小嫂子的味道

It was one of those perfect autumn evenings, so common in stories but so rare in the real world.

What was not perfect was the figure of Leon, who lay on the floor of the cafeteria, his clothes wet with coffee. It took a moment for everyone to understand what happened, and when they did, half of them laughed while half paid no mind.

Anya got up and helped Leon back up on his feet, Ellyn made a few unwilling approaches of lending out a hand but it was so clear that it was just a formality, and she enjoyed seeing Leon getting publicly humiliated.

He rose to his feet. Embarrassed, his cheeks a bright red as she dusted his clothes and wiped whatever amount of coffee he could with the tissues and his handkerchief. However, the coffee had gone into his clothes and was probably bound to leave a stain. He knew this.

"I probably go," he said as he picked up the broken pieces of the cup and gathered them up on the coaster. One of the waiters had arrived by this point, but he did it nevertheless.

"You didn't answer my question," Ellyn said.

"Huh? I said that I'm not dating her, didn't I? That kiss you speak of…" there was a moment of silence as he thought of the right word to say. "An accident, yes, it was an accident!"

"Really?"

"Yes! I'd never lie to you, I have to reason to. You know it," with that comment he headed to the counter, and paid for his snacks and coffee along with the cost of the cup he'd broken.

Then he left the cafeteria with a deep relief inside his heart that Ellyn only knew about the kiss, and not of the things which happened afterward. Although in the midst of all this he forgot that he indirectly admitted that he'd kissed Millia since he never refused it and marked it out as an incident.

Back in the cafeteria, Ellyn was aware of this, which was also the reason for the evil grin of a child she had on her face.

"Why are you smiling like that?" Anya asked, looking at Ellyn.

"He just admitted it, didn't you see?"

"What?"

"The kiss. It was possibly a rumor, but I wanted to confirm it," Ellyn explained with a sense of excitement in her voice, which soon faded away. "God, he's so easy to toy with," she shrugged off the comment.

"But that was just a rumor, wasn't it? At least that's what I thought of it," of course, Anya had heard of it before. Leaving everything, she too was a girl. The gossip fell on her ears, even if she wasn't interested.

Ellyn sighed as she brushed her hair back and forth, twisting and curling it around her fingers and then soothing it again. "There's always truth hidden behind whatever nonsense you hear. You know the saying, right? 'Where there's smoke, there's fire,'" she said in a non-interested tone as if she were reading it out of a book.

Anya didn't seem to mind this odd behavior of hers, and they sat in silence for a while. Ellyn played with her hair while Anya finished her tea. There was not much left to talk about for now anyway, they'd already discussed most of the things when Leon was here.

Plus, they both had something else on their minds. For Ellyn, it was the confusion on the matter that why she was bothered if Leon had kissed a girl or two without telling her. It was not like they were dating each other. No matter what the other students, they were just close friends.

Even that would be an overstatement. Leon had agreed to help Ellyn back when he helped her escape from her house and enter the academy, since then they had been close but not romantically involved. And now she had Zero, who had sworn to protect her as long as she played her part right.

She wasn't too sure about it, as he had not done anything of the sort that might make her believe him completely, but then she couldn't ignore the fact that she was letting her in on some secrets. She thought of her as an improvement.

But that was not what mattered. Now she had a choice. She could rely on Zero for help if anything troublesome came, but if he betrayed her or failed, she always had Leon watching her back.

Everything was perfect. For the time in her life after her mother's death, she could take a breath without worrying that someone might have left poisonous gas in the air. Even if there were, she had people to save her after she inhaled that stuff.

Then she was having this weird feeling she could not describe stirred inside her when she heard that Leon was probably dating Millia. The feeling only grew more when it was confirmed that she had kissed her.

Next, there was Anya. For her, it wasn't something as big and confusing as Ellyn's problem. Troubling her was a little domestic feeling of guilt.

Back when she'd said that, the academy had told her not to reveal the details of what happened with Zero and Mr. Rosenberg to anyone; thus, she didn't tell Leon and refused when he pressed on the matter.

She'd lied. The academy had said no such thing. While it was true that they haven't instructed her to fill Leon and Ellyn in on the details, they haven't restrained her from doing so either.

In reality, she hadn't told them because she thought it was what Zero would have preferred. He was the type to avoid trouble and attention if possible, and she knew this very well. Telling others about what had happened might do the unwanted, so she decided it was better to not tell anyone.

At first, she thought it was a good idea—which in a way it was—but later it somehow turned the conversation toward more tense matters and Leon ended up falling on his butt and getting wet down to his pants.

Even though she knew it wasn't her fault that he fell, the possibility that it could have been avoided if she took the conversion in another direction still lingered in her mind as she sipped the last of her tea and clicked the cup back on the coaster.

The mood took an upturn after that as the girls took a moment and talked about a few things two teenage girls would talk about. It was a perfectly healthy, and normal conversation. They smiled and laughed at silly things, and then discussed the upcoming midterm exams in a rather serious tone.

It was only then, when the hour bell struck and the sound resounded throughout the whole of the academy campus, Ellyn caught a look at the wall clock and checked the time.

She pushed her chair back and stood up. "I'll have to go now," she said with an apologetic tone.

"Extra classes?" Anya queried. Ellyn replied with a nod.

Calling it extra classes was too much of a stress as Ellyn was the one paying for an instructor to teach her sword arts aside from the time they were taught in daily lessons. This was one of the facilities provided in the Instrs and anyone with enough money could make use of them.

"Well, I should be on my way too," Anya said as she slid her chair back and rose to her feet.

Both the girls went to the counter and paid for the things they had ordered, then left the cafeteria and diverged in different directions; Ellyn toward the Instrs and Anya toward the dorms.

It was little more than a span of minutes when Anya was alone, walking on the grounds on a paved stone path. Her hair swayed back and forth as she walked, the golden sunlight of the evening shining down on her face, her green eyes reflecting the surrounding green.

As she walked through the path, she thought of her connection with Ellyn and Leon. They might have met in a dark alleyway by accident, but since then the coincidences have piled up, and they have built quite a good relationship.

She was avoiding Leon until now due to the letter she'd received, but now that she'd pushed that topic out of her mind, for the first time she viewed him as a person. The star that was so far away, which seemed out of her reach before, was now a little closer.

She wasn't interested in him romantically, she couldn't, there's no way, at least not now, at this point, she wasn't, it would've been a tragic story if she was, hence she was not. It was confusing, she didn't know. That's why she ignored this, too.

"Friend" would have been an overstatement, so she settled on "acquaintances" for now.

Ellyn was slightly toward the "friend" side, or so were Anya's thoughts about the matter. She enjoyed her company, even though Ellyn was treated as an idol by other girls and whenever they were together she got stares from the public.

This had set Anya off the tracks at the start, but now she was slowly getting used to it. Plus, after she came to her senses, Anya realized that Ellyn had helped her a lot when she was coiled up in her dark room. She could never thank her enough for that.

It was strange, truly.

Just like her brother, Anya had spent most of her time either inside the horse, playing with Zero—sometimes alone, hearing stories from Ron, or spending time with Ainge. Either that, or she had spent her time training with the sword, or teaching Zero.

She never really had friends; neither of the siblings did. Hence, this feeling was strange for her, but it was sort of good too. It was not terrible, if nothing. Enough to leave a smile on her face for a few minutes, even after the bidding farewell.

… She didn't dislike this feeling…she didn't dislike the thought of having friends.