Soren's eyes slowly fluttered open.
For a moment, he didn't quite know where he was.
His body felt warm and heavy, his mind still wrapped in a comfortable fog.
He stretched his arms above his head.
"Nnnngghhh—"
As he did, the blanket covering him slid down his chest and pooled around his waist.
He blinked, staring up at an unfamiliar ceiling.
…Not his dorm.
A heartbeat later, everything slotted back into place.
Lilliana's dorm.
The living room.
The faint scent of tea and old paper, the quiet air, the slight dip of the sofa beneath him, he recognised them all in a delayed rush.
He pushed himself up on his elbows, hair mussed, shirt slightly creased, and turned his head just as a voice came from behind him.
"You're finally awake?"
He jolted.
"—Sorry!" Soren spun around so fast his neck almost cracked. "I… uh…"
Lilliana was sitting on the other side of the sofa, a book closed on her lap, lime-green eyes watching him calmly.
Her bear ears twitched once, the only sign she had been sitting there for a while.
She smiled softly and shook her head.
"It's fine. If you were that tired, you should've said something, Ren."
He rubbed the side of his face, still feeling half-asleep and half-mortified.
'Great. First time staying over and I pass out on her sofa like dead weight.'
"Mmm… What time is it anyway?" he asked, trying to regain some composure.
"Uhm, last time I checked, it was around eleven," Lilliana said.
"Eleven?!"
Soren's eyes widened like an owl's.
"You mean… eleven at night?" he asked, just to be sure.
She nodded.
'…I slept for that long?'
When he had first arrived at Lilliana's dorm, he hadn't felt all that tired.
His body was fatigued from the catacombs, but his mind had been strangely alert.
He had cooked, eaten, talked.
It had felt… normal.
But the moment he lay down after the meal, drowsiness had hit him like a heavy blanket thrown over his entire body.
One second he had been thinking he should get up soon and leave.
The next… nothing.
He scrubbed a hand over his face.
"Wait," Soren said, the thought hitting him suddenly. "Have you been waiting up for me this whole time?"
Lilliana tilted her head, as if the question itself was strange.
"Well, someone has to be awake to lock the door when you go home, Ren."
"Ah…"
Guilt pricked at him.
She could've just woken him, or kicked him out.
Instead, she had stayed up waiting.
He opened his mouth to apologise, but before he could, Lilliana leaned back slightly and waved a hand.
"You don't need to worry about me," she said lightly. "It's actually normal for me to stay up multiple days in a row. Plus, it was nice to see you asleep for once."
Her voice softened on the last sentence.
She rarely said things like that outright.
Listening to her words, Soren felt the guilt loosen, but not disappear.
He half-smiled.
"...Still. Thank you for looking after me," he said.
"Thank you, Lilly."
Her ears flicked.
"You're welcome," she replied simply.
"What are you going to do now then?" she asked a moment later.
Soren slumped back against the sofa, staring at the ceiling again.
"I'm not sure. I've kind of messed up my sleep schedule," he muttered. "And training in the middle of the night doesn't seem like a good idea."
Dragging his tired carcass to the training grounds and collapsing on the track didn't sound appealing.
"Then why not just stay here?" Lilliana suggested. "You can read some books, or we can just talk. Nights are boring anyway."
Her tone was nonchalant, but her eyes watched him closely, as if checking whether he would refuse out of habit.
"Are you sure?" he asked.
He didn't want to be the kind of person who just latched on and overstayed.
"Think of it as repayment for the food," Lilliana said with a small smile.
It was a clean excuse, one that left him no room to argue without sounding rude.
He let out a quiet breath and nodded.
"Then… I'll take you up on that," he said.
And just like that, Soren's first overnight stay at Lilliana's dorm began.
••✦ ♡ ✦•••
Clink.
Soren placed his mug on the low coffee table, the faint sound echoing in the quiet room.
The tea inside was still warm, the gentle scent of herbs rising in thin curls.
He shifted slightly on the sofa and turned another page of the book resting in his hands.
The dorm had grown completely still.
Outside, the academy grounds were dark; only the distant glow of the city and the pale moonlight slipped through the curtains.
Inside, the only light came from the small lamp beside the sofa, casting a soft amber glow across the room.
Soren's eyes traced the words on the page.
It was a romance novel he had pulled at random from Lilliana's crowded shelf, though the more he read, the more he thought it probably wasn't random at all.
The title had caught his attention immediately, something about "the Knight who Swore to the Lady," the kind of cliché that would've made him cringe in the past.
Now… not so much.
'So this is the type of book that Lilly likes?'
He turned another page, brow furrowing slightly as the knight whisked the noble lady away from a political marriage and swore to dedicate his life to protecting her.
He was somewhat surprised.
Given Lilliana's personality, he had always half-expected her to be completely detached from romance.
Especially fairy-tale romance like this.
But judging from her shelves, that wasn't the case at all.
Most of the spines were worn along the edges, corners softened by repeated reading.
A good number of them had titles or covers that implied "love across status", or "forbidden romance", or "devoted knight" themes.
He could imagine her, years ago, curled up in some corner of a cold mansion, lost in these stories.
He glanced up from the page, eyes shifting to the side.
There, sitting a short distance away, was Lilliana.
She was curled on the sofa with her knees loosely drawn up, a book open in her hands.
Her expression was soft, almost distant, as her eyes moved down the lines.
Her small bear ears twitched every so often, reacting to subtle sounds or the slightest change in the room.
Tonight, there was a different air about her.
Soren had seen many sides of Lilliana since arriving in Ivansia, her quiet stubbornness, her clinical professionalism, her warm attempts at comforting him, but right now, she looked…
'Cute.'
The thought slipped in before he could stop it.
Now that he knew about her body, about why she was small, why her growth had been stunted, what she had gone through, it felt awkward to voice the thought out loud.
He had no intention of saying it.
But that didn't stop his mind.
After all, even if he didn't understand romance, he was still a man.
He watched her a second longer.
Then, as if sensing his gaze, Lilliana's eyes lifted from the page.
Their eyes met.
For a moment, neither of them said anything.
Her mouth curved up into a small smile when she realised he had been looking at her.
Soren's heart did not race, no fireworks went off, no bells rang, but something in his chest relaxed slightly.
He turned his head quickly back to his book, ears feeling faintly warm.
To cover the awkwardness, he asked the question that had been on his mind ever since he had examined her bookshelf.
"Are you interested in romance, Lilly?"
He could see how that question might have sounded from the outside, late at night, soft lamp light, the two of them alone in her dorm.
But Soren's tone held only curiosity.
He genuinely wanted to know.
Lilliana blinked once, then nodded, a faint blush colouring her pale cheeks.
"Would you like to know why…?" she asked, her voice hesitant.
Soren raised his head again, curiosity clear in his gaze, and nodded.
"Yeah," he said. "If you don't mind telling me."
She lowered her eyes for a few seconds, thinking.
When she spoke, her voice was slightly embarrassed, edges tinged with something older and sadder.
"When I was living back at the mansion," she began, "my only respite was reading. During those times, I would imagine myself as the female lead."
Her fingers tightened slightly around the book in her hands.
"I would dream of being rescued by the knights or princes in those novels… carried away from that place, somewhere safe where no one could hurt me," she continued quietly. "It's silly, isn't it?"
She lifted her gaze to Soren, a slightly pained, embarrassed smile on her lips.
He shook his head immediately.
"It's not silly," he said.
His voice came out more firmly than he expected.
"If it helped you get through hard times, who can judge you?" he added.
Lilliana's blush deepened, her eyes darting away for a moment.
His answer seemed to unsettle her in a good way, like she wasn't used to having her "silly" thoughts accepted so easily.
In an attempt to nudge the conversation away from herself, she tilted her head.
"What about you?"
————「❤︎」————