Well, here's another chapter. Looks like I'm continuing the 'start a story, put out 2 chapters, run out of motivation' trend. Well, hopefully not the last part.
(1st person, Karu)
"Your 16th birthday?" I ask.
"Well yeah, I mean it's not that surprising that there's gonna be huge party, I just wish there wasn't, or that I didn't have to attend," Kirito complains, currently hiding from the castle staff—well, a specific few anyway—in the smithy part of my shop/smithy/house.
"I'm surprised you managed to sneak out without anyone following you," I say, not actually at all surprised.
"You could have pulled it off just as easily," he points out.
"No quite, after all, I don't have as much practice," I say.
"True."
"So what's gonna be with the birthday party?" I ask.
"Well you know how almost nobody really knows what I look like? Like, it's not a secret but I've never made any public appearances. Well anyway, it's going to be a huge masquerade ball open to practically everyone, even fairies have been invited," he answers.
"Sounds more like an assassination attempt than a birthday party to me," I say.
"I can handle myself, don't worry," he says.
"I know, but still. If it is, that means whoever came up with the idea wants you dead, which means someone with a good deal of power wants you dead, likely in the council since that's pretty much the only people who could make that sort of decision other than your father," I say.
"I'll watch them when I get the chance, I guess. Anyway other than the ball, there's gonna a huge feast and such, followed by a party where desert will be served and people will be able to just talk," Kirito says.
"Seems rather grand, then again, not surprising for the prince's 16th birthday. It's in a little over two weeks, right?" I ask.
Kirito nods. "Unless you're against it, I'm gonna follow and observe some of the council members. Maybe I can even get the party canceled if I can prove it's an assassination attempt," I say.
"I'm not really against it, but I doubt you would be able get it canceled even if you prove it because it would ruin the royal family's reputation to a certain extent. But if you really want to, I don't mind," Kirito says.
"Anyway, I doubt they're looking in this area any more, since they started here, so we can probably come out," I say.
One of the castle staff had come to check if he was here, but I told him he wasn't in the shop, which was technically true since I didn't consider the smithy part of the shop
"I guess you're right, but we should still be careful, they'll be pretty much willing to drag me back by force," Kirito says.
"Hey Kirito, how many times per day to you wish you weren't the prince?" I ask.
"At least 10," he answers in a somewhat joking tone.
"Every time I talk to you, you seem to have one problem or another with prince stuff," I say with a slight laugh.
"Hey, I didn't sign up for being a prince," he says with a slight pout.
"I'm sure there are thousands upon thousands of people who'd love to trade places with you. Just for the record, I'm not among them," I say.
"Heh, I guessed. Unfortunate too, because you could probably pretend to be me for a while if you wanted to."
"With how similar we look, how well I know you, and how short you are, it probably wouldn't be too hard."
Kirito pouts a bit at me teasing him about his height. "Seriously though, you're as tall as 14 year old girl at 16, that's definitely short."
"Hey! It's not my fault," he says, complaining.
"Maybe it's all that sword training or something," I say.
"Well, I'd rather be short and know how to fight with a sword than the other way around," he says.
Wow, there's a way to spy on the council room, that's cool.
Well one of them is awfully suspicious, constantly trying to undermine the King and complaining. Also loud. So loud, I almost wanted to drop something on his head. The King would certainly be happy about it, given that he hated the guy, however, thanks to the system under which this worked, he couldn't do anything about it.
As the meeting about whatever was adjourned a followed him through the various secret passages and, as he left the castle, I followed him, silently.
If he does something like enter his house or whatever I'll go but I had a bad feeling about this so I was following him. Suspiciously, he took the road not towards the city but the smaller one which slowly turned into a path and led into the forest. Thanks to him having no skills whatsoever in watching for people—apparently—he still hadn't caught onto me.
"They're late," the council member says in an irritated voice. Well well well, what do we have here. Wait, you're supposed to say that aloud.
A bit later, a group of men dressed in black cloaks show up. Other than that the only thing they really had in common was the tattoo on their right hand and aura of bloodlust that made me want to run and cower in fear. Part of me. The other part... wanted revenge. Laughing Coffin, that's who they were. The murders who killed my father and many, many others.
Thankfully, the third and smartest part of me decided to just stay put extremely quietly. Okay, the run and cower in fear part was probably smarter.
"All the preparations are complete, my lord," one of them says, though the words my lord were said in a way that was obviously sarcastic.
"If that prince isn't dead by the end of the month, there will be repercussions for you," the councilor says. And if you aren't in prison by the end of the week there will be repercussions for someone.
I must be totally insane, because I muster up some courage and silently step out in such a way that I was hidden in shadows.
I draw my sword soundlessly and the deliberately step on a twig. All 5 people gathered here—4 Laughing Coffin members and the councilor—turned towards me.
"My Prince?!" the councilor asks with fake respect and very real surprise before saying, "Wait, you're not the prince."
"And you're an idiot," I say in a voice that hides my fear as best as I can. Then again, since we have about the same height, I'm wearing clothes similar to his right now, it's dark, we have similar hair and face, and I am using a stance that was basically a clone of his, it wasn't that surprising that he mistook me for Kirito.
"So which of you is PoH?" I ask in a somewhat jovial tone, however if you listened closely, you would probably here something much, much darker. PoH was the name by which the man who killed my father went, along with the rest of the hunting group except the one surviver. Perhaps it was a shortening of something, like Prince of Hell. Fitting for someone like him.
When none of them saying anything I ask, "None of you? Disappointing. I really, really wanted to kill him."
The tone I said that in definitely made the councilor cower in fear, and I swear even the hardened murderers shivered.
"You're discussing assassinating the prince, there's gotta be at least one important person here. You mind introducing me to your leader?" I ask.
I turn to the councilor, "I almost want to kill you for trying to assassinate my friend, but I think I'll just lock you up for the rest of your life."
"Like anyone would believe your words," he says, obviously scared. One of the members of Laughing Coffin laughs at him, "She's the prince's best friend, of course they'll value her words more than yours."
"If you're that smart, I wonder why you haven't run away yet," I say, not really wanting to fight them.
"I'd ask the same question, 4 on 1 seem to be pretty one-sided odds, in our favor," says the one who'd done all the talking so far. In truth they he was completely right. I wonder why I haven't run away yet. It's not like I need to drag the councilor to the prison, either he returns and gets arrested or he doesn't return and probably gets killed be Laughing Coffin.
"Hmm... you're probably right but, I guess I'm just don't have that much common sense. That, or maybe I'm not alone," I say, though the last part was completely a bluff.
"I have reinforcements coming, so I suggest you run," I say, playing along with the bluff I had decided to start. Why I was so unwilling to run away myself, I don't know.
"Right, like we'd fall for a bluff like that," he says in an ever-so-slightly nervous voice.
"You seem awfully nervous for someone who thinks that," I say. Why? Beats me.
"You're boring me," he says, a dagger appearing in his hand, likely poisoned. Basically, I get hit, I probably lose. He held it backhanded, which meant that he would have even shorter reach than normal for dagger.
He leaps forward, swinging his dagger at me.
I parry and leap back. Technically speaking, I should have the advantage, since I have a sword and he has a dagger, which gives me a huge advantage in range. Unfortunately, he's incredibly fast.
I swing at him, my blade scratching along his left arm before he can bring it back. He punches, aiming next to my neck so that the dagger would hit me. I step to the right and grab his arm, bringing it to my knee, kneeing him in the forearm. He yanks his arm back and I let go, not wanting to be pulled along.
He jumps back and his 3—presumably—underlings jump forward, all with daggers drawn and held in various ways.
They started to attack, but only 1 by 1. Do they have bad coordination? Or are they just playing with me.
One of them lungs forward with his dagger and I bring my sword down on his wrist, cutting his hand off. I cover my mouth and jump back, trying not to throw up as the smell of blood and iron filled the air.
The man screamed in pain and grabbed his wrist with his other hand.
The other 2 snarled at me, both jumping forward, I parry the one on my right and dodge to the right avoiding the left ones dagger... or so I thought.
The dagger cuts through my left sleeve and cuts a shallow cut into my left forearm. Almost immediately my arm goes numb and I'm practically unable to move it. Paralysis, I guess I should be glad it's not a lethal poison. The shallow cut doesn't seem to have been enough to paralyze more than just my arm, so I guess I'm lucky in that regard.
I jump back and hold my sword in front of me, carefully watching both opponents.
They attack at the same time, slashing extremely fast, simply trying to overwhelm me with the quantity of blows. And unfortunately, it was working. When I tried to retreat, they followed, so that wasn't an option. I was 'somewhat' regretting not escaping when I had the chance. And now that I cut the hand off of one of them, I doubt they'd let me get away with just death either.
I swing my sword with as much strength as I can muster, which decreased by a little with every scratch I received. The two jump back, giving me a window to jump back myself. I continue to retreat, not holding much hope for it, but if I can slowly draw the battle out of the forest...
"Where do you think you're going, little girl?" asks a creepy voice from behind me. When did...? Oh, the fourth one.
A sharp pain shoots through my right side and I find myself unable to stand, collapsing forward onto the ground, barely able to prevent myself from falling directly on my face. The pain soon fades and is replaced with numbness, likely a side effect of the paralysis poison.
"What should we do with her?"
"Let's start by tying her up, she can't feel any pain if she's paralyzed." That was the one whose hand I had chopped off.
While I couldn't feel my injuries or look to see the wound, I could still smell blood, likely both mine and theirs.
Why am I so drowsy? Oh right, blood loss. Well, it's for the better, not like I could do anything about it. I doubt I could even talk if I wanted to.
One of them hoists me up and ties me with a rope, throwing me against a tree. Since I can't even keep my head up, one of the few things I can see is that my clothes are soaked in blood. If I wasn't paralyzed, I'd probably vomit.
Once they're sure I've been tightly tied to the tree, one of them forces me to drink something. After a few moments pain covers my entire body, mostly from my left arm and right side though. Especially the latter. I let out a silent yelp of pain.
"Aww look, she's in pain," the one who's hand had been cut off says in a psychotic, sadistic voice. He had bandaged up his arm rather quickly.
He walks up to me and kicks me in the stomach, causing me to gasp for breath and bend over in pain. Or, at least try to, since I couldn't really move much. He kicks me several more times and one of his friends says, "Careful, if you kill her, you can't torture her."
The man smiled sadistically and held a dagger in his left hand. He put the point against my stomach and slowly stabbed me, causing me to scream out in pain. The taste of blood filled my mouth and the man laughed.
He yanked out the dagger sharply and raised it next to my head in a backhanded grip, readying to stab down on my shoulder. However, before he could, the dagger was sent flying out his hand by a familiar sword and he himself was sent backwards into the ground.
Kirito practically appeared between me and the 3 assassins.
He glanced back at me and an expression of cold anger appeared on his face as he turned to the Laughing Coffin members. Maybe, I'll survive...
The world fades to darkness.
"-ru! Karu! Wake up! Please, please wake up."
I drowsily open my eyes and with slight difficulty raise my head a bit. I see Kirito nearly crying above me and notice that for some odd reason, the pain was mostly gone. We were still in the forest however.
A moment after I open my eyes, Kirito hugs me and whispers, "Please, never do something that stupid again."
I hug him back—well try, anyway, since I can barely lift my arms—and say as loud as I can—which was basically a whisper—, "Thank you, Kirito."
I try to keep my eyes open and fail, though I feel a drop of liquid fall on my cheek as I fall asleep.
So huuunngry. And thirsty.
I open my eyes and see a familiar room, specifically, my bedroom. The light shone through the window and I sit up, rubbing my eyes. As I sit up, there's a pain in my stomach and side and I wince.
Upon looking around, I see Kirito is a light sleep on the chair on the room. "Morning Kirito," I say.
"Morning Karu," he says, sleepily raising his head.
He immediately blushes bright red and looks away. I look down and realize that I'm wearing nothing but my underwear and some bandages and instantly lie back down, hiding under my blanket while blushing furiously, hurting myself somewhat in the process.
"You-"
"Sorry, but it was that or let you sleep in clothes completely soaked through with your blood," Kirito hastily defends.
I resist the urge to throw something at him, since his reasoning was sound and I'd rather Kirito see me in underwear—as embarrassing as it was—then sleep in clothes completely soaked with blood for at least like 20 hours, possible something like 45 hours or whatever. Also if I threw something at him, I would probably hurt myself.
"Can you please step out so I can put on some clothes," I say quietly and as calmly as I could.
"Yeah, I'll just do that," he says carefully, seemingly relieved that I didn't do anything to him. He gets out of the room and I quickly get out of bed. I'm hit by a wave of nausea and pain and stumble slightly. No sudden movements, got it.
I relatively slowly get dressed and walk out of my room, swaying slightly.
"Are you alright?" Kirito asks, catching me as I stumble a bit.
"Yeah, just light headed, a bit nauseous, and sleepy," I say with a yawn.
He sighs with relief and says, "With how much blood you lost, that's not surprising."
"How long has it been?" I ask.
"It's the next morning," Kirito answers.
"I see. Thanks for saving me," I say.
"It's what best friends are for but, please never do anything like that again, I was so worried," he says.
"I won't," I say.
"Alright, now that that's-"
"Wait. How are my injuries healed so much in less than 24 hours?" I ask.
"Healing crystal," Kirito answers simply. Healing crystal? I thought those were just made up.
"Those exist?" I ask.
"Yes, but please still be careful, it may have closed your injuries but you could very easily still hurt yourself," Kirito says. They're undeniably rare then, but I decide not bring it up. It's probably best not to ask what happened to the Laughing Coffin members.
"So Karu, are you at all hungry?" he asks.
"Very," I say.
"I'm not surprised. Let's go get you something sweet to eat, after losing that much blood," Kirito says.
"Thanks." I yawn again.
"Maybe with some tea," Kirito adds.
"You're the best," I say and impulsively hug him. Maybe my brain wasn't operating at full capacity, because normally I wouldn't do something like that, or maybe it was that he had just saved my life.
Kirito blushes slightly and I let go of him. "I wonder if this is what being drunk is like. If so, I'm never drinking enough to get drunk. Ever," I say in a half-joking voice. Kirito laughs, "Maybe you should get some sleep first."
"I'd never fall asleep, way too hungry," I answer.
"Right, with how you're acting, you'd probably fall asleep anyway and then be miserable when you wake up," Kirito says.
"Just so you know, the party is an assassination attempt," I say, remembering why I had needed saving in the first place.
"I guessed that much, you follow and councilor and run into Laughing Coffin. Just for the record, you should have run away instead of facing them," Kirito says.
"I know," I say, looking down.
"Why didn't you?" he asks.
"Because one of them could have been the person who killed my father," I say.
"And if one of them was?" Kirito asks.
I don't answer. I want to kill him, but could I?
"I don't know," I say. I can't help but yawn, instantly lightening the mood.
"Anyway, back to you being hungry, I bought some sweets while you were asleep, since after you lose a lot of blood you're supposed to drink a lot and eat a lot of sugar," Kirito says.
We sit and eat for a little while when I decide to ask, "Hey Kirito, how did you know to look for me and how did you find me?"
"I just had a bad feeling so I went looking for you and I found you by asking the animals in the forest," he says as if it's nothing, probably to avoid me realizing and asking questions without lying.
"You can talk to animals?" I ask. If he said yes, I would believe him, since I can too.
"You don't believe me, do you?" he asks.
"I believe you, I can too so it's not that surprising," I say. It wasn't that I made animal-like sounds and animals understood me, I just spoke normally and somehow they understood me and I could understand them without really parsing what sounds they were making.
"Oh..." he says after a little while.
I get up to go open the window and wince as pain shoots through my stomach and side. Kirito gets up and catches me. "Be careful."
"Sorry, I forgot," I say, letting him sit me down.
"What did were you getting up for?" Kirito asks.
"I just wanted to open the window." Kirito walks to the window and opens it, allowing the chirping of birds to be heard. A small, blue baby bird falls on the window sill and cries out a bit. However my ability to communicate with animals worked, it didn't work when it wasn't trying to communicate with me.
"Hey little fellow, are you alright? Did you fall from your nest?" Kirito says to the bird, stroking the bird's head with his finger.
'Yes,' it chirps. I guess it works when it's trying to talk to Kirito. Kirito gently picks the bird up in his left hand and climbs on the window sill, standing up so he was mostly outside and handing on with his right hand. He reaches up and presumably puts the baby bird back into to its nest. He climbs back inside and drops off the window sill.
"I swear you're doing that just to make the fact the I'm injured bother me," I mutter.
"What?" Kirito asks, seemingly genuinely not hearing me. "Nothing, nothing."
I finish eating and say, "Let's head to the castle, since I'm not going to be doing any smithing, there's really nothing to do here.
"Are you sure? It's pretty far and uphill," Kirito says.
"Okay. I get you're worried, but it's not that far or much higher, I won't drop dead randomly," I say, slowly getting up.
"Something like that is exactly what I'm worried about..." Kirito says very quietly. Whether he intended for me to hear him, I don't know..
We walk outside and walk towards the castle at a relatively slow rate, with me occasionally leaning on Kirito for support.
"I still think you should have just stayed home until you recovered at least a little more," Kirito says quietly.
"I would die of boredom," I answer.
"People are normally confined to bed for a while after losing that much blood," Kirito says.
"Then remind me never to get seriously injured again," I say.
"I would have done that anyway."
"Can we go faster?" I ask.
"Can you go faster?" Kirito asks.
"Probably."
"Move carefully though, you don't want to hurt yourself," Kirito says in a worried voice.
"Prince! Where have you been, you didn't return to the castle all night!" asks the silver-haired guard captain.
I give Kirito a 'seriously?' look.
"I wasn't going to leave my nearly dead, unconscious friend alone," he defends himself quietly, not wanting to explain to the guard captain.
I silently sigh and say, "Kazuto was helping me with something and by the time we realized how late it was, it was already too late for him to go back so he just stayed at my place."
The guard looks at me skeptically. Thankfully she decides to let it slide. I better make sure not to look injured until we leave her sight because otherwise she'll be very suspicious.
Which was a bit of a problem, since I kinda felt like collapsing on the floor, or at least leaning on something.
"Let's go to the library," I say quietly to Kirito.
Kirito nods and we head to the library, though the moment we get inside and out of the courtyard where the guard captain was I lean on the wall and breathe deeply.
"Are you okay? I can carry you if you want," Kirito offers.
My face heats up and I look away. "I'm fine," I mutter.
"You sure?" Kirito asks.
"Yes, besides, Suguha will never stop teasing us if she sees that," I say. Kirito decides to let me be and we head to the library... which was unfortunately 7 floors up.
"Kirito, wait up!" I say as Kirito starts to run up the stairs.
"Sorry, I'm used to always running up stairs for some reason," he says as he runs back down to where I am.
"You sure you don't want me to carry you?" Kirito asks.
"How about I just lean on you a bit instead," I say, somewhat embraced by the difficulty I was having with simply climbing stairs. F***ing stairs. It's not like some mountain or something.
I lean on Kirito as we climb the 7 floors to get the floor the library is on—why does the castle need to be so damn big?—and as we enter leave the stairwell we run into Suguha, or really, Suguha literally runs into me.
I clench my teeth to avoid screaming and wince in pain as I hit the ground. "Damn it, watch where you're going!" I say rather too angrily as Kirito helps me up.
"Sorry. Are you alright?" Suguha asks.
"Yeah, I'm fine," I lie, trying to not show any pain or that I'm injured because explaining it would be a pain.
"Really...?" she asks skeptically.
"Yes, really," I say.
"Then why were you leaning on Kazuto?" she asks suspiciously. So she saw that before she ran straight into me.
"I wasn't leaning on him, I was... uh... hugging him," I say, not really hoping for it to work. Kirito just gives me a 'really?' look and sighs.
"I might have believed you if you didn't literally say 'uh' in the middle," Suguha says. "Besides, given how you moved in your duel with Kazuto a little while back, you shouldn't even have fallen over from me running into you and you wouldn't have been hurt by it or landed so poorly either."
"Caught redhanded," I say.
"Then explain how are you hurt and how did you get hurt?" she asks.
"Don't really wanna," I say.
"I'll tell the guard captain, I'm sure she'd love to know how you got injured and how Kazuto was involved," she says.
I sigh. "Kirito, can you take us somewhere where nobody will hear us?"
"Sure," Kirito says and leads us somewhere, not a secret passage, simply a storehouse.
"Nobody should go here and it's not like it's the end of the world if somebody else hears this, it will just mean we have some explaining to do to father," Kirito says.
"Alright, where should I start?" I ask.
"How did you get- no, how did you get into the situation where you got injured?" she asks.
"Two days ago Kirito mentioned how his 16th party would include a ball where anyone was invited and thus, able to get close to the prince. I pointed out this sounded awfully like some sort of assassination attempt and that one of the councilors must want Kirito dead. Yesterday I was following a suspicious councilor and followed him into the forest, where he met with Laughing Coffin.
For some stupid reason I didn't run away and instead fought them, in the beginning of the fight I injured one and stupidly forgot about him, then he snuck up on me and paralyzed me by stabbing me. Then one who's hand I cut off stabbed me. Then Kirito showed up and I don't really know what happened from there."
"If that was yesterday, how are you walking?" she asks.
"I dunno, ask Kirito," I say.
"Why do you call Kazuto Kirito?" she asks.
"Because I'd rather people not realize I'm the prince when we're talking outside the castle and she decided to just call me Kirito all the time to simplify things," Kirito says.
"Annnnyway, back to how she's walking—even if it's with difficulty—if she got stabbed multiple times yesterday," Suguha says.
I started feeling rather sleepy—likely a result of blood loss—and sat down in the corner of the store room, careful as to not hurt myself. I close my eyes and almost immediately fell asleep.
"Karu, wake up," Kirito says, poking me in the shoulder.
"Morning," I mutter, opening my eyes sleepily.
"It's not morning, it's the middle of the day," Kirito says.
"Whatever," I say.
"Why are you so sleepy? Weren't you asleep for like 20 hours?" Suguha asks.
"Ever heard of blood loss? It makes you sleepy, nauseous, and easily out of breath. Fun fact, being stabbed a lot causes you to lose a lot of blood," I say in a sleepy voice.
"Uh... sorry, that was dumb of me," she says, somewhat embarrassed.
"Sugu, stop bothering Karu," Kirito tells the 'younger' girl who was still a year older than me, so it felt weird referring to her that way.
I—with some difficulty coming from being somewhat limited by the bandages I was wearing and the injuries under them—stand up.
"Are you alright?" Kirito asks as I wince from moving wrong.
"I'm fine, I understand that you're worried, but it's fine," I say.
"Yeah, sorry," Kirito says, rubbing the back of his neck awkwardly.
"Get a room you two," Suguha teases, causing both to blush and look in any direction other than each other. Or more like every direction other than each other.
"Get a conscious," I answer.
"Ouch," Suguha says.
"So anyway, Kirito and I were on our way to the library, so, bye bye," I say and head to the door.
Well, here's chapter two. Please leave a review and tell me what you thought.
