THEO'S LAP WAS warm as I wiggled until I was positioned well enough that I could see my phone despite my position, without absolutely squashing him. He ignored me, so I continued scrolling through my social media, trying to find something to capture my attention.

It was April of sixth form. We were, somehow, still going strong. I had a feeling we might actually make it to our first anniversary. My inner cynic was screaming with utter disbelief and confusion inside me right now, but I ignored it.

We'd only gotten closer. First kisses under the moonlight when we thought no one was watching (and probably no one was), secret dates that weren't so secret on the Sports Hall roof, where it'd all started, and public displays of affection that weren't on purpose, but had simply become a habit. After so many months of being a couple, it had long started settling into our bones and our daily lives.

I even told my parents. My father was outraged for five minutes, until I'd told him about Theo, his family, his grades, his intellect and the way he treated me. My mum had been convinced the moment I showed her a picture of him.

He told his parents too. I'd said hi to them once, while he was calling them and I'd gone to the sixth form common room (where naturally, all sixth formers were welcomed). They seemed to like me. They were smiling all through it, which was what I based my assumption off of.

I could be wrong, of course. But I liked to think I wasn't.

I tended to be quite good at reading this kind of thing these days. And not in the way I thought I was back in Lower Fifth. Like, genuinely. I could even read Theo's moods accurately now, though I had a feeling that was less to do with me and more to do with the fact he felt no need to be guarded around me anymore.

It was another few minutes before he turned to me, fake outrage on his face. "You really came here just to scroll on your phone."

I turned my head and glared at him. No one batted an eye to our position. We were hardly the only couple in the sixth form common room. Damian, who Theo had been talking to, had just left, which explained me becoming his new recipient for attention. "Well, you were busy just now, weren't you?"

"You're sitting on my lap and scrolling through your phone," he huffed, wrapping his arms around me and pulling me back so I was leaning on him. "You're making me feel like I'm failing my responsibilities of being a boyfriend here, Honoria."

I rolled my eyes, struggling against his grip until I'd managed to escape, jumping onto my feet. "Not now, Theo. I was having a good time scrolling through my phone, you see. You were busy talking to Damian anyways."

"Honoria Song."

"Theodore Yu."

He gave up first. He always did. He motioned for me to sit back down, and I did, besides him, allowing my head to rest on his shoulder. "Anything happened today?" he asked.

I sneered. "Alex gave Louisa a rose today, as a gift, and she's been going around showing it off to everyone."

He let out a laugh. "That's quite sweet."

I glanced at him. "You and the boys suggested it, didn't you?"

"Maybe," he admitted. "In my defence, he was very desperate and begged us for ideas. Roses are romantic."

"Seriously? A rose? What are we in, the eighteenth century? And it's not even like a special day. Anything except a rose would have worked. A book, maybe."

"That's a bit too cliche."

"And a rose isn't?"

"At least a rose is romantic. A book is like him telling her to keep studying."

"Studying is useful!"

"Not while you're trying to please your girlfriend."

My eyes narrowed. He smiled blandly in return. I curled my hand into a fist and smacked it against his chest, though not hard enough to actually cause any kind of injury.

He pulled a face, slowly prying my fist open. "You wound me, babe."

"I'm going to kill you."

"We both know you won't be able to bring yourself to do that," he said with a laugh. "Don't even bother insisting you can."

He'd gotten even taller and bigger over the last while. He'd always been taller than me, but not terribly so. But now he had to be around a hundred and eighty five centimetres, which seemed ridiculously tall compared to my a hundred and seventy.

Duelling had put some muscles on him too. Somehow, it hadn't done that to me.

Disappointing. Life was so unfair. Two years in the Duellers' Club and counting, from one of the worst duellists to ever join the club to one of the veterans, and somehow I still hadn't gained any muscles.

Though I was stronger than before. That much I could feel. It still didn't amount to much when I was with anyone else, though.

Caitlyn had left the school. She'd gone to another one near Scotland, where her family had moved due to her mum's work. I kept in contact with her for a few months, but that had slowly fizzled out. Now, she was just another face on Instagram that I double-tapped before scrolling away.

Sometimes, that was all relationships turned into at the end. I had to admit, I didn't exactly miss her. We were friends, but never that close.

James Taylor and I still talked, though only sporadically. He found a boyfriend too, one of his old housemates. He himself had moved to the sixth form house, and he seemed happier there. More free. As the boys grew older, they moved away from the rigid conformities they used to abide by. James confessed to me the joy he felt at the changes.

"I don't feel like a freak anymore," he admitted, "for not liking football or basketball or girls and all that stuff. It's like over the summer everyone just grew up, all at once."

I gave him my congratulations. He'd made it to the end of his painful school experience.

From now on, it was all fun and games. Hopefully. There'd still be some troubles ahead, but he'd made it through most of it.

I hoped so anyway. James Taylor deserved some happiness in his life. All I'd seen of him was being underrated and ignored throughout his school career, and that was finally taking a turn for the better.

Didn't help that his new boyfriend was one of the most popular boys in school. And not the infamous kind. The genuinely nice kind.

Christian Morgan, on the other hand, now regularly represented Britain in international duelling competitions. He and Coach had reached some kind of deal where he only showed up for training sessions a few weeks before there were competitions so that he could maximise his time for more intensive training, which was fair enough. Adelina was starting to adapt to that kind of schedule too.

Adelina wasn't to Christian's level yet, at least in terms of the amount of international tournaments she attended, but she'd attended one or two already and had come back with rather good grades. Of course her last name helped her out of the arena, but the moment she was in it, any doubts anyone might have had about her skill faded away. She was a beast. I could almost never beat her anymore, unless she made some kind of fatal mistake. Which she rarely did.

It was sometimes a bit disheartening, finding myself beaten over and over again. But the matches were far closer than one might think, and I hadn't received half the training they had. It was fine by me, especially since I viewed duelling as a sport rather than a potential future profession anyways.

I didn't need to win every championship. I had friends who could do that for me. Two of them, in fact.

I wasn't a greedy person. I was rather easily satisfied.

I'd grown tired of fighting Theo a little while ago, and now wilted against him, mumbling, "I have a History test next Tuesday."

"Are you telling me you need to study?"

I shook my head. "No, I have everything memorised."

"Bloody hell," he muttered. "Your efficiency terrifies me."

"The test is in a week."

"Most people tend to leave the studying for the weekend immediately before it. Or the day. Either works."

"I'm not most people, Theodore Yu. You should know that, you're my boyfriend."

"Fair enough," he murmured. "Right. Let's get out of here. It's starting to get crowded."

I glanced around. People had started filing in. Fellow sixth formers who were a bit tired of the chaos in our house common rooms, with the fourth formers and lower fifths screaming their heads off and the upper fifths attempting to study for the JCMs. Oh, that felt like so long ago.

Almost a whole year had passed since then. It was a bit difficult to believe, in all honesty. It felt like tomorrow, we'd all be graduated and in university. And then graduated from that too. Working, getting married (or not), having children...

Life was passing by in a blur, and we were all trying to grab onto its tail. We all seemed to be successful, at least so far.

I wondered how long that'd last.

And that was my inner cynic coming out to talk again. I pushed it back down. "Oh yeah, sure. Let's go for a walk."

It was April, so it wasn't that cold outside. A simple jacket sufficed to keep me warm, as Theo and I strolled under the fluorescent lamp posts that weakly lit the school and its paths. I waved to Louisa and Alex as they walked by, with a disgruntled Gwen in tow—"I'm always the fifth wheel, no, the seventh wheel. It's disgraceful! Come on, people, stop doing this to me!"—the three of them probably either heading to the sixth form common room, or from the sight of the badminton racket Alex was carrying, to the sports hall. I glanced at Theo and asked if he wanted to go play some badminton as well, but he shook his head.

"Let's just have a walk."

I didn't argue. I didn't feel much like going for badminton myself. I was a bit too tired for that, and it was late enough that the sports hall would probably be filled with people right now. High chances were that even if we went, we wouldn't get a court.

So we kept walking, hand-in-hand.

If I'd seen myself like this two years ago, I'd probably have been driven to swears and curses. Relationships for me, back then, had been ridiculous. It was partially my own, inherent view of dating, and partially because of my disaster with Sebastian. I hadn't realised how deeply it had marred my understanding of some things. I did now.

I'd been stupid. But I didn't hate myself for that. I didn't even feel embarrassed. No one really remembered it, and even if they did, so what? I grew up. We all did.

I'd learnt a lot of things in England, and I liked to think that that was the most important of all of them.

To stop giving a shit about what everyone else thought.

To only care about the people you loved, and yourself.

Because that was all that mattered in the end.

And that was all that needed to matter.

—

I SPENT A majority of the summer between lower sixth and upper sixth with Theo. We started looking into universities, planning our future, and what happened after that. I picked up a summer job at a cafe, enjoying it immensely. It was an aesthetic little thing, and it was close enough to Theo's house that he sometimes came to pick me up after it, and we'd go to a restaurant for dinner before he sent me back home.

With our parents knowing full well about it, we saw no point in hiding it. Might as well make sure they knew exactly what we were doing so that they didn't worry.

We'd most likely be separated in university, we both decided, before also agreeing to not consider each other a factor in what schools we applied to. Neither of us wanted to drag the other down. Neither of us would be the ones making the sacrifice so that we could stay close together. With how advanced the internet was, we could easily give long-distance a try. Even if it didn't work, we could continue on as friends.

We decided all of that together.

Of course I spent time with my other friends as well.

Adelina came out as bisexual to us. Well, to be accurate, she did it on Instagram, but she informed a few of us beforehand privately. One month later, she revealed that she'd met a girl in France and that the two had decided to give it a try.

They broke up before the end of summer. But it was on good terms, and Adelina seemed to have gotten a lot of happy memories from it. That was all I really cared about. She was happier now.

James Withington moved on. It took far longer than any of us thought it was healthy, but he did. He tended to avoid us now, and when he couldn't our conversations were brief. None of us bothered forcing him.

If he wanted to talk to us, he would. If he didn't want to, we weren't going to make him do anything he himself didn't want to.

Yunji turned her attention to her music. Whatever qualms she'd had against it in fifth form, she'd squashed. Her goal, she confided, was to become a professional musician. It seemed like such a shocking twist in plans, but her parents seemed to support it and she was pleased with the decision herself. And there really wasn't any reason for me to protest, and neither did I have the right. I attended some of her concerts and recitals sometimes, even though I didn't really understand a thing, or recognise any of the pieces she performed. But I'd learnt piano for long enough to know that she was good. Really, really good.

And that was another girl chasing her dream.

It was quite sweet.

Sometimes I thought about the old days. Lower fifth, when everything seemed so perfect. When I'd wanted things to stay like that forever.

This was better.

This was far, far better.

This felt like freedom. This felt like what we were meant to be doing, what we were supposed to be all along.

Everything felt right.

And everything was right.

And wasn't that all that mattered?

Upper sixth was more stressful. Exam applications, ACMs, endless nights pouring over notes and letters to universities and typing up essays after essays on my laptop. I picked up the habit of drinking coffee, when tea didn't feel enough.

My first university offer came in mid-November. Not my first, second or third option, but a fairly good university nonetheless. It was a welcomed breath of relief. Something I could fall back on, even if everything else went wrong.

An offer came in from my second option at the start of December, to my eternal joy. Theo similarly received one. We'd both applied to very different universities, for obvious reasons. He wanted to study Artefacts. I had no interest in continuing education in a magical institute. I was ready to branch out into the world of ordinary humans. I'd never been raised in a very magical household, and I had little interest in it as well. Magic had always been more of a necessity than an interest. As long as I could cast a few spells that made my life more convenient, I saw no point in investing anymore into it.

But magic was Theo's lifeblood. It was his family heritage, his family history, and his duty. I knew he had to study it. Which was why we'd both braced ourselves for separation, silently telling ourselves that no matter what happened, we'd remember each other forever.

Turns out it wasn't necessary in the end. I received an offer from my first option and took it without hesitation. I laughed and cried about it with my parents for hours on call. Two days later, I got news from Theo—he'd received an offer from his first option as well, and it was less than half an hour's train ride away from mine.

It wasn't the same school, but we were still very much close together.

It would be fine. Everything would be fine.

Life was working out. Everything was looking up.

The year passed faster than I'd wanted it to. The fashion show was a success. I was the Weaver Girl, and Theo the Cowherd. Unsurprisingly, Aesir House's theme was history again. But it was also the last year of their housemaster, so it was probably going to be changed starting from next year, thank god. Though I wouldn't be here to see it. But I was sure plenty of the younger girls would send photo after photo of what happened here, so it might as well be like I was there to witness it myself.

And then, we were thrown back into the endless cycle of studying as ACMs neared. This time around, it was far less stressful. There were far fewer subjects, and I actually liked all of them. Which meant I knew fairly well the things I had to be examined on, and had a lot of confidence in it.

I aced my ACMs, though I wouldn't know that until almost two months after I'd left Bridewater College once and for all.

We had a party at the end of the school year, not unlike the one we'd had when we finished our JCMs. It was almost eerie, the parallels between the two parties, and I was struck with an almost immediate sense of deja vu as we stepped in.

It was almost exactly two years ago, at a party much like this one, when Theo first let it drop he liked me.

Two years later we were still together, about to leave the school we'd be at for the past four—or in his case, five years, about to head on a new adventure together.

I was terrified. And I could tell he was too. But the beat was addictive and soon we were dragged into the dance floor, swaying and moving to the music, without a care for the world.

Everything was different, yet everything was the same.

It was just the way I wanted things to be.

only! the epilogue! is left! omg