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Leona and Yuu make for a beautiful couple.
It happens shortly after they return from The Isle of Grief, their joint hands in the cafeteria as good as an announcement. Yuu's skin is porcelain fair against the smooth deep brown of Leona's, corded muscle curling around a bird-thin, dainty arm. Yuu smiles softly as she often does. Leona frowns, yet his tail swishes idly, pleased.
Kalim can't help but stare.
"Oh! Are Leona and the prefect...?" Kalim asks far too loudly just to keep his mind busy and swallow the knot in his throat. Jamil conspicuously flashes a glance before continuing with his meal.
"I suppose so." Jamil looks at them again. Yuu joins the table of her first year friends with Leona in tow, who bears a non-enthused expression but obligingly sits down. "They seemed very close when we returned from STYX. Guess it was a matter of time."
Jamil is right, but the inkling that it began earlier pricks at Kalim. Perhaps he'd been looking to the other side and comforting himself by the fact that nothing happened, that Leona still napped alone and Yuu hung out with her friends. Kalim is really good at that—turning a blind eye to things.
Until they unravel and explode in his face.
"They look happy," Kalim muses, propping his chin on his hand. It's not a lie. Even sitting down their hands are still laced together, Ace and Deuce's antics making Yuu giggle and Leona scowl. "I'm glad."
Jamil's gaze is piercing in its scrutiny, and a pang of fear freezes Kalim's veins when he thinks he's been seen through. Jamil says nothing though. After winter break, Kalim discovered that Jamil is also good at turning a blind eye and keeping things to himself.
Perhaps that's why they're stuck together.
"Malleus-sama has been in a terrible mood," Silver sighs, his usual blank face worn down by tiredness. Kalim jumps with wide eyes.
"Has he? What's wrong!"
Silver sighs again, exhausted. "I don't know if you've heard...that Yuu and Leona-senpai are in a relationship."
Kalim gulps, hoping that his face doesn't waiver. It's been only a week since that day in the cafeteria, and yet Kalim is certain that there's no person, ghost or animal in NRC that doesn't know that Leona and Yuu are together. Even if the whispers were not enough, they really don't hide their relationship either. They're always together touching one way or another, and yesterday Kalim had accidentally stumbled on them napping in the Botanical Garden.
(That had hurt a little more than he wanted to admit. They'd looked so peaceful under the haze of a golden afternoon sun, bugs whirring and a bed of grass soft and sun-warmed. The weather soured soon afterwards with an electric storm and a shower of hail, but their cuddled figures had been seared into Kalim's eyelids. Limbs tightly interwoven, heads facing each other, so close that you could not tell where one began and the other ended.)
"I've heard. They're really cute together!"
Silver blinks. "Well, I don't know either of them well so I cannot say, but...Malleus-sama is really fond of the prefect."
Kalim gasps. "Oh yes! That's true! In the VDC, she called him 'tsunotaro'."
Silver winces, blowing air through his nose. A couple of birds come to peck at his glimmering hair. Kalim bites back a smile. "Indeed. He... is not very amused that she's in a relationship with Leona-senpai now."
"But why? Leona's such a good guy! He..." Kalim's voice petters out when he pieces together Silver's crestfallen expression and Malleus' anger. "Oh."
"Yes." Silver nods, sombre. "I should not be disclosing my master's feelings, but...Lilia-senpai is not a lot of help at this moment and neither is Sebek. I'm sorry to burden you with this, Kalim."
"It's okay!" Kalim reassures him, lips twitching up. "Actually, I could talk with him, if you'd like me to."
"That's alright, there's no need." Silver's shoulders relax as if he can breathe easier. "Thanks for listening to my concerns though. I appreciate it."
"That's what friends are for!"
In the end, Kalim still meets Malleus.
Although the buzz around Leona and Yuu dies by the second week their relationship has gone public, Kalim cannot help but follow them with his eyes whenever he catches a glimpse of them, Leona's happy tail and perked ears, Yuu's wide smile as she tugs him forward. Or when they bicker in the cafeteria, and Leona smirks down at a pouting Yuu, teasing her. Or when Leona tutors Grim and her in the library, a patient yet severe teacher.
Kalim had earned plenty of Riddle's disapproving glares for being so distracted that day.
The sunny skies that had been forecast for the week after winter thawed and spring bloomed are instead replaced by a plumbing stormy sky, so dark that even teachers glance nervously at it. After a breakfast with a surprising array of coconut dishes (it was always so special when Jamil made coconut desserts and yet he'd been cooking them all week!), Jamil insisted for him to carry some waterproof spells lest he fell sick.
Thunder rumbles in the distance when Kalim stumbles on Malleus in a desolated hallway, gloomy with the swirling black clouds in the sky above. Malleus often dons a detached expression, otherworldly and aloof, but right now it is twisted into something more recognisable—more human.
"Malleus?"
He blinks slowly, as if just noticing that Kalim was there. "Asim. What are you doing here?"
"Just coming back from class," Kalim chuckles, scratching the back of his head. "What about you? Everything alright?"
Malleus remains silent. Kalim steps forward so he can be closer to Malleus—close enough that his reptile ears glow slightly, horns glinting with an otherworldly light, skin impossibly pale. Kalim's heart gallops slightly faster, instinct flaring in danger, yet the only thing Malleus does is sigh.
"I don't understand," Malleus mumbles, voice low and grave. "This feeling...is unlike anything I've felt before. I've known loneliness, but this is..."
"It hurts, doesn't it?" Kalim breathes out, a smile pulling his lips upwards. Malleus' eyes widen. "When you love someone and they're with another person."
"...Lilia said something of the sort," Malleus admits, fist clenching over his Diasomnia dorm uniform, elegant black glove twisting night-drenched clothes. "He said that love is the most beautiful thing of all, but I find it repulsing if it feels like this. The Child of Man...she looked at me with eyes deep as night, a black so dark that I could see the stars twinkling in them. But she doesn't look at me anymore."
Malleus stiffens when Kalim puts his hand on his arm and hums. "I'm sorry, Malleus."
"...Asim," he says, slowly, "do you know? How can I get rid of this pain and anger?"
"I don't know." Kalim smiles, apologetic. "Because I also...ah, Malleus, would you like to hear a story?"
He blinks. "A story?" His hand cradles his chin, features relaxing into pensiveness. "Very well, I'm listening."
"Once upon a time," Kalim begins as he allows himself to spin together a thread of memories that he's buried and left untouched. Confessing them to a fairy doesn't sound too bad, though. "A merchant boy met a beautiful prince. They became fast friends and had many adventures together, running through markets, making mischief in their respective houses...for the prince was a wild lion, brave and smart and ambitious, with many hopes for the future. The merchant boy was fascinated by him.
"However, many people sought after the merchant boy's wealth, and some even recurred to unsightly means. The prince then ate a poisoned meal meant for the merchant boy and nearly died. To prevent a diplomatic disaster, both families decided to bury the incident, and separated them. To ensure it'd remain like this, they wiped the memories of the merchant boy in the prince's mind—and so the merchant boy grew up alone, and burdened with his loneliness a servant boy, treating him like an echo of a friend.
Kalim finishes it with a steady voice, to his surprise. Malleus' lips purse together.
"I did not expect this kind of story from you, Asim." He flicks his wrist to the side in an elegant movement. "Is that really the end?"
"Well, maybe the boy and the prince saw each other again," Kalim laughs, jewellery jingling as he tilts his head to the side. "But the prince didn't recognise him, of course. And the boy, even though he nursed an unfaltering love, decided to let him go because of it. The prince had been safe all these years, so—"
"...but was the prince happy?" Malleus cuts him off, arms falling to his sides. "Surely he must have felt the absence of his friend."
Kalim's lip corners twitch higher. "He is now. He has a lover after all."
Malleus' eyes widen in realisation. Lightning cracks the sky like a whip before rain begins to pour as if the heavens were crumbling down.
"Asim, you..."
"What's going on here?"
Kalim puts his finger over his lips and winks to Malleus before turning back and beaming at Leona, lacing his fingers together at his back.
"Leona! I didn't expect to see you! And you're alone too, how rare!"
Leona's handsome face twists into a deep scowl, fangs glinting. "Ha? What does that even mean? And you two...how strange to see you together."
"We were just sharing an enlightening conversation," Malleus responds with a hum, cradling his chin. Leona's frown deepens. "Weren't we, Asim?"
"Eh? Well..." Kalim laughs, patting Malleus' arm. Leona's eyes linger. "I guess so!"
"It was most helpful," Malleus continues to elaborate. "I'm grateful. Thank you, Asim."
"Ah, no problem, Ma..." Kalim blinks, aghast to find no trace of him. "What?"
"That stupid overgrown lizard," Leona hisses, clicking his tongue and crossing his arms. "Just comin' and goin' as he pleases..." His eyes go to Kalim, cat-like, impossibly green: a laugh of everlasting summer that turns Kalim's knees wobbly. "You alright?"
"Of course!" Kalim smiles, his treacherous heart skipping a beat. "Ah, shouldn't you go back to Yuu already? She's probably missing you."
Leona stays silent for a few seconds that stretch to an eternity, staring at him. Kalim stifles the urge to squirm. "I guess so."
"See you!" Kalim waves enthusiastically when Leona begins to walk away. It's somewhat nostalgic. Kalim had always been chasing after Leona's back in the past, guided by his radiant smiles and lofty dreams for the future. Leona's shoulders may be broader now, hair longer, gait wider, but he still...he still shines so brightly that Kalim cannot look away, whether it is in the magift field, a fairy gala, or now.
I hope you're happy , Kalim thinks, wistful and forlorn and so lovesick it's hard to breathe. In an ideal world, perhaps they'd be together, soaring in a sky of twinkling diamonds. But Yuu is good for Leona...Kalim had known, back when he took her for a carpet ride. When her smile was blinding and he realised she was far better than he could ever hope to be.
At least when he returns to Scarabia there's a neatly packaged coconut dessert. Kalim's smile is small but sincere.
(And if he cries a little when he eats it in the aching loneliness of his room, well, nobody really needs to know).