Side Story: The Midnight Lesson

Quietly, I opened my bedroom door.

It was just past one in the morning, and the halls of Évrard Castle were perfectly silent. There were candles lit here and there, faintly illuminating the walls and floor—this was meant to discourage any criminal activity. Unfortunately, the firelight of this world was nowhere near as bright as the electricity I had enjoyed in my past life. But though this near-darkness might have been frightening in my past life, I had now spent fourteen years in this less-advanced world, so to me, it was perfectly ordinary.

At the Patriciél estate, the interior was always well-lit with dozens upon dozens of candles (how the count could possibly afford so many, I’d never know), but the boarding school had no such luxury, so I quickly gained a sense for how to move about in the dark.

“Off to the kitchen...”

I gently closed my bedroom door behind me, then set off down the hall. I hadn’t lived here at Évrard Castle for very long, but I at least knew my way to the kitchen; after all, it was where servants went to fetch tea and snacks as well as take meals during breaks.

A cold snap had set in just yesterday, and I could feel the floor’s chill through my thin fabric slippers. I’d put off getting myself some winter shoes since autumn wasn’t quite over, but now I realized what a mistake that was. No matter what the weather’s like tomorrow, I’ll go and buy some proper shoes, just to be safe.

Arriving at the kitchen, I located the water jug and poured some into my glass decanter. Mission complete. With that, I promptly headed back to my room.

The castle was eerily quiet at night. There were guards on patrol outside, of course, but everyone inside was fast asleep at this hour. This meant that every tiny sound carried farther than it would have otherwise—the pitter-patter of my footsteps, the sloshing of the water as I headed back up the stairs, the high-pitched creak of a door opening somewhere... Wait, who was that?

At the top of the stairs, I looked down the hallway in the direction of the sound... and my eyes met Reggie’s as he peered out from inside his quarters. Evidently, I wasn’t the only one awake at this hour.

Though he was just a year older than me, the dark woolen robe he was wearing made him look quite grown-up. Beneath it, he was wearing a plain white shirt with dark-colored trousers—probably his pajamas—and although they were visibly tailor-made, I could tell at a glance they weren’t made of silk. Probably for the best, given the approaching winter.

Considering I was technically a guest here, I felt a bit guilty sneaking around in the middle of the night. In my embarrassment, I blurted out the first thing I could think of.

“Um... Want some?”

I held up the decanter. Blinking in surprise, Reggie smiled slightly and waved me over. Personally, I wasn’t sure I was permitted to enter a prince’s quarters this late at night.

“If you’re worried about Mabel, don’t be. She’s sleeping in the room next door.”

Since it was freezing out here in the hallway, I decided to go ahead and take him up on his invitation.

As soon as I crossed over the threshold, I was greeted by the gentle warmth of the fireplace. Had Reggie lit it himself? Or had Mabel stayed up late tending to it so His Highness could sleep?

The interior was decorated with cutesy pastel landscape paintings and a beautiful woven tapestry hanging near the bed. This caught me by surprise. After all, the Évrard family generally didn’t bother with vain and ostentatious displays. Here on the border, where Salekhard or Llewyne could strike at any time, they prioritized function over form.

Inside, Reggie handed me a wooden cup. “For your water,” he explained.

“Thank you.”

I was dying of thirst, so I poured myself a cup and promptly downed it. As the cold liquid slid down my throat, the chill made me shiver in spite of the heat from the fire. How I yearned to crawl under a nice, warm blanket.

But the whole reason I came in was to share my water, so I refilled the cup and handed it back to Reggie. He drank it down gratefully.

“Is that what woke you?” he asked. “Were you just thirsty?”

“That’s part of it, yeah. What about you?”

“I had another bad dream.”

Every now and then, I would wake up in the middle of the night and have trouble going back to sleep. Still, I enjoyed sleeping, since there was a chance I might dream of my past life. Sure, it wasn’t all sunshine and roses—sometimes my parents would argue, or my friends would get in a fight—but it was still a drastic improvement over this cold, unfeeling world I now found myself in.

“Anyway, don’t worry about me. I’ll be back to sleep in no time. What about you, Reggie?”

“Oh, I’ve always been a light sleeper.”

You poor thing. “Should we try to find some way to help you sleep?” I asked out of sympathy.

He cocked an eyebrow and smiled. “Got anything in mind?”

I paused to think, but only a few things came to mind, and lullabies were absolutely out of the question. If our nation’s prince ever heard my terrible singing voice, I would probably die of embarrassment... so I decided to suggest something a bit more reasonable.

“Have you tried counting sheep?”

“Sheep?”

“Yeah.”

He looked at me, puzzled; I shooed him into bed and carried a chair over so I could sit next to him.

“Now lie down and close your eyes...”

With a playful grin, he did as I requested, and I pulled his blankets and quilts up to his chin. For the first time, he looked like any other teenage boy.

“You don’t have to say it out loud with me; just count in your head. One sheep, two sheep, three sheep...”

As I counted, I found myself looking at Reggie’s face... at his long silver eyelashes. He was so beautiful, I could only imagine what his parents must have looked like. His Aunt Beatrice was a beautiful woman, too. Perhaps all royals were naturally attractive.

Once I got to 34 sheep, Reggie let out a sigh. “Is this supposed to bore me to sleep, or what?”

“Maybe.” It was working its magic on me, at least. My mouth was getting tired, and I was starting to feel drowsy again. “They say you’re guaranteed to fall asleep before you reach one hundred.”

“Okay then, let’s see you prove it.”

With that, Reggie sat up, got out of bed, and knelt beside me.

“What the—whoa!”

“Shhh! Keep your voice down or you’ll wake Mabel.”

In a blink, he lifted me into his arms, bridal-style, and laid me to rest in his bed. Next, he pulled my slippers off, and I bit back a squeak as his fingers brushed my toes. Then, before I could protest, he pulled the quilts over me and sat down in my chair. We had now officially traded places.

It was kind of awkward, having someone staring down at me while I was lying in bed. Still... the blankets were toasty warm from his residual body heat, right down to my feet. Clearly he had better blood circulation than I did.

Grinning, Reggie placed a hand near my face. “This time, I’ll do the counting.”

Evidently he wanted to test the validity of my chosen method. Wait, I can’t sleep here! Sure, we’re both still technically children, but we’re teenagers! We can’t share a room together!

Besides, I’d feel terrible if it meant Reggie was forced to sleep on the sofa instead. And if Mabel caught us, she’d probably get on my case for being improper with the prince!

But before I could tell him I’d changed my mind, he started to count.

“One Kiara, two Kiaras...”

“Wait, what?”

“Three Kiaras, four Kiaras...”

“Why me?!” Are you trying to say I’m a sheep?!

Reggie snickered. “Because it’s more fun for me this way. Five Kiaras. Besides, you’re not that different from a sheep. Six Kiaras.”

“How?!”

“Because you’re cute and fluffy. Seven Kiaras.”

“If you’re going to liken me to a cute animal, pick a cat or something!”

“Fine, then you’re a fluffy little kitten. Eight Kiaras.”

Seriously, Reggie? Ugh... Kill me now!

“I’m enjoying this. If there were eight Kiaras, I bet you’d all get into some sort of mischief together, wouldn’t you? Nine Kiaras.”

“Nngh...”

Judging from the smile on his face, it almost seemed like he wanted more Kiaras. Are you obsessed with me or what? If I didn’t stop him soon, I was going to die of embarrassment... but at the same time, I couldn’t think of anything that would actually make him stop. All I could do was groan under my breath.

Fortunately, Reggie heard me groaning and took mercy on me. “If you don’t want me to count Kiaras, then how about I tell you a bedtime story?”

“Yes, please. I’d prefer that.”

At this point, anything would be less embarrassing than counting Kiaras. And if it made Reggie happy, then so be it. After he finished his story, I’d tell him it was my turn and switch places with him. Then, once he was asleep, I’d go back to my room. That was the plan.

“Once upon a time, there was a royal prince. He met a woman, fell in love at first sight, and married her.”

I hadn’t heard this story before, but then again, my experience with bedtime stories was limited to begin with—in this world, at least. I figured maybe this was one of the more well-known tales.

“The couple was soon blessed with a child, and the prince lived happily with his wife and son. But his father, the king, was none too pleased, for the prince’s wife was noble in name only. Though she was by no means ugly, and reasonably capable in most areas, she was not exceptionally skilled or beautiful... and His Majesty would accept nothing less than an omnipotent goddess.”

At this point, I was expecting this to turn into a story where the prince’s wife worked hard to change the king’s mind... but then things took a turn for the dark.

“The king wanted only the best for his handsome, talented son, whose only ‘flaw’ was his poor taste in women. Then, when his grandson was born even more handsome than his daddy, the king resented the prince’s wife more than ever. And after the prince fell ill and passed away at an early age, the king’s resentment manifested in his behavior: he kicked the prince’s widow out of the royal palace.”

Reggie was recounting the story slowly, but it was still a lot to say all at once. He paused for a few breaths, then continued.

“After that, the widow lived in a mansion away from the castle... but she disappeared after she was attacked by bandits. In order to ease his guilty conscience, the king then told his grandson that his mother had run away of her own accord.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. This story was too realistic to be a fairy tale and far too dark to tell a child at bedtime. Was it some sort of parable passed down in the royal family? Was “choose your wife wisely” the moral of the story? I decided to ask Reggie flat-out; he smiled awkwardly.

“No, there’s no lesson to be learned from what happened.”

“Wait... Are you saying this is a true story?”

He smiled wordlessly at me. Oh god, he’s not denying it!

“Actually, now that I think about it, maybe there is a lesson: the prince should have called his father out on his asinine behavior. And the prince’s wife knew the king hated her, so she should have at least pretended to try to be better. But they were so busy being in love with each other, they didn’t pay attention to anyone else. They were too trusting. And as a result, the prince forgot about his limited lifespan, and his widow was met with a horrible end. You could say it’s a precautionary tale about a failure of a man who couldn’t even keep his own loved ones safe.”

Ouch. “That’s pretty harsh for a fairytale, Reggie.”

“I think it’s important to reflect on past mistakes. That way you can learn for next time. If you’re smart, anyway.”

Deep down, was Reggie always this sarcastic about everything?

“You’ll go bald from thinking too hard, you know,” I muttered under my breath.

He stared at me, mouth agape—a reaction I’d never seen from him before. As for me, I sincerely meant what I said. Stress was a common cause of hair thinning, and as a prince, Reggie was under a lot of stress. But he was a handsome guy, so I wanted him to keep his flowing silver locks for decades to come. Before I could explain this, however, he started laughing.

“No one’s ever said that to me in my life!”

“Oh... Right... I guess that’s kind of offensive to say to a prince. I’m sorry.”

I was so used to thinking of him as a friend, it was easy to forget that he was at the very top of the social hierarchy. No one in their right mind would make that sort of comment in the presence of royalty.

“There’s no need to apologize, Kiara. I want you to treat me like a peer. Isn’t that what you were doing?”

“Uhh, I guess...?”

Did aristocrat boys tease each other about their hairlines in this world, too? Maybe I should ask Alan about it sometime.

“Well, whatever. Now it’s your turn to tell a story.”

“Okay...”

It was then that I realized I had forgotten to pretend to be sleepy, and so my plan had failed. With no other choice left, I decided to toss out a quick fairy tale, then go back to my room once I was finished... but which one? I’d only heard two or three of the more common Farzian fairy tales.

The girls at my boarding school, however, seemed to know quite a few. They were always name-dropping stories or characters I’d never heard of. Most of these were fanciful romance stories about princes or nobles, or tragic tales of knights who died fighting dragons to protect those they loved. That, or parables about the dangers of marrying commoners. If the love interest wasn’t a noble or a prince, then you could be sure someone in the story was going to die. In my view, it was proof that the fathers of this world only ever saw their daughters as pawns for political marriages. Cynical, I know.

Long story short: the only fairy tales I knew well enough to tell were ones from picture books in my past life.

“Do you mind if it’s something... more obscure?” I asked.

“Go for it,” he replied.

And so I decided to tell him the story of Momotarou the Peach Boy, since that was the one I knew by heart. Fortunately, this world already had plenty of stories about children born from flower dew and whatnot, so the concept of a boy born from a giant peach wasn’t all that outlandish by comparison; Reggie merely wondered if he was the son of the goddess or something. But since Momotarou famously went on to battle demons, I shrugged and went with it.

And so Momotarou headed off on his grand journey, carrying the packed lunch the old couple prepared for him before he left... Since millet dumplings didn’t exist in this world, however, I went ahead and changed it to something else.

Along the way, Momotarou made some animal friends—and then, for the first time, Reggie started asking questions. First, he wanted to know how the animals could possibly talk. After all, in our world, not even the most magical of monsters were capable of human speech. Personally, since this was just a fairy tale, I would’ve liked him to just let it go, but since he wouldn’t, I changed the pheasant to a feathery dancer, the dog to a hunter in pelts, and the monkey to a mischievous, tree-climbing little knave.

Then he wanted to know why Momotarou would give his food to a bunch of animals, but by that point I was too tired to argue, so I changed the animals to human girls and told him they had fallen in love with Momotarou at first sight. Perhaps that was a more believable reason as to why they’d tag along with someone they’d only just met.

Then Reggie snickered at me, and I realized he was probably just messing with me for fun. What a bully.

And so, as my drowsiness intensified, Momotarou gathered up his harem of animal girls, and together they defeated the demons. After all my changes, the story had turned into a total mess, so I was worried Reggie hadn’t enjoyed it... but my eyelids were too heavy, and I couldn’t see his face.

“And they lived happily... ever...”

The protagonist was now a hero, with girls and riches to spare. What more could anyone ask for?

Now that I had finished the story, I found myself drawn to the warmth of Reggie’s bed.

◇◇◇

He could see her innocent, unguarded face right in front of him, sound asleep.

“You must really feel safe with me,” he muttered aloud.

All his life, Reggie had always been a light sleeper. Fortunately, his body could run on minimal sleep just fine. Whenever he awoke, he would stare blankly at the ceiling for a while. Normally this helped him go back to sleep, but this time he hadn’t been so lucky. So he decided to wander around the Évrard estate for a bit—and that was when he’d spotted Kiara coming up the stairs. She was carrying a decanter full of water, and he quickly intuited that she was on her way back from the kitchen.

He was bored, and since she was awake, he’d decided to invite her into his quarters for the hell of it. But as they talked, he noticed that she was visibly cold—her shoulders were ever so slightly hunched. Evidently, the fireplace wasn’t doing much good for her.

That was when he decided to flip things around... and when he scooped her up, he found that her legs were freezing cold. Poor thing. She’d probably feel a lot warmer under the blankets. Sure enough, relief flooded her expression, just as he anticipated... and then she nodded off to sleep in the middle of their conversation.

“This is kind of nice.”

For some reason, it really warmed his heart to see her fast asleep in his bed. Of course, if it had been anyone else, he would have kicked them out... but in her case, she was reminiscent of a tiny kitten, all curled up. Maybe it was the little smile on her face.

He was tempted to stroke her hair, but he knew if he woke her, she might try to escape... and that frightened him.

He wanted her to stay. Forever.

“Where did you come from, little cat?”

As far as any of them knew, Kiara was raised as an aristocrat, and yet she sincerely seemed to forget that he was the crown prince of Farzia. That was a line not even Alan was willing to cross, despite multiple requests on Reggie’s part. Who but a commoner could manage such a feat?

Every now and then, her behavior would suggest that she was raised outside the Farzian social hierarchy. Still, she was obliging his desire to be treated as an equal for once, and he had no complaints. In a way, she was a closer friend to him than his own cousin.

It was strange—their viewpoints were so different, and yet in some respects, it felt like they were a perfect match. How was it possible?

As he gazed at her, his truant drowsiness found its way back to him, and his mind grew fuzzy. He knew he couldn’t sleep sitting upright in this chair, lest he catch pneumonia. And yet it felt like such a wasted opportunity to send Kiara back to her own quarters.

Odd... I hardly ever get this sleepy when other people are around.

In the end, he decided he would lie down on the opposite side of the bed. As he crawled in, he was sure the sounds and vibrations would disturb her, and yet she didn’t budge. This emboldened him to finally reach out and touch her hair—and in response, she slammed her knee directly into his shin.

“Agh! You’re awake...?”

At first, he thought she’d done it on purpose, but she didn’t respond to his question. Her eyes remained closed, and her breathing was slow and steady. The sight filled him with the impulse to bully her.

“You know what? I’m definitely not letting you go back to your room now.”

He rolled away, closed his eyes... and before he knew it, he had drifted off more easily than he ever had sleeping alone.

◇◇◇

When I awoke, I found Reggie sleeping in the bed next to me and nearly screamed.

Upon further inspection, I noticed he was all the way on the opposite edge of the bed—which, incidentally, was large enough to fit four people—and there was a rolled-up blanket serving as a divider between us, so there probably hadn’t been any funny business.

Unfortunately, all my flailing woke Reggie. He gazed over at me, and there was something about his dazed, drowsy expression that made my heart skip a beat. It was just so... sexy.

After a moment, he started to snicker at me. What?! What’s so funny?! Is there something on my face?!

Reluctantly, I decided I’d better get back to my room while it was still dark so Mabel wouldn’t find out I was here. Unfortunately, it wasn’t until after I was safely back in my own bed that I realized I’d left my decanter behind. In the end, that was what sealed my fate.

The next morning, Mabel tracked both of us down and lectured us for hours on end...