Chapter 3: My Parents Are Also the Problem, Apparently

Dinner was a trap.

I realized it was a trap as soon as I walked into the dining room and saw candles. We never have candles at dinner. Usually, there’s just a lamp, some bread, and my father grumbling about the guild’s numbers. Candles meant something special. Something special meant my mother had Feelings she wanted to talk about.

My mother was already seated.

She wore the blue dress with embroidery—the one she saved for festivals, weddings, or that time the bishop insulted her cooking. She was smiling, hands folded on the table. It was the same smile Sakura used.

I had not previously made that connection.

I was making it now.

“Alfred, darling. Sit.”

“I could eat in my room.”

“Sit.”

I sat.

My father came in behind me, hair still damp from washing up, and sat across from me with a heavy sigh, like he’d been waiting for this all day. He reached for the bread, but my mother slapped his hand away and pushed the bread toward me instead.

“Eat, sweetheart. You must be tired from all that training.”

“I am.”

“And from the summons.”

“I am.”

“And from your future.”

“…”

“Don’t slouch, Alfred.”

I wasn’t slouching, but I straightened up anyway. My mother can say my name in a way that makes my back go rigid whether I want it to or not. My father watched and snorted into his cup.

“He’s straightening.”

“He’s a good boy.”

“He’s straightening because you terrified him.”

“I did not terrify him. I encouraged him.”

“Is that what we’re calling it?”

“Eat your soup, dear.”

My father ate his soup. My mother turned her smile back to me. The candlelight made her eyes twinkle, which was never a good sign in our house.

“So. The Royal Academy.”

“Yes.”

“At dawn.”

“Yes.”

“With Sakura-chan already in the Tower.”

“…coincidentally.”

“Mm. Coincidentally.”

She took a careful sip of water and set her cup down without a sound. Even assassins make more noise than my mother does when she puts down a cup.

“It’s very romantic.”

“It is not romantic.”

“The capital is lovely in spring.”

“I will not be there in the spring.”

“You might be.”

“I might not.”

“The Academy runs year-round, darling.”

“…”

My father was grinning into his soup, pretending to be interested in it. The soup wasn’t that interesting. I knew because I was staring at it too, hoping it would somehow save me from this conversation.

“Mother.”

“Yes, darling.”

“I am being sent to the capital to study magic.”

“Yes.”

“Sakura-san is being evaluated in a tower.”

“Yes.”

“These are two separate events.”

“Of course, darling.”

“They have nothing to do with each other.”

“Of course not.”

“Mother.”

“I didn’t say anything, Alfred.”

“You’re smiling.”

“A mother is allowed to smile.”

“Not like that.”

My father choked. Really choked. Soup went down the wrong way, and he coughed into his napkin for a good ten seconds. My mother handed him another napkin without looking away from me. The candlelight still made her eyes do that twinkling thing.

“Your father did the same thing, you know.”

“Please do not tell me a story.”

“When we were courting.”

“Mother.”

“He used to run.”

“MOTHER.”

“Across entire districts, Alfred.”

My father recovered, set his napkin down, and leaned back in his chair with his hands behind his head, looking like someone ready to enjoy a show he’d already paid for.

“I did not run.”

“You ran.”

“I walked briskly in the opposite direction.”

“For six months.”

“I had things to do.”

“You had me to do, darling. You just didn’t know it yet.”

I buried my face in my hands.

“I am eating.”

“Finish your soup, Alfred.”

“I have lost my appetite.”

“Finish your soup.”

I finished my soup.

My mother leaned over and tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. Her fingers were warm, and she smelled like her favorite nighttime tea with dried flowers. For a moment, I felt eight years old again, before anything bad had happened.

Then she spoke.

“Sakura-chan is a very devoted girl.”

“She is not devoted. She is a natural disaster.”

“Devotion is a form of disaster, darling. That is what makes it love.”

“That is the worst thing you have ever said to me.”

“I have said worse. You were too young to remember.”

“Reassuring.”

My father made a sound that wasn’t quite a laugh. It was the kind of noise a man makes when his wife says something that reminds him exactly why he married her. He pointed his spoon at me.

“Your mother ambushed me at a bathhouse.”

“I do not want to hear this.”

“I was seventeen. I was trying to relax.”

“I am begging you.”

“She climbed the wall.”

“Father.“

“She brought snacks.”

My mother beamed. She sat there in her festival dress, hands folded, candles twinkling, and smiled about the time she snuck into the men’s hot springs with rice crackers to corner my teenage father against a rock.

These were my parents. These were the people responsible for my existence. These were the people who had, just this morning, nodded solemnly at a royal messenger and said “yes, of course, at dawn,” as if they were not actively plotting to hand me over to a smiling girl in a white tower.

“You support this.”

“We support what, darling?”

“Sakura-san.”

“We adore Sakura-chan.”

“She drew my face on a rice ball.”

“That’s thoughtful, Alfred.”

“She fed me my own face.”

“She’s artistic.”

“Father. Please. You have to help me.”

My father looked at me—the guild leader, the man who made me practice my stance that morning and smiled like he’d finally met his son. I know he loves me; I have proof. He looked at me across the candlelit table and said, in the voice of someone committing a careful, deliberate crime:

“Good luck at the Academy, son.”

“Father.”

“Your grandmother chased your grandfather into a war zone.”

“Father, no—”

“The Haruno girls have always been like that.”

“The Haruno girls have always been like that.“

“Yes.”

“There is a pattern?”

“Alfred, darling, finish your bread.”

I finished my bread.

I wasn’t going to win at this table. I wasn’t going to win in this house. I’d been born into a conspiracy, raised in it, and now the conspiracy had served me soup.

After dinner, I packed.

My room was small, and I didn’t own much. A few shirts, a travel cloak, good boots, bad boots for rainy days, a book from my grandfather I never finished, and a wooden practice dagger I made at ten but couldn’t throw away. I kept folding and unfolding my things, needing to keep my hands busy because my thoughts were too loud.

The Academy.

By order of the king.

At dawn.

I sat on the edge of my bed, stared at my travel bag, and tried for the fourth time that night to make sense of it all.

Sakura walked into the Tower on Tuesday. By Thursday, a royal messenger in palace colors bowed to me in my training yard and handed me a scroll with the king’s seal. The king—the king of the whole kingdom. As far as I knew, he didn’t care if a lazy guild leader’s son went to magic school.

Until two days after Sakura walked into a tower.

“…no.”

I said it out loud. I said it to the empty room. The empty room did not argue with me, because the empty room knew I was lying.

There was no way. Absolutely no way. She’d only been in that tower for forty-eight hours. She didn’t know the king. She didn’t know anyone who knew the king. She was just a sixteen-year-old girl with neat handwriting and a worrying smile. She couldn’t have—

She could not have —

I remembered the silver hair clip I gave her for her eighth birthday. When I gave it to her, she stared at it for a long time and then asked if it counted as a promise. I’d said sure, whatever—it was just a clip. I was eight.

She was still wearing it.

She had been wearing it this morning, in the alley, when she made me eat a rice ball with my own face on it.

“…no.”

The word came out shorter this time.

There was a soft knock. My mother stood in the doorway holding a folded scarf. She walked over and set it on my bag without asking, like mothers do. She smoothed it out and kissed the top of my head.

“Be kind to her, Alfred.”

“Mother.”

“She tries very hard.”

“Mother.“

“Sleep well, darling. Dawn comes early.”

She left. The door clicked shut.

I sat on the edge of my bed, the royal summons on my desk and a scarf I hadn’t packed in my bag. A quiet, cold thought sat at the back of my mind, just out of reach.

The candle on my nightstand guttered.

Somewhere across the city, on the north hill, a light was on in the top window of a white tower.

I lay down. I pulled the blanket up. I closed my eyes.

I did not sleep.