It was the first day of the re-opening of school, and Nickel had never seen Lily as excited as she was now. She was buzzing around like a hyperactive honey bee - if she could bounce off the walls she would have been for at least thirty minutes. "I can't wait!" she was practically shouting at the top of her lungs.

Nickel, for his part, was exactly her antithesis in the moment. He was smiling, though not in the least bit excited, and he was almost completely silent, watching Lily run around and helping to make sure she had everything she could possibly need. "And why is that, Lily?"

Lily finally stopped running, looking up at Nickel with sparkling eyes. "I get to see all my friends again!"

Nickel hummed. "And you didn't tell me of these friends?" he asked in mock hurt. "I could have met them and then we could have all been friends together."

"Well, I didn't know if I would see them again like this, you know?" Lily explained, her voice only slightly less energetic.

"Fair point." Nickel paused, and an interesting thought popped into his head. "Anyone in particular that you wanna see?"

Lily thought about his question. "No, not really. Why?"

"Eh, I was just wondering if you had a best friend or something. What grade are you in, by the way?"

"Grade One. What grade are you in, mister Nickel?"

"Oh, I'm finished with school."

That gave Lily pause. "How old are you again, mister Nickel?"

"Fourteen." Silence reigned for a few seconds, before Nickel added, "Trust me. I am genuinely finished with school at fourteen."

Lily still didn't look like she bought it, but she dropped it and quickly regained her excitement. "Come on! We don't wanna be late!"

She would have bolted out the door that very minute if Nickel hadn't stopped her. "Where's your bag, Lily?"

She visibly blanched. "I almost forgot my backpack!" She took off once more to retrieve it, making Nickel grin.

.

Nickel had to be led by Lily to the office of the principal, having never gone to this particular educational establishment before. There, they were greeted by a large bear who certainly looked the part of being the principal of a school.

"Ah, Lily. Welcome back," he said as Nickel and Lily took a seat at the sizable desk. "How is my most well-behaved student?"

"I'm doing well, mister Clemens," Lily replied, polite as always. She produced from her bag three papers and slid them across the table. "Sorry about the corners..."

Nickel knew exactly what those three things were. One was a certificate of re-enrolment, to be signed by the school head. He'd had to write his full name on it as part of the verification; Lily had asked about his middle name when he did.

The other two were certificates of death, each for a deceased parent. Nickel had no part in the signing of these, but Lily had shown them to him before. She'd been very sad, and rightly so.

Principal Clemens scrutinised the papers; his eyes slightly, but noticeably, widened upon seeing the death certificates. "I presume that this happened during the war?"

"Yes, sir," Lily answered. That, Nickel hadn't known. He'd always assumed that their demises arose sometime before the war, but evidently that was not the case. "Mister Nickel is the one who's been with me since then."

The bear nodded in acknowledgement, before signing the enrolment certificate and returning all three papers to the two felines. Nickel took them this time. "You can go, Lily," Principal Clemens said. "I want to talk to your friend here."

The xanthic-furred girl beamed at him. "Thank you, mister Clemens," she returned, before stepping out of the room.

Nickel barely had time to turn his head back from the door before a question was thrown his way. "Do you talk?"

The vermilion-furred youth would have scoffed at the question, had he not been asked that very question several times before. "Yes, I do talk. I'm just shy."

"I see." There was a long pause.

Eventually, Nickel asked, "Is there anything else you wanted to ask me?"

"I'm just having a look at you. You're not from here, are you, Nickel?"

"No. I'm from one of the islands off the south coast."

Another bout of silence followed, and Nickel took the time to look around the office, seeing the vision statement and the mission statement of the school, as one might expect. There was also a collection of flags beside the statements, above a lone window looking out over a playground of sorts, and next to that window was a small shelf with a clock and some books sitting on it. "Reminds me of my old primary school," the cat said under his breath.

"Nickel," Principal Clemens began again, interrupting Nickel's thoughts, "may I ask how old you are?"

"Fourteen."

That answer earned a sideways look. "Shouldn't you be in school yourself?"

"I'm finished with school."

The look turned even more sideways. Nickel tried not to roll his eyes or say something cheeky. It was clearly common for people to doubt him when he said that. All anyone had to do to prove that was to ask Lily - it'd literally happened just that morning.

"You know, I know someone who might like you," the bear said. "If you know to what I'm referring."

"I know people that might like me, too," Nickel replied, perhaps sounding arrogant but certainly speaking truthfully. "Just ask Lily. She'll tell you how many looks I get thrown at me in public places. Especially by girls."

"Too many to count, eh?"

"And not enough to be finished, apparently." That elicited a small laughter from them both.

After a long while and more conversation, a bell went off somewhere. Principal Clemens looked at the clock on the shelf. "Ah, it's the recess bell."

Nickel raised an eyebrow at that. "You have recess at nine-thirty?"

"Oh, no. That clock's around an hour slow."

"Ah, that makes sense." Nickel thought it now opportune to take his leave. "Well, seeing as it's so late, I'll get going. It was nice to meet you, sir."

"Likewise, Nickel."

Out the door the feline went, trying his hardest to remember the way back. Lily was no doubt enjoying her recess to the fullest and he wouldn't pull her from that just to help him leave the compound.

.

.

.

Lily had a fantastic first day back in school. She did really well in class, even being singled out by the teacher for her good work. And there was no homework handed out - every schoolchild's dream.

She also had a great time with her old friends during the breaks, playing all sorts of games with them and talking about what they were doing before school reopened.

When the final bell sounded, she bounced outside and scanned the environment for red fur. Nickel said he'd come to meet her when school was over, but so far he hadn't arrived. Hopefully he hadn't gotten lost on the way. Lily giggled as that thought passed through her mind.

Presently, two girls about Lily's age approached her, asking what she was doing.

"Oh, I'm just waiting for mister Nickel," she answered.

"You mean your boyfriend?" one teased, making Lily blush red in embarrassment.

"I told you already: I don't like him like that! And he's eight years older than me!"

"Well, you did talk about him a lot earlier," the other pointed out.

"That's only because - " Lily cut herself off, thinking that she'd seen Nickel arrive; he hadn't. "That's only because he lives with me and I see him everyday and he's always doing something weird."

"He lives with you?"

"He looks after me," Lily amended before they could latch onto another idea that would certainly turn her as red as Nickel himself.

The old saying went like 'Speak of the devil and he shall appear'. She wouldn't necessarily call Nickel anything like that, but he had now definitely appeared as they talked about him. She waved enthusiastically to him and ran over to meet him, admittedly glad to have not had to continue the conversation that she was having.

"Hi, Lily," he said in a sing-song tone - as sing-song a tone as he could use with his low voice.

"Hi mister Nickel!" she returned.

"How was your day?" he asked her, coming down closer to her eye level. "I'm assuming it was good, based on that look on your face."

"It was! I had so much fun today! First - " She would have gone into excited retelling of her time back at school, had not Nickel stopped her.

"We'll have plenty of time to talk on the way home, Lily." He ghost-booped her with his powers and she recoiled, giggling a little at his usual display of affection.

Also giggling at that were two voices behind Lily; she wheeled around to catch a glimpse of the girls she was talking to earlier eavesdropping on them. She couldn't help but get all huffy, puffing up her cheeks in annoyance as they ran off.

"Who were they?" Nickel asked.

"Just... some girls in my class. They think you're my boyfriend," Lily explained.

"Am I not?" Lily turned back around, incredulous, to see her big friend wearing the kind of grin that he always wore when he was being cheeky. "If I am a boy who's your friend, then I'm your boy friend, amn't I? Not a problem."

Lily's eyes lit up. "That's so true, mister Nickel!" She started walking toward home. "Now I can say that whenever someone says you're my boyfriend."

"Absolutely. Just remember," Nickel warned as he stood up to walk alongside her, "there's a space between 'boy' and 'friend'." Lily nodded yes. "So, about your day at school..."

.

.

.

Nickel peeked into the little girl's room. "Have you finished your homework?"

Lily looked up from what she was doing with a face that gave the clear message that she was frustrated. "No," she replied. "I can't do this math homework."

Nickel hummed. "Can I see it?"

Lily nodded yes; as Nickel sat on the floor next to her bed she gave him a worksheet and explained her woes. "I can't do these questions. They're too hard."

Nickel examined the sheet. It was filled with forty subtraction questions that, to him, seemed a trifle too difficult for Grade One. But who was he to judge - he did maths in Grades One and Two at the same time and never had problems with it, at one year younger than she was.

He shook that pride-laced thought from his mind. Besides, Lily had already completed a lot of them.

"What is it about them?" he asked her.

"The whole borrowing thing with big numbers, when you have to do it two times."

"What do you mean?" Nickel shifted from sitting to a kneeling position, allowing him to look at the petite xanthic cat.

She gestured for the sheet, and Nickel handed it to her. She pointed at a specific problem, given as 124 - 75.

Now Nickel realised her issue. "Oh, okay. I understand now." He thought about what he could say to help her out. Obviously he knew how to solve the problem, but he would need to explain a way to do so that she would grasp the concept easily. It was then that he noticed something. "Did you erase your working?"

Lily looked at him blankly.

"The little things that you use to keep track of what you're doing?" he tried to elaborate. An even more confused look crossed her face, and it dawned on him. "Are you telling me that they didn't teach you to do this?"

"What, mister Nickel?"

Nickel gestured for both the worksheet and Lily's pencil; when he had been given them he started to demonstrate what he meant. He talked through the way he grew up doing subtraction problems: when the question required you to "borrow" from another column, he would strike a line through the number he was "borrowing" from and write a tiny number above it - one less than the previous number - and then he would add a tiny '1' next to the number that had done the "borrowing" to mean that that number was supposed to be thought of as ten more than before.

Nickel would freely admit that it was a technique more easily described using visuals in lieu of just words, but Lily seemed to grasp the idea.

"So I can do that for this one?" the little girl queried, referencing the question she'd pointed out to Nickel earlier.

"You can do it for all of them. If ever you have trouble keeping track of what you're doing, you can."

Lily began the question again, and she finished it quite quickly, to her glee. "I did it! That was so easy!"

Nickel applauded her, and she giggled. "Now you'd better hurry and get those done. It's getting late," the vermilion feline said.

Lily nodded yes, and Nickel watched as she started work on the remaining problems, before returning to the living room where he once was.