M.E. 750
It has been seven years of training and living a double life; training in the Palace with their father keeping a close eye on them from time to time, at the same time befriending fellow apprentices and even catching glimpses of the young prince—who was having a different regimen under Gladiolus Amicitia, the son of one of the King Regis's men, Clarus—and then juggling school on the other days.
Both Neoma and Orius attend the same high school—although they were sorted into different classes and Orius is technically a year higher—and it wasn't that too difficult for them to blend in, unlike the walking talk-of-the-town that is the young Prince Noctis—who has girls squealing and tittering for him left and right.
"Isn't he gorgeous?!" a bob-haired student sighs.
"He has that aura of mystery that I just seem to can't get enough of!" A girl in a long ponytail swoons relatively.
Two girls—who happen to be Neoma's friends—continuously giggle while Neoma spaces out staring at the window.
"Hey, Neoma!" the bob-haired one taps her gently on the back of her hand to snap her out of it.
"Huh?" she turns her head to them.
"Didn't you hear us?"
"Oh, I heard you both, alright." She turns her gaze back to the window where two boys stand underneath the shade of a tree somewhere in the schoolyard.
Both of the girls followed the general direction of Neoma's gaze—they assumed that she was looking at Noctis and not his blond companion, Prompto.
"See? She agrees with us!" the bob-haired one says and she continues on with her swooning with her companion.
"They can't get any more wrong, can they?" Neoma thinks to herself.
It's lunchtime and Neoma usually eats her lunch somewhere that isn't crowded—one example is the school gardens which is seldom visited but ironically well-maintained. Unlike her extroverted brother—who earned a certain degree of popularity in school—she prefers being alone and she thinks she enjoys it.
The way to the garden from the school building is a bit of a long walk but Neoma finds it relaxing. In the middle of the walk, Neoma reads a book in one hand while holding her lunch in the other; since she's memorized the path to the garden—since she frequents the spot so often—she has no trouble in looking more at something else than the way.
Halfway to the gardens, Prompto and Noctis are coincidentally taking the same path. Both of them were so indulged with their conversation that they didn't notice Neoma in the way—this resulted to a minor clash in the middle of the path and a clutter of books and a lunchbox.
Out of impulse, trying her best not to ramble out her frustrations, she picks up her book and her lunchbox—helping her was Prompto who was picking up the papers that fell from the pages.
"Oh, I'm so sorry!" Prompto says, piling the papers together and attempting to straighten them out.
"Don't worry, it's my fault—I wasn't looking." Neoma shyly mutters.
Before Neoma could realize, she stole an upward glance and caught a glimpse of a familiar color of hair—sunshine blond.
Then Prompto faces her, friendly as he is by nature, he hands over the papers he's picked up and he does it with a mellow smile.
"Here you go. No harm done!"
"Thank you so much. Really, you shouldn't have bothered."
"Ahh, it's nothing. Happy to help!"
Noctis notices another book that has strayed from its owner, he bends over to take it, he gives it a good dusting and then gives it to Neoma.
"I believe this is yours?"
"Oh, thank you, Prince Noctis."
"Oh, what a relief," the prince says, not in a brooding way but rather in a genuinely relieved tone.
"Did… I say something?" Neoma asks for reassurance, slightly confused as Prompto.
"You're someone who doesn't grovel and be exaggeratingly grateful just because I handed them back their stuff." Noctis continues.
Prompto eyes on the hardbound cover of the book, he gestures lightly at it, "Also, that's an interesting book you got there. What's a girl like you reading about swords?"
Neoma stuttered at the question, wondering if she should make up an excuse or stay true.
"It's… it's a hobby of mine." She answers while secretly clutching on to her book.
"That sounds cool. Your drawings look awesome too." Prompto comments.
"What?"
"Your drawings—the ones I picked up, I snuck a peek and thought they're cool." He nervously chuckles and scratches the back of his neck.
"T-Thanks."
"Alright, come on now, Prompto. Let the girl have her lunch." Noctis says as he swings his arm around Prompto's neck, hooking him and dragging him along.
Before they could even get farther from her, Prompto escape from Noctis's choke and turned around to wave back. Shyly, Neoma returned the gesture and proceeded to her favorite spot to eat her lunch.
Meanwhile, Noctis and Prompto's conversation went on. However, Neoma became an addition to the topic—which was brought up by Prompto from time to time.
"What do you think of that girl earlier?" Prompto.
"She seems okay. I mean, she's not like those other girls who come at my tail every minute."
"I guess she's not that type of girl."
"Perhaps. Why? She your type?"
Prompto smiled—not in his playboy way—and looked up at the trees that shades their path, "Heh, maybe."
"Okay, that was a playful-sounding 'maybe' so I'll take that as a yes."
The blond laughs in response, then he shifts into another subject.
"So, you got any plans tonight?"
"The usual."
"Which usual?"
"The Gladio usual."
Prompto makes a prolonged "Oh" and needn't any explanation, for they have developed particular slang words that only they can understand—something that has strengthened their bond in these few months of school. As they took sanctuary in any place in the school as long as they're not being crowded by schoolgirls that have been following them around, they decided to eat their lunch there and enjoy the silence—ironically, a luxury that Noctis can't seem to have in this environment at his disposal.
For the carefree blond who's always by his side, he cannot help but think of the girl he bumped into at the path. At that moment earlier, he felt a tinge that he finds difficult to explain but the sensation is surreal—as if he knows a thing or two about the girl that's not from hearsay or secondhand information. He felt a connection. He had it. He just didn't realize it yet.
He only remembered how she looked at him and how pure her expression was.
Neoma enjoys her lunch while studying more about the small book of weapons she had borrowed from her father's study. She stares intently at an entire fold dedicated to a crossbow alone—two whole pages were covered by the illustration of a common crossbow: its attributes, what kind of the fighter its wielder is, the damage it deals, how far each arrow could go, and all else.
She snacks on a piece of karaage from her lunch while flipping to the next page. She pauses from her reading and looks at the peaceful bustle of the students around the campus—the athletes do their laps around the school, girl friends strut while sharing stories about random things, and wallflowers sit anywhere to do their reading or their homework.
There's twenty minutes left before the bell indicating lunch has ended would ring. Neoma delicately places her bookmark—a simple strip of a black ribbon—between the pages of the chapter she just stopped at. She finishes her lunch but she savors the karaage that she and her father marinated last night. The scent of the food caught the attention of a stray cat wandering around the school and so it meowed to get Neoma's attention.
"You're a pretty little thing. Are you a Coeurl kitten?" she giggles to herself and realizes, "Impossible. Maybe you're just a regular kitten."
She tears a piece of the meat and slowly stalks towards the cat, careful not to scare it away; slowly reaching out with the food in her hand, she patiently waits for the animal to come closer and gain its trust, the feline cautiously pads its way towards Neoma's hand, sniffs the food, and nabs it with its tiny, pinprick teeth.
Neoma gives her half-eaten karaage to the cat while she enjoys a whole new one. She does not notice it, but someone else is near her—adjusting the focus of his camera's lens, antsy to finally get the perfect angle, focus, and lighting before clicking the shutter button; he's got it until the oblivious Neoma comes up again to offer the cat another scrap of food, but then again, it's a good shot—might as well take it.
Prompto checks the captured photo on playback, he feels kind of proud to have captured a candid moment—he's had those moments but rarely—without any time to spare to adjust the settings. Eventually, Neoma sensed his presence and spotted him, she just waited for him to look up from his camera.
"Did you just took a picture of me?"
It was Prompto's time to stutter at the question, and he had no other good excuse to bail himself from this situation—moreover, he doesn't know how to handle it since he hasn't had incidents like these.
"Well, I was about to take a photo of the cat but…" he stops mid-sentence, thinking of a better way to say that she has gotten in the way but it's totally understandable since she didn't even know he was there the whole time.
"Oh, did I get in the way? Did I ruin it?"
"No! Actually, you made it kinda better."
"Really?"
"Yeah, you wanna take a look?"
"Sure."
Shyly, Neoma comes up to Prompto to take a look at the photo—she realizes that she only stands almost an inch short from Prompto, she didn't count the height of his hair because he's styled his bangs upward—Prompto presses the playback button and scrolls through the gallery until he found the candid shot he liked.
Noticing the detail on how Prompto captures his photos, out of curiosity, she asks, "How long have you been doing this?"
"I've been into this sort of thing when I got my hands on my own camera back in elementary."
"You're actually good with one."
Prompto looks at her, she seems to have taken a step back when she sensed that he was going to look at her after she said that.
He smiles at her, "Thanks."
He puts away the camera and she goes back to the table where her things are, Neoma notices that the cat has buggered off and so she resolved to collect her things before class starts.
"By the way, from what class are you in?" Prompto asks, without so much as waiting for her to turn around to him after gathering her stuff and head in the general direction where he's standing.
He waits for an answer as Neoma fumbles with her things, she turns around, not yet done fixing her things as she thought that she has taken too long for him to wait for an answer.
"I'm from Class 2-2."
"Oh, so we're neighbors then! I'm from 2-3."
"I… I actually thought you were from 2-1, you know, considering that you hang around with the Prince so often."
"Well, we've kinda known each other since grade school. So, sections don't mean much to us."
Neoma nods, then proceeds to continue on fixing her things on her table, she's only rearranged her books and her lunchbox since she hasn't completely finished her meal—and she's still hungry.
"Have you had lunch yet?" Neoma politely and welcomingly asks as she sits down again on her spot.
"Well, I did grab a snack with Noct, so… I'm good. But thank you!"
"Alright."
No one spoke afterwards, Neoma continued with her meal while Prompto looked around the walkway's tree canopy—looking for another subject: a bird in its nest, another stray cat, or a squirrel—then it took another few more minutes before either of them could break into conversation. Until the ending lunch bell rang and everyone in the campus started scampering around the school to get ready.
Just when Neoma was about to leave, Prompto finally managed to muster up the gut to ask her name.
"Wait…!" Prompto calls out and Neoma stops in her tracks—she turns around.
"Yeah?"
"I didn't catch your name."
"It's—"
Out of nowhere, Neoma's friends come charging towards her, grabbing both her arms and dragging her away from the scene and then back to the building in a panic rooting from the fear of being late and getting a scolding from their teachers.
Prompto just watches her get dragged away from him while he follows the crowd in a leisurely pace.