Chapter Text
“I will not.” Merlin slammed the seat of the chair on the desk.
“Please, for the love of God,” Romani begged him. “Everyone else has already paid.”
Merlin moved to the next row and continued flipping the chairs to store on top of the unused desks. “I don’t participate in any activities, so why should I pay?”
“It’s like a tax! It’s going towards activities including the school anniversary festival, the total proceeds from which you benefit—”
“Try again. You’re talking about miniscule, indirect benefits, negligible at best. What, one-two-hundredth of the cost of a blackboard?”
“It’s four dollars!”
“I can buy a day's worth of ramen with that. Anyway, how'd you do on the math test?" It wasn't graded yet, but da Vinci's answers were always correct.
"Oh, we'll get to that!" Romani seemed to deflate, slouching over the nearest desk. Outside, the sun was just setting over the mostly deserted campus. “Please. I just want to go home. You want to go home. I have to get the money today or Gilgamesh is going to kill me.”
"How?”
A confused look. “How?”
“How’s he going to kill you? That’s even more illegal than tax evasion.”
“I don’t know!" Romani howled. "Make me clean out every classroom? Fine me? Have his chauffeur run me over? Don’t you remember what he did to Ishtar when she forgot to give his flute back to him last year?”
Finished tidying up the classroom, Merlin dusted off his hands. Then he grimaced. An incident with Ishtar and a flute? Probably something that had happened while he’d been busy helping Artoria sort out trouble with her girlfriend and friend last fall, so it was something he’d missed when he’d updated himself on affairs afterwards. Awful. Inexcusable. Even if he had a pretty good idea…. “No, what did he do?”
“He had his chauffeur run her over!” Romani shouted, punctuating each word with a clap to the poor abused desk.
He knelt to pick up his bag. “Oh my. But it looks like she got off fine.” Still the loudly proclaimed prettiest girl in school. Merlin mentally stuck out his tongue at the concept of her. Artoria’s cuter than you are. “Her dad’s car intercepted them just before she was flattened.”
“Oh my. Strife.”
“With millions in property damage!”
“What are you mongrels barking about?”
They both turned. It was another boy, leaning against the doorway of their classroom with arms folded and an expression of marked displeasure, and they both knew perfectly well who it was. To Romani, his boss come with the axe of an executioner. To Merlin, the student council president he’d heard more stories about than he’d had lessons so far in pre-calculus. Who else had that aura of disdain, that golden hair to be traced exquisitely by the slant of late afternoon light? Who else was so impetuously beautiful? It was no wonder everyone talked about him, in admiration or rage or both.
“Nothing,” Romani answered promptly.
“Mm, what he said,” Merlin said, none of his brain cells performing any function at all.
“Tch.” Gilgamesh clicked his tongue. He began to form a criticism, eyes narrowing and lips parting, but then something in the scene before him must have registered, probably Romani’s beseeching posture. He met Merlin's gaze and his voice went cold. “You’re that junior, Merlin, aren’t you?”
The creature addressed stared into those slitted pupils, feeling utterly at peace with the universe and distantly baffled by the fact he was experiencing such a sensation. Such a perfect nothingness. “Yes, I am.”
The president lifted off the doorframe and uncrossed his arms in one smooth motion and strode towards them. Words swam one by one into Merlin's head. Oh, he’s coming closer. Do I do something? What do I do? In the end he didn't have time for anything, Gilgamesh’s movements were swift and fierce and before Merlin could formulate another thought the president had slammed the desk above him with twenty times the force Romani had brought to bear and was right in his face. “Your rebellious sentiment has been noted and will be ignored.” The very quality of his voice sent something in Merlin's chest trembling. “Mongrel, where is your activity fee?”
Merlin was unable to look at anything but him, but his hands did the work on their own, smoothly and obediently reaching into his pocket for his wallet, picking it open and respectfully presenting four bills with joined palms. Red eyes flicked down to the money and with that, he was gone, fee collected and out of the room as briskly as he’d entered. Merlin and Romani were left staring at his stiff back until he passed out of view from the classroom's windows. For the second time that evening, Romani deflated with a long sigh of relief. For his part, Merlin kept staring at the spot where the student council president had disappeared until he felt a touch and looked down to see Romani patting his arm, murmuring, “Finally, thank you, you ass.”
Merlin just gazed at his friend and said, sounding even to himself like he was miles away or maybe floating in the sea, "Was he always that…." He gestured vaguely.
"Oh," Romani shrugged. "You haven't had much direct exposure to him, have you?" Romani himself was not only their class representative but the council's health and sanitation liaison. "He can be frighteningly persuasive."
"My friend, if I were a weaker soul, that would have pierced my heart!" Merlin said. "Luckily, I'm always prepared to step back and process the sensations experienced by my physical form, as befits my chosen occupation as the omniscient bystander."
"As if that's a real occupation. I bet I'll come to a class reunion five years from now just to hear that you starved to death in an empty lot. I'm going home."
"Are you taking the bus? I'll go with you."
"No, I need to buy some groceries on the way."
"Ah, then," Merlin slung his bag over his shoulder and sidled up to him. "Escort me to the bus stop?"
Romani sighed.
"An empty school's so lonely," Merlin said. "And what if I'm attacked by another flock of murderous geese?"
"They weren't murderous, geese are just like that. At least they didn't get you. One ran at me and bit open my knee, once."
"Hm." For field day, Romani was always written down as a reserve member of the 400-meter relay team, which happened to include Achilles, Dantes, Cú and Merlin himself. It was just so he'd have a role; no one ever expected him to compete. If a runner was incapacitated, one of the other three could just do two legs of the race. Of course Romani wouldn't be able to outrun a goose. "Once."
"By the way, about that math test! How'd you get that last question? No one else got that question, I'm pretty sure the teacher didn't even cover it!"
Merlin held up two fingers and grinned. "Lucky guess." V for victory. The square root of two.
To his disappointment, Romani didn't scream. He only sighed. "I should've known."
"You really should've."
➷
In the time he'd taken to make the juniors to shut up, Siduri had gone home, but she'd left a thin stack of documents for him in the student council office. Gilgamesh plucked the envelope of activity fees from 11-A off the top, checked off the last name, and inserted the last four dollars. He'd do a final count tomorrow, for now he locked the envelope in the desk's second-lowest drawer. A flip through the stack revealed there wasn't much in urgent need of his attention.
The school anniversary was the next upcoming event, and it was months away. Between the long council sessions characteristic of the beginning of the school year—when everyone still had the free time to debate—meetings with teachers, and the rash of club applications, all he wanted to do was go home and play racing games until he blacked out.
Gilgamesh eyed the stack.
But Enkidu would definitely judge him. In that unbearable, passive-aggressive, lollipop-sucking way of theirs.
He stuffed the papers into his bag. There would be plenty of time for entertainment after he was finished cleaning up mongrel detritus. Maybe he'd call Enkidu over then, just to tell them they could take their observations on empathy and responsibility and direct them towards a mirror.
He closed up the office and headed into the courtyard. Here at the back end of summer, the air was smotheringly stagnant, and the school was drenched in the unflattering orange of the humid sunset. It occurred to him, then, that he'd forgotten to notify his driver that he was finished. He'd fired the last driver because she had terrible aim, and the new one hadn't yet learned to predict his coming and going. "Wretches, the lot of them," he muttered as he typed out a terse message. "Maybe if I fire this one, too, Mother and Father will give up and get me a new car."
Crashing the last one had been Enkidu's fault, anyway. The great Ninsun was biased. He knew his mother: she had to be pretending not to see that hellion for what they were. If either of them had any restraint, it was him.
Like on the matter of Arjuna and Karna. The brothers headed the school's rival charity clubs. Near the end of last semester, he'd wanted to tell them there weren't enough classrooms for both their clubs to have offices, just to see if one would kill the other, but his infernal vice president had vetoed the idea (just to be contrary!) and Siduri had taken her side. So he agreed to let them continue using their old spaces, for Siduri's sake.
Granted, maybe things would have gone differently if the Mobile Phone Studies club hadn't just been suspended due to the misconduct of its leader. Ying Zheng had dismantled 12-B's projector one morning, and was putting it back together when they were caught, sitting on the floor between shafts of sunlight and mechanical viscera. None of the teachers believed their assurances that they could fix it, and their parents had to pay for a replacement. The incident prompted a reevaluation of the Mobile Phone Studies club, following prior suspicions that that society's concerns had expanded since its christening. The administrative office printer was never the same after four loose screws were found on top of it, packaged neatly in a plastic bag. Ying Zheng ended up with a demerit. Not that they minded.
Actually, now that Gilgamesh was thinking about it, he'd let that Merlin off too easily.
All he'd done was glare at him, even though he'd inconvenienced the council with his stubbornness. The pigheaded junior didn't even have a good reason for being stubborn, apparently, seeing how easily he'd given up. Gilgamesh reflected smugly on the awestruck expression the junior had taken when visited by the president himself. He'd only identified Merlin through process of elimination, but the name wasn't unfamiliar—he was mentioned with the Pendragons sometimes, usually causing minor inconveniences to the siblings. Yes, delinquents should be punished.
Gilgamesh's shoe hit something and a metallic ring scattered out against the tile floor. Stepping back, he found, gently spinning in the aftermath of his unwary kick, a thin dagger. It rotated until it lay straight across his field of view, and stopped. The decorated hilt was golden, and he knew instinctively that its swirls would fit his palm as if it were made for him, and the blade was bright, too radiant for reflected sunlight. Unnatural, and placed before him for a purpose.
He lifted his shoe. Aiming for the doorstep of the men's restroom, he kicked the dagger aside and continued on his way as it rang off the wall, arriving at the school gate without so much as a look or thought back.
And that was when he saw it.
In the still air, the cover over the bus stop crumpled in on itself as if crushed by an invisible fist. A pale blur flicked out from under the shrieking metal, whirling around in a sweep of white hair. That feature was enough for Gilgamesh to recognize him. As soon as the boy had escaped the collapse, however, the canopy of the bus stop hit the road and the asphalt under his feet cracked open like the cavernous maw of a beast. He screamed. Gilgamesh flew forward and caught his flailing wrist at the lip of the hole, hissing when this fairy-colored thing turned out to be heavier than expected.
"I can't feel the bottom!" Merlin wailed.
"So stop kicking for it!" Grimacing with effort, Gilgamesh reached for his other hand and managed to haul him out of the hole. Merlin collapsed, heaving, a few feet away from the edge. "Oh, god," he gasped. "Thank you, president, sir, for a moment I thought I'd really lost that fight."
Gilgamesh frowned at the fingers still curled claw-like around his own wrist.
Evidently still in possession of enough sense to mind his rescuer's gaze, Merlin glanced at their joined hands. "Sorry, very sorry," he said, breathlessly, "Can you let me hold on for a little bit longer? It's safer, the bus never came and—"
"Presumptuous," Gilgamesh said, wrenching his arms free and making to get up.
"No, wait!" Merlin jumped to his feet. "Please?"
"I saved you on a whim. You don't owe me anything. Now, I'm busy—hey!" That junior had grabbed his leg and was clinging to him like his life depended on it.
"Aren't you curious?" Merlin cried.
"Not particularly," he said, flinging him off and turning to the street. Better to leave some things be. He flexed his fingers.
Delinquents should be punished, he'd thought. He hadn't meant execution.
The buzz of a voice started in his ear; he gathered all his spite to ignore it. It would probably be telling him to be grateful or something. The first dull spark of a migraine pulsed in his eye.
Wonderful, he thought. Does this mean I have to be careful of what I think even when I'm not actively making prayers?
A nasty development.
The driver finally arrived.
➷
Merlin had always been an exceptionally unlucky child. Despite his best efforts at building good karma through public service, the universe had always seemed bent on having him executed before his time.
His earliest memory was of choking on a grape with no recollection of having sought out the dish of grapes several meters beyond his reach. As far as he could tell, the fruit had maneuvered itself into his esophagus, and he made sure to repeat this conclusion whenever he retold this story to his mother.
She took her son's misfortunes quite matter-of-factly. On a trip to the beach when he was nine, he almost picked up a deadly jellyfish that he'd taken for a baseball when it washed up close to his ankle, and that preposterous brush with mortality had driven him to the end of his tether. Bricks falling from upper stories, bridge slats collapsing under his feet, that he could take, because there could always be an element of human neglect to explain these structural failures, but this—this! He just! Wanted! To! Play! On! The! Beach!
Even when buffeted by the first explosion of temper her son had ever summoned, though, his mother had only looked askance.
"Mother," he told her when he got home (an eleven minute sprint: a new record). "I was nearly eaten by the road today."
She paused, just a second, before sitting down. "How did you escape?"
"The student council president saved me."
They split their chopsticks and started on dinner, Chinese takeout.
Today's incident was ominous support for his hypothesis that the world was upping the frequency of attacks, but still, being rescued from certain death by a very charming prince did wonders for his mood, so he decided to do some homework for a change. To mark the occasion, perhaps. In any case, he'd been getting monthly accidents since his last birthday.
He proofread the presentation on medieval saints he had to do with Romani and Arthur and wrote the English essay due on Monday. He even dug out the book of past standardized test questions that his mother had very meaningfully gifted to him last Christmas. Once he felt he'd done enough studying to prove his knowledge, he moved on to other operations (which he considered charity work, for that matter) ending the night at the healthy hour of ten.
He only came to notice much later, but that night, at a point that might well have been midnight, the chorus of crickets fell silent. No sound at all, from outside. At the time, though, he was already lost to sleep.
➷
He opened his eyes to a rough sand beach that unfurled into the horizon. The waves shimmered under sunlight through rolling clouds, shifting between black and silver, but when his attention moved elsewhere, the sea became a field of flowers trembling in faint wind, rooted in earth like they'd always been there.
He'd seen someone he hadn't expected to find here.
Really, Merlin found himself thinking, if there are angels in this world, this is what they should look like. Golden hair, the shade that glowed in even the faintest light, definitely fit the picture, especially because Merlin was partial to blonds. They should always approach from above, or far away, so you could admire them. But most of all, they shouldn't have ordinary eyes. Not creatures who saw more than humans ever would.
It would be nice if angels existed, but he figured that if they did, they wouldn't have allowed the world to fall to such a state that the masses would doubt their existence. So I have to be content with a dream, he thought comfortably, stepping forward and tilting his head at the dream-Gilgamesh.
Jewel-red eyes narrowed. Merlin didn't say a word. He couldn't remember the last time he'd had a dream this original, and it wasn't like he'd get many chances to interact so closely with the real student council president, so he was content to see how things would play out. Flowers in nature were usually prettier than painted flowers.
Gilgamesh walked up to him. Their eyes never left each other as the distance closed, though Merlin couldn't read much of his expression. A pity he didn't know him well enough to imagine the distinctions between varying levels of annoyance.
When Gilgamesh stopped, he was close enough that Merlin could count his eyelashes.
He lifted his hands to either side of Merlin's face, fingers hovering a prickling hair's breadth from his cheeks. The breath caught in Merlin's throat.
And then Merlin's ears were yanked outwards.
"Ow!" He startled awake.
➷
It was already light outside, so he took the opportunity to enjoy a slow cereal breakfast before the bus came. The drowsiness started to kick in around second period, though. Luckily, he managed to force himself to stay awake. When the lunch bell rang, Artoria disappeared somewhere with her boys to practice. Which sport they'd practice tended to change depending on what Artoria had been beaten at in P.E. that week, usually by Cú and company. Either way, her absence meant it would be safe for him to take a long, refreshing nap after his meal.
That was when the trouble started.
He had a novel propped on his pencil case and was almost unconscious when Romani Archaman marched over and tapped his desk. "Oi. Where's your activity fee? You're the only one left who hasn't paid."
Merlin didn't bother turning his head; he'd already read the same sentence ten times and was looking forward to blacking out. "Have you been missing sleep, Romani? I paid yesterday, to Gilgamesh himself."
Saying that name brought back the pain of his ears nearly being ripped off his head. I thought it'd be an adventurous dream, too, he reflected, mildly annoyed.
"Gilgamesh?" Romani asked. "When did you see Gilgamesh? Siduri just told me to get the fee from you by the end of today."
"Yesterday afternoon." Yawning, Merlin turned the page, trying to signal to him to begone.
"What? We went to the café with Arthur yesterday afternoon."
"That was the day before yesterday."
Romani snatched the book away from him. "Look, this isn't funny! Come on, it's four dollars!"
"Which I've already paid!" Merlin said, making a half-hearted swipe for his book. "You can ask Gilgamesh."
"I," Romani hesitated. "Fine, I will!" And with that he marched away.
"Yes, and you can keep my book as a hostage!" Merlin called after him. He pillowed his face in his arms and closed his eyes.
It had to be less than a minute before he was disturbed again.
"He didn't even remember who you were!" Romani shouted.
Merlin sat bolt upright. "Impossible, we went through a near-death experience together!"
"When? Yesterday, while you were stuffing your face with Arthur's chocolate cake and not helping with the presentation?"
"No, what's wrong with you? That was the day before yesterday, I'm actually a little worried about you now. But what do you mean, what exactly did he say?"
"I asked him if Merlin had paid him yesterday, and he said, 'who?'"
"That's…." I dreamed of you, and you forgot me! Merlin pushed back his chair. "I'm going to ask him myself."
"For the love of God," Romani groaned, "Why are you making such a big deal out of four dollars?"
"It's not about that anymore. I've been mortally wounded. We were on the way to becoming friends!"
"Friends? Him and you?" Romani scoffed.
Merlin was preparing a retort, but someone else cut through before he could say anything. "Merlin, it was yesterday." Their quarrel had long since caught public attention, and Arthur had peered in from next door.
Merlin stared at him. "You too?" Yet even as he asked, he was uneasy. He wasn't so self-absorbed that he could ignore an obvious majority, particularly when Arthur looked genuinely concerned for him. Plainly, unlike Romani, he didn't think Merlin was joking. Merlin pulled his phone out of his pocket.
Thursday, September 9th.
His first thought was, the Internet is wrong. But he was wise for his age. His second was, I am wrong.
Suddenly he felt awfully lightheaded and had to sit back down. First order of business, he thought, go with the flow. If this is some over-the-top prank, I can always say I was just playing along. Four dollars isn't that much, anyway, I was just holding out for Romani to either start crying or pay my fee himself to guilt-trip me. I would've paid, then.
He sighed deeply. "You ruined my prank," he said, casting a reproachful look at Arthur, who blinked.
"I wasn't going to fall for it anyway!" Romani snapped.
"I'm still not going to pay, though." Merlin pillowed his face again.
"Merlin!"
At that point the bell rang, so neither of them got what they wanted.
Maybe that was for the better, because at least for a short while, Merlin was able to tell himself that anything unusual was a fantasy conjured by his sleep-deprived brain. Unfortunately, that comforting state of mind didn't last. Now that he'd been made aware, he became clearly, unwillingly alert to his surroundings. Besides, he always had godlike control of everything in actual dreams. If he was really dreaming, he should be able to point to Romani and make him turn into a duck. And people rarely interacted with Merlin in his dreams.
Math class was exactly the same as yesterday. The same test. The square root of two. Again, Cú Chulainn accidentally flicked a chunk of rubber into the teacher's eye while he was carving his eraser into a stamp, which Merlin knew from yesterday's observations would be of his initials, but which was as yet indecipherable. The next class was the same, too. And the next. Like everyone was in on the same joke.
The only difference was that he'd come to school on time, so he hadn't missed the morning classes.
By the time the last bell rang, Merlin had gone two hours without saying a word, watching a movie on repeat, staring dazedly at the clock at the front of the classroom.
He wanted to see Gilgamesh. He didn't know why, but he felt like it was important. Something about the directness of his approach in that dream had been too real, maybe.
"Romani," he said.
His friend was packing. "Yeah?"
"Forget your little worries. I'll pay him the fee myself, for real, this time."
"Oh," said Romani. "Sure, then. Thanks. Finally." A muted reaction. Now that he'd had time to cool off, he'd probably detected that Merlin wasn't feeling right, somehow.
"Bye." Merlin shouldered his bag and went downstairs to the student council office, adjacent to the administrative offices.
At the door, he stopped. He's gone back to not knowing me, Merlin thought. Who? Romani said he said. I guess I'll have to reintroduce myself. But if he really doesn't remember—Wait, does this mean nothing yesterday actually happened? Is this a reset or a collective memory wipe?
Merlin bent to check his knees. The back of his neck prickled. His legs were still scraped. And now that he was paying attention, his palms still felt a little raw.
Alright. Yesterday happened, he concluded. New question is, is it a collective memory wipe, or did it only happen to me?
He shook his head. Never mind for now. If Gilgamesh didn't remember, either, then he'd be out of leads, and then he could start thinking about groundhog day mechanics.
He faced the door. Best to act, hmm, to act confused and sorry. No one else so far had demonstrated awareness of the repeat. Being confused and sorry could handle both possibilities with Gilgamesh—if he wasn't aware, Merlin was sorry for the late fee; if he was aware, Merlin was making clear he had no idea what the hell was happening and absolutely nothing to do with it.
The trick to looking absolutely pitiful in the eyes of a stranger was channeling that abandoned-puppy energy and looking lost and endlessly well-meaning. It helped that he really was lost. He knocked, dispensing the gentle raps between carefully rationed pauses of hesitation up until a girl’s polite “Come in!” sounded from inside. He opened the door, ducking his head in an apologetic greeting.
To his disappointment, the large desk by the window was empty. There was only a girl, who must be the council secretary Siduri, sitting at another desk, sorting through papers.
“Hello, I don’t think we’ve met before, I’m Siduri. Merlin, yes? How can I help you?”
Ah, she recognized him. He straightened. "Hi, I'm just here to pay the activity fee, I heard you asked Romani to get it to you by today. Sorry about the lateness! I just never had enough on hand." He looked around as she took the four dollars. "Is the president in? I was hoping to apologize to him in person, especially after troubling him yesterday."
"Yesterday?"
"Ah, sorry! Nothing, I was just thinking about a cake I had yesterday. I meant, apologizing for troubling him." No, from what he knew of her, Siduri wasn't the type to participate in a practical joke of this scale. She could be tagged as Adult in the Room.
"He's just gone out to get a signature from the principal and check in on 10-D on the way. He should be back in another ten minutes, if you're willing to wait?"
"Sure." He sat down on the plush couch by the door, hands on knees. She went back to work, sorting sheets into three piles.
A beat passed.
"Hey, by the way, Siduri, are you single? I'm only asking for research purposes."
➷
When Gilgamesh returned from his reconnaissance mission, he found a slightly disheveled white-haired junior squatting outside the council office.
At the sound of footsteps, the junior perked up like Enkidu's dog at mealtime and turned a sweet, hopeful smile on Gilgamesh.
The buzzing grew louder in Gilgamesh's ear. Angrily he shoved it away and focused on Merlin. Well, now that things had gotten to this point, to pretend or not to pretend? Merlin had obviously noticed what was very wrong, even if no one else had.
"Who are you and what do you want?" Gilgamesh settled for the latter. If all went well, maybe Merlin would forget the repeat, he'd probably slipped through the cracks in God's attention. Gilgamesh would handle this problem himself. Though he might consult Kirei after he was finished with his work.
All the warmth melted off Merlin's expression, leaving behind a stiff smile. "Huh," the junior said softly. "I guess I just wanted you to know."
"What?" he asked half-heartedly. No, not consult. He'd confront the priest, wasn't that what spiritual guides were for?
Merlin abruptly gathered himself and cried, “I’m Merlin! I just wanted, well, to say I’m so sorry for the trouble with the activity fee, I just never had money on hand—oh that’s a terrible excuse, I’m sorry! I'm sorry for making trouble for you at this busy time, president!” Merlin bent double in a dramatic bow towards Gilgamesh's shoes.
"And how many times have you rehearsed this performance?" he said, wryly.
Hope bloomed again. "Rehearsed?" Merlin breathed.
Gilgamesh walked past him to the door. "You seem used to bowing and scraping. One of the Pendragon lackeys? No matter, you must have just paid the fee to Siduri. If you're really sorry, you can stop wasting my time." He put his hand on the doorknob.
Merlin drooped. "Yes, sir."
Gilgamesh watched him slink down the two steps to the courtyard, then turned away.
He'd hardly opened the door when there was an earsplitting roar and a crack and he was thrown into a stagger as the air at his back exploded into blazing heat. His hand went to the back of his head. Fine, now I'm curious! He spun around and found Merlin folded on scraped hands and knees, coughing up dust, inches from a charred sunburst on the bricks.
"What did you do?" Gilgamesh demanded.
"Why would I try to blow myself up!"
"Then what was it?!"
"Lightning," Merlin said, blankly.
"Lightning."
The pale boy met his glare with round, apologetic eyes with all the guile of a startled deer, and slowly pointed to the cloudless tangerine sky. "Today," he said, "is not a good day."
The scorch mark was still smoking, sending up an acrid stench that forbade denial. Gilgamesh raised measuring eyes to the heavens. He looked, and listened.
Oh.
It wasn't because of his call for delinquents to be punished, after all.
A buzz over his skin, the prick of a curious gaze. Merlin must be wondering if he was trying to pick a fight with the sky.
Well, the more he knew. Gilgamesh slung his bag over his shoulder and met his eyes. "You should go home. The bus'll be here, soon."