He had a bit of a romantic dream he liked to keep all to himself, something he'd never share with anyone, not even Rai and Fuu.
He wanted to be a knight. He wanted to be a knight, and he wanted to save a princess, climb up and whisk her away and carry her off into the night, just like in all of those old fairytales, just like in the children's books he used to read when he was little, when the knight would find the mysterious princess and rescue her from her imprisonment.
The only difference was that he had already found himself a princess.
He saw her in the middle of the night, white and bright and standing out in the darkness, smiling to herself – or maybe at him – a little sadly, her hands folded on her lap, and he wanted so badly to get closer to her, to climb up there and be the one to bring her away from there, to take her with him when he finally couldn't take this place any more and ran away, like he wanted to do. It was the perfect scene – the middle of the night, dark and alone and in the forest, and she, the beautiful princess, dressed in pure, angelic white with silvery-blonde hair, stranded up in the tallest tower of the grandest building, watching him, waiting for him, smiling at him, if he squinted up at her enough. And here he was, the knight, the valiant warrior, come to take her away from here for good, to bring her back with him.
He never went up to get her, because the lock was in the way, the gates were closed up tight, and the next time he looked up, she wasn't really there at all.
At first, he convinced himself he was dreaming. Making it up. Maybe he thought he saw something, but it wasn't even there at all?
That was what he told himself.
He found her again two weeks later, at the same time, in the same situation – she was watching him watch her, smiling just that tiny bit, and he would sit in the grass, dead leaves all around him, smelling of rainfall and a forest in summer, new plants and pollen and fleshy-cut grass, and dream about how he would, one of these days, climb up there and pull her into his arms and take her away from that world, that dark world where she was trapped. In his eyes, she didn't belong there, trapped in the world of darkness, in that dusty, spider-web decorated manor with the shredded curtains and the crumbling bricks.
To him, it was the perfect fairytale. The perfect dream: his romantic dream. One day, he would rescue her, and she would smile at him, and he could finally see her in clear detail, see all of the smiles and the color of her eyes and the creases in her skin.
She stopped appearing, after a while. He wasn't sure when it happened, wasn't sure why she vanished all of the sudden, wasn't sure if she had been there at all, but it didn't matter, because she was gone, and his dream was slipping away, like water between his fingers.
It was then that he finally broke his way into the mansion in a bout of anger and frustration and maybe, just maybe, a little sadness, in the middle of the night, just like he always appeared here. Broke his way through the doors and the dust and the mold and spider webs, and wandered through the dark manor – god, it really was the perfect scene, made just for a fairytale – and, finally, finally, he found her room, found the bright, bright white prison she had been trapped in for so long, the cage she had been locked in that he was supposed to save her from.
And when he arrived, she was gone.
He looked around, called to her, called out for the princess he was supposed to rescue, the dream that was floating away like smoke, but no one answered, no one came, no one needed to be rescued.
The only thing he found, amongst the dust and the cobwebs and the age-old dirt that had marred the surface of the white, white room, was a notebook, torn and yellowed, like it hadn't been touched in ages, with the beautiful, delicate tale of the knight, all blond hair and green eyes and white armor, whisking away a princess, dressed in white with golden, angel-soft hair and bright, bright blue eyes.