"Chatter, chatter." Enix shuddered. The toast had just passed him and, whilst Fria was exuberantly gazing all around, he was left frightened at the overwhelming statures of people of all colors towering over him and buzzing around like bees.
All sorts of unsightly and pleasing faces flashed past him like a rapid projection playing at 5x speed.
Just as the silence started to scream in his numb mind, and the world felt as if its rotating speed had suddenly been doubled, Fria's hand slithered forward and clenched onto him just as he started to sway back.
The nauseating bustle and hustle quietened like some aggressive phonk ending on some peak note.
And all his world mounted atop Fria.
Fria shuddered and moved closer to him, snuggling into him as she cried meekly, "So frightening.
"F-father told me that I may well be able to choose any of the girls here as a fiancée... but... but... what are these lollipops?" Fria grimaced. Her heart brimming with loath and a tingle of suppressed fear.
"Lo-lollipops?" Enix repeated, his face visibly bewildered, 'Are there lollipops in this world and age?'
Fria nodded her head and clenched his hand tighter, "They are all half-wit kids... I doubt they know how to wipe their butts much less what a marriage is... Even as a joke, I would never agree to any of them."
As Fria listed her strong feelings, Enix, too, was compelled to break loose from the adults and focus on the ones he could see eye-to-eye.
And as he saw them, some having their mothers feed something to them. Some trying to idiotically look tough and ended up looking cute. Whilst a few were bawling miserably after tripping and another bunch trying to clean their faces with a napkin and ending up ruining it further.
He couldn't help but be taken aback, "Kids... they are kids." He put weight on his words. Half surprised and half accepting this scene.
'The oddity is me... with my transmigration part. Whilst Fria... Fria is a pioneer. A precocious child. Far above her peers... I guess I must've had some influence on her... but it was coupled with her own genius which turned her into as mature and brilliant as she is.'
"Hmm!" Fria nodded, her hand squeezing tighter as she jerked.
Enix stared at their hands, at her lily-like delicate hand and his sickly pale palms crumpled under her brute force.
He could feel his bone creaking, but she couldn't. Their joint palms sweated terribly.
Just as Enix was mulling over what to do, gritting his teeth and unable to even winch from the pain, the hall slightly quietened.
And from the gate strode in, smiling pleasantly and obstrusively, Duke Ululus with his wife and four children— two boys and two girls—Enix and Fria's cousins.
Ululus, unlike Juggu, was a bald man with a whiskered rough face. And arched above his large eyes were a pair of twine width brows and below his straight nose fat lips.
While his wife, waving a fan in her hand and her hair covered beneath a bonnet was rather beautiful.
But more than them, more than the other of his children, what caught Enix's eyes was their eldest son.
Being led forward by a servant on a wheelchair. He was about 10 to 12 years old, with one of his leg missing from beneath the knee.
His eyes a pair of incandescent knives, and his complexion that of a mad dog.
Juggu, alongside a smiling Mugam, calmly moved over and greeted them with a quick hug.
"Another pair of clowns join the show." Fria rolled her eyes, gently tugging Enix's hand and motioning for him to follow her.
As Enix was being dragged away with her grip, a large hand gently patted him, making him shiver and freeze.
"Allow me to borrow your sister for a moment, Fria." Juggu smiled and taking Enix's hand, started to walk toward the Duke's family— mingling with the nobles.
"Uh! Excuse me, Ululus. Pardon me stealing him for the brief moment." Juggu politely bowed toward the noble clinking glasses with Ululus and took off. Making his brother follow after him.
Just as they reached their own space, with Gufra, Ululus's wife, following her with her children. Juggu smiled and motioned toward the wheelchair boy, making Enix stare at him up-close.
There was look of contempt and seething hatred in his eyes as he stared at him, his nose bloated up.
"This is Enix, dear Trevor," Juggu smiled toward the boy, not diverting his eyes from Enix, and continued, "Your fiancèe."
Ululus's eyes glinted, and he stepped forward and smiled, "Our little girl has grown quite big, Juggu. She has become a fine person... I can tell just by her eyes that there's way more to her then her... appearance betrays."
Juggu smiled and nodded, "She is certainly a genius, Ululus. They are sure to be a marvelous pair. Both as they are."
Enix's and Trevor's eyes glinted at once.
Whilst Gufra smiled and patted him on the head, "Go dear, go talk to your fiancé on the side."
Enix froze as her hand lifted from his head. His eyes had yet to budge from Trevor's, much like his.
And as the air started to turn a little odd, Ululus coughed and voiced slightly rougher, "Trevor... go with your fiancée, have some chat with her."
"...Yes, father." Trevor snapped his finger, and the servant started to propell his wheelchair away.
As Enix stared at his departing figure, he felt a gentle nudge from behind, "Go after him."
He didn't know why, but as he glanced into his father's eyes, his feet began to move on their own.
He gave chase after Trevor, hearing his father's flying words get stuffed in his ear with a push, "She's a little tomboyish. But certainly things will sort between the two. Maybe they would relate due to their similarities."
'Tomboyish?' Enix turned back, his eyes quivering as he scourged through the masses for his father, 'Similarities?'
But before he could find him, he ended up seeing Mugam. With a face deathily black and a seering fire in her eyes making her hair shutter like a flame, she was glaring at Juggu like a tiger staring at a rat.
He suddenly bumped into somebody, and seeing it was the servant pulling the wheelchair, he looked down apologetically.
"You ungainly bitch." A snort came from the front, and Enix ended up staring at Trevor as his lips moved rapidly and wordlessly.
But quickly after, he felt something prickle his back... as he turned his head, he saw two eyes, as smoky and soul-crushing as a nuclear explosion, glued to him... glued to the person past him!
With her lips puckered out and her teeth grinding into an irritating sound making her forehead crown with veins; her hair floated like flaming lances, a heavy breath, leaden with the burden of a hundred elephants wafted out of Fria's small mouth.