Sam woke up feeling her head turning. She clasped her hand to her head as the pain and drowsiness hit her. She had a headache, not only that, it felt like her whole body was aching with pain as if she had undergone a thorough exercise the last night. She tried to remember what happened but her memory only gave her the picture of her boss, walking past toward her dashingly with an umbrella in his hand.

"Oh boy!" She gasped. She had a bad feeling about this—about Ziggy always appearing in her memory with that gorgeous face and killer smile. Perhaps she should avoid being with him all the time because his influence and effect on her was already alarming.

​​

Sam pulled her body out of bed and noticed that some note was left on her bedside table together with a glass of water and a tablet of medicine. The note says "Drink me"

Sam couldn't help but smile and commented while shaking her head. "Cringey… you are getting weirder and weirder everyday youngest sire"

She took the medicine and drank it together with the water before Sam head through her bathroom. Passing through the bathroom door, Sam noticed the gown she previously wore on the party lying on the floor as if somebody had thrown them away in that side and completely forgot about it.

She froze when she remembered that such gown was the last thing she remembered wearing, but she don't remember undressing them. Curios, Sam went to pick the gown but something fell from the crumpled clothing that made Sam's jaw dropped.

It was her undies.

Sam knew herself very well and the possibility of her taking off her undies while she sleeps was zero. She immediately examined herself and notice that she had been wearing a set of pink pajamas she had never wore once. She never wore pink—like ever and so she was very certain she wasn't the one who choose that clothing.

Did the youngest sire….

"Sh*t! Sh*t!' Sam could only do nothing but curse upon the thought.

What the hell happened?

Did he saw her body…. Like all of it?

Also, why was her body aching so bad?

Did something happened last night? Something that shouldn't have happened?

"Oh Sam!" She chided upon herself while knocking her own head with her fist "How could you be that stupid?"

****

Xhemin went into the village to run some errands for Professor Owens. The latter was so busy attending to the little princess that he had no time to do other things. Thus, Xhemin disguised herself again and went to buy the things they needed at the princess household.

She was at the village market right now waiting for someone to appear. It was the boy who always ran errands for the professor, Bitbit was what he calls him and he was supposed to give something to Xhemin today as per professor Owens instructions.

Xhemin stood on one corner busying her eyes with the chaos of the market. A lot of things were traded in there like squirrels meat, herbs, wild flowers and some other things she had no idea about. She herself brought some meat to be cooked later on, since the princess needs to eat some meat too.

"Healer," Xhemin heard a call, almost a whisper beside her and notice someone small had been pulling up her sleeve. She looked down and saw Bitbit carrying a couple of things in his tiny hand. Xhemin noticed too that his body was wet, probably with sweat but Xhemin withdrew that conclusion when she realized his hair too was wet and was still dripping with water. That wasn't at all, the boy must have gone swimming somewhere before meeting her.

"Why are you wet?" Xhemin used a Manggan language to communicate with the boy. After few days of using it with the princess and handmaid Lin, she got used to it right away.

"The thing that the professor asked can be found under the sea water so I had to go swimming in the ocean" he answered and raised something covered in a wet cloth to Xhemin.

"I see" Xhemin replied "Is this all that he needed?"

"Yes…" The boy smiled as Xhemin accepted the thing and tried to scrutinize it. "…Those were special kind of sea grass"

"Was it hard to find?" Xhemin looked at the boy proudly. She thought the boy must have been so clever that Professor Owens opted to get him under his care to train him. Aside from that, the boy seemed to be very mature from his age.

"Not at all," The little boy bragged. "By the way healer… I got something for you too…"

"What is it?" Xhemin's brow arched.

"A gift" he said and smiled even more.

"I love gifts!" Xhemin exclaimed happily. She was trying to play with the boy by acting like a child since she was very fond of him.

"Wait a minute don't be too excited," The boy told her and find something from the things he was carrying. After a minute his eyes brightened when he found what he was looking for "Oh, it's here!"

He took a plastic container and gave it to Xhemin.

Curios, Xhemin took the thing and was left thunderstruck on what she saw.

"Bitbit where did you find this?"

"I found it floating at the sea shore. It must be from the other side" He said to her. "So I planned to give it to you since I don't know what those are,"

"This is a disposable plastic container," Xhemin told him as she knew it was the first time Bitbit saw something like that "We produce this kind of thing in the other side"

"And the one inside?" Bitbit asked further. He was really curious as to what those were since he had never seen a thing like those at the island.

"Strawberries" She answered. Together with her words came a lot of memories and emotions "You can eat this. It is delicious,"

Xhemin opened the sealed container and took one fruit with the intention of letting Bitbit taste it. However, when she examined the fruit, it was already rotten. Perhaps it had been floating on the ocean for few days before it got drifted to the shore.

"Such a bummer. It's rotten already. We cannot anymore eat it," She said sadly.

"Ai do, that's sad. I wanted to have a bite since healer says it's delicious" The boy lamented.

"It is," She replied "It's my favorite"

"Perhaps we can grow it if there's a seed inside, then Bitbit can taste when it grows" He hopefully wished trying to cheer the healer who turned very upset with his gift.

Bitbit words put back some colors to Xhemin's face "You are so brilliant Bitbit! There's no seed inside it but outside. Here… look…"

Xhemin showed the small strawberry seeds that had already been mixed up with the rotten fruit.

"I'll try to grow it so Bitbit can have a taste…" Xhemin promised although she knew that it was rather hard to grow strawberries in that part of the world "I hope the soil here wasn't as harsh like the soil in Hampshire"

Xhemin and Bitbit separated their ways at the market and Xhemin started her journey back to princess Song household with the plastic container full of rotten strawberries.

She wondered how those strawberries reached the Manngan Island but didn't bother herself to dug deeper in such a mystery since they had more important things to focus on those days.