Decorated with white walls and wood-colored accents, Gray's room was finally ready. Well, it had been ready for a few hours now, but now that Gray arrived she felt a little overwhelmed by the comfort of the house.
"I think this is too much!"
She said, but Sakura put her hand on her shoulder to tell her:
"As long as you're here, this is going to be what you'll need. My father told me that from now on you'll be his apprentice. So, it will be a pleasure. Now he will have two apprentices. When you need something, when you have a doubt or don't feel well, don't be afraid to say so. You are our guest, so I will do my best to make you feel comfortable."
"I understand... I really appreciate it. This is all so different from my village that it feels anticlimactic."
"Well, from now on you'll have to see a lot of different things, but that won't be a problem."
"Listen to what that girl tells you. You can tell she wants to help you. But what could be expected of you. Everyone would feel so sorry for you that they would try to help you."
Add again, but this time Sakura voiced what she felt so Gray wouldn't feel demeaned by the annoying voice of that Mystic Code.
"I'm not doing this out of pity. This is what I want to do because it's born from my heart."
"You're too kind..."
Sakura denied at Gray's words.
"I'm not being kind. I'm simply being myself. Someday you'll leave together with my father and I'll be left alone. Until then, I'll try to enjoy every moment I have next to the people most important to me."
After that, Sakura said goodbye by closing the door.
***
For a few moments she stayed outside the hallway thinking.
The day that everyone will walk away from her, what will that all be like? How will she feel when that moment comes?
'I'm not going to think about that too much.'
Because thinking too much is what makes a person stagnate and unable to move forward. That's why she wasn't going to let this feeling consume her....
No...
That's a lie...
The more the hours, days and months go by, the more she feels that feeling of abandonment growing more and more; the paranoia that someday everyone will leave her side and she will be left alone in this world torments her.
If someday that comes to pass... if someday they all leave....
'What will I have left?'
An obvious answer, really. With Gray in this house, preparations for her father to go to the War for the Holy Grail are almost complete. All that remains is for the Clock Tower to decide who to send to the war.
***
In the meantime, Gray sat on the bed of sky blue sheets thinking about what to do next, however, when she saw a mirror on the other side of the room, she got out of bed and looked at her face.
Seeing that face reflected in the glass, she clenched her fists tightly. That distant memory of her baking homemade sweets with her mother came to her mind. The time when she was happy and didn't know it.
She wished she could go back to the past, when her face didn't look like that. She wanted to stop looking like that person that all her people wish she could become. But she hates this face. She hates herself for not knowing who she is right now.
She covered her face a little more with the hood and whispered.
"Who am I, what am I?"
Inside the cage, Add maintained his silence. He already knew how it is that this girl thinks. It's quite sad that such a big and cruel burden is on the shoulders of a country girl like Gray.
'Haa~ There's nothing sadder than having a sad master. I wonder if that Lord will be able to do anything about it?'
Until then, Gray will continue to think this way about herself.
***
The next day, Gray removed the mirror from her room. The night before she couldn't sleep due to the fact that when she looked at the ceiling, she realized that she was in an unfamiliar place and that scared her, besides the mirror reflecting scary shadows in the dark and the fact that she can see this face in that same mirror.
Right now she was dressed in a dress-like pajamas that Sakura bought her yesterday. It was quite comfortable to wear this, but she had to go back to wearing her usual clothes.
On the small table next to the bed, Add found herself with his eyes closed waiting all the time for something interesting to happen.
Gray watched him as she dressed and, when she finally put on her cloak, she took the bird cage in her right hand and opened the door.
The short hallway showed itself to her, revealing three more doors in the place.
She was curious about the other rooms, so without asking permission she opened the door opposite the one to her room. When she peeked her head through the door, she saw a sort of library full of books with a very pleasant smell.
Gray thought that place would be very comfortable and quiet for reading, so she went in and looked at the shelves full of books.
'This basement is bigger than it looks.'
In fact, the basement rooms directly encroach on the neighbors' private property because of their large size, but Waver used certain trickery to make that no longer a problem. Besides that Melvin took it upon himself to make some arrangements with the power of money.
In the center of the entire library was a large square table where books could be placed. There, she calmly walked around the place touching the books with her fingertips, and taking advantage of this, she took some books from the shelves and threw them on the big table.
After that, she took a seat and took a deep breath while opening one of the books she took. The book itself had an empty cover, but inside were many historical facts that caught her attention. Places like ancient Egypt, mysteries about the pyramids, among others, were the first things she read. There also seemed to be mystery novels among the whole order of books.
Sherlock Holmes, literature's most famous detective and his companion John H. Watson, was one of the novels there.
Since her town was somewhat remote, it was hard to get books she hadn't read, but she was a little excited to know that this library had some of what she had already read. It was a nice respite from all the stress, plus she undoubtedly felt that this place was adapting to her, or was it the opposite?
As she read everything with an Olympian calmness, the door opened and Sakura appeared looking for the guest of honor. When she saw the gray-haired girl reading so intently, she smiled slightly and knocked on the door twice so as not to startle her.
"Uh... good morning... I was, it's not what it looks like."
With the evidence literally served on the table, Gray thought she'd get in trouble for browsing the library books without permission, but Sakura shook her head to tell her it was okay. No problem there.
"Is there anything you like about this place? If it's any books, you can take them to your room and read them before you go to sleep."
"Are you sure?"
"It's now your home. You don't have to ask permission. My father wouldn't mind either. In fact, he would let you do whatever you want considering that from now on, apart from being his apprentice, you will also be his bodyguard."
"I see. I'll take your word for it and take this one."
"Enjoy it. It's a very interesting mystery novel. Although I like short stories by certain select authors better."
"Short stories are also something I usually read. At least in my village, there were old short stories and children's books."
"Now you can read whatever you want, at least what we have in this library. My father likes to buy books that he doesn't have in his collection. He always takes his time to read and study them. Although sometimes he doesn't sleep because he is so into his reading that I have to wake him up in the mornings."
"Lord El-Melloi II seems to be a somewhat strange person..."
"I would say that, rather than being someone strange, he is just someone very juvenile. Everyone would expect a person his age to act serious all the time, but that's not the case with him. He only acts serious when the situation warrants it, but when it doesn't it's quite the opposite. Just wait until you meet my sister for you to realize what I'm saying, it's quite a show..."
"Sister? You have a sister?"
"Something like that. She, Reines El-Melloi Archisorte, is my father's half-sister. She told me we could act like we were sisters, but even though it's been seven years since we met, I'm still not convinced of it. Yet I still call her sister."
Gray was silent after that. She didn't really know how to continue the conversation, but Sakura knew how to read the atmosphere very well, so she made sure that this room didn't freeze because of the silence.
"Right. There's breakfast already. That's why I was looking for you. Let's go upstairs."
"Yeah, I'll be right there."
Gray then left all the books in their place and followed Sakura.
When they came out of the basement, they approached the kitchen where the dining room is and saw the classic breakfast served on the table.
"Have a seat. I have to get ready to go to my father's school. I mustn't miss any of his classes, because afterwards I would have to face long hours of tutoring."
"The Modern Magecraft Department?"
"Yes. You can come with me if you want. I don't think anyone is going to be mad if you're there. You're my father's apprentice. I'm sure everyone will be jealous of that."
"For being an apprentice?"
"You know, I'm not exaggerating when I say that my father is the best at what he does. All of his students really appreciate him for the way he teaches. That's why they're going to be jealous that you can have a class with him anytime you want."
"I've heard rumors, but I didn't think he would be such a talented teacher."
"In any case, I'll wait for you if you want to join me."
Sakura went up to her room on the second floor and Gray stared at the food on the table.
Everything looked delicious, which led that girl to wonder if it was Sakura who prepared all this. She pushed that thought aside though and ate a bit of everything.
The bad thing was that her hunger was satiated with just one toast, so she felt bad for leaving the rest of the food there. So, even though she wasn't hungry anymore, she ate it all so fast that it made Add start laughing.
"You finally eat like a real person. You were already so scrawny, brat."
A vein swelled in Gray's forehead, who picked up the cage, even with a piece of bread in her mouth, and began to shake it vigorously to make Add dizzy and stop fussing.
In the end, Add again ended up face up babbling things about the presence of a monster in this house or something. The important thing is that Gray didn't care what his Mystic Code said.
After eating, she took the dishes from the table and went over to the sink to clean them.
There, as she washed the dishes, Sakura came down from her room wearing different clothes. Now she had a black beret on her head, a brown blouse with long sleeves and a beige knee-length skirt. She had long black stockings covering her legs and a pair of boots the same color as her skirt. It appeared that under her skirt she was wearing tight shorts.
"Shall we go?"
Gray didn't know what to say. Sakura looked very fashionable, but surely her clothes weren't just for looking good. She could tell that much. So she set the washed dishes aside and nodded her head.
It was time to discover more of this world.
With everything ready, they both left the house, but when they walked through the door, in front of them was that same car from so many years ago parked waiting for them.
In the window that suddenly rolled down, a blue-eyed, golden-haired girl was shown. She said to both of them:
"Do you want a ride?"
She was Reines.
To be continued...