"Do you think he's wearing a new shirt today?"

From beside me, my sister Veronica sighed heavily. "I don't know, Eli. Only you pay this much attention to him."

"Oh, no, this is one he's had for a while. I've just never seen him dress it up this way," I continued musing, heedless of the irritation in her voice.

My name is Elizabeth Liones. I'm a freshman at Liones High. I have two sisters, both older than me, and my father is the president of our country. I am nothing special, myself, even though I think I am reasonably pretty and certainly not as foolish as some other girls are. My sister Margaret is the super intelligent and kind one, and Veronica is funny and passionate and driven. I have no particular talents, but I do like to care for people when they are ill. But even if I do not feel extraordinary, there is nothing wrong at all with my very ordinary. Everything in my life is very nice, and I'm so grateful for it. All that could be done to improve any of it is if I were dating Meliodas.

Meliodas is two years older than me and in his junior year. He's short, has wonderful green eyes, wild blonde hair that looks very soft to touch, and the warmest smile I've ever seen. He is very fair and friendly to everyone, even the bullies and the people nobody else wants to interact with. I fell in love from a distance with how often he grins and how outgoing he seems to be. I'm not completely sure how it is to really interact with him, though. I've never spoken to him. As far as I am aware, he did not know that I existed. And I constantly warred with myself about whether or not I wanted things to stay that way.

The table I chose for Veronica and I every day had a good, clear view of Meliodas from across the cafeteria, where he sat at a table with a handful of friends. One of them was Gilthunder, my eldest sister Margaret's boyfriend. From here, I could moon over Meliodas from a safe distance – no risk of embarrassment on the chance that he actually chose to talk to me for some reason.

"Why on earth have you never spoken to him?!" Veronica asked incredulously.

"Because I'm not like you are!" I protested. "I don't think on my feet quickly enough to make my mistakes look cute or funny, so people just think I'm strange."

Besides, I continued to myself, even if I were comfortable trying to talk to him, I couldn't get a word in edgewise. Meliodas, you see, was always surrounded by his friends and by his girls. I was far from the only one with a crush on him, and most of the others were more eager to express their affection than I was. Meliodas had several girls he liked to hang out with – and I think flirt with.

There was one girl in particular that he seemed to like the most though. The only one other than my own overanxious self that I thought might actually get in the way of my love for Meliodas. Her name was Merlin, and at lunch that day, she was all over him.

Merlin almost always wore really racy outfits. Not in a slutty kind of way— okay, she actually looked really slutty most of the time. But somehow, I guess because of the way she carried herself, her near nudity was… classy. It helped her case that despite how many boys couldn't take their eyes off her firm thighs and trim stomach, she never glanced twice at any of them. She only ever paid any attention to one man. Unfortunately for my prospects, that one man was Meliodas.

Veronica nudged my elbow and cleared her throat softly, drawing my eyes away from Merlin's cleavage hovering at his shoulder. When I looked at her, she was frowning.

"You're staring, Eli. Don't be a creep. Don't blush, you'll make it more awkward!"

I pressed my lips together, willing away the heat that crept up my neck, and obediently looked away from my crush. The very last thing I wanted to do was to ruin my dating prospects before they even existed.

"I'm sorry. I just can't stop looking at Merlin. She's so… competent. I'm sure Meliodas will just think I'm a foolish little girl if I try to follow that up."

"Or, maybe he'll think it's cute and find you endearing." My head dropped at the tone of her voice – her mild exasperation with me was clear. Veronica was so much more outgoing than I that it confused and frustrated her when I couldn't muster up the courage to act like she would. I felt bad that I was never able to take her advice in situations like this. "You should go talk to him. Both of them, actually."

"Merlin, too?"

Veronica shrugged carelessly. "If you have competition, you may as well know who she is."

No. Way. I felt a blush bloom from the back of my neck at the mere thought of how mortifying that interaction would be. My sister noticed it and let out a heavy sigh before shaking her head and going back to her homework.

"Isn't that due in just a couple of hours?" I asked, more than glad for the opportunity to change the topic.

Her reply was unenthusiastic. "Uh-huh." Veronica rarely finished all her homework the night before – it was fairly common for her to rush to finish an assignment during lunch like this. She suddenly threw down her pencil and looked at me sternly. "Hey, Ellie, let's make a bargain."

"A bargain?"

"Yeah. If you go over and talk to Meliodas during lunch today, I'll do all my homework on time for a week."

I gasped. Our father always nagged her for not budgeting her time better, and he'd beg me and Margaret to do what we could to motivate Veronica. So far, all our efforts had been in vain. It wasn't that Veronica was incapable of doing her work; she simply didn't want to. Now she was using that as a bargaining chip!

"Veronica, you know I can't do that!" I protested. My sister only shrugged and picked her pencil back up to return to her last-minute crunch work.

"Okay. Fine with me."

We sat in silence for a while. I kept staring at Merlin hovering over Meliodas until she straightened up, flipped her hair, and walked away. Sauntered away, more accurately, with a sway in her hips and a smug smile on her mouth. My cheeks heated up again as envy filled my belly. Getting to know my competition, as Veronica had put it, was a very bad idea. But I couldn't just let Merlin walk all over the man I pined for and take him for herself without giving myself a fair chance first.

"Deal," I said softly.

"What's that?" Veronica looked up from her worksheet again, and I repeated myself.

"I said, deal. I'll take your deal. Tomorrow I will go talk to him. I'll go talk to Meliodas."

I realized very quickly that accepting Veronica's bargain had been a mistake. All throughout the rest of that afternoon and the entire morning of the next, Veronica smirked and winked at me every time we passed each other in the hallway. At supper, Father asked her if she had something stuck in her eye.

There was no chance that I could escape this.

Meliodas and I shared a free hour during the second period of the day, a fact I'd surreptitiously gathered from Gilthunder when he was over for dinner one time. The two of them usually hung out together in that hour, he'd said, and he believed Merlin had class at that time. I told as much to Veronica when she pestered me to know how I would approach Meliodas; she volunteered to orchestrate a distraction for Gil.

Whatever Veronica did to get rid of him worked. When I crept up near the outdoor spot Gil and Meliodas inhabited on most days, my sister's boyfriend was nowhere to be seen. Meliodas sat alone beneath the big tree.

I withdrew into the safety behind the building wall after only the barest glance at his back, terrified for a moment that the small tilt of his head meant he'd noticed me. All I could do for a moment was press myself to the bricks and shake, my breath coming in frantic pants. Then the panic faded – the world stopped blurring in front of my eyes, and I could inhale fully.

"Your sister Veronica would laugh at you right now, Elizabeth," I told myself in a stern whisper. "She'd ask what you were scared of, and shake her head when you realized there was nothing for you to fear."

Although it did not help my confidence at all, my pep talk to myself did shoo away the last of the trembling and the fright. No harm could possibly come to me, and so I shouldn't be afraid. At worst, I would embarrass myself terribly.

At that thought, my stomach twisted, but I squashed the feeling down. Meeting Meliodas properly and maybe getting a date was worth that risk. This was fine, I reassured myself. This was fine.

With my nerves steeled, I rushed around the corner before I could change my mind. My fists clenched at my sides as I approached Meliodas, grabbing fistfuls of my skirt hem as a flimsy sort of anchor. He turned around before I spoke to him, his attention probably drawn by the sound of my footsteps in the grass. At first he seemed a little confused by my presence, as if he were expecting to see someone else walking over, but a jubilant grin spread over his face before I could dissect the first expression. My chest tightened immediately in response.

"Me-Meli—" Only the first two syllables made it out before my throat closed around his name. I'm sure he expected a more coherent greeting than that, but he still didn't miss a beat.

"Hey! You're Elizabeth, right?" I became lightheaded as the oxygen suddenly vanished from the atmosphere around me. I managed a tiny nod, and Meliodas continued. "Margaret's younger sister. Little Gil pointed you out to me while we were talking once."

I finally found my voice. "Oh, yes." I clasped my hands behind my back, lacing the fingers together tightly. "Actually, Margaret and Veronica are my adoptive sisters. I don't have any biological family."

"Gotcha." His slow nodding was suddenly cut off as he sent another beaming smile my way and said: "But hey, sometimes the best family is the one you weren't born with. Blood is thicker than water, and all that. Wanna sit down?"

I nodded mutely and walked over to the spot he patted. With my hands pressed against my bottom to hold my skirt in place, I settled down on the grass beside Meliodas. My swallow stuck in my throat at the realization of how close our bodies were.

"I understand what you mean," I began softly once I sat. I wanted to look at him, but I just couldn't manage to keep my eyes on his face as I continued. "But I think - if you don't mind - I think that saying might not be quite right for what you are talking about…"

The sound of Meliodas laughing made my attention snap straight back to him. He was smiling at me with a little sparkle in his eye. If I hadn't been so anxious, I probably would have melted into a puddle.

"Actually, the shortened version of that saying makes it seem like it means the opposite of what it really does. The long one goes: 'The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb.'"

"Blood is thicker than water…" I murmured. I wondered if he had a family he preferred to his biological one. And then I realized - oh, goddesses, I'd tried to correct him when he was right. My entire face promptly turned scarlet, and I felt the sting of tears building up behind my eyes. I turned my face away from him and tucked my head against my drawn-up knees to hide them as I apologized. "I'm really sorry, I didn't mean to be rude-"

Meliodas cut my blubbering off by laughing again. I felt his warm hand rest softly on my shoulder and jerked upright to look at him again. His smile fell when he noticed my choked-back tears, and he turned around to rummage in his backpack. I hastily wiped the moisture off my cheeks with the backs of my hands while he wasn't looking. Before I'd gotten all of my tears, he returned from his pack and held out a tissue to me.

I took his offering with a tiny sniffle. "Th-thank you, Meliodas."

"Hey, don't worry about it. I don't mind rudeness, and you weren't anyway."

My gaze fell to the grass between us. I wasn't so sure.

"Trust me," Meliodas continued. "Some of the people I hang out with can be rude for real, and you were nowhere near them. Heck, Merlin straight-up insults me every now and then, and I bet you are kind enough that you don't even think of doing that to a person."

I nodded a little, but did not respond in full. He was right that I would never insult people, and it was nice to know that he thought of me as kind. Why did he have to compare me to Merlin, though? The fact that there was enough room in his mind to be thinking about her even while he and I were right next to each other crushed me.

He took a breath, probably intending to fill my silence with more of his own conversation. Then the sound of the period bell silenced him, saving me.

With a roll and a hop, he somehow managed to put on his backpack and rise to his feet in one seamless motion. I stood up more slowly and more clumsily, still dabbing at the damp redness around my eyes. Meliodas seemed not to notice that as he grinned and waved to me.

"Nice to meet'cha, Elizabeth!" he said over his shoulder as he walked away. I managed a small smile and a smaller wave as he disappeared around a corner with the shout of: "See ya around!"

At lunch, I made very sure not to sit at my usual table. Instead I chose a spot in the back corner of the cafeteria where I could not see Meliodas, and he could not possibly see me. It took Veronica several minutes to find me there. I could tell by her face as soon as she sat down with me that she knew exactly what my new location meant.

"It went that badly, huh?"

I nodded, staring hard at the rice on my plate. "We didn't even have much of a conversation before I started crying."

"Aw, man. Seriously, Elizabeth?"

My eyes began to sting again, and I pressed my lips together tightly for fear that speaking would break the dam on my emotions. Veronica was exasperated on my behalf out of love and wanting the best for me, but sometimes her abrasiveness was just too much. I focused my gaze on one grain of rice, then on the veins of a spinach leaf, willing myself not to cry.

Neither of us spoke for a while. I assume Veronica went back to her food, while I tortured myself replaying the humiliating encounter with Meliodas in my mind. After a number of long, dreadful minutes, Veronica cleared her throat to speak again.

"Hey, Eli."

The sharp edge on her tone told me she was trying to catch my attention. I wasn't sure I could handle her conversation at the moment, so I did not respond.

"Eliiiii," she said again, this time drawing out the syllables of my nickname and letting a little bit of patronism seep into her voice. Again, I pointedly refused to give her any reaction.

Then she reached across the table to jostle my shoulder, and I couldn't pretend to ignore her anymore. My head snapped up, a frustrated frown on my face and my mouth opening to tell her off, but the sight that greeted me brought me up short with a gasp.

Standing right beside my sister's chair, looking straight at me with the least readable expression I've ever seen, was Merlin.