Soren Arden POV
A few minutes passed after the quiet broke and then settled again.
The library returned to its natural rhythm: soft footsteps between bookshelves, pages turning, a clock ticking somewhere in the distance.
Students drifted past the tall windows, carrying boxes and bags back toward their dorms, the sunlight thinned into a light-afternoon gold.
Soren sat with Amelia beside him, her head resting against his shoulder once again.
The tightness in his chest had faded; his breathing was steady again.
The damp at her shoulder had dried.
The awkwardness that remained felt light, like a coat he could shrug on and off.
"Mm," she breathed, almost like a cat, as she stayed still.
Soren's eyes lowered to their hands.
At some point during the quiet, she had laced her fingers with his.
Her grasp was calm, as if to say she had no intention of going anywhere.
He didn't mind it; if anything, he was grateful, but he was also a little embarrassed.
Only yesterday, Lilliana had done something similar; different in feeling, but similar in concept.
It was hard not to think about how he felt like he was becoming a professional at being comforted.
The thought made his mouth twitch despite himself.
He had come to the library to avoid bothering Lilliana further, to give her a chance to rest.
To get used to being near people again.
To listen to the voices of others until it stopped sounding like a threat.
To make the crowd tomorrow less of a cliff.
Although he had managed to work through a lot in his time with Lilliana, he wasn't completely free of trauma.
He could handle conversations with people, speaking the same way as he had in the past, but when it came to crowded spaces or physical contact, he still couldn't deal with it.
Instead, he had fallen asleep and woken with a face only inches from his.
His body had panicked before his thoughts arrived; the anxiety from that incident resurfacing.
Even after recognising Amelia, a thin line of fear had lagged behind sense.
That part was the thing he truly hated.
He hated fearing someone he considered a friend.
Soren glanced sideways.
Amelia's expression was the same languid calm as always, but softer.
Her ears were relaxed; her tail, hidden beneath the chair, thumped once against the leg and went still, a portrayal of her good mood.
"So," Amelia said at last, her voice low and even. "Are you feeling better now?"
Soren cleared his throat.
"Yeah… thanks."
He meant it.
The words came out smaller than the feeling, but the sincerity within them was apparent.
Despite the fact that he had held fear and anxiety toward her minutes ago, he now only felt comfortable.
It was a different kind of comfort from what he felt with Lilliana, but it was comfort nonetheless.
"When did you get back?" he asked, shifting the topic without grace.
"A couple of hours ago."
He blinked.
"...Did you come right here?"
"Yeah. I wanted to see you."
A small chuckle escaped Soren's lips as he remembered the type of person Amelia was.
Someone whose sense of distance was so skewed that she was practically a walking magnet for misunderstandings.
'I missed her.'
The thought came to his mind suddenly.
Although it had only been two months, he couldn't help but miss his friends.
Those connections he had made in only six months of living in this world were already important to him, so much so that he couldn't imagine living without them anymore.
A smile formed on Soren's lips as he made eye contact with Amelia.
"Does that mean you missed me?" he teased.
"Yeah. What about you?" Amelia asked in the same breath, her husky voice tickling his ear.
He looked at her.
It wasn't possible to lie to a face that honest.
"A bit."
Her eyes widened by a fraction, then a small smile made itself known at the corners of her mouth.
"I brought you a gift," she said, as if it suddenly came to mind.
He watched her lift her hand.
Space shimmered above the ring on her finger.
Amelia reached in and drew out a wrapped bundle the size of her palm, set it on Soren's palm, and looked up at him.
"Can I open it?"
Amelia nodded once.
He unwrapped the cloth.
A large bone lay inside, pale and curved, its surface matte with faint scratches where something harder had struck it.
It sat heavy against his skin.
"What's this?"
"Manticore fang."
Soren looked from the fang to Amelia, and back again.
A laugh escaped him, quiet and full of disbelief.
"How the hell?"
"There was a monster wave at the kingdom's borders. I helped stop it."
Her tone was casual, as if she were talking about an everyday activity, but her expression, faintly smug, betrayed her.
Soren was aware that Amelia was a monster, but to kill a manticore in her first year, a creature that Alex would still struggle against even in the middle of his second year… it left him in awe.
"Wow…"
He slid the fang into his inventory, then turned back toward Amelia.
"Thanks," he added. "I'll make good use of it."
Amelia didn't respond, just rested her head against him once more.
Her ears twitched, and her tail flicked back and forth; it was a sign of her good mood.
Soren's gaze lingered on her tail for a second, then drifted back up toward her ears.
He remembered a conversation with Felix, the words he had said, and Felix's stupefied expression.
– She's like a puppy…
– Did you seriously just call the Wild Wolf a puppy?
– Isn't she?
His hand moved before the thought finished, reaching out to stroke her head.
It was an action without a plan.
His fingers slid through the hair that was softer than he had expected, warm from the window's light.
The angle of her neck tilted under his palm into the gentle touch.
Her ears relaxed further as her tail wagged back and forth.
He let his hand continue.
The motion calmed something inside him, the same way repetitive tasks were kind to frayed nerves.
He could have stopped, but he didn't.
It was only a beat later that his common sense finally kicked in.
"Ah, sorry," he said, pulling his hand back.
He expected annoyance, or at least something negative.
Instead, Amelia just stared at his hand with a face full of dissatisfaction.
Then, she caught his wrist, guided it back up, and set his palm on her head with the same certainty she used to put a fist through an enemy's chest.
She didn't say anything; her eyes told him to think less.
He resumed, slower this time.
Her posture loosened in increments under his fingertips.
The feeling was somewhat addictive, both because of the comfort it gave him and because of the soft texture in his hands.
The minutes folded quietly.
His hand drifted; the backs of his fingers brushed the soft edge where the hair became ear.
Suddenly, Amelia jolted from her seat, both hands flying up to cover the ear as if someone had tugged a string.
"Ah–Did I do something wrong? Sorry," Soren said immediately.
"...The inside is sensitive."
"Oh. Right."
Soren remembered the time she had told him something similar in the cafeteria, and he nodded.
Her shoulders quickly eased as she took her seat in the chair once more.
She lowered her hands slowly, wary of his fingers touching the same space again, then she leaned back against his shoulder as if the incident had been an inconvenience and nothing more.
"...Keep going," she muttered, as if annoyed that she had to say it.
"Alright," he said, unable to hide the warm smile that appeared on his face at her cute words.
He moved his hand back through her hair, careful to avoid the inner ear.
The small, steady motion smoothed the last jagged bits inside of him that her earlier comfort hadn't reached.
The library's sounds faded to the edge of hearing, and the world narrowed to the warmth and texture under his palms.
"How was home?" he asked after a while.
"Same as always. Oh… right." She paused, raising her eyes to meet his own. "Uhm… Mama and Papa want to meet you."
The sentence landed like a dropped book.
Soren looked at her and into the empty space and then at her again, as if he didn't quite understand her words.
"...Huh?" he finally said after a few moments.
"I was going to tell you before summer break, but a lot happened."
Soren nodded, understanding her words.
"Why do they want to meet me, though?"
She glanced off to the side, acting uncharacteristically hesitant.
"...I sent a letter telling them that I made my first friend."
She said it plainly, with a hint of embarrassment, but the words were filled with weight.
A flush touched her cheeks, and her ears did a small twitch.
There was no performance in it; she wasn't trying to be endearing, she just was.
'So cute.'
Soren's mouth curved before he could stop it.
"Well, I don't mind. When would be a good time?"
Amelia blinked once, as if she had prepared herself for a different conversation entirely, one where she had to persuade him or argue with his caution.
In the past, he would have been hesitant and fearful, conjuring reasons not to go, reasons to push Amelia toward Alex, as he had planned when he still believed the story needed shepherding.
He would have constructed a wall and called it prudence.
Something had shifted, however, maybe Lilliana's words after the final exams had reached him.
Or maybe with everything going on, his mind had become too full to care about such things.
At the very least, he had grown.
'Well, it's already too late to push Amelia over to Alex anyway… plus,' he looked at Amelia's face. 'I don't want that anymore.'
For the first time in a long time, Soren felt greedy.
"Are you sure?" she asked, studying him with the same care she used when she faced strong enemies.
"Yeah, why not? We're friends, aren't we?"
Her eyes widened, and her lips curved upward; her expression a mix of relief and happiness.
Her tail tapped his leg once, a gentle pat that showed her mood.
"Thanks," she said sincerely.
————「❤︎」————