Maybe I didn’t look too closely or I was plain too preoccupied to see. I am undoubtedly in the middle of war. I am at war with myself, Beatrice or Danbi, who is winning?

The Hunters, although queen and queen mother are not telling me are in the start of war too. I am their princess and it’s my gut telling me that war is just beneath their feet slowly rising up and loosening the earth to grab them by their ankles and yank them down to defeat.

But still the queen is my queen and I have to follow because I’m just a princess sent away from our realm and for once I don’t know what really motivated them to send me away.

Right now, I’m in a war within a war. The paper I am holding in front of me seems to glare and tear me apart and at the brink of death it brings me back just to hurt me again. The amount of wrong answers from the right ones seems to tip me back as I’m standing at the edge of a cliff, imbalanced, and now I’m falling to my death not knowing exactly when but I know its coming.

But being this old, I’m not even afraid of death.

I hid the paper, folded it and tucked it in one of my seldomly used notebooks. Juri looks over to me just as I zipped my bag up, together with the paper hiding my embarrassment.

“How did you do?” She asks, eyes rounding just a little bit. I shook my head and she understood. Because the next event is my teacher looking stern and telling me to stay behind just to spare me from the shame her oncoming lecture about me failing my exam.

“This is bad, Ms. Park. How can you fail this close to your college entrance exam?” She sits across from me, crossing her stocking clad legs and shows with her fingers the miniscule amount of time from midterms until the day of my entrance exams.

I wouldn’t apologize or make up excuses, I know I studied but Sinwoo’s words were another burden for me and maybe I snapped and gave up. “You need to work harder and sleep less hours because I can’t have anyone in this grade fail, you understand me?”

I nod, what else could I do? She lets me go after rubbing her temples and slouching in her desk dragging her chair away from mine and sulking like she gave up on me as well.

“Oh, my…” Juri covered , using her free hand to clutch the paper and crumple it a bit. Hyuk laughed after seeing my score, if it wasn’t for the noise in the cafeteria everyone would’ve heard him.

I frowned, an ugly, deep scowling grimace turning the corner of my lips downward and pinching my eyebrows together. How can any of this be funny? In my original, normal life I did above average in school, I never failed and I worked hard to have excellent marks, I never cheated but ever since math is always my waterloo.

Hyuk laughed even harder as he allows himself to skim through the paper. With my temper boiling over, I slam my spoon down making a huge clattering sound, tear the paper from his hands and walk away.

“Don’t be like that, Princess.” Hyuk follows me outside, where few trees and grass littered the school yard. Sitting on a cement bench and almost in tears I wipe them and ignore him.

I don’t know why I’m crying over this, it’s not even gonna matter when I go back to the Hunters.

He sits beside me, nudging me with his shoulders. I scoot away and compose myself, trying very hard not to cry. “It’s better to laugh at it than sulking.” He says and drops a paper on my lap.

I thought it was mine but as I skimmed over it, the penmanship isn’t and lastly I looked over to the score, failing remarks like mine. “Princess, I’m sorry I laughed.” I allow him to see my face, eyes not b with tears anymore.

“Okay.” I felt compelled to agree with him.

“Sanghyuk-ah” He looked over to me, concern and surprise mixing on his expression. All of the “what-if’s” crowded my mind as I take in his features. What if he knew my real identity, what if he knew what will happen when I leave, what if…

“Nothing.” I look down at the papers in my hands, folded them neatly and rest my hands on my lap feeling uneasy.

“Wait here.” He leaves me and sprints to the building. Once he came back, he had our things in his hands swinging wildly in his hands as he sprints back to where I am.

“Let’s skip.” He smiles, a crooked boyish grin and I found myself smiling back until I took note of the time. It’s only 12:30 which means we’ll be skipping half of the day.

“No, I don’t want to get in trouble. Especially after—“ He cuts me off pulls me up from the bench and hands me my bag.

I should have fought a better fight, I kept saying no but each time