Author: greyrani
Genre: romance, angst

DAY 400

I was idly throwing food for the fishes in the pond of Crescent Pavilion. Umika stood a few distance away behind me, perhaps sensing my sour mood. Yuri was nowhere in sight after I ordered him to leave me with Umika alone. Only two servants accompanied us in the garden.

“Tell me about Mirai,” I instructed, freely speaking of your name. I liked how the name felt in my lips.

“What do Your Highness want to know?”

“Everything.”

Everything… that word echoed inside my head, and the memories of you flashed one after another. I was annoyed at the moment because I thought I would be getting a little closer to you after you found yourself woke up in my arms the morning after you got nightmare. That day, unlike the usual in which I left the chamber at the first ray of dawn, I stayed until you woke up. You were blushing a bit realizing that we had been cuddling. I told you that you got nightmare, but when I asked you what it was about, you evaded from answering me.

However, about the fact that you were calling my name and begging for my help in your sleep… I kept it from you. I didn’t want you to know that I knew you still remembered calling me that way.
My gaze stared at nothing, but the eyes of my mind deeply looking at my childhood memories.

“Was she always been that cold?” I asked, wanting confirmation.

Umika didn’t know that I and you were childhood friends. So, I assumed that you didn’t tell her.

“Lady Shida Mirai is a quiet person. She has been like that since the first time I met her. She doesn’t talk much, perhaps that’s why people often misunderstand her. But she is kind. She never treats me unjustly.”

The more I heard, the more I didn’t recognize the Mirai Umika talking about. When you’re a kid, you were bubbly and cheerful. Umika met you when you were ten years old. We parted when we were eight. There’s two years gap. Did something happen in that time span? Something that changed you…?

“How was she when her sister passed away?” I probed further. Your sister died when you were fifteen.

“She was sad.”

“But she didn’t cry, did she? That was why they started calling her the Ice Lady?”

As soon as I caught Umika's eyes, she looked down to the grown, but I noticed her troubled face.

“Her Highness… She might not show her feeling, but that doesn’t mean she isn’t capable to feel.”

“You don’t need to defend her,” I purposely taunted Umika. “You ar