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 that 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 that the college had given him. It was a formal coat suit, charcoal gray, tailored by someone who knew what they were doing, originally intended for some hotel interview that 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 was something that 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 and how to hold his glass and how to sit in a way that did not announce to the world that he had never sat at a table like that before in his life.
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 that had been clawing at 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, and she was 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, a child's word for something no child could understand.
His mind went blank. His heart stopped. His face, which had been pale with nerves, flooded with color so fast he felt dizzy.
"Beautiful," he blurted out, 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. She had heard poets and princes and warriors try to capture what she was, had heard them stammer and stumble and fail. She had never cared. Had never listened. Had never let their words touch her.
But his words—his stumbling, fumbling, completely inadequate words—hit her somewhere she did not know she had.
Her face turned red.
"What the hell," she said, her voice high and strange. "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, 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 was bent over, following the pull of her hand, his hands raised in surrender. "My hair—I just used gel to set it—please, 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 was standing in the doorway, already dressed in the little dress Yuuta had bought her 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, his face still red, his hair now pointing in seven different 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, her excitement spilling out of her in waves that made her wings flutter and her tail wag behind her. "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 of lifetimes. 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, which meant 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, who had been sweeping his doorstep, froze with his broom mid-swing. Mrs. Hayashi, who had been coming out to check her mail, stood in her doorway with her mouth open. Children who had been running to school slowed to a halt, their eyes wide, their games forgotten. Everyone stared. Everyone who had ever lived on this street, who had ever walked these cracked sidewalks and ignored these peeling walls, 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.
His soul was somewhere above him, watching himself stand there with his mouth open, and he did not blame it for leaving.
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 might have been 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 a machine. Functional. Adequate. Nothing more.
But she did not say that. She looked at Yuuta's face, at the wonder there, at the way he was looking at this thing like it was magic, and she held her tongue.
Yuuta made a sound that might have been a laugh or might have been a sob.
Elena tugged at his sleeve. "Papa, the car is shiny! Can Elena touch it? Can she? Please?"
Before he could answer, the car door opened.
Not with a handle, not with a latch, but with a soft hiss of hydraulics, the door swinging outward on its own, revealing 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. It was smooth, warm, perfectly modulated—the kind of voice that had been 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 talked to them. 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 the same measured grace she used for everything, her dress brushing against 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 she was tall, and 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, his mind racing, his heart pounding, his hands sweating. Then he moved.
He stepped up to the open door, one hand on the frame, and leaned in slightly, his posture careful, his voice soft.
"My Lady," he said, "please allow me to escort you."
Erza looked up at him.
He was standing at the door like a footman at a palace, his suit neat (if rumpled from her earlier assault on his hair), his expression earnest, his hand extended toward her as if she needed help stepping into a car she had already entered.
Erza looked at his hand. Looked at his face. Looked at the way he was standing, the way he was trying, the way he was doing something he had never done before because he wanted to do it right.
Her face went pink.
She stepped past him into the car without taking his hand, but her steps were slower than they needed to be, and her eyes stayed on his face longer than they should have, and when she was settled in the cream leather seat, she looked out the window and said, very quietly,
"Well," she said. "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 hopeless, pathetic mortal—after all the insults and corrections and the times she had hit him for being stupid—he had finally earned something. A compliment. A real, genuine, from-the-Dragon-Queen compliment.
Yuuta's heart soared. His hands clenched into fists of victory. "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 she wore when he asked stupid questions and gave stupid answers and existed in her presence in stupid ways.
"Do not get carried away," she said, and her voice was cold again, the cold of winter mornings and frozen lakes and things that had been frozen for a very long time. "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, which had been soaring, crashed back to earth and buried itself somewhere in the vicinity of his shoes.
"I see," he said. "Yes. Of course. That makes sense."
He turned away so she would not see his face, and walked around the car to the other door, and told himself that he had not expected anything different, that he had known she would not mean it, that he was used to being nothing.
Erza watched him go.
Her hands curled in her lap.
She had meant it. She had meant the words, even if she had not meant the way she said them. He had been good. 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 say things like that. She did not admit that a mortal had made her feel something she had never felt before. She did not let anyone see the cracks in her armor, the places where the cold was starting to thaw.
She looked out the window and pretended she did not care that his face had fallen.
Elena, who had been watching everything with the sharp eyes of a child who missed nothing, 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. She was a child, and children were born to be mischievous, and Elena had been born to be more mischievous than most.
"Papa! Papa, come! The car is waiting!"
Yuuta climbed into the seat across from them, the seat that faced backward, which felt strange and wrong and made him want to turn around to see where they were going. He buckled his seatbelt. He tried not to think about the fact that he had just done something correct and it had been dismissed as nothing.
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, patient, the voice of someone who had been designed to make people comfortable. "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. It was a small movement, barely perceptible, but he caught it. She was confused. She was curious. She was, he realized, not going to ask what temperature meant because asking would mean admitting she did not know something, and the Dragon Queen did not admit to not knowing things.
Elena had no such reservations.
"Temp-a-ture!" she said, drawing the word out like it was a new flavor she was trying to understand. "What is temp-a-ture, Papa?"
Yuuta laughed. It was a small laugh, surprised out of him by her earnest little face and her serious little voice.
"Temperature, sweetheart." He reached over and ruffled her hair, careful not to disturb the braids Erza had put in that morning. "It means we can make the inside of the car hot or cold. Whatever we want. However we want it."
Elena's eyes went wide. Her wings fluttered. Her tail, which had been curled around her leg, shot straight out and wagged like a puppy's.
"Cold?" she breathed. "We can make it cold?"
"Very cold," Yuuta said. "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 had not meant to say them. Had not meant to let them hear how much she missed the ice, the snow, the cold that had been her constant companion for centuries. She looked out the window, her face carefully blank, and pretended she had not spoken.
Yuuta did not look at her. Did not acknowledge what she had said. He simply turned to the dashboard, where a small light pulsed gently, waiting for his command.
"AI," he said. "Make the inside cold."
"Of course, Mr. Yuuta." The AI's voice was pleasant, accommodating. "What temperature are you looking for? Please specify the desired degree."
Yuuta thought about it. He 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, still learning what it meant to be half dragon and half human. 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 ice and snow and the cold that did not bother dragons but would freeze a human solid in minutes.
"Two degrees," he said.
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 that 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 the damp warmth of a spring morning to something sharper, cleaner, the kind of cold that made you want to breathe deep and feel it fill your lungs. It was not uncomfortable—not for him, wrapped in his suit, and not for them, dragons who had been born in places where this cold was summer.
Elena sighed. A long, happy, contented sigh, the kind of sigh she made when she was exactly where she wanted to be.
Erza closed her eyes.
She did not say thank you. She did not look at him. She did not give him any sign that his choice had mattered.
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.