Chapter 31: Chapter 31. For a Friend
Someone else in the cafeteria was paying equally little attention to the gossip.
She sat a few tables away, golden hair catching the light, golden eyes moving quietly over the room with the kind of measured awareness that had been trained into her long before she was old enough to understand why. A face that invited a second look without demanding one. A bearing that made respect feel like a natural response rather than an obligation.
Elizabeth.
She had heard the full account of the morning’s events before she had even arrived at the cafeteria. And she believed none of what the students around her were currently saying, not because she was dismissing them out of hand, but because she knew more about Necrotize than anyone else in this room. She had been required to. From childhood, that had been her education, learning him. She had never spoken with him properly, never stood before him in direct conversation. But every book in the Imperial Palace that bore his name, every record, every annotated note passed down through generations, she had read all of it. It had been taught to her like a language.
And yet, even with all of that, she still couldn’t arrive at a clean answer for why he had done what he did this morning.
She let her eyes move across the cafeteria until they found him.
Necrotize was eating with complete contentment, entirely undisturbed by the fact that he was the subject of what appeared to be half the conversations in the room. Beside him, Lyra sat with a faint colour in her cheeks that hadn’t been there before, for reasons Elizabeth couldn’t immediately place.
Should I go over there? Should I ask directly?
She turned it over briefly. Then she picked up her plate, stood, and walked across the cafeteria to their table, taking the seat on the opposite side without excessive deliberation.
Necrotize noticed her the moment she sat down. He shifted his attention from his food with the unhurried ease of someone who had been aware of her approach for some time and had simply waited.
"Oh, hello, Elizabeth." A genuine greeting, easy and unforced. "I believe this is the first time we’ve actually spoken."
Elizabeth had intended to greet him first. She hadn’t been given the opening.
"Hello, my lord. Yes, this is our first proper exchange. We shared a class yesterday, but I didn’t find an opportunity to greet you then." She turned slightly. "And hello, Lady Lyra. This is also the first time we’ve spoken directly, though we’ve been in the same place on a few occasions before. There was never a proper chance to introduce myself."
Lyra straightened slightly, the faint colour in her face deepening by a fraction. "Ah, yes, Princess Elizabeth. This is certainly my first time meeting you properly as well. And please, you don’t need to be so formal with me. Just Lyra is more than enough." The last part came out slightly awkward, which she was aware of. Speaking to a princess for the first time was one thing. Speaking to the chosen one of this generation, the person destined to serve a God, was something else.
And then, quietly, something clicked in the back of her mind.
The God she was destined to serve was sitting right beside her, eating his lunch with complete serenity.
And on top of that, he was her friend.
She found it genuinely difficult to hold both of those facts in her head at the same time. Because every time she looked at Necrotize, actually looked at him, the conclusion that this was the God of Destruction required active effort to reach.
He’s such a weirdo.
Necrotize caught the thought and said nothing, though something in him was privately entertained.
Elizabeth looked between the two of them for a moment, then settled on a small, easy smile.
"You can call me just Elizabeth as well. We’re classmates."
Before Elizabeth could carry the conversation any further, she noticed that Necrotize had already returned his attention to his food.
She wasn’t particularly surprised. She knew this about him, that he loved eating, and that he had little patience for interruptions during it. What was strange, though, was the manner of it. He was sitting in the middle of a cafeteria full of noise and barely contained gossip, entirely unbothered, not acknowledging any of it. No incident. No consequence visited upon anyone.
That part gave her pause.
Because what she had read in the Imperial Palace was something considerably different. The Necrotize described in those records, if he were that version of himself, every student currently sitting in this room would have ceased to exist. Not figuratively. Their presence in the world would simply have been removed, quietly and completely, and no one would have been left to remark upon it.
And yet here he was. Eating lunch.
Elizabeth did not particularly enjoy talking around things. She had even less patience for vague, carefully constructed questions designed to approach something without actually reaching it. So she set both aside and asked directly.
"My lord. Why did you do it?"
Necrotize glanced at her, and something faintly teasing moved into his expression.
"What are you referring to?"
Elizabeth glanced briefly at Lyra, then back to him. "Claiming to be a single-element user."
At the question, Lyra lowered her head.
She already knew the answer. She knew it had been done for her, and while that knowledge sat warmly somewhere in her chest, another part of her, quieter and less comfortable, felt the weight of it differently. That he had done something like that. For her.
Necrotize considered the question for exactly one second.
Then, without any particular emphasis or ceremony, he said:
"For a friend."
That was all.
Two words. But Elizabeth’s eyes widened slightly at the sound of them. She hadn’t expected the answer to be that simple, or that complete. In the space of a single sentence, the entire shape of the morning’s events assembled itself clearly in her mind.
She looked at Lyra, who was still sitting with her head slightly bowed.
And in the privacy of her own thoughts, something moved through Elizabeth that she hadn’t anticipated.
You shouldn’t be this way. Everything written about you, everything you are, is cruelty. Ruthlessness. Destruction. That is what you’re supposed to be. So why are you like this.
Why are you kind.
She held the contradiction for a moment. Then she looked back at Necrotize, who was eating with absolute contentment, carrying no apparent awareness of having just dismantled several foundational assumptions she had spent years building, and something in her expression shifted.
A small smile. Quiet, and entirely genuine.
"I see."
