I am completely frozen in place. He was really watching me. I was being watched through the window in my room at night by someone hidden underneath a tree. The chill I had earlier rips through me again, more violently this time, and I cannot force myself to stop staring out at the man through the small hole I formed in between the curtains. He slips back into the shadows, disappearing from view, but the weight of his presence lingers in my mind. I force my tightly clenched hands open to release the curtains and fall back from them.

Did he see me looking at him?

I considered the size of the hole I had been watching him through, as well as the dimly lit outside world and pitch blackness of my own room. I am also on the 3rd floor. Unless he had a magic enhancement on his eyes, it was unlikely that he would have been able to see through a small hole at such a distance in the dark.

I take a breath. How long had I been holding it?

I look around my room. A violin I never learned how to play leans against the far corner of the wall. My bookshelf is overflowing with books. I have read most of them, but there are still a few interesting titles there that I have not touched since the day I bought them. A sketchbook lay in the floor near a bean bag, the page opened to a doodle that I had been drawing simply to relieve some stress recently. My homework, due at the end of the week, is sprawled across my desk exactly how I tossed it yesterday.

The man is already gone, but the fear and anxiety still ripples inside me. It's obvious I can't sleep under the circumstances, but what can I do? I'm scared to turn on a light, as if that would somehow make me more visible to the man now. I'm even more scared to leave the safety of my room. There are a number of things for me to do scattered about my room, but I find it difficult to go pick up even one of them. My eye catches on a water bottle stuck in the side pocket of my bag. I swallow then cautiously slide off the bed and crawl towards my bag a few feet away. My trembling hands pull out the bottle. I take a sip of water and take a deep breath, slightly dulling the edge on my fear, then look around again.

I need a distraction to fill my mind until I settle down. The violin and the drawing would leave too much room for thought. A book might keep me occupied, but then again, I may be too on edge to really get sucked into it. Without any other ideas, I slowly stand up, turn on my desk lamp and start organizing my homework. Though I hate homework, I feel grateful for having it right now. For several hours, I was able to sit there and read questions and write in answers without much other thought. However, once the tension in my muscles completely relaxed and my heart rate slowed, I caught my mind wandering back to the shadows outside, the man lurking beneath the tree... I force my thoughts to stay on the homework in front of me. Anything is better than that. And yet...

I recall the man again. My thoughts are clearer now that the danger is long gone, and I try analyzing my memory of him for any distinguishing features. I only saw him with one eye through a small hole, so I didn't have the clearest look at him. I could tell he was human in form and of average build. He had been wearing dark clothing and his hair was dark too. I couldn't see his face well. My night vision should have given me some idea of what his face looked like, since his skin was pale (not as pale as mine though)... Perhaps he was wearing a mask that made it harder to see? He had a silver chain hanging from his pants belt and... what was attached to the end? A pendant? I can't remember. I lean back in my desk chair and sigh.

What did he really want? It is an entire building full of girls. But why my room specifically? Was I just the only one he could see... Actually, wait... Could he see me? It actually doesn't make sense. The lights in my room never came on even once. I never made any noise or even appeared in the window until I went to close the curtain. He couldn't have seen me until that moment, and even then, it was still quite dark. He could have just been waiting there for someone, anyone, to appear.

But he focused on me. He looked at my window even after the curtain closed.

I groan. I'm not getting anywhere with this. It's actually giving me a headache at this point. I look over at digital clock on my nightstand: 11:09pm. It's been about 3 hours since I saw that guy. I feel calmer now. Maybe I should try to s-

Knock, knock.

I felt like I almost jumped onto the ceiling. The knock wasn't coming from my door. It was my window. Why did it have to be my window?

I take a glance at the violin behind me and slowly tiptoe over to it without turning my back on the window. It's better than nothing. I bend my knees to pick it up without looking at it then inch towards the window. Maybe if I survive this, I'll find a witch that will make this window non-existent. Or maybe I can see if my entire wall can become something like a two way mirror. My hand grips the violin tighter and I raise it up to my shoulder, ready to swing it at a moment's notice. I lean over my bed and pull on the side edge of the curtain, near the wall, to create the tiniest gap to see.

I sigh and loosen my grip on the violin. I step in front of the window, grab one of the curtain panels and pull it out of the way so that I can undo the latch and swing the window pane open.

"Thanks," says Ren as he leaps off his broom and lands safely in my room.

"I can't tell if I'm more relieved or annoyed that it's just you right now."

He smiles apologetically. "Sorry. I scared ya, didn't I?"

"You shouldn't fly up to girls' rooms in the middle of the night. You're just asking to be branded a pervert or worse."

"It's all good as long as I'm not caught." He laughs when I roll my eyes, then looks down at the violin in my hand. "I wasn't aware you play the violin."

"I don't."

"Well that sure looks like a violin in your hand. What else would you be using that for?"

"Baseball," I respond simply before setting it down on the floor against the wall.

Ren looks confused for a minute, then his eyes widen in realization. "Were you going to hit me with that?!"

I watch silently as Ren breaks down laughing.

"You... are in a school full of magic... and you picked... a violin..."

"It's effective enough. I'm not skilled with magic. Did you want something?" My annoyance in this moment is only moderately soothed by my relief. This could change quickly if he keeps up.

"Not really. I just thought I'd check in on you."

"What?" My mind reels for a moment as I remember this evening's earlier events.

"You've been a little quiet today. Well, you're always quiet, but... It seemed like you were feeling a bit down. You're like that sometimes, and I know you aren't going to talk about it." He sits down on the edge of my bed. "But I thought maybe some company would help more than being alone."

Huh? I stare at him for a minute before speaking, "I like being alone."

"Noticed. But you're already alone a lot. That's exactly why, when you're sad, you need the opposite! And maybe, just maybe, you'll actually feel inclined for once to tell me a little about what's on your mind."

His logic makes so little sense to me, but he smiles proudly as if it was really insightful. I have to admit though, given what happened earlier, there is some comfort having him here.

"You're a pain sometimes," I tell him.

"Should I leave then?"

We lock eyes for a moment, then I sigh and walk towards the light switch.

"No. Stay. Just for a little while," I say quietly with my back to him.

After flipping the lights on, I turn around to see Ren smiling at me. Then he leans out the window to grab his broom, still floating outside, and pulls it inside. Once he sets it down, he turns back towards me and reaches into his hoodie pocket. He pulls out a deck of cards.

"Want to play old maid? It's just a regular deck of cards though."

"I'd rather play poker."

"Yeah, no way. I don't know how good you are, but you have the type of personality that would mercilessly strip me down to my underwear then make me leave. We're not doing that."

"Oh. You could tell? I'm actually pretty adept at poker. You dodged a bullet."

"Yeah, see. I knew it."

We spend the next couple hours playing crimmage and double solitaire until we are bored. Then I go finish up my homework while Ren sits in the bean bag and reads one of my favorite books. He comments on the characters and some of the scenes. He isn't too fond of one of the overly dramatic side characters, but he likes the witty, sarcastic humor of the protagonist. By the time I finish and turn around to look at him, he's fallen asleep there with the book partially open in his lap. I take a bookmark out of my desk drawer, then walk over and put in between the pages where one of his fingers were. After putting the book away, I toss a throw blanket over him, then shut off the light and sit down on my bed. I stare at the night sky for a little bit. It's already getting lighter out.

Yesterday, I longed for home. Today, I long to stay here. The life I have here is actually more comfortable in some ways than the one I had at home. There aren't any stuffy rules about how I should and shouldn't behave as a lady. I'm not constantly having my movements monitored and restricted because, all forbid, a princess go anywhere alone. Though, admittedly, there was a bit of a thrill that came with sneaking out of the palace. I feel a sliver of that feeling now, having Ren here after hours.

I remember the first time I sneaked out. It was thrilling but also nerve-wrecking and confusing. I didn't go any farther than the palace town, but it was so new to me. The market was buzzing with so many people. There were children my age everywhere. Few people had clothes that looked as nice as mine or hair as clean and shiny, but they looked happy all the same. There was an old man running a food stall that was absolutely astounded that I had never been to the market before. He gave me a sample of his cooking: a stick with pieces of chicken covered in some sort of glaze. Somehow, it tasted way better than the food at the palace. A nice lady taught me how money worked after I asked her why she traded silver for fruit. I returned home before anyone figured out I was gone. I filled a small pouch full of coins and repeated my adventure at every opportunity. I never once went outside without learning or experiencing something new, and I never once told anyone I was the princess. At some point, I started venturing further. I visited the nearby countryside towns and saw a very different way of life than I saw in the capital. Everything was always so interesting. I was hooked on seeing the world.

When I learned there were other worlds that were vastly different from ours, I felt like I had to see those too. I read a lot of books about Magi Empire and the Mortal World. I didn't know how different it would be. The Mortal World surprised me the most. Magic is a myth there? The idea was unfathomable. Along with my research, I found out there were gateways that we had relatively free access to right there in the capital. Just like the first time, I was nervous and excited traveling to these new worlds. It was amazing to see how different they looked from mine: the people, the buildings, even the plants and the trees.

I also learned that even time flowed differently in our world than it does in the other two. 10 years in my world was 250 years in these worlds. The idea that I was 13 at home but over 300 years old here filled my child self with giggles. Even now, it's amazing to think that, in the almost four years that I've been here, less than a mere two months have passed at home. To me, back then, it was a thrilling discovery. The time difference made it so much easier to stay and explore for longer periods of time, though it messed with my sleep schedule greatly to spend a full day in one world and return to mine where it's been less than an hour. For that reason, I worked out a schedule to spend days at a time in another world and then carefully choose the hour when I returned so that I could minimize sleep deprivation. I technically spent more time here than I did at home. The odds that I would get stuck here were actually pretty high, now that I think about it.

My thoughts are interrupted by a witch whizzing by on her broom. On her way through, she drops off a thick stack of newspapers from the Magi Empire that our dorm mother will eventually pick up and put in the common area for us all to take and read at our leisure. Lightveil technically has a local newspaper as well, but it's usually only a page or 2. Not much goes on here that's all that newsworthy, so they simply wrap the singular Lightveil page around the outside of the Magi Empire newspapers. Clever of them.

I walk over to Ren and nudge his shoulder.

"Wake up. It's almost dawn. The newspaper just got dropped off. You should go before everyone else wakes up and sees you leaving."

Ren groggily drags himself across the room to collect his broom. He opens the window and tosses it outside, where it rights itself and waits in the air for him to get on. He then steps up onto the ledge of the window and makes a small hop off it and onto the broom. It looked like the broom moved itself slightly to correct his aim mid-jump.

Once he's outside, I cross my arms and move closer to the window.

"Hey, Ren?"

"Yeah?"

"Um. Thanks."

"Hm? Oh. Yeah," he said, rubbing his eyes. Is he going to be okay flying home like that?

Before I could really think too much on it, he took off.

As I reach out to close my window again, I see the papers sitting outside and decide I'll do something nice for the dorm mother since I'm already up. I've got a little time to kill before I need to get ready for school anyway.

I change into some fresh clothes then slip downstairs and out the front door to pick up the papers. I unwrap the plastic around them and place the stack on the common room's coffee table before grabbing one for myself and heading back upstairs. It's been awhile since I read the news. I skim read the Lightveil Academy page. It rarely contains anything worth reading for me. Like usual, there was nothing of particular interest in it, so I turned the page to the Magi Empire news. My breath caught as I read the headline.

THE HUNT BEGINS! MAGI EMPIRE EXECUTING ALL SPIRIT REALM BEINGS