Chapter 4

And even after their week of detention with forty-five minute extended Helen, the vice principal decided to torture them further. He was a man (or was supposed to be) with dark purple hair swept to "seem" suave, blush dotting both cheeks on extremely palely-powdered skin, and a constant, carefree smile that finished it all. Richard, as most people in the school called him, was gay. Or homosexual, as Aisha liked to refer it.

Richard was a unique vice principal, in the simple truth that he believed that love was the solution to almost every problem. One of the reasons that he became vice principal, in fact, was because he wanted to make lack of education solvable via love.

And so here Aisha and Elsword were, with the exact same crowd beneath them, both standing in the exact same spot on the stage they were on exactly one week ago.

In between them was a glass fishbowl sitting atop a tall, broken chair propped up with a few textbooks. Inside the bowl were hundreds of red tickets, each with a different name that was one of the students in front of them.

Yep. Richard was making them keep their carelessly thrown promises to the school.

"I just need you to find all of your friends and bring them here! Whoever brings the most and helps me beat Elsword Sieghart, my rival in this contest, will receive a date with me and a kiss to the cheek!" She put emphasis on that word. There was never enough emphasis on words to keep these boys at bay.

The moment the words left her mouth, all of them stampeded out the doors to the gym, leaving nothing but dust behind.

Elsword didn't miss a beat. "You too, girls!~ The one who brings the most will receive a NIGHT with me!"

Aisha eyed the fishbowl. "How about you first, Sieghart?"

The corner of his mouth twitched. "No thank you, ladies first, right?"

She sighed and gave up. They would stand around here bickering the rest of the day away if she didn't get this done over with. Aisha cautiously slid her small hand into the bowl and mixed the tickets around, feeling the smooth paper run over her fingers like water. She felt a sense of foreboding and instantly snatched one up.

Praying within her heart, she cracked open an eye to see the slanted, cursive handwriting and she brightened. "Allegro Darkrin!" she called out triumphantly. Now to see who Elsword gets to spend the night with, she thought mischievously.

She heard Elsword swear lightly and stick his hand into the pile. Her eyes followed his fingers as he picked one up and read it aloud, confused if not hesitantly. "Chung...Seiker?"

The girls erupted into whispers and chatters. Aisha stifled a giggle that began to bubble up within her at the mention of the name. It's Chung! My dance partner from last time. Who put his name in, though?

Immediately, the track of her thoughts pointed towards a certain friend of hers. Rena, vice president of the school, strong supporter of homosexuals (and always believed that Chung was a girl deep down.)

She kept her mouth shut though as she watched Elsword try to process that name into his systems. She could almost hear him thinking, "Chung Seiker? Isn't that the prince of Hamel? Or, wait, is he a princess? And I have to spend a night with her?! ...is it a him? What?"

The crowd seemed to regurgitate the prince, shoving him forward like a river giving up one of it's stones. And, to her surprise, Aisha noticed that all the females were not in the slight bit jealous, rather, boiling over with excitement that it might be... She heard the word "yaoi" pass over several times as Chung stood stiffly in front of Elsword, meeting his ruby eyes with cerulean ones. They both had a staring contest, and the gym held it's breath. Then, Elsword lifted his chin up with a single finger, tilting his head so he was looking up at him. She saw the faint glint of recognition light up in his irises and knew that he finally figured out Chung's gender. Which was good for him, she supposed, but she was disappointed in the fact that he didn't get a slutty girl like Chloe to sleep with.

But then again, he got to sleep with a guy, right? (She sincerely hoped the rumors would do their job.) And all she needed to do was to go out with a boy that she was actually acceptable with.

Simple, right?

The night after the raffle selection, Aisha was casually fitted into a normal-looking dress (she didn't want anything too expensive or fancy for a friendly date). It consisted of lavender frills accentuated with layers of white underneath. Detached sleeves of a darker shade of purple that matched her hair was held in place with brown leather and gold buckles at the base. The dress's hem flowed down to about the middle of her thighs - quite short, but not so much that it'd make her flirty, showy, or uncomfortable.

Allegro was waiting for her at the entrance of a restaurant that fragrantly smelled of Hamelian foods and spices. A small smile picked it's way to her mouth. What a sense of flavor that he had in first-time dates, taking a girl out to eat Hamelian dinner!

She felt like she was the host of a show that was rating on the decisions of each nervous boy or man that got onto camera for their first date choices. But it was just a habit she had picked up, nothing big.

On one side of the town of Velder, a prestigious mage was having a delicious dinner with an anticipant, constantly-blushing boy that she only had friendly, acquainting feelings for; on the other side of the town, however, a room within an apartment was dark. Elsword shifted every other second or so, trying to find space on his bed. He hadn't exactly wanted to sleep on the floor, he only had one bed in his small apartment room, and he didn't want to force the prince to take his place on the carpet either.

But he hadn't expected the long-haired boy to take up so much space on his one-man bed. He was practically squished to the wall, nearly kissing it, as he listened to Chung's slow, breathing noises and turned raging thoughts over in his head. Damn it, maybe he shouldn't have taken such crazy bets. And neither should he have been actually doing this, although he wouldn't be surprised if he had a few stalkers that had followed him and Chung home.

Elsword, unable to take the wall's unforgiving embrace for much longer, twisted his body and turned to face the other way. He came nose-to-nose with the prince of Hamel and almost gave a yelp.

He knew he was a guy. That was for sure. But no matter how you looked at him, even in close inspection, he just got more and more feminine. Pale skin, slightly-blushed cheeks, soft lips, silky, smooth hair that flowed past the waist...

Oh, what was he thinking?

But back to the other end of the town. Aisha and Allegro had finished their dinner in a timely manner, and she was delighted to see him hold his hand out for hers to take as they exited. Such was the manners of that one man she wanted to meet in the future, the one she would fall in love with. Yes, she decidedly thought as Allegro took her outside back into the frigidly cold air, the man that I would fall in love with must be handsome. He must be rich. He must be polite to me and treat me nicely, and not as a replacement for something else. He'd have to be a shining prince and save me whenever I was in a dilemma.

That would be the man I would want to marry, she decidedly agreed with herself.

(She, at this very early point, didn't know just how wrong she was and how little she knew about her heart. But no one could blame her, ne? But, indeed, he was handsome. That was the only one she was right about.)

"And, as I promised," she spoke as they neared the taxi that her date had gotten, "you can have your kiss to the cheek." Although quite unwilling to do it, yet not quite minding it, she stooped down (he was shorter than her) and gave a small peck to the cheek. Just a brushing of her lips on the side of his face. She waved at him as he clambered into the taxi, stuttering incomprehensible phrases, his whole head turning into a bright red strawberry.

When she was sure he left and was out of sight, she turned to the parking lot and headed to her own car. A chauffeur was standing outside of the sleek, black doors, bowing when he saw her. "Milady," he began.

"It's fine, no need," she crisply cut him off. "Please drive me home."

And as her thoughts swam back to what her future prince would look like (she was much more of a girl than she gave off), they wandered in the direction of her arch rival at school. Elsword didn't seem to dress like he was rich, more like he was scandalous...

Well. It wasn't like she dressed like she was rich either.

Polite and nice to me? Save me in a dilemma? Handsome? her mind sputtered.

Yep, she concluded. Elsword Sieghart was the exact opposite of what she liked about the other gender. No wonder she hated him.

But somewhere, also ticking off in the back of her head like a clock, some of the nicer things and words he said were held under key and lock.

As Aisha's little date ended in a quick couple of hours, Elsword, on the other hand, was getting more and more uncomfortable. There was absolutely no way he could sleep with a royal stranger in his bed. He was facing the wall again, unable to bear the innocent-looking face on the other side. He had never prepared himself for two people on his bed, and was awkward and irritated at the same time. In only a pair of boxers and nothing else, he found the wall relentless in it's cold-hearted chill. Elsword could've stuffed part of his blanket in between him and the wall, but he was afraid of waking Chung up with him yanking the blanket roughly. He began talking to the slab of painted wood for some reason, about the purple-haired prat, the prince next to him, and the fact that the wall was too hard.

Then he looked around at his cramped apartment and the prince next to him and sighed. Were all people at Velder High rich? That couldn't be. But if they were... Then that must've meant that Aisha Greimyst also had pockets full and stuffed with overflowing ED?!

He banished the thought from his head. People that had that much money on their hands would be dressed properly. Not with overgrown, hanging bangs, drab appearance, not even a sense of rhythm in dancing! (How "dressing properly" turned into dancing with rhythm was impossible to know.)

Unbeknownst to them, they were thinking about each other on a very similar topic. Both, however, also put it in the perspective that each hated each other to the point they might as well have cut each other's hair bald and burnt each other's clothes off. Or maybe they were just lying to themselves, but were both too dimwitted to notice the tricks their own mind was playing on them.

Still.

He found the wall no good company.

Sighing, he flipped his body around again, rather having the wall to his back than have it in his face. He was about to scoot closer to Chung for huddled warmth when, instead, he accidentally bumped into the blonde-haired boy.

Not on the head, or the legs, or the arm, body, no no, not any of that, but-

-it just had to be on the lips.

Immediately, forgetting all about the prospect of not waking him up, Elsword shot up on his bed and scrambled off. Over and over in his head, like a recording that someone annoyingly taped and replayed, his mind whispered to him, Your first kiss~ Your first kiss~ Stolen by a cute sleeping prince, who happened to be in your bed~ Where have we heard of that before? He shook his head rapidly from side to side, his crimson hair fluffing and messing up in the process. His heart went fluttering about in his chest like a butterfly, not because he just found out he was not very attracted to girls (he was very attracted to them) but because it was overall too shocking for anything but his heart to comprehend.

For the rest of the night, with no complaints whatsoever, he slept on the stiff floor, cheek to his arm.

Sorry for the short chapter! DX I've been busy lately (there are tons of school projects coming up, tests, etc.) and I could only afford this measly wall of text. QwQ I'm actually a really bad fluff writer and I started writing this in high hopes of improving it. Nonetheless, hope y'all liked it! x3 And consistent thanks for all your continual support!