Weeks passed into months and months passed into years. The reputation of Felicia and Darius grew and followed them through their grades.

The student body stopped called Felicia by her first name. Instead they all opted for calling her by the more iconic and ironic name “King”. Darius, forever quiet and always following his sister around like a shadow, was viewed as Felicia’s strange little lackey. He would only listen to the teachers and Felicia, so it couldn’t be helped if they thought of him that way.

Everyone originally had mentally labelled Darius as “the Lackey”. That changed after one of the less tactful children accidentally called him “Assistant” in front of Felicia. The surrounding kids thought this tactless idiot was dead, killed by the King herself, but instead Felicia laughed and teasingly began calling Darius “Assistant Dee”. Thus, all the other students began calling him “Assistant” too.

The title “Assistant of the King” would teasingly follow him until the day he graduated. If this bothered Darius, he never showed it.

Graduating from elementary school and entering into middle school brought with it a lot of changes. Not only was puberty in full swing, the boarding school option was now available. “Outside” students poured in and the class sizes doubled. Dynamics between boys and girls changed, seemingly, over a single summer break.

This was most obvious with Darius.

He grew taller, his shoulders broadened, and his voice deepened. Unlike the other boys his age, he wasn’t loud or obnoxious, nor did he obsess over sports or fight within his peer group for approval. He also wasn’t timid or shy, easily standing to speak before a crowd and able to answer any question (no matter how embarrassing) without showing the slightest sign of distress.

While he didn’t bother with popular sports like football or basketball, he did participate in track and field. Whether it was sprints or long distances races, jumps or throws, he was fast and astonishingly precise. He made everything he did look easy, even when he was running hard and sweating buckets. Whether male or female, he was impressive to watch.

The new students either felt adoration or envy at how well Darius did at everything. The adoration came almost exclusively from the girls. His quiet indifference was mistaken for being cultured and sophisticated. For the boys, it was ambivalence or envy. They took offense to his lack of interest in them and interpreted his silence as snobbery.

For those who’d been around Darius from the 1st grade, nothing he did was new. No matter how good looking he got on the outside or how fantastic he seemed at sports or how he excelled in tests, those who’d gone through several grades with him knew the inside hadn’t changed. He was weird as ever.

They all knew he only entered track and field because “the King commanded it”. He had no interest in winning, much to the frustration of the other track and field members. Other than with Felicia, he rarely took part in conversations, preferring to sit in a corner somewhere and be ignored by everyone. It wasn’t that he was sophisticated or snobbish, he just didn’t care about what was going on around him.

But the fact that the “inside” students all knew about him only further increased his popularity. He was greeted to varying degrees everywhere he went, sometimes warmly and sometimes in a teasing manner. This made the “outside” students think he was popular, though naturally they misunderstood why.

With the influx of new students, Felicia lost her absolute control over her grade. Those who knew her from 1st grade remained loyal and positive towards her, which kept her reputation relatively high. Her polite but friendly attitude paired with her absolute confidence in herself further boosted the impression new students had of her.

She’d always been a cutey, but when she hit puberty her freckles disappeared and she hit an early growth spurt. Perhaps due to Kim’s genes running through her, she was well-endowed at a relatively young age compared to her peers as well. She went from cute to sexy in a very short period of time, so short it startled even her.

This stage in life was already really awkward for her, with the hormonal changes in her body causing terrible mood swings, growing pains, zits, and then the dreaded Aunt Flo. But the boys, particularly the new ones, made everything ten times more awkward for her.

They all responded to her three ways: 1) obviously drooling over her, 2) too shy to speak a coherent sentence or 3) torment her endlessly.

The boy's behavior, in turn, made a lot of girls jealous of Felicia. The nickname “King” became a double-edged, with quite a few girls using it in a derogatory manner. She found herself the source of quite a few malicious rumors.

However, being one of the “inside” students and being a King had its perks. Firstly, the students who grew up with her weren’t influenced by the rumors. Whether it was a boy or girl, if they heard someone talking smack about “the King”, they’d speak up for her. Secondly, there was an inclination for middle schoolers to judge each other based on their parents' wealth. As Damien King was one of the most wealthy parents there, quite a few students—mostly the new ones—didn’t dare do anything bad to her.

Felicia and Darius stayed close, even when Felicia graduated from elementary school a year sooner than he did. To everyone else, Darius stayed more or less the same, but Felicia noticed a shift during this time. Not only did puberty make his body grow, it grew his ego!

Previously, Darius had a very simple metric for when and how he’d deal with people: are they interesting? Yes, continue the conversation. No, politely leave. As to how he personally felt about people he found boring, there was nothing. After all, why would he pay any mind to people who bored him?

The older he got, the more aware of the world he became. With this awareness, he realized he was vastly more intelligent than the average person. His disinterest stemmed almost entirely because he was bored. Nothing was challenging, everything could be easily solved by simply sitting down and thinking about it a while.

Intelligence was valuable in this world. Children were regularly tested on it and their futures were decided based on it. Therefore, Darius thought, he was a very valuable person in the world. This thought was further reinforced by the teachers who praised him and then the girls who gushed over him. Even the jealousy of other boys his age, when he realized that was why they were being so aggressive, served as a “proof” to how amazing he was.

On the surface, this only resulted in Darius being more willing to talk to some and less willing to talk to others. He was never a conversationalist, and his ego couldn’t change that. But it did change how he judged people.

Felicia was privy to all this information because she’d embedded in Darius’ mind, very early on, that she was smarter than he was in everything other than math. Therefore, Darius would always come to ask her questions about the world around him or to discuss something he’d experienced that he greatly disliked. Because she was “above him”, he respected her enough to confide in her about his life.

Truthfully, the gap in raw knowledge had already narrowed significantly by the time they were 12. Darius was a real genius but Felicia was a fake, only having the advantage of being internally older. But Darius lacked the emotional maturity to notice. Or maybe he noticed and chose to ignore it. No matter how smart a person was, they’d always have a soft spot that they’d want to protect, and for Darius that was Felicia. So even if he had moments of clarity, that perhaps his sister wasn’t as smart as she claimed, he’d immediately rationalize her behavior.

Felicia felt a certain level of gratification knowing she’d not only gotten Darius to the point that she could hold real conversations with him, but also that he liked her enough to ignore the fact that she was turning out average. As long as that family-affection remained strong, no matter how utterly boring and normal she became in the future, he’d always treat her special.

And that meant she could keep him away from Janice and Jenny!

It wasn’t that she had no real affection for Darius after all these years. Felicia would have to be a heartless person to live with someone for so long and feel nothing at all. She really did see him as her little brother. But the enormous amount of work she put into growing their relationship didn’t come from any love for him. It came because of the goal she’d been given for this mission.

Maybe that made her heartless, but Darius wasn’t an easy kid to have for a little brother. If not for the goal, she definitely wouldn’t be trying so hard. First he was completely disinterested in the world and after puberty he felt like he was better than everyone else. Nothing she said could dissuade him. And yet, despite thinking he was the most amazing thing since sliced bread, he would *still* hound her with questions!

For instance:

“One of my classmates brought a strange magazine into class last week.”

“Strange magazine?”

They were in the family library and it was the weekend. They would always come here if they wanted some privacy to talk. Currently Darius was on the floor and she was on the overstuffed seat, both reading different books.

“Mm… they would only show it to the boys and they swore us all to secrecy.”

“Then why are you telling me?” Felicia asked with a frown. She'd taught him to understand the value of secrets early on. Unless it involved something dangerous, he wasn’t supposed to tell anyone. Not even her.

Darius hesitated, “It’s… I can’t get what I saw in the magazine out of mind now.”

Felicia stiffened instantly.

It couldn’t be. Darius had just turned 12, but he was still stunted in other ways. Even if he saw… he definitely wouldn’t…

Taking a deep breath, she settled herself down. She must be mistaken.

“So?

“Sometimes I dream about it and I wake up with my pajamas and bed a mess.”

Her grip on the book she was holding loosened, causing it to fall down to the ground with a thud.

Darius leaned over from where he was sitting on the floor, picked up the book and frowned, “This is a first edition. If Dad finds out you dropped it and bent the pages, he’ll be upset.”

“Nevermind the book, Dee!” Felicia got out of the chair and grabbed him by the front of his cardigan, shaking him. “I don’t want to know, do you understand!?”

“What don’t you want to know?”

“Anything about your dreams that leave the bed a mess!”

His face brightened, “So then you DO know why it’s happening?”

“Guh!” She realized her mistake and let him go, taking a step back and shaking her head violently. “I don’t know! I don’t know anything about anything!”

He stood up and took a step towards her. “I know messing up my pajamas and bed is bad, but I don’t know how to stop it. How do I stop it?”

“Dee, I told you, I don’t know anything!” She covered her ears and took another step back.

“You know, you obviously know.” He looked a little upset. “Why won’t you just tell me? Even if I did bad things in the past, you always explained why and how to change. Why won’t you do that now?”

‘DARS, DARS, save me!’

[The user does not need to be saved.]

‘Yes I do, YES I DO!’

[Apologies, I can not save the user from nothing.]

‘Traitor!’

Felicia wanted to cry.

“You went through the same sex ed class as I did, why are you even asking me?”

Darius' eyes narrowed, “See? You do know! Why are you lying? And I don’t understand— what’s sex ed got to do with what I’m experiencing?”

‘The frick! What did they teach in the boy’s class?!’ Felicia thought, furious. Outloud she said, “Go ask Dad! Dad knows better than I do!”

“Why would I ask Dad when you’re here and already know?”

“Because Dad’s a guy! This is a guy thing!”

“So what if it’s a guy thing? I know about menstruation because you explained it to me, and that’s something only girls can experience.”

“You forced it out of me, that’s why I told you!” She gave a fake sob, “But I’m not telling you anything this time. Just. Go. Ask. Dad!”

“But I want you to tell me.”

He took a step forward.

“Then die ignorant!”

She took a step back.

“Sis…. you don’t mean that.” He smiled, but there was a stubborn glint to his eyes. “If it’s too uncomfortable to say out loud, just write it down.”

Felicia’s lips trembled. Why was he always like this? The more she didn’t want to tell him, the more he wanted to know. She got chased around for a week because he wanted to know what the bloody cotton-paper things were in the bathroom trash cans after she got her first period.

Even if she’s technically an adult on the inside, she’d never been a parent. Having to explain stuff like periods or whatever, she never had to do that. If she talked about it at all, either in her original life or in this one, it's always been with girls. Having to explain, in excruciating detail, how periods work to a 10 year old boy was not something she wanted or expected to do.

Thinking about that mildly traumatizing experience caused a surge of desperation to run through her. Instead of arguing with him further, she sprinted out the library door screaming, “DAAAAAAAAAAADDY!” at the top of her lungs.

Even though Darius could catch up to her without any problem, because she’d screamed so loud it caught the attention of everyone in the mansion. Mr. King hurried over in a panic only to see his daughter trying to step on his son's feet while yelling at him “No, no, no, I won’t!”

His heart felt a little uncomfortable from running so suddenly, it took a few deep breaths before he felt normal again. The mansion wasn’t a tiny house, getting over here so fast had taken a lot out of him.

“You two… what on earth are you doing?” He asked, a little angry since clearly there was no emergency.

“Daddy!” Felicia hopped over to him and grabbed his hand. Her eyes were huge and shining, “Daddy, listen, Dee has something to tell you.”

“...you screamed like you were dying for that? Really??”

Felicia’s face immediately turned serious. “If you were me, Daddy, you’d have screamed too.”

Confused, Mr. King looked at his son, “What is it that’s got your sister like this?”

Darius stood there, a mixture of lazy and disinterest. “I have no idea.”

“Well, it must be something! Otherwise she wouldn’t have screamed.”

Darius’ eyes narrowed slightly, “If it’s something. Maybe. She. Can. Explain. It.”

“You— You—!” Felicia pointed out him, clearly outraged to the point that she couldn’t talk.

Mr. King immediately realized they were in the middle of a fight and he was being dragged into it. It didn’t happen often, but they did occasionally fight. It was always over something silly. Since he loved both his kids, he didn’t like picking sides in their childish squabbles.

Patting Felicia on the shoulder he said with some sympathy, “Sweetie, just talk it out with him.”

“But I don’t WANT to talk it out with him!” Felicia cried out in frustration.

“Then tell me what it is Darius is unwilling to say.”

She opened and closed her mouth, her expression stuck between outrage and embarrassment. How could she say that her younger brother was suffering from wet dreams because he read porn at school? How could she say that?! Even having lived twice, she didn’t have it in her!

Mr. King gave her an encouraging smile.

Unable to do it, she lowered her head and muttered angrily, “Okay Daddy. I’ll… I’ll talk to him….”

After Mr. King left, she turned to Darius.

“Dee, I hope someday you have a kid just like you.”

“Are you trying to threaten me? How is that a threat? My kid would be the smartest, cutest, most amazing—”

“Ugh, just shut up.”

And this was why she didn’t feel bad about how goal oriented she was concerning her relationship with Darius. It was the goal that kept her sane. Otherwise, she’d have already sat on his head and farted on him to get him to quiet down.

Like what a proper older sister would do!