I know. I suck. It's been almost three months and I don't have much of an excuse of why I haven't updated other than plain laziness. I'll try to not suck so bad. But also I was away from home for three weeks and I failed my exams, so is that enough of an excuse?

Still. Sorry.

Also also I've been nominated for three categories in the 2016 Maid sama fanfiction awards :) so if you like this fic than pls go to violet or angel's profiles and vote for me! Or don't.

To say the atmosphere at breakfast at our table was tense would be an understatement. Erika was drilling holes into Subaru's forehead with her fiercest glare, Subaru was fidgeting uncomfortably in her seat, and Honoka was so moody her black aura had leaked out so that everyone in the entire room could feel it in some kind of shape or form. I was feeling awkward about the whole thing.

"You told her," Erika accused.

Subaru fidgeted more. "She kept bugging me about it. And she said she didn't like him in that way. I believe her."

"That's true, I really don't," I added in.

Erika ignored me and leaned across the table and hissed almost inaudibly, "are you an idiot?"

"Erika, shut up," Honoka snapped. "Misaki said she doesn't like him."

"I really don't," I piped in again, but, as expected, the three maids ignored me and continued to bicker among themselves. I sighed loudly and pushed my mushy scrambled eggs around my plate anxiously.

I got mail that morning, which didn't help my gloomy mood much. This time it was only a piece of paper with three words written in big capital letters: WE SENT HELP. In other words, they had sent extra assassins to aid me.

It was all so pointless. I didn't even care anymore. Why was I even in this place? I hadn't thought of killing the King in far too long, and the only thing taking up my thoughts was Takumi; an endless flow of Takumi and his smiles and his laughs and those eyes. Those regal emerald eyes were what I saw when I closed my eyes, seemingly burned into every corner of my mind, and I hated it. He seemed to be stalking me in more ways than one.

I wished I wasn't an assassin more than ever now.

If everything hadn't gone wrong, maybe I would have grown up on a little farm on the edge of Miyabigaoka. I would spend my days picking apples and selling them in town with my little sister, and my parents would teach me everything they knew. I would see everyone I loved every single day and my father would have never started gambling, and I would have stayed on that farm until the day I got married. Maybe I would have fallen in love with that boy in the farm next to ours, just like my parents always thought I would, and we would have a beautiful wedding and live happily ever after together. But now it was impossible to think of a perfect life without a Takumi, yet with Takumi nothing was ever perfect. Nothing was ever going to be perfect.

Because with Takumi came his grandfather, his brother, his fiancée that I didn't even know but couldn't help but despise her. And then there's the fact that I wouldn't have ever met him if it weren't that I was meant to be killing him. The thought of that sickened me. A vivid, vivid image shot through my head – his dead body lying limply on the floor, crimson blood drowning the carpet, a terrible expression frozen on that beautiful face of his. A knife was clenched in my own hands. Despair instantly filled me. What had I done?

It's not real, I told myself, but my hands were shaking so much that I knocked over my glass of water. The other maids gave me their undivided attention for the first time today, in alarm. "You okay?" Erika asked, her pretty eyes following me as I stood up very suddenly.

"I'm good," I replied in as much as an even voice as I could, and slipped away back to the bedroom, still feeling their gazes on my back.

I had begun to think.

If I didn't kill Takumi, if I didn't kill his brother or his grandfather, if I stayed in Seika forever in peace and lived a normal life as an ordinary maid. If I betrayed my leaders and my country. What would happen then? Nothing would change. I was irrelevant. A pawn. If I didn't do it, someone else would be sent in to do it. Takumi would be the same – dead – only by a stranger's hand. It was no different to if I stabbed him in the heart myself. I had been stupid to even entertain the thought that I didn't need to kill him. Either way, the Association wanted him dead quick. He probably wouldn't even hit his eighteenth birthday by the way things were happening.

I wish I didn't care about him like this, but no matter what I told him I did like spending time with him. He made me happy like no one else had since I was born. I didn't know if what I felt was what they call "love", but I knew that it certainly wasn't fair that he had to die because he was second in line to the rivalling throne of Miyabigaoka. They didn't know anything about him or his gorgeous smile...

Misaki. Focus.

If Takumi was to be kept alive for as long possible, it would be good to keep the assassins away for the time being. Maybe they hadn't sent someone yet. Maybe they could hold the person back for a bit. For that to happen, well, I would probably have to kill either Gerald or the King. If I went for Gerald, the King would probably become even more paranoid that somebody was after him and could figure that the killer must have been one of the servants. My mind flickered back to the story Takumi had once told me – only a couple of guards had been guilty, yet the King killed every last one of them. What's to say it wouldn't happen to us? We were just as expendable, since everyone in the country wanted to have this job. We would be replaced just as soon as we were dead.

But if I went for the King, Gerald would have the throne. I didn't like Gerald much at all, and you didn't need to meet him to know that he was going to be a selfish and unjust ruler. But in a few months or years Gerald's disease would take over him and Takumi would be King. But then what's to say that in a few years the Association wouldn't want him dead too?

And of course there's the point that I would be called back to Miyabigaoka since my mission was to kill the King primarily and if I could, kill the others. I would never see my friends again. I would never see Takumi again.

My heart sagged a little when I thought of that.

But it wasn't about me or my feelings. I blocked Takumi's smirking face out of my mind again.

Neither of these options were much good, and of course it was out of the question killing Takumi and killing none of them would only make the Association send in a few more assassins who would kill all three.

No, I wasn't at a dead end. My mind started to tick again.

It didn't require much thinking at all to get to the conclusion that there was another solution.

"Hi," I said. I was holding a ginormous platter of fried crab that looked and smelt so appetizing that I could barely think straight, but I tapped Satsuki a couple times on the shoulder with the edge of the silver plate to get her attention.

Satsuki turned to look at me. "Hello – have you been crying?" she said and then noticed my puffy eyes.

I looked away, embarrassed. "No," I mumbled. "Can I ask you a question?"

She smiled. "Of course."

"Is there any way that I can talk to the King?" I bit my lip nervously. "Alone?" I had asked the same question to all the maids and some of the footmen, but they laughed and told me that I could never get into a room alone with that paranoid old sod in my wildest dreams.

Satsuki shook her head. "He's a very busy man," she replied. "And even if you could speak to him, there would obviously be guards."

"How many?" I asked without thinking.

"Maybe ten?" she said with some thought. My heart sank. I was a skilled fighter but it was impossible to take out that many trained guards and then go for the King before he called for reinforcements. "It depends what situation the meeting would be. If it was a political meeting there would be more than thirty, but if he was meeting a friend there would be only about five – why do you want to know?"

"No reason," I muttered. "What about Gerald?"

"What about him?"

"If I wanted to meet him alone."

Satsuki gave me a look of pity, looking like she wanted to give me a big hug like she always did, if I wasn't carrying a giant platter of crab. "Is this about you getting dismissed from your job?"

It would be better if she thought that. "Yeah. Maybe."

"I don't think Gerald would give you back your job even if you begged for it. I'm sorry, Misaki-chan." She looked as if she would cry again, and patted my shoulder lightly. "Your crab is cold. You better get the cook to redo it."

The cook wasn't very happy when I told him I hadn't delivered the dish because I'd been standing around chatting to someone for too long, but he redid it and made me wait there against the wall as he did it. It was hot and stuffy in the kitchen, and I found I kept having to loosen my maid corset because it was simply too hot to stay in there for too long. I knew I didn't look like the most attractive girl in the world right now because I could feel sticky sweat all over me, and I wanted nothing more than to have a nice cold shower. But the time ticked by and the cook, I realised, was purposely dragging it out so that I would get into tons of trouble when I delivered it late. Petty, but I would be annoyed too if I spent an hour making a pretty impressive platter of crab just for it to be ruined by a dumb maid. He finally handed it to me grudgingly, telling me that I better run up those stairs and get it to the guest while it's still hot.

I was sprinting up the stairs at the speed of light, but I wasn't taking too much care to not bump into anyone because the palace was pretty empty at this point of the day so I didn't expect that when I turned a very sharp corner on the second floor –

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!" I squealed, trying to keep my voice down. But the crab flew out my hands and up and over someone's head.

"AAAAAAAH," something said flatly. Very flatly.

My head spun, but I concentrated on her. She was definitely dressed as a maid, one of the much lower ranked ones by the way she was dressed. I focused in on her face. It was beautiful, fresh and young, and she had short dark hair tied into loose pigtails. And her eyes. Her eyes were so familiar it scared me. Amber. Like mine.

Recognition flooded me. "Suzuna," I whispered.

Pls try to review but I know that if you reviewed on my hiatus notice (that I deleted) then you probably can't...but thanks for reading. It means a lot to me :)