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Zeze Ryou was in the middle of chemistry class when the migraine hit.
It started small. He stared up ahead at the blackboard and found the equations were harder to read than they should be. Every time he blinked, a small point of light overtook his field of vision, warping the teacher’s hurried handwriting until it turned nonsensical. His uncle might be right: maybe he really did need glasses.
Ryou frowned. If he got glasses, he would look even more like Teshimano. And it was already bad enough that Teshimano did his hair the same way Prince Eugene did. Last week, one of the girls in class 1-2 had asked him whether Teshimano was his boyfriend. It didn’t help that the guy had taken to following him everywhere he went – no, Ryou couldn’t get glasses.
He would never get a girlfriend this way.
(instantly, that day a few weeks ago came to mind, when he’d called Minami his wife in front of the entire class)
(even the ones who weren’t reincarnated)
(it wasn’t his fault the type of girls he was attracted to turned out to be his wife he’d killed in a past life)
Tapping his pen against his notebook, Ryou focused. Eugene’s memories had given him a new burst of appreciation for school work (three different teachers had asked him if everything was alright after he actually submitted his homework on time for once), but that didn’t mean he actually liked studying. Or chemistry. Eugene had never really been that keen on understanding the building stones of the universe either – social science and history on the other hand… Ryou certainly found those more interesting now.
It was weird. To suddenly be two people.
Most of the time he tried not to think about it.
He blinked again, and the entire world lurched sideways. His grip on his pen tightened. Glancing towards Teshimano and Ootomo, no one else seemed to have noticed. So just him then.
Ryou forced himself to take a deep breath. He should ask Takemura-sensei if he could maybe switch to a seat in the front for next class. Something was wrong with his eyes. They wouldn’t really focus, and it was getting worse.
Takao raised her hand. “Um, Sensei?” Her voice was like nails being traced over a blackboard. Ryou had to actively stop himself from covering his ears with his hands.
“Yes?” Takemura wasn’t any better.
Noise hurt.
There was no other way to describe it. Ryou had never experienced anything like it before. It was as if someone had taken his ears and filled them with water or one of those doctor thingies, the ones that made your heartbeat very loud. Every sound seemed to echo, with a direct – painful – connection straight to his brain.
It didn’t help that half his vision was just static by now.
“Can I have Minami’s worksheets for today? I am collecting them so he can do catch-up work once he’s feeling better.”
Right. Minami was out sick again today as well. It had gotten kind of frequent. Takao’s reminder had the class exchange weighted looks – well, the ones in the know, anyway. Their time was running out.
Ryou’s knee bounced against the underside of his desk. It rattled his pencil case, even that small noise deafening to his ears. Fear curdled in his stomach. Half his field of vision was gone, his entire left side filled with rainbow colored static. Dropping his pen, he dug his fingers into the worn wood of his desk. His knuckles turned white.
It wasn’t painful. Not really.
Well, sound was, the murmurs of his classmates over Minami’s fate a vortex of confusing, confuddled noise. But his vanishing sight didn’t hurt. It was more like pressure being piled on top of his head. It had an undeniable presence, but there was no actual word for it.
Was Minami’s fate finally catching up to him as well?
His left hand shook when he raised it. He had to turn his head slightly to even be able to see it. If he looked straight ahead, it was gone, swallowed up by the swirling patterns invading the room. When he moved his head, the entire classroom swayed. Ryou wasn’t quite sure if he could stand up. He didn’t trust his own legs to hold him.
“Yes, Zeze?”
“Um…” His mouth was awfully dry all of a sudden. The entire class turned to look at him. Usually he didn’t contribute other than to make a crass joke – or recently, to remind them of his position as their prince. He wasn’t used to all that attention.“I’m not feeling well either.”
His jaw popped when he spoke. Spit pooled in the back of his throat. Clearing it did nothing. His stomach felt weird. Really tight, as if someone was holding it in their hand, slowly squeezing it. A stony fist holding onto his entrails. It was hard to keep his eyes open. His left lid twitched.
Why was everything so damn loud?
“Do you want to go to the nurses’ office?” Takemura’s voice was kilometers away, only reaching him through a thick fog. Single sounds vanished, only to pop up seconds later, too loud and too close.
Ryou tried to answer – really, he did. But when he stood up to show his respect, the room tipped sideways. It didn’t really make sense. His ears rang as if someone had pulled the fire alarm. For a moment, he saw the sky outside the window with its heavy clouds drowning out the light, followed by Teshimano’s shocked face and the screech of a chair as it skidded over tiled floor. He fell. Or maybe the world did.
He could have sworn that it was Veronica who stared down at him in judgement.
Everything turned black before his muddled brain could even try to make sense of it.
The mattress he was lying on was hard and unforgiving. For a moment, he was back on the road, weeks of travel necessary just to reach that cursed castle his wife-to-be inhabited. There’d been too few stone roads to travel on, inns a scarcity in that part of the country, so for long stretches of the journey, they had slept in tents by the roadside. Unbecoming of a member of the royal family.
Then again, he’d been a pawn.
The blanket on top of him was scratchy. Someone had undone the top button of his uniform, allowing him to breathe. It took a little bit for his brain to make sense of this jumbled mess of sensory information. The steady pulse of a skull crushing headache behind his right temple didn’t help.
He wasn’t Prince Eugene.
He was Zeze Ryou.
He was fifteen years old, a first year at Minato Prefectural High School. He lived on his own, his parents had recently divorced, and he had an older sister who sometimes seemed like a stranger to him. His grandmother adored him. He liked electro music.
Underneath the blanket, his nails bit crescent moons into his palm. It helped ground him.
(he remembered the smell of blood, the weight of his sword, the reality of taking a life)
(most of his classmates died because of his orders)
(he killed more than one of them directly)
Somewhere to his right, a blanket rustled. He wasn’t alone. Prying his eyes open, he flinched back. The lights had been dimmed, but even their gentle glare hurt. Taking a moment to allow himself to breathe, his stomach a tender ball of nausea, Ryou dared another look around.
He was in the infirmary. He’d never been here before, never even had friends who he could visit here as they skipped out on gym or Japanese literature. The cot he was on was one of maybe three, though he couldn’t see the others. A curtain had been drawn between him and his neighbor. The blinds in front of the window were drawn shut, only a few weak strands of the pale October light peaking through.
“Wh– What?” The word tasted of bile. Ryou couldn’t remember throwing up. “Urgh.”
“Ah, so you’re awake.” Minami’s voice crossed the distance between them.
Right, Takao had said that Minami was out sick as well.
“Why aren’t you at home?” Ryou whispered, one arm thrown over his eyes to block out even the faint light coming from outside. “You haven’t been to class.”
“I fainted on the steps of the school this morning. Haruko convinced them not to call my parents.” The curtain separating them rustled, Minami careful not to make too much noise as he pulled it back. “I’ve been here ever since. If the school calls my parents one more time, they’ll lock me up at a hospital. Can’t have that now, can we?”
Ryou dared to glance at Minami. Tie long gone, his white shirt was rumpled from sleep. His face was pale and drawn, pillow creases imprinted on his left cheek like some sort of esoteric drawing. Despite the obvious sickness clinging to his shoulders, the bastard was smiling.
“Oh yeah, whatever would we do if we lost our valiant leader?” Ryou’s sarcasm fell a little flat, on account of the throbbing pain squeezing his head like a stressball. Still, he tried. “What time is it? Where are the others?”
“2 pm. They just finished lunch. The nurse should be back in half an hour to check on us.” Minami winced when he sat back down on his cot. Damn it, they weren’t even sixteen yet. And already dying. Minami chuckled. “Hiroki and Haruko basically had to drag Teshimano out of here. He got really intense.”
“Surprised Takao left you alone, to be honest. She’s just as much your guard dog as Teshimano is mine.”
“Oh, she and Hiroki organized guards at the end of the hallway.” Minami’s expression turned severe. Ryou couldn’t tell if it was the topic of conversation or the pain that made it so. “Ootomo has a planner. I just told them to please focus on school. It’s bad enough I’m missing so many classes.”
The pressure in his head spiked. He closed his eyes tight, the clench of his jaw surely not helping. But he couldn’t help himself. Everything was pulled taunt, only a few measured breaths easing the fierce assault. When he slowly peeled his eyes back open, tears had collected in their corners. Every muscle in his body shook – being in this much agony was physically exhausting.
Was it like this for Minami all the time?
“Guess I’ll be joining you with your frequent flier miles here at the infirmary soon enough.” He didn’t quite manage to catch his breath. “Fuck, this sucks.”
“Yeah.” Laying back down, Minami looked at him from across the aisle. “You blacked out?”
“In the middle of Chemistry. I’ll never get a girlfriend like this.”
“Well, dear husband of mine—”
“Shut it. You literally have Takao.”
“And you have Teshimano…” There was a teasing glint to Minami’s brown eyes.
Ryou resisted the urge to point out how much this look reminded him of their wedding bed. Veronica and Eugene had only shared their bed for a couple of nights, royalty – thankfully – usually expected to keep separate chambers even after wedlock. Still, they had consummated their marriage. Veronica had done everything expected of a wife supposed to bear many healthy children for the future of her kingdom. It wasn’t her fault that her fate had always been to die.
Thinking about it now, Ryou understood how Veronica could have wished to be treated as a boy.
“He doesn’t even notice.” Ryou couldn’t tell Minami all that. How did you tell your male friend that sometimes he reminded you of the woman you used to be married to? Ryou had basically almost confessed once already. That had to be enough. “How he’s— you know.”
“Yeah.” Minami agreed. “I noticed him cleaning your apartment. And putting on coffee for us when we visit you. And he always walks behind you at school and— Takao, I mean, Haruko is the same. She’s my girlfriend, but damn… she treats me like I am her princess. Not in a— not in that way. Not— you know what I mean.”
Ryou laughed, even if it hurt. The flush high on Minami’s cheeks was worth it.
“I knew it. Even in this life, you want to be pampered by your girlfriend— does she draw your baths here as well? Do you still share it, like some naive porn fantasy—”
“Who told you about that?” Minami sat up, only to immediately fall back down when the headache reared its ugly head. He groaned, hands covering his face. “Of course, Haruko and I don’t— which one of the knights blabbed? I am going to kill them.”
“Only fifteen and you already know what your girlfriend looks like naked. You are such a quick learner, Minami–” It was easier to tease Minami than to talk about the real stuff. It was a real joy to see the impenetrable Minami Harusumi squirm and flush.
“It was her previous life, and you should really stop being a pervert right now because I also know what you looked like—”
Minami stopped immediately when Ryou flinched back from the sound. The pain was crescendoing again, a relentless wave battering against the stony cliffs of his head. Sound turned to incessant ringing, the bad taste in his mouth made so much worse by the bile he was forced to swallow back down.
He broke through the surface with a gasp. His chest felt tight.
“Zeze?”
“Yeah?” It was a gasp more than anything else.
“Are you okay?”
“Are we really dying?” It was a question that had to be asked. He feared the answer. The tear trailing down his cheek was a purely physical reaction. Promise. “Will this be the rest of our painfully short lives? Random headaches that knock us out? Until…?”
“You know more about it than I do. I wasn’t even aware this could happen until Nishina explained it a few months ago.”
That was the truth. For as much as Minami had established himself as a leader in this life, Veronica had been so fiercely set in the role of a Zerestrian princess that she hadn’t known the truth until the day of her death. Her murder. By his hand.
Eugene at least had been warned, even if that warning came too late.
“I would like to turn sixteen.” It was a silly confession. An ancient curse was killing them, they were fighting the literal concept of magic, somehow they still had to finish their math homework and avoid suspicion from their teachers, and all Ryou could focus on was the fact that it was October. And he could feel it in his bones, the knowledge that he wouldn’t make it to his birthday in December if things continued like this. “I’m sure my mom would come home for the celebration. It’s been a while since I last saw her.”
“Yeah. I really want a chance to go on a proper date with Haruko. One where she doesn’t check the exits every time we enter a store, and I’m actually— you know, not followed by two knights at a safe distance.” Minami pulled the scratchy blanket up to his chin.
Ryou mirrored him. It felt a bit like a sleepover.
It was cozy and secretive. In here, their pain became a shared burden, not a cruel fate.
What had Minami confessed to him? He always thought their marriage could have been a happy one.
Ryou banished the thought.
“I want to graduate high school. Buy a really pretty car and drive to Osaka just because I can,” Ryou offered to the room.
“I want to study at university and get a diploma so fancy my dad cannot help but be proud of me.”
“I want to go drinking in Akihabara until 4am. I want everyone to be embarrassed by how loud I can sing the fifth One Piece opening.”
“Hah, that’s a good one.” Minami furrowed his brows as he thought. “I want to eat so much ramen, I have to throw up.”
“That’s disgusting. And actually doable.”
“Say something better then!”
They both winced as Minami’s voice echoed through the room. Still, it wasn’t enough to stifle the sudden energy that had overtaken them.
“Sure.” Ryou turned and stared at the ceiling. If he stopped counting the dirty and scruffy off-white ceiling tiles, he could almost forget he was lying in the school infirmary. “I want to grow old enough to build a house.”
“To have a family.”
“To be someone other than a kid who died too young.”
They both fell silent.
It sucked that they had to pretend to be enemies in the classroom. It sucked that Ryou had to be Prince Eugene these days, instead of just Zeze Ryou. He was the one who told Teshimano that remembering was a kind of death. Back then, he’d been ready to die, should it turn out that Eugene was enough of an asshole to fuck up his second chance at living. As it was, he didn’t have to – his fate had been sealed long ago.
Minami was his friend. Veronica had been something else.
“I’m sorry I killed you.” Ryou spoke so softly, he wasn’t sure Minami had even heard.
“No, you’re not.”
“No, I’m not.”
“But I—” Minami sounded sleepy. “But I forgave you a while ago now. I think you should try and do the same.”
“We’re dying.”
“Yeah. Time to make the best of it.”
Veronica had always been a terrible optimist as well, for such a sad little girl.
“You scare me sometimes.”
“How so?”
Ryou made sure to turn on his side before speaking next, to look into the eyes of his sometimes friend and sometimes wife. “Last time I underestimated you, you orchestrated for one of our classmates to get almost killed. And then you framed it as a kindness.”
“Did I make you proud?” That glint in Minami’s eyes was back.
“Yeah.”
“Well, in that case…” Minami smiled. It showed teeth. “I do not plan to go gentle into the cold dark night.”
The pain hadn’t left. Still, Ryou closed his eyes with a promise. “Then I’ll have no other choice but to follow you, I guess. You are my wife after all.”
“And you wonder why you’re single.”
Ryou didn’t answer. He was asleep.