23 days left…
It came as a surprise to no-one that Mai and Oliver avoided each other as much as possible. They didn't look at each other at meals, and were careful not to get in each other's way on the rare occasion they were in the same room or corridor.
But in a sense, Mai was luckier than Oliver. For Oliver was constantly being teased by Eugene, even though Eugene was perfectly aware nothing whatsoever had happened. You weren't allowed to tease Mai on pain of death (or extreme annoyance and hate).
After another confused breakfast where she had been whispered about constantly, glanced at furtively or glared at in a threatening way by Miss Hara, she had had about enough. Was it really that important? Did nothing ever happen here? She scowled.
"Cheer up Mai." Count Takigawa said in between mouthfuls. She grumpily prodded the food on her plate.
"That's easy for you to say."
"Things aren't so bad." Lady Ayako pointed out. "Luella said you could live here, so at least you don't have to worry about where you would go otherwise."
"It still could be better."
"The way you're acting, anyone would think that you cared."
"I don't care!" Mai protested hotly.
"Of course. Are you sure you aren't attracted to him?"
"No! I mean, I am sure, and I'm not attracted to him!" Mai said, her face bright pink. Lady Ayako raised an eyebrow. Mai could feel her face get even hotter.
"Aha! You're blushing." Count Takigawa grinned.
"State the obvious." Mai muttered darkly. He patted her head.
"It's okay, your secret is safe with us."
"It wasn't the last time!" Mai said sarcastically. Lady Ayako had the grace to look slightly guilty.
"But now we can help you!" She countered.
"Or hinder." Mai growled.
"Or help you." Count Takigawa repeated.
"You two are impossible." She got up and left hurriedly. Slowly she made her way through the palace towards her room, thinking hard all the while. She wasn't fond of him, was she? No, that was impossible. He was cold, he humiliated her and laughed at her. And he had rudely ignored her surname and title almost from the beginning. No, she disliked him. A lot.
Alas, she was thinking so hard she failed to see the rather large tabby cat which was coming down the stairs. In fact she was thinking so hard that she failed to notice it until her feet had managed to walk straight into the unmoving cat, who looked at her reproachfully. Mai however had other things on her mind, like not losing her balance. Her arms flailed madly, but to no avail, she felt herself falling. Her ankles hit something hard so she double tripped.
Suddenly her arm was being wrenched out of its socket. She cried out as fire laced up her arm.
"Mai."
She opened her eyes, only to find herself looking up at a pair of deep blue ones.
"Grab the ledge, you idiot." Mai cursed her luck. The guy she most wanted to avoid would just have to be the one who caught her. It was about then she realised she was hanging out of the window, and the only thing preventing her from falling a couple of floors was Oliver's tight grip on her wrist. She gulped.
"Hurry up, you're really heavy." He said through clenched teeth.
"But it hurts." Mai complained as her failed attempt to reach the ledge Oliver was leaning over only made her arm feel like it was about to tear.
"It hurts a lot less then hitting the ground will." He rolled his eyes.
"You really know how to treat a lady." Mai said bitterly as yet again her hand slipped off the hot wood.
"At the moment I'm not so bothered about politeness, strangely."
"Okay Mai, grab my hand." The same voice, but different. Eugene. "That's it." He grabbed the hand she swung up to him. She sighed, relieved, as the weight was taken off her burning joint.
"Wait, what are you doing?" She screamed as Oliver let go.
"Mai, let go of my wrist." Gene said calmly. She looked up at him, her eyes wide.
"But I'd fall 6 metres!" She cried.
"Trust me. You won't fall."
"I will! There's this thing called gravity…!"
"Mai. Honestly. I do it all the time. Trust me" Gene said emphatically, gently prising her fingers away from his arm.
She closed her eyes as the inevitable happened. She was falling, she could feel it, she was falling and now she was going to hit the ground from three floors up. She was going to end up with a broken leg, or rib, or worse, dead. And then she would actually have to kill him. Both of them!
"Mai, you can open your eyes now." Eugene said, sounding fairly unimpressed.
Slowly she prised one eye open. Immediately she opened the other one, feeling like a fool. She hadn't moved at all. Well, maybe she had fallen by a few inches, but that was it. She was hovering in the air, feeling completely weightless.
"Wh-wha…?" She gaped.
"I can't believe you didn't trust us!" Eugene said reproachfully.
"But… how?" Mai managed, after she had managed to work out how her mouth worked again.
"Oh, didn't we tell you?" Euene said, glancing at his twin, who remained expressionless as usual.
"No…"
"Well basically… Well, there is no basically, but… You see, Noll and I-"
"It's complicated. Can I put you down now? You're still heavy." Oliver interrupted briskly.
"Put me down…?"
"Inside or outside? It's not that hard." He was tapping his foot.
"Inside…?" Mai felt the oddest feeling she'd ever had. She was not in control, but she was moving anyway. And she was defying gravity. And she wasn't liking it one bit.
She breathed out a sigh of relief when her feet touched down on solid floor.
"How did you do that?"
"You wouldn't understand."
Noll, it's not customary to insult the girl you have feelings for.
Mai flushed. "I could, if you would explain it!"
Oliver said nothing, but looked stubborn.
"If you won't explain, at least don't do it again! It wasn't nice!" She erupted. Both the twins looked surprised, so that Mai wouldn't have been able to tell which was which at that moment, had she not already been speaking to them.
"Are you serious? It's so fun!" Eugene said, some manic excitement sparkling in his eyes.
"Gene…" Noll said warningly, but to what Mai couldn't tell.
"Please?" Gene pleaded.
"Fine."
Gene grinned hugely, and winked at Mai. "Watch and learn, my girl, watch and learn." And before Mai could stop him he had leaped out of the window. She gasped and darted forwards, surprised that Noll hadn't moved at all, and looked a little bored. Mai watched in fear as Gene did multiple somersaults, and landed gently on the dry grass. He grinned, bowed to her, and casually walked away. Mai stared.
"He likes scaring guests like that." Oliver said dryly from behind her.
"So you can… control forces, or what?"
"Not exactly. It's like a… strength that I can control using my mind."
"Right." Mai said weakly. So they were telepathic, could control things with their minds, good looking, rich and clever? What else? She noticed Oliver was already walking off, and darted forwards.
"Thanks. F-for catching me."
Oliver looked at her.
"I think people tend to say 'You're welcome'…" She hinted.
"You're welcome."
"And about… the other day… can we pretend that it never happened?" She added. Noll paused, wondering which of her already many embarrassing episodes she wanted him to pretend never happened. Then it dawned on him.
"Yes."
"Thanks." She smiled gratefully. There was an awkward pause. "I guess you have work to do, so I'll just… go…" With that she skipped off. Oliver shook his head, smiling slightly, and set off in the opposite direction.
"A… a boat trip?"
"Yes! It'll be so much fun!" Euene smiled enthusiastically. "What could go wrong?"
Mai could think of many things that could go wrong.
"Do we even have boats?" She asked, trying to worm her way out of it.
"Miss Mai, of course we have boats. We are the royal family."
"I guess you would…"
"So you'll come?" He was practically jumping up and down from excitement.
"Yes." Mai sighed.
"Try to sound a little less enthusiastic." Eugene's shoulder's dropped.
"Sorry. I just keep on thinking of what can go wrong."
"Nothing will go wrong" Eugene said blithely. He added conspiratorially, "Even Lin's coming."
"I admire your powers of persuasion."
"I do too. It's going to be great!"
"I hope you're right…"
"Wear something light. You might get wet." He winked and walked off. She stared after him for a few moments before sighing and walking the other way.
A boat trip. Mai had a feeling that it was to try and cheer her up, even though she'd been trying to act like nothing was wrong with her life.
She'd never even been in a boat before! Or at least, not as far as she could remember.
"Eugene's recruited me into going on a boat." She grumbled to Lady Ayako, Count Takigawa and John Brown next time she saw them (she might have grumbled to Miss Hara as well, but Miss Hara was strangely distant ever since the rumours had started…).
"Oh? You're going too? It's going to be great!" Lady Ayako counter attacked.
"I'm not looking forward to it… think of all the things that could go wrong!"
"Mai, nothing ever goes wrong. I've been on loads of boat trips with the Davises."
"There's always time for things to start going wrong." Mai complained.
"I'm sure it'll be fine." Mr Brown reassured.
"I'm not so convinced."
"You're probably just nervous."
"Oh, and you know Oliver's going to be there too?"
"I know…"
"So a meeting is inevitable."
"I've already sorted it out with him, actually. We're going to pretend that it never happened."
"Just because you are, doesn't mean everyone else will." The Count jerked his thumb towards a nearby group of maids, one of which had pointed out Mai to another. Mai could almost hear them muttering 'that's the princess who's in a relationship with Oliver…' It was driving her insane. She felt grateful when Count Takigawa went over to them to tell them off for loitering.
"It'll pass." Mr Brown said, trying to stop Mai killing the maids with only her eyes.
"Eventually."
Mai grimaced on the bank of the river. She was actually going to do it. She was near the back, and watched people getting into boats one by one before setting off. The boats looked horribly tiny and feeble. Mai could all too easily imagine one of them hitting a rock and sinking with everybody on board. When her time of doom came she steeped nervously onto the little jetty, and looked nervously at the boat in front of her.
"Sorry Mai! You'll have to go in another boat. These can only fit four people." Lady Ayako said. Mr Brown gave a sympathetic look, Miss Hara just looked smug and Count Takigawa just plain grinned. She sighed, and turned so that she was facing the other boat, which she would have to get in, once the occupiers noticed her waiting. She saw out of the corner of her eye Miss Hara's smug look turn to a glare of fury as she realised that because she couldn't go in her boat, she would have to go with Oliver and Eugene. Mai decided that Miss Hara probably had hopes of one of the twins and was jealous.
Oliver and Gene looked like they were deep in a telepathic conversation, so she waited nervously until Eugene noticed her.
"Ah! Mai! Come in our boat!" He stood up, making the boat wobble slightly. Oliver sighed.
"How do I get in?" Oliver noticed the way she was fiddling with her dress.
Nervous, he noted absentmindedly, forgetting that Gene could hear him, thus probably hasn't been in a boat before, or possibly has bad experience of boats. Scared of the boat wobbling, as shown by the faint panic in her eyes and the way her eyebrows go up slightly when the boat moves-
Noll, stop checking her out.
I'm not 'checking her out'. I'm simply assessing her behaviour in a professional manner.
"I believe you step into the boat." Eugene said, offering her a hand. She took it and cautiously stepped, her arm flying out and barely missing Oliver when the boat rocked under her.
More like assessing her in a creepy obsessive stalker way.
Mai successfully sat down with a sigh of relief.
"Can we go now?" Oliver asked, impatient to get it over with. Mai glared at him.
"Not yet…" Eugene was leaning slightly out of the boat. Something whizzed down the jetty and jumped fluidly into the boat before running up Eugene and curling up in his lap.
"I thought cats don't like water." Mai stated, eyeing Socks suspiciously.
"Socks is… special."
And so started Mai's first trip in a boat.
And what happens on Mai's first trip in a boat is for the next chapter, so I'm afraid you're going to have to wait.
Thanks to everyone who reviewed :3
I only really got this chapter because I forget my physics book and thus couldn't do my physics homework tonight. But my biology did take ages... lengthened by the fact I kept get distracted by writing this.
Please review!