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Ryuuren

As he walked through another of the many wildernesses he has ever explored, his thoughts drifted back to the Imperial Exams. In the beginning, he had done it, merely to get what he wanted - permission to travel, unhindered - by his foolish elder brothers, but in the end, he was glad that he did, for it was what brought her to him.

Shuurei. His first real friend.

Sure, she didn t exactly understand how his mind worked, or his methods, but he had long ago noticed that in this day and age, very few people really understood the other. Not the secret person inside that was free of what society had forced them to conform to. All anyone ever really knew how to do was to translate an action that corresponds to what is deemed acceptable by society. That was it.

However, unlike other people, she had not let this small thing turn her away from him. In fact, unlike most people who were merely forced to deal with what they thought of as his eccentricity, Shuurei, who had no need to (who definitely had enough guts to tell him to bugger off), suffered his sometimes callous remarks (which he could identify, by judging the expression on her face), and accepted his proclivities and his quirks in stride, because she knew deep down, that he was only being honest to the person he was within, and that he really was a nice sort of person (if maybe a tad bit annoying).

She even humored him, and cooked for him. She would put her foot down on something if she really had to. And while she never would understand what made him tick, he knew she saw him, -the good with the bad- not just the strangeness that often people tended to focus on.

That was why he had called her Soul friend #1. She was the first person who ever looked into his soul, and did not see a freak, but just another person, if maybe a little (to a lot) different from others. This was the reason he had agreed to his foolish older brothers to make an offer for Shuurei to marry him. Because while he couldn t really grasp the emotion of romantic love as some would call it, he would much rather be tied to a woman he actually liked, instead of someone he didn t even know.

In this world where people bowed down to him due to his lineage, his authority, even his intelligence...she treated him the same way she treated everyone else. And so did the people around her. Never had he found so many people he was unrelated to, to whom he was simply Ryuuren.

Not the genius from the Ran Clan. Not a member of the Ran Clan. Not a brother of the Ran Clan Heads, nor of Ran Shuuei, a great general, trusted explicitly by the emperor (though why people lauded his foolish older brothers, he didn t really know).

Just Ryuuren.

He smiles as he remembers her glare sternly, as she informed him that he needed to eat vegetables, too. It really amused him when she told him off!

enough to make him promptly compose a melody on his flute as an affectionate tribute.

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