Somewhere Someplace

"Hmm…" Swordstaff was seated in his chamber's study desk, eyes glaring down upon a piece of parchment, grumbling away whilst the ink of his pen dripped and dropped.

"…are you serious?" Blossom was standing behind him close enough, looking down at that which had been troubling him so; she was not amused.

"I do not need your commentary, girl." Swordstaff, annoyed, so replied; "Be smug all you want, there will be a day when I will master this too."

"…you receive tutoring every week since you were a boy, yet you struggle with…this? This is simple." Blossom so remarked. "Your tutors must be…bad."

"Grrm." Swordstaff, grumbling, so shifted his glare straight to her. "Watch your mouth before I dirty it myself. My tutor is…good enough…" It was weird to see him not blame someone else, for once. His eyes drifted back down to that parchment sheet. "Although, sometimes I do feel he is…conspiring against me," oh, never mind, "but… I…simply require more time to master this…art… I require more practice, which is why…he has been giving me these…practices."

"Which instead of you doing, you thought it most wise to fuck Moon, Orange, Yellow, and who knows whoever else and have an orgy in here." Blossom was bland in her voice.

"Heh…" Swordstaff's finger gently scratched at the parchment as he clearly fell into recollection. "Maybe if you knew the stress—the weight that was made to crush my shoulders… You would understand…the type of relief."

Blossom tried not to yawn nor utter the word 'yawn'.

"Heh… I was always told I should savor my youth, before full expectations entered… When everything is scrutinized." He glanced her way. "Father said that…there will be time where I will calm and age, when…the heat of the heart will diminish… And I do have a heart, but this world is cruel and prefers to crush me, so I must crush it." There was an almost tension in his voice… "That is what I do… Through will and power, I force my way that it becomes the way…" He then shifted to a relaxed, almost leering, smirk…as if…reminiscing. "Heh… And there is no greater respite than when…servants grovel, begging for my—"

"Alrightly, ew, ew! Gross…" Blossom timely cut him off. "Gods, you're such a daddy's boy with a fragile soul—always feeling that you're on top of everyone but also somehow beneath everyone." She became franker than frank. "You are never going to make me feel bad so that I coddle you, stroke your tail, and call you 'master'."

There was a sizzling growl and a tightening to his legs. "And you…" Yet there was then a simmer… "You… You are truly insufferable… But I shan't…let you provoke me…" His eyes drifted away and down, back to the parchment. "I know what you are trying to do… As with before, you want me to drag you into that bed and—"

"I don't want you to; I never wanted any of this… I just want this over with. I don't care anymore…about anything… My future is…lost…" Blossom…spoke more hollowly. "But you refuse to finish this fast because you're so scared that a son will replace you… It won't even be your burden—it will be mine, and I am asking you…"

"Hmph." Swordstaff blew his lip in a scoff. "I refuse to believe this is the full story. I've read of corruptive rots—black magics and their rituals; evil beings seeking children…" He then lanced yet another glare her way. "Besides, you are detestably weak—it disgusts me… Your constant words of 'giving up', and that you are worth nothing…"

"…uh, are you implying…I'm worth something?" Blossom was now so confused… This was something she had to come learn of Swordstaff throughout these weeks… He was incredibly inconsistent regarding any of this and constantly contradicted himself.

"No. You are worthless to me—completely unworthy!" His voice abruptly flared louder. "You are blight upon me—a curse! An insult!"

"…rightly. So, if I am…a curse, then wouldn't it be better if we…quickly finished this, so that I can leave…forever?" Blossom was hoping she would die in childbirth, frankly. Such was a common fate for many would-be mothers, and she was…young—perhaps too young.

Swordstaff gave her a gawking stare, before turning away whilst pinching his forehead… "Sixteen years, finally of age… Father promised I would have been arranged by now; that everything I was working towards would…impress a princess of a greater house… But look at me, stuck with a bastard attendant who had lived amongst peasants…" He again glared at her; "I am amazed, truly amazed, that you can even bathe yourself!"

"…huh?" Blossom just shook her head a little with a raised eyebrow… "…what?" What…was that even supposed to insinuate?

"You sneer at me whilst I sleep; whilst I struggle with this…this task!" His focus sharply returned to that still unsolved parchment. "But I will dominate this…absurd art as I have everything else."

"…that is the problem." Blossom, sighing, decided to actually be a little helpful. "You can brute yourself through your magical studies and…spells and everything else along your way, but…you cannot do that with maths."

"Why?" Swordstaff really hated this 'math'. "It is just symbols to be shoved around… This shouldn't be so…infuriating!" He growled with frustration. "Oh, but everyone else… The peasants. That slutty maid, Moon—Oh, she, an illiterate peasant, she could solve all of these without issue… Heh…" He began to reminisce… "That's why I made her watch as I allowed her friends to relish with me; I made her solve these practices as she heard every last gasping moan… She must've been craving it too, but I denied her… To make her feel what it's like to be so diminished."

Great, he was ranting again, becoming distracted.

"You know, if you were a girl, you would be a slut, rightly?" Blossom decided to stop being helpful. "You are…literally the same thing—constantly charged, I mean it is so…obvious. Most nobles maybe fuck one or two of their maids here and there with maybe an occasional forcing, but you have to go and fuck every single one of them…to 'claim' or whatever." There was something about mouthing off in this way that made everything feel more bearable. "You are a sick pervert and repulsive baby who…" However, she then noticed his stare… The type of stare… "…who…"

"Who?" Indeed, Swordstaff was intrigued. "Who what? Go on, say it." He stood up from his chair. "Say it. Go on. Say it." He pushed her just a little.

Blossom averted away and down, her breaths anxious… "…nevermind…"

"Pathetic." He tsked; somehow, her revert to docility only frustrated him more. "How are you able to stand when you lack a spine?" He sat back down, scooting the chair in. "Sky above, even a timid sheep hiding within bold wolf's skin still has fangs. What happened to yours?"

Sometimes Blossom had to wonder if he…actually liked it when she…asserted herself. It was weird… He was very… "Very weird… You are such a freak…" It honestly uneased her… "I don't understand you…at all…"

"You know nothing." Swordstaff was blunt; "Sovereign's blood but a bastard, you were raised by peasants… I do not even know why I have you here when you have never provided any help besides sneers, taunts, and being irresistibly frustrating…" He thus waved his hand. "Go. Leave me. I don't need a useless attendant watching me always; you're not even worth fucking, dry emotiveless log."

Blossom kept her head down… "…sure." She did not bother contesting. If anything, this was Fortune's rare blessing, for she would finally be away from him. Yet as she stepped aside and began to walk, she paused… "Hrrm…" She tightly gripped her dress, grumbling with increased scowling ire.

Her walking away, in a way, would be an admission of defeat, and she did not want him to win. No, no… If they were going to be…this for however long only the Gods knew, she could not just take it while he acted like such a toxic bitch. Her own hypocrisy aside, she was annoyed—angry, even.

Biting her lip, she turned herself around and went straight back to him. Without a word and with quite the bland face, she yanked the feathered pen right out from his hand, practically pushing the man-boy aside.

"Huh??" Swordstaff was bemused, having been partially pushed out of his chair by the weakly girl whom he could easily strangle against the wall.

"Move. Move. Shoo. Get off the chair." Blossom waved as if shooing. "Call me 'useless', there are fifteen practices on this sheet, and you have yet to even do the first one!"

"Bold… And disrespectful!" She did not need to give him her eye to know he was snarling at her. "How… How dare you assault me??" There was something weird with his voice, frankly.

"I…actually…don't want to hear you say that—at all." She absolutely did not.

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Swordstaff refusing to move from his chair, Blossom simply ignored him and looked at the bemusing problem on the parchment.

3x + 8 = 20

…That was the bewildering problem. Granted, for these lands, this was advanced mathematics. However, Blossom happened to know a thing or two.

Dipping the pen's tip into the ink, she began to write the process down before his gawking eyes.

3x = 20 - 8… She used her fingers.
3x = 12
x = 12/3
x = 4

Within seconds, it was done.

"See? So, not so useless? This is not that hard." She glared at him. "Once you know the goal is to find the missing number, the math is peasantry—adding, deducting, magnifying, partitioning. Move and isolate."

"X is…four?" Swordstaff just looked. "I hate this… Beyond the basics, this is not useful! What does it mean for it to be four?"

Blossom could not really argue about…the usefulness of understanding this, but she did know how to answer what should have already been…intuitive.

"The missing…value? That's what this is—how do you not know that?" she thus replied, slightly bewildered; "Go back to the original and put in…this number where the x is." She proceeded to do exactly that.

3(4) + 8 = 20
12 + 8 = 20
20 = 20

"See?" Her ink pen's tip so pointed. "That means I was correct. Four is the answer, because four completes the…uhm…it—this. It completes this, and the numbers all confirm twenty."

"…why…does three gobble four to become twelve?" Swordstaff asked…

"Uhm… It's magnification?" Blossom replied with a slight tilt… "I don't… Have your tutors never showed you the chart?"

"Yes, he has." Swordstaff so replied; "But I don't learn anything from charts… I understand addition and its opposite, deduction—you yourself used your fingers… There is a realness to it. But with magnification, there is a chart. But why is there a chart? What does the chart mean? Whence does…any of these come? Where is the realness? The logic? The why?"

"…uh…" Blossom…was confused as to what exactly he was…asking. "Wait, you don't know what… They never…taught you the trick?"

"…trick? What trick?" Swordstaff seemed interested.

"Three magnified by two is six, which is the same as three added by three and two added by two added by two…" Blossom explained, though she also began to write it down. "Three magnified by three is nine, which is the same as three added by three added by three, which is also nine. Three magnified by four is twelve, because three added by three four times is twelve and four added by four three times is also twelve." She then kind of realized… "So, wait, that's why…the other word for this is 'times'…? Three…times four, adding three…four times… Woah…"

Swordstaff looked at her… "Huh…" He nodded his head, starting see it now… "Three times two, three…two times. Three times four, three four times—three added three added three added three…" He did the counting… "Twelve. I see it. It's…condensed addition? Instead of adding three four times, you write it down…this way, but…" He was thinking… "So, is partition…reduction but compounded?"

"Uh… No." Blossom shook her head… "See, back to…up here…" She pointed to her solving of the problem; "We had a fractional of twelve above three, which is a division: twelve partitioned by three… Four magnified by three is twelve, so twelve partitioned by three is four—twelve partitioned by four is three."

"It is…an undoing of the magnification, then?" Swordstaff was not that stupid, it seemed.

"Yeah… Basically. It's called partitioning because you are trying break it up into…little parts and…yeah…" Such was how she was explained it, at least… "Think of it this way… Twelve partitioned by two, that's splitting it in half… Twelve partitioned by three, that's splitting it into thirds… Or…" She wrote down the number twelve. "Here's twelve, split in half that's two sixes: six two times—six times two." She visually demonstrated. "But the sixes can be further split into threes; so, three and three; three and three… We're left with four threes. Three four times—three times four." She circled. "That's partition, dividing and splitting."

Swordstaff just stared… "…why do you know any of this?" He had to wonder. "What usefulness would it serve you as a peasant?"

"…" Blossom had no…answer to that. It was just stuff her mother and secretly hired tutor—whom she had caught in her mother's bed multiple times—had taught her. "Well, my mother was taught by…learned ones; it was useful as a servant, but… It is just good to…know? It helps the soul by giving…wisdom?" Yeah, something like that… "Not everything learned needs to serve a purpose."

"Hmm…" Swordstuff looked at the parchment, at the things she had scribbled. "Next one…" he simply requested; "Now the next one."

"Uhm, no." Blossom, however, handed him the pen. "You do it. I am tired, and you saw me write it out…" She looked at the next problem. "It's literally…identical in the method of…solving. So, copy the method."

Yet Swordstaff did not like idea of solving it himself… "I… I was never taught any tricks or…the logic… I was only presented these numbers and told how to do it, but not understand it…"

"Or maybe this is because you had your 'servants' do all the work for you, making your tutors think you're way better than you are." Blossom was blunt. "Do it yourself. That's the only way you'll understand this. But you don't need me to tell you this… Unless you are that stupid, which…"

"Stupid? I am not stupid! I understand far more than you could ever—"

"Prove it. If you are not stupid, then one example by me should be more than enough." Blossom really was enjoying this, just in a more sinister way. "If you don't then you're officially stupid, and I am going to tell all the maids that you cried about how hard this was…"

"…you wouldn't dare!" He was taking her seriously. "…slander me, and I will—"

"Solve the problem." Blossom just repeated. "Or are you scared?"

"…" There was a moment of silence. "Give me the quell!" He asked though ultimately yanked it from her; he proceeded to the problem himself.

Blossom watched him attempt to solve 5z+9 = 21, the poor man-boy not realizing that 5/12 was the acceptable answer… He tried to figure out how to divide 12 by 5. It was almost cute, seeing him struggle. He eventually attempted to employ Blossom's trick; understanding that division, or 'partition' as the locals called it, was the opposite of multiplication, or 'magnification', he knew that 5 added by itself twice equaled 10, but 5 added by itself thrice was 15. He reasoned that the answer, thus, had to be in between 2 and 3.

He felt so thrilled with himself, indeed, as if had discovered a paradox…up until Blossom showed him the trick that was 'long-form division', which provided an answer—2 with a carryover of 2—marginally faster. However, she then proceeded to cheekily convert that into a fractional expression, 2+2/5, which she then further converted to 2,4, providing the most technically correct answer possible.

And, indeed, the look on his face… It was so very funny. She tried not to laugh…

At how pathetic he really was.

Nevertheless, she continued to actually help him for a few more problems; beyond one particular confusion, he did most of it himself. Later, she contemplated changing the answers while he was not looking, just so he could be scolded by his tutors… Though, she then realized, right… It was written in ink.

-|||-

A new day. Another day.

Blossom was humming as she strolled down these halls, her weirdly smiling face unmatching to her baggy eyes and burn on her cheek. She felt weirdly satisfied… Swordstaff had been hard at work this morning, doing more math practices. It appeared that his main issue had seemingly been with not understanding the logic—or rather way overthinking it—as opposed to the process; now that he was starting to understand, he was becoming less stupid at it.

Although, it ended up being a real shame that his morning cup of tea had found its contents splashing all over that same parchment of his, ruining all his work… While she had sworn it was just an accident, he knew very well that she was playing with him…

It was fun… This was fun… Playing with him this way.

She got burned, but…by this point, it did not feel that bad.

None of this felt bad…

She never had a so-called 'boyfriend' before, so this was…a new experience. Obviously, she knew well enough that…they were not like that at all and she in fact absolutely hated him; there was no love or romance—bleh—, but a formal exchange…

She was merely an attendant on paper, and attendants were not supposed to be so close-close… But the Berrybottoms wanted her sovereign-blood. And if he was going to play with her, she was going to play with him.

A simple formal exchange…

And she could already imagine he was sobbing in his room about his ruined math homework.

Poor him.

Though despite that provocation, he had yet to do another 'reminder'—which was to say, drag her to bed. Eck… Even thinking about it…made her boil within…

He had literally the easiest role in all of this… Place the stick and plant the seed—How was that so hard?

It was frustrating; he was being so stupid… He was stupid. Unforgivably wretched and freakish…

Oh, and it was so tiny… His little 'wand'… All of the other girls were probably faking their moans… Not that he had even given her any opportunities to fake anything herself… Ugh. She did not even remember the experience.

…Adolescents, truly.
So quick to maladapt.

"Nugh…" Blossom scratched her head. "Why does it…always feel like something is…eating me on the inside…" She paused for a second, realizing what she had just blurted. "Ew. He'd never do that, he sucks—such a bad man… Billhook would've probably… Pfft… They all suck—all of them… Suck…" She paused again. "Ew, no! Egh!!" she fervently shook her head, getting intrusive thoughts; "With how much Swordstaff loves his daddy, he might as well though… Pfft… Make him find out how wretched a tail is... Disgusting, bleh!!"

Or perhaps it is simply her.
Truth be told, this girl was already…
Perhaps loose in the head.
Truly, the mind is an abyss.
And I relish in its contents.

"Nugh…" She pressed her head again. "My head…feels so weird…" There was a sudden freeze in her walk. The pain of this headache, the throbbing of her mind… It was as if, in a way, it had all…brought her back. "…what is… What am I even doing?"

Indeed. With heavy breaths unraveling, she backed herself into the wall of this hall. Being alone, she sank down and…remained there, with a shaky hold to her legs, a chatter to her gritting teeth…as if shivering yet not even cold.

"Gods' sacred toilet… This is…really happening…" she so mumbled to herself with trembly jaws, tightening and squeezing, eyes widening… "I really…am here… This is happening to me… I am actually…"

Sometimes it was easier to pretend that this was all a dream; that everything she was doing and everything befalling her was inconsequential… Yet, even if rare, there were still moments like these when everything just so abruptly and suddenly…struck; reminding her that all of this was, in fact, real—the pain both within and beyond, the crushing weight of what all of this really was; that it was not going to end…anytime soon… The realization of how terrifying all of this was; the future, the act of being forced to bear and carry and then…

What? What would even happen after that?

They would want another just in case…

Then after that? Would they want another one? Then another one?

Most children…never made it, after all…

How much would they want from her before it was finally over? Would it…ever be over?

She…had not even formally turned of age yet… They did not even bother waiting…

…It felt like she was being slowly stripped and skinned alive…of everything she was.

"Fuck…" Yet with a sniffling breath and grand exhale, Blossom wiped her slightly teary eyes dry… "Whatever…" Indeed, such was all she muttered as she stood herself up and recontinued her walk.

Whatever.