Okay, this can be interpreted as friendship or romance, so take it as you will. Also, I'm sorry if the few facts I've referred to here do not actually exist. I'm crossing my fingers that they do! Feedback would be appreciated.

Disclaimer: I do not own Zatch Bell. Nor do I watch the Japanese version of Zatch Bell.

I never thought I'd feel this way. I'd always thought that I was incapable of attachment to anyone, that all there was to life was becoming King. That nothing else mattered.

I was wrong.

At first I was right. I came to the human world, I found a willing partner, and I won battles. Nothing beyond that was of any concern to me. She was good like that; she wanted to help me win, too, and she understood my unconcern at anything else. All she asked in return was a certain degree of obedience. For this, I helped her and she helped me. I helped her by protecting her, and she helped me by casting the necessary spells.

I protected her mainly because she always held my book, and if anything happened to it my one chance at Kingship would be gone. Besides that, she was now the only one who could cast my spells. I would be practically defenseless without her. It was in my best interests to make sure she wasn't injured too badly, but I didn't really care if she was knocked about a bit in our fights.

But soon, I started to care about her as a person, not just as the keeper of my book. It began to matter to me if she got hurt, even the relatively minor injuries. I started to protect her and not the book. It was up to her to protect that, and she did it with as much strength as she had in her. For that, I was—am—thankful.

I'm not sure when this change started to occur. It could have happened over a few days, or over a few weeks. In any case, I became attached to her. All of a sudden, she started to matter to me. I stopped thinking of me, and started thinking of us. I became what once I had scorned as weak and had despised, what I had promised myself I would never become.

I realize now that this emotion, this ability to care about another besides myself, makes me stronger. That my desire to protect her makes me battle harder than I otherwise would have done, because she has more energy to cast spells and because we work better as a team. That I was incredibly selfish back then. And I can—and will—gladly say that I have grown emotionally from this experience, and I'm a better person now.

Don't get me wrong. I still want to become King just as badly as, if not more than, before. She's very competitive too, so we sort of spur each other on. But now, I have something else to fight for. I want to protect her now, and I want to spend as much time as I can with her before the time comes that I must go, as painful as that is to think about.

Even if, by some terrible mistake on our behalf, my book is burned tomorrow, I will take something away from this experience, and I wouldn't change it for the world. And I wouldn't change her for the world.

Thank you, Sherry.