aldric Stellaris-Vane was standing in the middle of the hallway with one hand on his hip and the other resting on the hilt of his sword. The afternoon light was coming through the window behind him and lighting up his golden hair. He had probably been standing in that exact spot, waiting for the sun to line up.

"Oh! Your Highness!" I stopped scratching immediately. "Hi! How are you?"

"I have been informed," Aldric said, "of a grave matter."

His eyes were as dead as ever.

"I have learned that my future bride, Lady Serena Frostfall, has been cast as the masked knight in the Founder’s Play. I have also learned that the masked knight, at the conclusion of the play, kisses the princess beneath the rain. And I have learned that the princess is being played by a commoner girl named Lily Everdawn." He turned his face slightly toward the window, so the light caught his jaw. "In other words, the woman who is to become my wife will kiss a commoner in front of the entire kingdom, and the Queen herself."

"Well, when you put it like that..."

"I have not finished."

He took a step forward and raised one hand toward the ceiling.

"Since I was a boy, I have known that I was born for greatness. My tutors said so. The stars said so. The court astrologer said so twice, once when I was born, and once when I asked him again. The Founder’s Play tells the story of a princess saved by a masked hero of noble blood, and for three hundred years, that role has gone to the noblest student in the academy." He lowered his hand and placed it over his heart. "That role has always been mine. It was written for a man like me."

[It was written for exactly you. I wrote it. I was fifteen.]

My attention went straight to the math. Aldric kissing Lily under the rain machine was the original canon. If he took the role back, the system would probably pay me for it.

Then I pictured Aldric’s dead eyes two inches from Lily’s face.

[Absolutely not. Not for any amount of MP.]

"So, I will take the role," Aldric declared. "Inform the director."

"Ah... Unfortunately, the cast list is already final!" I clasped my hands together and gave him my most sympathetic face. "Professor Sabine turned it in yesterday, and it’s been approved by the Headmaster and everything. There’s actually only one role left."

Aldric’s eyes narrowed.

"Which role?"

"The narrator for the sorcerer brother’s scenes. He stands at the very edge of the stage and reads the sorcerer’s tragic backstory out loud while Fenna does a little dance."

Aldric didn’t say anything.

"But I really don’t think you should take it," I continued quickly. "You’re the crown prince, Your Highness! A man of destiny! Can you imagine the crown prince standing at the edge of the stage, in the dark, reading another man’s backstory? It’s way too small a role for someone like you! The audience would see you up there and think the academy had wasted you! It would practically be an insult to the crown!"

Aldric slowly turned his face back toward the window.

"...I had not considered how it would look from the audience," he said, very quietly.

"Exactly! You’re destiny, and destiny doesn’t narrate!"

He was silent for a long time. The sunlight moved a little on the floor. I kept my hands clasped and didn’t breathe.

"You may have a point," Aldric said at last.

"I do!"

"I will consider it." He raised his chin. "Perhaps destiny has a greater stage in mind for me. Perhaps the Founder’s Play is beneath my purpose."

"It definitely is!"

Aldric nodded once, turned on his heel, and walked away down the hallway, holding his sword hilt and posing every time he passed a window.

I let out a huge breath.

In other words, I’d just talked the main male lead out of the role he was born for, by telling him it was too small for him. Teen-me would have cried.

Then the itch under my boobs came back, twice as strong as before.

[Seriously, who is talking about me!?]