After the war, everyone had told him to take a break, to explore and do something new, even when he was always doing something new.

"You need to go and mingle with the others," his parents had said.

"You need a girl in your life," Holly and Juliet added.

"If you don't know what's out there, you would never know about other, better things," Butler chimed in.

So he listened to all of them, and did the things they wanted.

He went and mingled with the others and got to know them; they weren't better than the people he knew. Save one.

One was a boy his age, fun and an extrovert, with boundless energy in him. A male version of Holly. The result of the first advice was a good one.

He followed the second advice and got a girl in his life - Minerva Paradizo. But she just wasn't what he wanted.

She was needy, always wanting to be with him. She never let him do anything without her. All their evenings were spent at lavish restaurants, or a home doing things a couple was supposed to do. She tried to, but never understood him. And when they went out for a get-together, her roving eye never stopped roving.

So he ended it. the second advice didn't yield any good results. Not yet.

So he followed the third, and found more than he had hoped for. A girl, quiet, fun in her own way and an introvert. A female version of him. Someone he could talk to all night, voicing his opinions, never bored of her company, and vice versa. She considered him her best friend, through that was less than what he could say of her. She was something else altogether for him, someone else. He just didn't know how to put it. But he wasn't in a hurry.

The third advice had yielded excellent results.