Rebel Red Carnation {Kiribaku}

VI

As the weather worsens and the last of the fallen leaves have been raked up, I do everything I can to suppress my paranoid thoughts. Every time we pass a guard—all of them annoyingly bowing their heads to the prince—I feel my shitty shoulders stiffen, like they're already suspecting us under the surface. Regardless of whether the dumbass prince believes he'll take the blunt of the punishment if we're caught, I still don't. I am just a thief, a criminal, little more than a maggot in the eyes of everyone who lives in this uptight-ass palace but him. I keep imagining my head on a fucking guillotine...

Through all of this bullshit, Eijirou's seemingly forgotten about the soulmate bullshit, too. Though maybe forgotten is too strong of a word, as infatuated by the whole thing as he was. He's stopped mentioning it, even if I occasionally catch him looking closely at me, particularly when my right side is toward him. Every time I brush him off and turn away, but even I'm not as annoyed as I used to be. Ugh.

As much as I fucking hate to admit it, the damn prince has grown on me. A lot. I wouldn't say he's a friend—fuck no—but he's not exactly my enemy anymore, either. At least someone in this huge fucking place has some goddamn sense, and at least he's tried to fucking help me with what I originally came here for. Gotta give him that. Still don't think he's my damn soulmate, though, and it doesn't mean shit that I can't remember where I got the stupid eyelid scar anyway. I have lots of scars, (none of which I've seen on him) so it's not weird that I can't remember where one tiny one came from.

Aside from the clothes and food, he starts sneaking in some other shit—matches, once I've told him we don't have means of keeping ourselves warm in the winter; silverware, when I muttered someshit about having to eat with our hands more often than not, among a few other miscellaneous things that'll more than likely come in handy one way or another, like tape and thread.

The longer this goes on without suspicion popping up amongst the guards and shit, the more I find myself relaxing. Eijirou tells me one day not long after he first started sneaking me things that he thinks they're going to let me go soon, and I fucking hate the way my heart jumps at the information because it twists right in time with my stomach.

"How soon?" I mumble.

"Maybe another week or so," he tells me. "No more than two. They've hired people to replace the ones whose work you've been doing, and since you've been on good behavior they don't really have a reason to extend your punishment," he says with a mild shrug.

After that we get back to shitty work—scrubbing toilets, apparently. Go figure.

The stupid, gross knot in my stomach doesn't let up, and I realize I'm not as fucking glad as I should be about knowing I'll be leaving soon. It's not because of the regular meals or the two extra sets of clean clothes given to me, or even being sheltered from the increasingly chilly weather. It's... because of—

Oh fuck no. I won't think it. I grit my teeth and scrub at the stupid toilet harder, trying to distract my thoughts from both it and the damn tangle of confusion in my stomach that makes me want to throw up more than anything.

As he does, the prince chatters away at me while I'm cleaning but I can hardly find the will to listen. I let the sound of his voice drown out the stupid, unwanted thoughts as much as I possibly can...

———

A day later, Wednesday, he tells me they'll be sending me on my way on Friday. Two more days is all I have to endure of this shithole before I get to go back to my own shithole. Hmph. At least my friends and family are there.

I don't pretend not to notice the hint of sadness in Eijirou's stupid, big-ass eyes when he tells me this, and his smile can't even mask it. And of course, with my luck, that damned face is stuck in my head for the rest of the fucking day and halfway through the next, right up until the moment the same guard who caught me in their basement confronts us in one of the huge kitchen pantries where I'm unloading boxes and boxes of their stupid food onto shelves.