Taking her place

Meeting him

His green eyes shine brightly under the moonlight as his eyes open wide when I turn to look at him. 

I stay quiet as I observe him carefully. 'He can’t be trusted, so I have to be careful.'

I look at the clothes that he is wearing and sigh softly. 'I guessed his size wrong.'

I think to myself as I realize that his shirt is too tight on him, he almost looks restricted and his pants look a bit too short. Since I knew that he would eventually turn into a man I left some clothes for a grown man in his closet in case he ever woke up and wanted to change but I never guessed that he would be too tall or too ripped for his clothes. 'I should have just gotten him clothes around the size that mike wears.'

I look at his feet and see that he is not wearing shoes before I look back at his face before I realize that he's also looking at me. His eyes roam every part of me and I begin to feel a bit of embarrassment, men like beautiful women.

In this world the definition of a beautiful woman is a fragile woman with soft untainted skin and fragile hands, I am none of those things. I have muscle, not a lot but enough to be a knight and to win my fights against others but my arms and body are not fragile looking due to it and it sometimes bothers me.

"I see you have woken up," I say as I take a seat on the water fountain.

His eyes look at my face now as I see his face twist weirdly, an expression that I have never seen before appears on his handsome face but before I can study it he turns away and covers his mouth.

"My mother found you, in the middle of the forest but what she brought back was a boy, not a man. Could you explain yourself as to why you look like this?" I ask as he looks at the floor shocked, still looking away from me for a couple of seconds before he looks at me again. Although I already know the answer to this question I try to sound as curious as possible for him to not think of me as someone suspicious. After all, it’s not like I can tell him that I know who he is because I saw my future.

"Did she find me with anyone else?" He asks as he closes his right hand into a fist.

"No, you were abandoned it seems. She found you walking in the dark woods in the form of a boy, all dirty and confused. You seem to not know who you are but I wonder if you know more as you are now?" I ask him as he looks at my eyes.

"I do, but if the other me doesn't that will be a problem." He says as he passes a hand through his hair.

I observe him as he looks at the floor in confusion and I sigh in pity towards the people who betrayed him, after all, he is not the type to forgive betrayal at least not yet.

The crickets sing as usual but soon stop and I slowly get up from where I am sitting. "I'd love to chat with you here but nobody in this house knows of your situation, if they catch you they might throw you out without realizing that you are the kid so do you mind if we change locations?"

He is confused as he looks elsewhere and begins to say "there’s someone coming" before I pull his hand towards the house and away from whoever may be coming closer to us. "Yeah, that's why I said let’s move our conversation to a more secure location." I try to whisper as I pull him hard but soon I begin to worry since the footsteps seem to be getting louder and the man in my hand seems to not want to cooperate as he pulls away from me, making me relieved that I have some sort of strength to pull him.

As we move through the side of the house I see a small entrance where the decor is usually placed and I pull him in there with me. The space is big enough to be dark and to fit a large vase but its barely enough to keep two people from prying eyes so there’s no other choice. "Shh..." I push him towards one side of the wall as I cover his mouth and keep my body as close to his as possible. "Try not to breathe too loud," I whisper as he freezes.

I wait as I look to the side of the hallway where there’s light and I see Lenna walking towards the garden with her sword in hand. I stop breathing for a moment due to the stress of being possibly found by her with a man in my pajamas outside of the house late at night. Knowing her, she will force me to marry the man for being shameless enough to wear the thinnest clothes I own in front of him. I push into him harder as I see her walking past us as I shove my face into his chest to cover up my distressed breathing.

As soon as she leaves I gasp as I pull my head off his chest out of relief. 'That could have been bad.'

"Oh sorry." I move away from him as I look around and check that there’s no one else as I pull him towards the back entrance. "Come with me."

I sigh loudly as we finally make it to his room, I had almost forgotten that Lenna sometimes trains herself at night when she cannot sleep.

"Let's not do that again," I say to him as he just stares at me.

I stare back at him and I am immediately captured by his beauty. 

His expression is that of a beast that has not eaten in a while and I shiver as I realize that my body may be reacting to his gaze. "We can't turn on the lights since my sister might come up to check up on the child version of you, but you can let the moonlight in by opening the curtains." I walk over to the windows as I begin to tie them to the sides of the wall to keep them open.

I turn to look at him, but I'm pushed towards a wall as he grabs both of my wrists and pushes them towards the wall above my head. A small whining sound comes out of my mouth as I feel the same hand where Lenna hurt me begin to burn.

"Why should I believe you?" He asks as he grabs my chin so that I am now looking at him.

Tears begin to come out of my eyes as I try to hold them in, but it doesn't work, after all my arm is bruised and my wrists are possibly being bruised at the moment.

"Look I don't know what is getting you so riled up right now, but don't you think doing this will cause an uproar?"

"You are lying, there’s no way you didn't find me with someone else. She would never leave my side." He begins to talk to himself as he pushes me back against the wall again. "What did you do to her?"

"f**k!" I gasp as the pain makes me lose the strength in my legs as he stares at me in a confused expression. "Look if you could just let me go then we can talk about this."

"No, for all I know you'll try to run."

At this point my patience is running low as he grabs my neck and begins to lift me up. "If you won’t talk, I’ll just have to make you."

'Fucker.'

I gather all the strength that I have left in my limbs as I lift my legs and kick him as hard as I can in the chest making him lose his breath. He lets go of me as he moves backward with his hands to his chest, I fall to the ground but manage to save myself from getting hurt at the last minute as I land with all four on the floor.

"Look it’s not my fault that you are barely realizing that people aren't all rainbows and butterflies. This really isn't the time and I'm not the person for you to try to turn your anger on." I get up as I shake my wrists, the words come out as if I were the me in my past life and this causes him to look at me in a confused expression.

"You've been trained." He says as he gets up from the floor slowly as he keeps his eyes on me. "Why?" He moves towards me as he looks at me with a confused expression. "Why would you help me?"

"I don't know your circumstances but I’ve been there before, it’s a moment where you are thrown into a place where you know nothing about and at the same time your world flips upside down and all you want to do is throw everything around you." I wrap my arms around myself and message my neck where he had his hand as he continues to stare at me. "At that moment of my life, I was also helped by someone who took me under their wing, just think of this as me trying to pay back what was given to me. Just think of it as fate, fate allowed me to be saved, fate will now allow you to be saved. The only difference is that now I'm doing the saving."

"What if I'm a bad person? You haven't bothered to think of that?" He asks as he walks around me, observing me.

He's probably trying to push me to a corner or testing me to see what it takes for me to be afraid but there are only two things that scare me, for my loved ones to die or for me to die at the hands of Ethan again.

"What makes you think that I'm a good person myself?"

"What?" He stops walking abruptly as he stares at my face more intently.

"You speak as if I'm a pure-hearted person who thinks you are good like me and that's why I'm helping you, but I never said I was a good person." I say as I walk towards his bed as I sit in the small cabinet that stands beside it. "The pure one has always been my sister, you know. So even if you are not kind, that's not exactly something I care about. I only care about paying back the goodwill that was given to me so that it may leave my conscience."

Bullshit, that is the description of what I just said. 

If it were for me, I wouldn't care for his situation and would have probably turned him into the authorities but since I know that my sisters’ life is in danger I have to have him close to me. Close enough for me to observe the situation, to be able to manipulate it so that it ends according to my own will.

'At least the fact that I'm not a good person isn't a lie.'

He walks to the side of the bed and stops once he is standing directly in front of me. He leans on his opposite side of the bed against a pole that reaches the ceiling as he crosses his arms. "I don't trust you."

"Well, you are going to have to start eventually since you look like you need the help," I say as I lean my hands behind me against the small cabinet.

"Why exactly should I trust you?" He asks with irritation in his voice "although you are trained, a woman like you can't do anything to help me either way, women have almost no influence in this world."

"You don't know much about me so I don't blame you but, you can go ahead and think of myself as powerful as you. Maybe not in strength but I am quite smart, so I like to think that it helps balance out my weakness a bit."

He moves away from the pole as he passes his hands through his hair and thinks intently while looking at the closet in front of him. I do not move, I simply enjoy the silence as I wait for his response, and unfortunately, as much as I hate it but expected it he says. "Let me think it over a bit. I must put my thoughts together before I can do any movements from my part. For now, it would help if you could take the other me out to places that might relate to my everyday home, I might remember something if I interact with things I recognize."

I get up from the small cabinet and open one of the drawers to grab a small piece of paper and a pen. Since my mother loves to randomly write poems here and there in the middle of the night, she made sure that all of the rooms have a drawer next to the beds with small amounts of paper and with a couple of pens.

I smile as I touch the small rough paper and set it down on the cabinet with the pen on top. 'Who would have thought her little hobby would be so helpful.'

"You can go ahead and write a list of things that you think might help and I’ll make sure to do it." I walk through him as I head towards the door but stop before I can get to the door. "Oh, and I would appreciate it if you don't go out from this room at night, but if you do please don't let anyone see you."

"Make sure you come tomorrow and report to me." He says as he moves his fingers against each other making mine itch by pure instinct.

'Now you order me around?'

"Of course." I smile as I walk out from the room as quietly as I can trying to not wake anyone one up.

I sigh softly as my legs go numb, in my mind I had the resolution to act as if nothing affected me but the heavy aura that this man emanates is something else.

'How the hell was Lenna able to even stand her ground with him?' I continue to walk as I hold on to the walls for support. 'But then again she's so dense I wouldn't be surprised if she didn't even notice it was even there, to begin with.'