Throughout his life, Kreig had never been one to ignore his instincts. In times of dire battle and uncertainty, it was often only his instincts that kept him alive.

But now he found himself actively ignoring the little voice in the back of his head that told him that whoever watched him at night, peeping through his blinds and observing with animosity, was someone to be wary of. That he had to act. That he was a sitting duck, waiting for the end of the world to come to him.

The voice that told him not to relax too quickly.

Kreig stood up and shook his groggy head free of his morning thoughts. Parting the curtains, he found the sun rising slowly among the many building of the city, seemingly climbing between them like a big red octopus. If he looked down at the usual spots outside his window, he found a few presences with their attention trained on him.

However, not that one.

That particular presence seemed to have an unusual habit of never following him completely around the clock or at school. Sometimes, he could even leave Painstone only to find the presence watching him once he got home. At other times, the presence would leave him for entire days at a time, making him feel as though it was finally over. But then it’d just come back, more passionate than ever.

An enemy he could neither see nor fight. The fact of the matter was that, should he ever try to actively hunt down the presence, the organization that imprisoned him when he first returned would surely capture him once again. And for good reason.

His only way to deal with the presence was through the help of others.

After a few seconds of staring at the rising dawn, Kreig got dressed and left his room. Well in the kitchen, he prepared a simple but homely breakfast for himself and his siblings. It was, surprisingly, not in any otherworldly style. His siblings were obviously very interested in the cuisine of the other world, but by this point, Kreig no longer wanted that to be all that he knew. So, he’d been spending his time learning about Earth food. Just simple stuff, things almost everyone knew.

Like bacon and eggs, or pancakes. The only issue Kreig had been able to note so far was that there was no one definition of any dish, especially not the breakfast types.

He should have considered this before since it was the same with the otherwordly dishes, but when he came faced with the fact that there were thick pancakes, thin pancakes, small pancakes, big pancakes and everything in between, he couldn’t help but feel surprised. It made the matter of learning these new dishes slightly harder, but he was an avid learner.

Nowadays, most of the food he served at home was Earthly dishes. Some from his home country, others from countries whose existence he had forgotten. Most of the time he just picked dishes that seemed nice.

As of yet, not a single person who ate his food had ever complained. Maybe they were just being nice, but knowing that he could experiment with foods without forcing them into fasting felt good.

Just as Kreig flipped over a little egg into a so-called “over easy,” Sam entered the kitchen. She took a big sniff of the aromatic atmosphere. “Heyyy, is that eggs and bacon?” Grinning, she strode over to peek at the frying pan. “You know I like mine sunny, right? Fried on the bottom, none on top?”

“Yes,” Kreig answered simply. He deftly cracked another egg into the pan. In all honesty, he couldn’t really understand why one kind of fried egg was different from another. It was still a fried egg, right? The only way to make the egg different would be to fry it to the point where the yolk hardened, which just so happened to be how George wanted his egg. Kreig didn’t know why, but Sam seemed positively disgusted by this. Same with how George wanted his meat fully cooked through-and-through. Was there something wrong with being cautious?

Right as Sam took a seat by the table, George entered, almost as though he heard Kreig’s thoughts. He gave a quick wave to his siblings before heading over to the cupboards to put plates and cutlery on the table.

Within a few minutes, breakfast was served, with all three of them sitting and eating. Kreig’s eggs were scrambled since it allowed for more varied seasoning combinations.

And for a second, they just ate in silence.

“Kreig,” George said a little strangely. Their eyes met. “Are you aware that your six-month anniversary is coming up?”

“My what?” Kreig echoed hesitantly.

A smile found its way onto George’s lips. “Of coming home, I mean. To Earth.”

Kreig swallowed. Had it been that long already? Six months… Half a year. Back in the other world, six months would barely be a drop in the sea. Especially not if he spent that time fighting. All those years he spent back there felt like some thick, muddy soup he could barely even perceive. But this short time that he had spent on Earth was completely different. It felt clear, honest, and, most of all, pleasant.

His time in the prison was pleasant. His time studying was pleasant. His time with his siblings even more so.

It felt like two completely different yet equally long lives. And still, it had only been six months.

That meant he had dozens upon dozens of lifetimes left to spend with his family and friends.

“Is that so?” he answered, feeling a warm emotion spread through his mind.

Sam banged the table and stood up. “What! Seriously? Dude, we have to do something, like a-, like a party! Or just a dinner? I dunno, but… We gotta do something, right? Like, I’ll admit I don’t even know who we’d invite, but we’ve gotta do this. Or something. Unless you don’t want to, which is totally fine, but if we do that then I still want us to at least watch a movie together. Maybe.”

George nodded while wearing a facial expression that seemed to suggest he had been planning on suggesting something similar before she grabbed the limelight. “Well… Kreig? How do you feel about having a dinner party of some sort? You can invite anyone you’d like.”

A dinner party. Just him, his family, and anyone else. Maybe he could invite the presence?

Kreig chuckled to himself. “I believe it sounds lovely.”

“Alright!” Sam shouted, pumping a fist. “Wait, who are we gonna invite?”

George took a bite of his hard-fried egg, chewed and swallowed. “We’ll leave it to Kreig. The anniversary is in three days, this Friday, so you should have all the time in the world to get a hold of whoever you want visiting. If you’d rather we send invites, we can do that instead.”

“No, I’d gladly tell them in person.”

And so, breakfast concluded. Leaving Kreig to figure out who he might want to invite. Of course, there were Sam and George. Not bringing them would be a crime. Other than that…

Kreig left his thoughts to stew as he biked towards Painstone, joining up with Erica along the way.

“A dinner party? Like, a ball and stuff?”

“I couldn’t tell you. I’m no clearer on the subject than you are,” Kreig replied, increasing his speed to bike in front of Erica as another bike passed on the other side. “Whatever it is, I seem expected to invite people I know. Not that I know too many.”

Erica absently tapped her bike bell. “Hmm… Well, you know me, right?”

He looked her up and down. “Would you like to come to the dinner party?”

“Sure!” she said sweetly.

“Then you are invited. This Friday at 18, I believe,” Kreig said, hoping that this date had been decided on amongst his siblings and not that he just pulled it out of his ass. That was one guest done and counted for. By all means, this encounter did give him a measuring stick to judge everyone else he might invite by. If it was okay for him to invite his tutor, then he should also be able to invite Darius, with whom he actually had a session later this evening.

“I’ll be there,” she said in a strange, wistful voice. “Though, uh, one question?” She furrowed her brows. “What’s the dinner party for? Is it like a birthday or an anniversary, or is it to celebrate the upcoming resurrection of the snake king?”

“The snake king is returning?” Kreig asked in genuine surprise. “I was certain I had slain him…” But when he looked at Erica again to ask her to elaborate, he instead found her face a perfect blank slate, kind of like a sheep that has no idea where the rest of the herd went to. “Ah,” he muttered. She was just saying something strange again; she wasn’t actually talking about the snake king. Though, one never knew with her… “It is the anniversary of my return.”

“Oh, cool!” she said, seemingly completely oblivious of Kreig’s mutterings. “What’d you return from? War or something?”

Kreig felt his body go cold. “S-, something like that,” he mumbled, hoping she wouldn’t ask any more about it.

“Hmm. Okay, gotcha,” she said, and by the way she was looking, if she’d had a pen and paper she would surely be jotting something down. For a few minutes, she seemed deeply enraptured in whatever she was thinking about (which really could be anything), until, finally, she perked up again. “You know, you were right.”

“About what?” Kreig asked, hoping she wouldn’t say something incomprehensible again.

She made a movement in the air with her hand. “The students and stuff. It’s only been a few weeks, but… It feels good, you know? They aren’t too loud, they do their work, they listen pretty good, and they aren’t too mean. Well, most of them, I guess.”

“Who’s being mean to you?” Kreig asked a bit more forcefully than originally intended. For some reason, when he imagined the event of a student being mean to her, he couldn’t help but feel an intense need to protect her from that student, to do something to help her. He’d already given her a small blessing of bravery on her first day, so maybe one of intimidation might scare away the mean student. Either that or he’d get involved himself.

“Hm? Oh! Uh, no, it isn’t…” Erica’s words turned into mumbles as she looked away. When she looked back at Kreig, he found her eyes unusually uncertain. “You promise you won’t do something, right?” He nodded at her. “Well, it’s this girl - Jay, I think she’s called. She was a little mean the first day, and even now she kinda avoids me, I think. But I think I’m getting through to her, so no worries there! Whenever I see her working on her article, she seems really into it, so if I can just cultivate that, I think she can turn into a real model student.”

“Jay…” Kreig turned the name over in his head and found that it actually hit a bell. “Yes, I have her as well. Scrawny little girl. Despite that, she seems intent on trying to keep up with the rest. Surprisingly hard worker. I believe I saw her hanging around Gerald on my first day, but ever since then they have seemed almost hostile to each other.”

“Gerald is that German kid, right?” Erica piped in. “I don’t speak German, but he’s been making really good strides in English lately. He’s almost fluent!”

Gerald… He counted as a friend, didn’t he?

As the two of them rolled onto the school’s grounds, Kreig found his eyes drawn to where Gerald sat talking with a girl he could swear he recognized somehow. She was around his age, with brown hair tied up behind her head and clear green eyes. And where the two of them sat, they seemed so perfectly ordinary. Just two young teenagers, making the most of their young lives.

They were friends, yes, but Gerald was still only a kid. He had a future here, one he could live completely unrelated to the other world.

Kreig and Gerald had barely talked ever since the first day, and the reason for that was simple. Although they would always be friends, their lives were too separate. The life Gerald led would be best off if it wasn’t connected to Kreig’s. Maybe in ten years or so, they might connect once more, but until then, Gerald would be best off on his own.

He was part of Kreig’s life just as how Kreig was part of his, but the lives they led from now on would be separate. Kreig was a man and Gerald remained a boy.

That was what they had decided upon, and that was an agreement Kreig intended to keep, no matter his sentiments.

The day that followed moved rather quickly, with Kreig now so used to his work that he could do it without giving it much thought. He couldn’t really tell what his students thought of him but compared to his first few lessons, they seemed much more relaxed now, often laughing and talking amongst themselves even while he addressed them all. He didn’t mind it.

They were kids, not soldiers. They could afford to have fun and goof off, even to the point of laziness. At one point, Kreig might have looked upon this with a grown-up’s ire, but now he just saw it as charming. They had something he only had in a time before time, but he felt no jealousy. They had their lives as he had his.

After school concluded, he had a quick session with Erica before heading over to Darius.