The Extraordinary Accounts of One Lost Girl

-2-

My father's silence made me worried. I really could not tell what thoughts were running in his mind as he stared at me. It took me a lot of courage to just stand in front of him. I found him working in his study when I came home from school, after voicing my dream to work as a nurse to one of the teachers that fawned upon me the most in the convent. I was not charming, nor was I good to look at and I was too silent for my own good. But there were teachers who liked students who were like me. They liked the type that didn't make noise and worked diligently. And fortunately, those were the type of teachers who were old and held most power in school. I voiced my thoughts to Mrs. Herald, a British lady who was appointed in my convent to teach English literature. She used to ask me about my progress in my studies and used to comment about my essays and assignment a lot that I earned a lot of dislike from my classmates.

But survival mattered more than having friends and for some reason, the girls in my school didn't mind marrying someone handsome and being at home being a housewife. I won't know why I hated the concept. Maybe reading somehow warped sense about the world. Maybe reading all those adventures and all the places in the world made me crave the experience myself, instead of depending on someone else's viewpoints and experiences. Maybe knowing the horrors off all that could go wrong in the future made me lose sight of all the good that can come from something.

Mrs. Herald had held my gaze and looked at me thoughtfully when she asked what my plans were for the future. She always asked that from me. I have always said that I wished I could attend university. She always nodded in approval. But the look she gave me when I said I wanted to become a nurse was difference. As if she wondered what changed. I almost wanted to tell her that I didn't want to become every other story a girl usually faces. Married. Chained down. I was not okay with that. It felt suffocating. I almost wanted to beg her to recommend me to a medical training facility. Yet she held my gaze and gave out a hmm, like a consideration.

Maybe I hoped too much.

When I said to be father, 'I want to be a military nurse,' he simply stared at me until he asked, 'Why?'

It was hard lying to him. He was trained for it. He and mother both. Mother might seem light a fragile lotus in a pond, but her roots were deep. She was a Ceylonese noble. Proud like a lioness with an esper that could tell the past of any object she touched, hence she was always present for interrogations of spies. Father could creature flames with a simple thought and thus was a Major General. Both were powerful espers from a long line of espers, united by the Esper Breeding Program of the Royal Military Academy. My three brothers also were powerful espers. Only I was the not. For years, I wish I were. I wished I could read minds, move objects without touching them, light flames at random like my brothers. How I wished, ever since I was small. But I never manifested and I was soon reaching the age limit for manifestations.

'I don't want to get married,' I said clearly, 'I will become a nurse.'

Father didn't say anything. He could not refute. I maintained my grades meticulously, never allowing them to slip for nearly four years ever since I realized my eventual fate. My whole family thought I was not clever. I never bothered to concentrate on my studies anyway. I found reading whatever I could get my hands on more... satisfying. The day I found "The Sorrow of Wives" by Samantha Stoat, I felt my worldview point change. I didn't want to end up like the protagonist of the story. I didn't want to end up like that girl, who just like me, was born rich, meek, ambitionless. So I studied. It was hard to catch up. I surprised my father when I showed him my report card. Even mother, who was the only person who ever paid attention to me, was surprised. My father thought it was a fluke, but I maintained it, just for this moment.

My father studied me for a moment before putting down his pen and saying, 'Very well.'

I left the study with a feeling as if I had battled a war and won.