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Byleth leaned back in her chair, sipping tea. The sharp scent of cinnamon burnt his nostrils.
“Okay,” said Byleth. She set her feet on the desk, left and then right. “So tell me how it happened.”
Sylvain had impeccable timing. Whenever he went, whoever he was with, however, he navigated his way through life, things just went his way. Felix witnessed it time and time again, from the way he timed dodges in the battlefield to the time he and his favourite girl had finished a tryst fifteen minutes before an exam.
So, despite Felix’s fast training and reflexes, he couldn’t avoid Sylvain when he walked out of the dining hall. He almost ghosted out of his reach, but Sylvain seized his arm in a terrible grip that almost forced him off his feet.
“Hands off,” Felix said blandly.
“I need a favour,” said Sylvain.
“Begone.”
Felix almost made it down the staircase when Sylvain intercepted his path. “But I need a favour!”
“And I need you out of my life, yet here you are, blocking my path. Out of my way, Gautier.”
Sylvain sidestepped into his path again. “Felix, Felix, Felix. My man, my best friend, my brother from another mother—”
“The man who’s going to murder you if you don’t move.”
“This is a big deal.”
“It involves a girl, doesn’t it?”
“Naturally.”
“Goodbye, Sylvain.”
“I will get on my hands and knees.”
“Please don’t. I’m sure people see enough of that already, so there’s no need to do it in public.”
Sylvain got on one knee.
“What are you doing?!” Felix exclaimed, with the thinnest edge of panic creeping in on the corners of his voice.
“Felix Hugo Fraldarius, I humbly beg that you do me a favour,” said Sylvain.
“People are staring.”
“Do me a favour and I’ll stop.”
“You’re pathetic.”
“I’ve got all day.”
“I’ll outrun you.”
“I know all your hiding spots.”
Felix’s jaw jutted out, teeth clenching so hard together Sylvain could hear bone breaking. He saw the moment his will gave with all the slow-dawning horror of lines breaking on a battlefield. His eyes rolled and his shoulders slumped somewhere past his waist.
“What do you want, Sylvain?” Felix asked.
Sylvain answered by seizing Felix by the arm and dragging him off, ignoring his disgruntled protests.
They ended up by the staircase leading to the marketplace. Felix looked out of place among the vendors and shoppers, a black ink stain on a pristine piece of parchment. Felix used the opportunity to play out battle tactics in his mind. What would happen if they were attacked? Where could they find quick cover from archers? How could they save the maximum number of civilians while killing the most amount of imaginary bad guys?
Unfortunately, the probability of an attack in the marketplace was low. Not nonexistent, never nonexistent because their lives were an unbroken melody of battle after battle, though for a moment they were living in the caesura. If Felix had his way, he would lose himself in an endless battle-scarred haze.
All the more reason to get him to loosen up a bit. Sylvain posed Felix at the bottom of the staircase, stepped back, and analyzed him like Dimitri did during training exercises. Then he unfolded Felix’s arms and repositioned his body so he was leaning against the stonework.
“Perfect,” said Sylvain. “Now don’t move.”
“Why am I here?” Felix asked—a rhetorical question. Sylvain feigned ignorance, which Felix only knew because even Sylvain wasn't that dumb.
“Because you need sunlight, and I need a wingman.”
“What.”
“I just need you to stand there and look pretty.”
“Relax, you don’t have to do anything,” said Sylvain. His own posture loosened up with a lot less effort as he leaned on the wall next to Felix. “Just sit back and admire the view.”
“I need to train.”
“Hey, don’t you move—you’re doing me a favour, remember?”
“I don’t even know what kind of favour this is supposed to be.”
“There’s a sale in the marketplace.”
“Is that the favour? You’re not getting my money, Gautier.”
“I don’t want your damn money. You know I don’t need it. I only need to pay with one thing: my impeccable good looks.”
“Disgusting.”
“Oh—there goes a six.”
“What?”
“A six, over there.”
“…That’s a fellow student.”
“A six if I ever saw one. I don’t think the hairstyle suits her, but if it gets tousled up a bit…I think she could be an eight.”
“Can I go now?”
“You’re not even looking.”
Felix squinted across the marketplace. The girl Sylvain indicated was a Black Eagles student, her mousy brown hair in a prim and groomed bob to her chin and a bored, neutral expression across her face as she surveyed wares at a trader’s booth. She possessed the well-manicured appearance of a noble who never wanted.
“Well?” Sylvain asked. “What does she look like?”
“Like a student,” said Felix.
“No, I mean, how do you think she looks?”
“She looks healthy.”
“I bet she’s kinky.”
“Keep your filth to yourself. Is this the favour? You want me to assess if a girl is healthy?”
“Of course not,” said Sylvain. “Look, Felix, your training is getting out of hand. As your concerned friend, I thought you could benefit from a break.”
“By forcing me to stoop to your level?”
"Goddess, no! There are no miracles. I think you could at least learn to appreciate the sight of a pretty girl. You know what I see in your eyes when you?”
Felix threw him a hard stare. Sylvain just grinned.
“Yeah, that’s the look!” said Sylvain. “It’s the look of a guy who’s never looked at a woman sexually in his life.”
“Sylvain!”
“Felix, you’re gonna get forced to get married eventually and if you don’t perform, it’s gonna suck for everyone involved.”
“I’m telling Ingrid that you were being disgusting again.”
We need to make the process easier. Will you just look around and pick out a girl you like?”
Felix held his face in his hands. “This favour is too much. I’d say it’s uncivil for a knight to leer at women, but I know your standards aren’t that high.”
“Felix, you got good looks, a good bloodline, and a Crest on your side,” Sylvain pressed. “I don’t know if you noticed. In fact, I know you haven’t, but girls in the whole Officers Academy love you. Just yesterday, a girl asked me to introduce her to you. Alas, I had to turn her down and give her some much needed comfort once I told her the sad truth…You wouldn’t make me break a girl’s heart like that again, would you?”
“You don’t need by help to break hearts, leech.”
“Look around. Go on, try it.”
Felix closed his eyes. He wanted to go back to the training crowd and beat a Sylvain-shaped dummy into submission. In fact, he was tempted to forego the dummy and move on to the real thing. But a favour was a favour, and like it or not, he didn’t go back on his word. Often.
Felix pulled his hands down and scanned the crowd, looking for an aesthetically pleasing girl. The sooner he picked one, the sooner he could leave.
“Um…her,” Felix said. He pointed to a student from the Blue Lions, one with chestnut-coloured locks flowing down to her knees.
“Ah,” said Sylvain. “Beautiful hair, mesmerizing eyes, and that bone structure…You have an eye for perfection, Felix.”
“She looks strong. She would make a good sparring partner.”
Sylvain slapped his face with his hand.
“Hm.” Felix scanned the area. His attention landed on a familiar head of pink bobbing between the crowd. It was Hilda, and latched onto her arm was a very reluctant looking Marianne. “There’s Hilda. She has an excellent swing, but her footwork needs work—she leaves herself too open to attack. I think I could spar with her.”
“Uh, that’s not the type of sparring I was thinking of,” Sylvain said with a nervous lilt to his voice. Still, he glanced from Hilda and Marianne, then back to Felix. “Oh, I just got an idea.”
“That’s terrible.”
“You haven’t even heard it yet.”
“Whatever it is, it’s terrible.”
“You take Marianne, I’ll take Hilda.”
“Excuse me.”
“C’mon, Marianne’s your type, Hilda’s mine. Not that I can’t appreciate a delicate flower like Marianne, but anything for my good buddy, Felix. Everybody wins.”
“I don’t know Marianne, nor am I interested.”
“No, no, no, you’re missing the point here. You don’t have to know them. That’s the beautiful part of it.”
“I want no part of this.”
“You’re making my job difficult,” Sylvain sighed. “But okay, I can take a challenge.”
Sylvain scanned the crowd, eyes lingering on ones he found attractive. Felix rolled his eyes.
“Okay, there,” said Sylvain. “Hey, I think she’s checking you out!”
Felix jolted and did a double take. Sure enough, visible through the crowd and pretending to be interested in a vendor’s wears was a dark-haired girl who he thought he recognized from the Black Eagle house. When their gazes locked, she peered away. She let her eyes drift until they were staring again.
“She’s into you,” said Sylvain. “Oh, she’s so into you.”
The girl just would. Not. Look. Away. She kept staring. She tried a toothy smile that made his stomach clench. Neither of them were capable of breaking the staredown. Then, her hand twitched as if reaching for something.
His mind switched. He seized the hilt of his sword and relished in the unsheathing metal drawing out.
“Uh, Felix, that’s the wrong type of sword to be whipping out in a situation like this,” Sylvain laughed nervously.
“She’s threatening me,” said Felix.
“No?! She’s not?! FELIX, WAIT!”
Byleth leaned against the desk with her face in her hands. “You caused a riot.”
“She was threatening me,” Felix said.
“Eye contact isn’t a threat, Felix,” said Sylvain. “I’m sorry about this, Professor, I should’ve remembered that Felix feels threatened if anything looks at him for too long.”
“You two are on stable duty for the next month,” said Byleth.
“What!” Sylvain exclaimed. “C’mon, Professor, that’s not fair.”
“I have training to do,” Felix complained.
“I don’t want to hear a word out of either of you,” Byleth snapped. “Just get out. And if I hear that you’re attacking random people in the streets again, we’re going to have stronger words.”
Felix and Sylvain left Byleth’s office side by side. Once out in the cool air, Felix slapped Sylvain over the back of the head.
“You owe me a favour,” said Felix.
“Hey, I just wanted us to spend some quality time together,” said Sylvain. “And it wasn’t a total loss.”
“I suppose not. Hilda offered to spar with me after the Knights came in to quel the riot. I look forward to studying her technique.”
Sylvain went slack-jawed, eyes bulging from his head.
Felix just stared back. He looked for signs of a lingering threat in Sylvain’s eyes, and found none. “…Why are you looking at me like that?”