The morning of the interview arrived faster than Yuuta had expected.
It felt like only yesterday that he was scrambling through books and papers, trying to absorb everything the Headmaster had told him, practicing dance steps until his feet ached and etiquette rules until his head spun.
But the calendar on the wall did not lie, and the sun streaming through the windows was the sun of the day everything would be decided.
He stood outside the apartment building, waiting near the small flower patch the landlord insisted on maintaining despite the building's general disrepair.
The morning air was cool against his face, carrying the distant sounds of the city waking up, cars starting, birds calling, the murmur of voices from the street beyond.
He was wearing the suit the college had given him. A formal charcoal gray coat, tailored by someone who knew what they were doing, originally intended for a hotel interview he had been preparing for before everything changed.
The fabric was good quality, the fit was right, and for once in his life, he looked like someone who belonged in a place like the Morning Star Elite Academy.
He tugged at his collar, adjusted his tie, smoothed down the front of his jacket. His hair was carefully styled, he had used gel, which he almost never did, and the result made him look almost professional. Almost like a real father. Almost like someone who deserved to be standing beside the woman who was going to change everything.
His mind wandered back to the past few days.
The dance practice, with Erza's hand in his and her waist beneath his palm, her voice sharp and her corrections brutal and her patience, somehow, infinite.
The etiquette lessons, with her showing him which fork to use, how to hold his glass, how to sit without announcing to the world that he had never sat at a table like that before. He had been nervous. He was still nervous.
But she had made him practice until his feet moved without thinking, until his hands found the right positions without searching, until the panic in his chest had quieted to something he could almost ignore.
He owed her for that. More than she knew.
He waited by the flower patch, watching the street for the car the Headmaster had promised to send. The morning light was gold and soft, the shadows long, the air cool enough that he could see his breath misting in front of his face.
He heard footsteps behind him.
"What are you mumbling to yourself?" Her voice was cold, as always, cutting through the morning quiet like a blade.
He turned.
And stopped breathing.
Erza stood in the doorway of the apartment building, wearing the dress she had worn on the first night she appeared in his life, the white imperial dress with golden flowering stripes, the one that made her look like she had stepped out of a painting or a dream or another world entirely. The fabric caught the morning light and held it, shimmering like snow in sunshine, the gold thread gleaming with every breath she took. Her hair was loose, cascading over her shoulders like a waterfall of silver, and her horns, clean now, gleaming, white at the base and black at the tips, rose from her temples like a crown she had been born to wear.
She was not just beautiful. She was something beyond beautiful. Something that made the word feel small and insufficient.
His mind went blank. His heart stopped. His face flooded with color so fast he felt dizzy.
"Beautiful," he blurted, then shook his head.
"No… that's not it. It feels like I'm reducing something endless into a word that can't hold it."
Her eyes went wide. Her heart stopped.
Ba-dump.
Ba-dump.
She had heard compliments before from poets and princes and warriors trying to capture what she was.
She had never cared.
Never listened.
Never let their words touch her.
But his words, stumbling, fumbling, completely inadequate, hit her somewhere she did not know she had.
Her face turned red.
"What the hell. What are you, you cannot just."
He realized what he had said.
"No! I didn't mean, I mean, I did mean, but I didn't mean to say it like that, I was just, you took me by surprise."
She grabbed his hair. His carefully styled, gelled-into-place, absolutely-not-meant-to-be-touched hair.
"You!" She yanked, not hard enough to hurt, but hard enough to make him yelp.
"How dare you flirt with me! A queen! A royal blood! How dare you speak to me like I am some, some."
"My queen! Mercy! Please!" He bent over, following the pull of her hand, hands raised in surrender. "My hair, I just used gel, I spent twenty minutes on it."
"I do not care about your hair!"
"Elena is going to see us!"
She stopped. He stopped. They both looked toward the apartment door, where Elena stood in the doorway, already dressed in the little dress Yuuta had bought for the interview, her hair brushed and braided, her eyes bright with excitement.
She looked at her mother, who had her father by the hair. She looked at her father, who was bent over like a sapling in a storm. She tilted her head.
"Mama," she said, "why are you grabbing Papa's hair? Is it a new game?"
Erza let go. Yuuta straightened, face still red, hair now pointing in seven directions, his carefully constructed professionalism in ruins.
"It is not a game," Erza said, her voice returning to its usual cold, though her face was still pink. "Your father was saying something foolish. I was correcting him."
"Oh." Elena nodded sagely. "Papa says foolish things a lot. That is why Mama hits him."
"That is not true," Yuuta started.
"That is correct," Erza said.
He stared at her. She stared back.
Elena clapped her tiny hands together. "The car is coming! Papa, look!"
Yuuta turned. And his soul left his body.
The car gliding down their cracked, uneven street was not a car. It was a dream given metal form, a machine that belonged in magazines and billionaire documentaries, not on the potholed road outside his apartment building.
A Rolls-Royal, the kind of vehicle that cost more than his apartment building, more than his entire neighborhood, more than he would earn in a lifetime.
Its body was sleek and black, polished to a mirror shine that reflected the morning clouds, and the tech design had been touched by Tesla engineers, meaning somewhere inside that perfect exterior, there was an AI more intelligent than anything Yuuta had ever encountered.
The car stopped. The people on the street stopped too. Mr. Yamamoto froze with his broom mid-swing. Mrs. Hayashi stood in her doorway with her mouth open. Children running to school slowed to a halt, eyes wide, games forgotten. Everyone who had ever lived on this street stood frozen in the presence of something that did not belong here.
Yuuta understood. He could not look away either. This was the car he had seen in articles, in videos, in the fever dreams of people who would never touch anything like it. It was here. In front of his building. Waiting for his family.
Erza looked at the car. She looked at the people staring at it. She looked at Yuuta, who appeared to have forgotten how to breathe.
"It is a box," she said flatly. "A metal box with wheels. I do not understand the fascination."
Yuuta made a sound that might have been agreement or his last breath leaving his body.
Elena tugged at her mother's dress. "Mama! It is so shiny! Like a beetle! A very rich beetle!"
Erza looked at the car again. She still did not see what everyone else saw. It was functional. Adequate. Nothing more. But she looked at Yuuta's face, at the wonder there, and held her tongue.
Elena tugged at his sleeve. "Papa, can Elena touch it? Please?"
Before he could answer, the car door opened, not with a handle or latch, but with a soft hiss of hydraulics, swinging outward to reveal an interior of cream leather and polished wood and screens embedded in surfaces that had no business having screens.
"Greetings, Konuari Family," a voice said. Smooth, warm, perfectly modulated, designed in a laboratory to make people feel welcomed and important. "Please, be seated. I will ensure your journey is comfortable."
Yuuta's mouth fell open. The car talked. The car knew their name. He was going to faint.
Erza did not wait for him to recover.
She walked to the open door with measured grace, her dress brushing the pavement, her horns catching the light, her presence making the gleaming car look like what it was, a machine waiting to serve her.
She ducked slightly to enter, the door was wide, but her horns required space, and settled into the back seat with the ease of someone who had spent her life sitting on thrones.
Yuuta stood frozen for another moment. Then he stepped to the open door, one hand on the frame, and leaned in carefully.
"My Lady," he said, "please allow me to escort you."
Erza looked up at him. He stood like a footman at a palace, his suit neat (if rumpled from her earlier assault), his expression earnest, his hand extended as if she needed help stepping into a car she had already entered. Her face went pink.
She stepped past him without taking his hand, but her steps were slower than necessary, and her eyes stayed on his face longer than they should have. When she settled into the cream leather seat, she looked out the window and said, very quietly,
"Well. That was... adequate. I did not expect that from you."
Yuuta's heart soared. His chest expanded.
His back straightened. His face split into a grin so wide it almost hurt.
After days of being called an idiot and a fool and a pathetic mortal, after all the insults and corrections and times she had hit him for being stupid, he had finally earned a real, genuine, from-the-Dragon-Queen compliment.
"Finally," he breathed. "Finally, I have earned your respect."
Erza's face did not change. Her voice did not change. She looked at him through the open car door with the same cold expression as always.
"Do not get carried away. What you just did is something a child could do. A trained monkey could do it. A particularly well-behaved dog could."
His hope shattered. His grin faded. His shoulders dropped. His heart crashed back to earth and buried itself somewhere near his shoes.
"I see," he said. "Yes. Of course. That makes sense."
He turned away so she would not see his face, walked around the car to the other door, and told himself he had not expected anything different.
Erza watched him go.
Her hands curled in her lap.
She had meant it, the words, even if not the way she said them.
He had been better than good.
He had been something she did not have words for, something that made her heart beat faster and her face go warm and her throat close up so she could not say what she wanted to say. But she was the Dragon Queen. She did not admit that a mortal had made her feel something new.
She looked out the window and pretended she did not care that his face had fallen.
Elena, who had been watching everything with sharp eyes, did not wait to be escorted. She ran toward the open door, launched herself into the car, and landed on the seat beside her mother with a bounce that made the suspension complain.
"Papa! Come! The car is waiting!"
Yuuta climbed into the seat across from them, the backward-facing seat, which felt strange and wrong, and buckled his seatbelt. The door closed on its own, soft and final, sealing them in a world of cream leather and dark wood and the faint smell of something expensive.
"Mr. Yuuta. Miss Erza." The AI's voice was warm and patient. "Please let me know which temperature you would prefer for the interior. I can adjust the climate to your exact specifications."
Yuuta blinked. "Temperature?"
Erza's head tilted slightly. Confused, curious, and, he realized, not going to ask what temperature meant because asking would mean admitting she did not know something.
Elena had no such reservations. "Temp-a-ture! What is temp-a-ture, Papa?"
Yuuta laughed, a small laugh, surprised out of him by her earnest little face. "Temperature, sweetheart. It means we can make the inside of the car hot or cold. Whatever we want."
Elena's eyes went wide. Her wings fluttered. Her tail shot straight out and wagged like a puppy's. "Cold? We can make it cold?"
"Very cold. Cold like Antarctica. Cold like the top of a mountain. Cold like."
"Like home," Erza said quietly.
The words slipped out before she could stop them. She looked out the window, face carefully blank, pretending she had not spoken.
Yuuta did not look at her. He simply turned to the dashboard, where a small light pulsed gently.
"AI. Make the inside cold."
"Of course, Mr. Yuuta. What temperature are you looking for?"
Yuuta thought about Erza's dress, thin and white, the kind of fabric that would not keep anyone warm. He thought about Elena's small body, still growing. He thought about the way Erza had said like home, soft and quiet, like she was letting him see something she did not let anyone see. He thought about the cold that did not bother dragons but would freeze a human solid in minutes.
"Two degrees."
The AI paused. "Two degrees Celsius, Mr. Yuuta? Are you certain?"
He looked at Erza. She was still looking out the window, still pretending she did not care, but her hands had uncurled in her lap, and her shoulders had relaxed, and there was something in her face he had never seen before.
"Yes," he said. "I'm certain."
"Proceeding. Interior temperature will reach two degrees Celsius in approximately thirty seconds."
The air changed. Cooled. Shifted from damp spring warmth to something sharper, cleaner, the kind of cold that made you want to breathe deep and feel it fill your lungs. Not uncomfortable for him in his suit, and not for them, dragons born in places where this cold was summer.
Elena sighed, a long, happy, contented sigh.
Erza closed her eyes. She did not say thank you.
She did not look at him.
But her hand, resting on the seat beside her, uncurled fully, palm up, fingers loose, and she let the cold wash over her like she was coming home.
Yuuta watched her for a moment.
Then he leaned back in his seat, let the cold settle around him, and smiled.
To be continued...