Chapter Text
I was not supposed to be outside the school grounds after curfew. In my defense, neither were half the students in Tsukimura village that night.
The night air bit through my thin summer uniform as I left The Laughing Cauldron, a pub popular among us students, and started up the mountain road toward the school. Behind me, Tsukimura Village glowed with floating lantern lights. My classmates’ drunken laughter spilled out of the tavern’s open door, dissolving into the darkness like smoke against the mountain’s looming shadow.
Most of my classmates were still inside.
It was the end of the academic year at Tsukikage School of Magic, which meant two things were happening at the same time. During the weekdays, everyone was buried under mountains of textbooks, preparing for the year-end examinations, and on weekends, those same students would crowd every pub and tavern in Tsukimura, getting drunk until they lost themselves.
That was our unofficial coping strategy.
Tsukikage School of Magic perched on the steep volcanic slopes of Minami-Iwo-Jima, where palm trees gave way to mist-shrouded stone buildings. The Japanese Ministry's official maps marked it as uninhabited, a clever deception that kept Muggles away while allowing one of the densest wizard populations in Asia to thrive undetected. Similar hidden communities dotted the main island of Japan too, invisible pockets of magic tucked between Tokyo skyscrapers and beneath ancient mountain shrines.
The only reason Tsukikage did not get more transfer students was because of how isolated the island was. That, and the local admission system was a bureaucratic nightmare. Other than that, it was basically Hogwarts, except it was an old castle built into the side of a dormant volcano and modeled after a half-forgotten blend of Heian and mid-century Shōwa architecture.
Tsukimura was the little wizarding village at the base of the mountain, surrounded by a dense forbidden forest that was home to all manner of magical creatures and enchanted wildlife. The village survived almost entirely on students’ bad decisions and had grown into a strange hybrid of student town and a magic marketplace. The villagers tolerated us well enough, though I suspected the business owners appreciated exam season the most. Half the school seemed determined to drown their exam anxiety in beer and sake before the tests began.
Personally, I don’t see the appeal.
It wasn’t that I was completely opposed to drinking, but I discovered very quickly that my tolerance was embarrassingly low. Two cups of Sake or a pint of beer are enough to make the room tilt in a way I found deeply unpleasant.
Still, I came most weekends anyway, nursing a single pint of beer while Tanaka and Yoshida slurred through increasingly nonsensical debates about wand movements across the table, rather than simply lying awake in an empty house dormitory, listening to the silence. I'd developed a routine: arrive at nine, claim my usual spot, tolerate two hours of increasingly ridiculous magical theories, then slip away before anyone started singing or, worse, crying.
Which was exactly what I had done tonight. By the time the third round of drinks arrived at the table, the conversation had already devolved into someone loudly insisting they could duel a senior Auror if given the opportunity. And that was usually my signal to leave.
The mountain road stretched ahead of me now, winding upwards through tall cedar trees toward the school grounds. Lantern charms floated at intervals along the path, glowing softly like captured fireflies. The walk back to Tsukikage took about twenty minutes if you kept at a steady pace.
I didn’t mind it.
After an evening of loud taverns and drunken debates, the quiet was almost peaceful. I shoved my hands into my pockets and continued up the road, listening to the distant sounds of the village fade behind me.
Six years. That was how long I had been a student at Tsukikage.
I arrived when I was ten, though the academy doesn’t consider those early years part of formal education. Classes only truly begin at thirteen. The first few years are simply preparation, an introduction to magic, and a slow adjustment to life away from home.
Which meant I was now in my sixth year of formal study. Nineteen years old, about to turn twenty soon.
The academy trained young witches and wizards from all across Japan, taking them in as young as seven-year-olds. That’s perhaps where it differs a bit from the main branch, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, located in the Scottish Highlands. The formal education at Hogwarts began at eleven. Though lately it’s been adjusted to thirteen following the fall of Lord Voldemort. Several wizarding governments reviewed their education systems, and one major concern was that the students were simply too young and too emotionally immature to be introduced to the dangers of the wizarding world so early.
As for Tsukikage, many parents in recent years have grown reluctant to send their children to such a remote island so young.
My mother certainly had.
She refused to send me until I was about ten years old. She very persistently ignored every letter and owl the school had sent. She even avoided the teachers who came to speak with her until one school counselor finally managed to get through to her and appease her fears. By the time I finally arrived, I discovered that formal classes didn’t begin until after I turned thirteen anyway. The earlier years were simply meant to prepare us and introduce us to the world we were about to enter.
So, in that sense, I didn’t miss much.
Thank you, Hiromi, for being so stubborn about not sending me away.
Next year, year seven, marks the end of my studies at Tsukikage, and I will be released into the wider world as something resembling a competent adult. I hope I will be one when that time comes. But that’s a story for another day. I have to survive the sixth-year annual exams first.
Right now, the entire school is looming under the shadow of those tests. Even the professors look tired. I exhaled slowly, watching my breath fog in the cool air. Summers on the island were strange. The days were scorching hot, but the nights turned bitterly cold. I should’ve carried my outer robes or at least a jacket with me.
All these thoughts swirled through my head as I continued to walk up the path toward the mountain. That was when I heard a sudden burst of shouting coming from one of the paths off the main road. They seemed to be arguing about something, but a wall of high shrubs made it impossible to see anything.
I left the pub fairly early, but no matter how I think about it, it was probably past eleven pm by then. And there would usually be nothing particular going on with the village that would prompt this sort of rowdiness this late at night. Tsukimura, at the end of the day, was a sleepy village if you ignore the occasional student scuffles that happen every now and then.
I veered off the main path toward the commotion. Through a gap in the foliage, I glimpsed four or five men in disheveled robes circling someone and raising hell. At the center of their jeers crouched a figure hunched protectively over a large leather briefcase that he held close to his chest.
One of the men cackled and dumped his beer on the man’s head.
No matter how I look at it, directly confronting them is out of the question. There were too many of them. I was confident in my combat skills, but even confidence had limits. More importantly, if things escalated, I would have no way of explaining to the house master or the Headmistress what I was doing in Tsukimura this late at night when there was a perfectly clear curfew I was supposed to be following. So I took a deep breath and shouted:
“Security! Right over there! Hurry! Someone’s being attacked!”
At my shout, the over-excited drunks scattered and dissolved into the night like startled cats. Only their victim remained, still crouched on the ground. With careful, deliberate movements, he reached into his breast pocket and withdrew a neatly folded handkerchief, then began dabbing at the beer soaking his hair and collar.
“Are you okay?” I asked
“…You’re a lifesaver.”
He straightened slowly, brushing invisible dust from his sleeve.
Under the warm light of the floating lanterns, the man turned around. The golden glow caught in his hair, not just blond, but the precise shade of honey that drizzled through sunlight. His eyes, the impossible blue of alpine lakes in midsummer, met mine with startling directness. I prayed he hadn’t caught the little “whoa” I’d let out under my breath.
I’m going to make a bold assertion here: I’ve never laid eyes on a more beautiful human being in my life. My throat went dry. The lantern light seemed to bend around him, as if even photons couldn't help but linger. Each feature, the slope of his high cheekbones, the perfect symmetry of his face, those impossible blue eyes that I felt like I could stare at for hours, seemed like they were designed by someone who understood beauty as a mathematical equation. His skin reminded me of the finest porcelain my mother kept behind glass. Luminous, unmarred, and almost translucent, where the light caught his jawline. And when he spoke Japanese, each syllable emerged with the crisp perfection of temple bells.
Time seemed to crystallize around him. The night air, previously just cold, now felt charged with static electricity. Dust motes suspended in the lantern light orbited him like tiny planets. My heart stuttered against my ribs. Had this been a woman, I might have called it destiny—this moonlit rescue on a mountain path. But this was a man in a charcoal gray suit with silver cufflinks that winked like stars when he moved his hands, and I couldn't look away.
He told me his name was Richard. He looked like someone new to the island. Surely I would have noticed such a face in the narrow streets of Tsukimura or the hallways of Tsukikage. Even on Minami-Iwo-Jima as a whole, he would have stood out like a foreign coin mixed into a handful of yen.
A gorgeous person like him would be hard to forget once you lay your eyes on them. That made me wonder whether he was here on personal business or on school-related business. It would be cool if he were somehow connected to the school, like a cool new professor. Though I don’t know, it’s rare to get new professors at this time of the year.
When I prompted Richard and asked him what had happened with those men, he exhaled through his nose so dramatically that it somehow conveyed centuries of accumulated human frustration compressed into a single breath.
“There were some…rather unique circumstances,” he said.
He then began to tell me a story that made it sound like this might very well have been the worst day of his life.
Richard arrived at the island earlier that day on the Ryūgetsu, an old, enchanted ship that is the primary mode of travel for anyone and everyone who travels to Minami-Iwo-Jima. His journey should have been straightforward—dock at the port, take a carriage through the forest, reach the village, and check into his lodgings. Instead, his luggage had been misplaced by the house elves overseeing the baggage transport. He was forced to wait hours at the harbor while the ghost officials searched the ship. By the time they located it, it was already late into the evening. But his troubles didn’t end there. The carriage he’d taken to Tsukimura had gotten lost twice in the forest path, overcharged by a surly cart driver who abandoned him at the village entrance, where he encountered the ill-mannered drunks, had beer poured all over him, and dented his briefcase.
I winced, imagining the cascade of misfortunes piling up on this stranger's day. The Ryugetsu staff, with their pressed uniforms and clockwork efficiency—rarely misplaced so much as a handkerchief, let alone an entire piece of luggage. Something about his story felt almost cosmically unfair, as if the island itself had conspired against his arrival.
We fell into step together on the winding path back into the heart of Tsukimura Village. Richard assured me several times he needed no escort, and something in the precise way he adjusted his cuffs suggested he was accustomed to handling far worse than drunken locals. Though I noticed he didn't actually quicken his pace or turn away.
Something kept me walking beside him—perhaps the quiet satisfaction of seeing this rescue through to its proper end, or maybe just the strange gravity he seemed to exert. Either way, I found myself determined to escort this beautiful being safely to his lodgings.
A corner of his briefcase seemed slightly dented from the previous scuffle. Richard was carrying it, cradled in both his arms. I offered to carry it for him, but he stubbornly refused.
It was past midnight by the time we arrived at The Moonbridge House, where he was staying. Perched in Tsukimura’s upper district, the establishment styled itself a “long stay business residence,” according to the ornate wooden sign hanging at the gate. We stood together on the landing for a moment, breathing the cold air. I told him I’d wait until he went inside, and he gave me this look like he was utterly baffled by me.
“Are you sure you’re not a knight?”
“A knight?”
“A gentleman,” Richard pronounced expertly in native-sounding English. “You accompanied me until I reached my lodge, and now you’re willing to wait until I actually get inside, even though you could’ve very well left after the drunks got away.”
“Well, it would’ve been annoying if I’d left and they came back to harass you once again, right?”
Richard laughed a bit softly at that. His expression remained quite amused throughout. I have no idea what he found so funny about that. But something about my earnestness seemed to delight him in a way I couldn't quite understand.
And then, I let out a loud “um” without really thinking, and he paused.
“I, um, I know you’ve been through a lot today, but please don’t let this experience make you hate Tsukimura. Not everyone’s like those idiots.”
“I’m quite aware. Not to mention, making sweeping generalizations about people is a rather foolish endeavor. You shouldn’t feel responsible for their behavior.”
Foolish. I hadn’t heard that word in a long time.
Richard pivoted toward the entrance, then hesitated mid-step, his shoulders turning back to face me like the second hand of a clock reversing its course.
“How should I identify my knight in shining armour?” he asked, a small smile playing on his face.
The nickname caught me off guard. I felt heat rising to my cheeks, but managed to meet his eyes as I replied.
“Seigi. Seigi Nakata.”
Richard seemed a bit surprised at first, but his eyes crinkled into a smile, “I see, you really did your name justice, huh?”
It took me a second to realize what he meant.
With that, he pivoted gracefully and wished me goodnight, his voice carrying a note of genuine concern as he reminded me to return safely to campus. I couldn't look away as he ascended the stone path, each step deliberate and elegant. At the door, he set his briefcase down with the care one might show a sleeping cat, then produced a wand from his sleeve. The whispered incantation that followed was too soft to catch, but its effect was immediate—the door responded not with a simple click but a mechanical ballet, its panels separating and sliding apart like the petals of some clockwork flower. Richard reclaimed his briefcase, turned back just enough to offer me one last smile that seemed to hold a private amusement, then vanished into the building as the enchanted door reassembled itself behind him.
His parting smile lingered in my mind as I stood there, wondering if I'd imagined the promise of "until next time" in those blue eyes, or if my own wishful thinking had simply painted it there.