The next morning, the castle resembled a kicked-over anthill. Servants rushed around with trunks, Lianel handed out valuable instructions, and the King absentmindedly flipped through some papers.

  I, as usual, had nothing to pack. My entire life fit into my pockets. But the real horror lay ahead. It turned out we weren't going to fly on carpets, and we certainly weren't going to use a normal human teleport. We were taking a carriage. Across the entire country. All the way to the border.

  "Are you serious?" I looked at the carriage as if it were an inquisitor's pyre. "That takes forever. It's agonizing. It's... boring! How about I just snap my fingers and we'll be there?"

  Everyone immediately refused. In unison. Apparently, the prospect of sudden teleportation terrified them more than a week in a cramped wooden box on wheels.

  Right before we left, Ryan came up to me. "Greg, look what I can do!" he stomped his foot.

  The sword I had "brought to life" for him slid out of its scabbard with a quiet ring, right into his hand. "Did you see that? Did you see?! It moved on its own!"

  I smirked. "Not bad, squirt. I think I heard a legend once that if you train long enough, a sword can become so sentient it will fight on its own while you drink tea on the sidelines."

  "Wow..." Ryan stared at the steel, mesmerized. "Greg, the next time we meet, I'm going to be strong. Very strong. I promise." "Yeah, Ryan... You probably will be." Just don't forget about the 'butterfly'.

  Finally, the commotion ended. We loaded up. I sat by the window, looking with longing at the receding spires of the castle and the bustling streets of the city.

  I noticed fresh bruises on Lianel's arms. "Lianel, what is that?" I nodded at her forearms. "Did someone try to kidnap you on the way to the carriage?" "No," she winced. "Just the dummy... I couldn't put my guard up in time, and it 'corrected' me a little." "By the way, how is that lump of clay doing?" I asked. "Actually, doing very well," she replied with a strange sort of pride. "He recently learned how to read."

  I froze. "WHAT?" "Well, I taught him."

  "Lianel," I rubbed my temples. "Why?! Why are you teaching a training dummy how to read? Do you want him to write memoirs about his difficult life in between beating you up?" "What, Greg? He's practically alive! He's interesting to be around."

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  I just sighed. These people had definitely lost their minds.

  "And how long do we have to... suffer like this?" I nodded at the road. "Somewhere around a little over a week," Lianel answered calmly. "WHAT?!" my shout probably spooked the horses. A week in this tin can?! I'm going to grow moss!

  Lianel ignored my wail and turned to her sister. "Alexia, listen carefully. From this moment on, you are keeping an eye on Greg. Understood?"

  I frowned. "Hey, why do I need to be watched? What am I, a suitcase without a handle?" "So that you don't come off as too hostile and accidentally kill someone over there," Lianel cut me off. "Imagine the newspaper headlines: 'Student from Our Kingdom Murders United Nations Student on the Very First Day.' It would be a political catastrophe."

  Alexia lazily put down her book and looked at her sister. "Greg is a big boy now. He's perfectly capable of looking after himself." "Yeah, exactly!" I chimed in.

  "NO!" Lianel was adamant. "Alexia, this is your responsibility. You have to watch his every step!" "If you need him watched so badly, you watch him," Alexia snapped, returning to her reading. "Don't turn me into a babysitter." "HEY!" Lianel threw her hands up. "For your information, YOU are the one who picked him up! Your stray, your responsibility!"

  I froze, staring at the princesses. "WHAT?!" 'Picked me up'? Am I officially considered a stray cat now, dragged into the house out of pity?

  I slowly turned my head to Alexia. "'Picked me up'? Are you serious right now?"

  Alexia put down her book, folded her hands in her lap, and adopted the look of a noble martyr from scripture. "Well, how else would you describe it, Greg? Don't you remember? You were wandering down the street—poor, freezing, pathetic... You looked like you were about to give up the ghost right in front of the honest public. How could I, the kind Princess Alexia, walk past such a miserable creature? My heart bled, and moved purely by my infinite kindness, I picked you up."

  I sat there with my mouth hanging open. The sheer level of audacity in this carriage had exceeded all permissible limits. "Wha-a-at?! You dragged me here with candy! You exploited my one and only weakness!"

  Without changing her expression, Alexia reached into the folds of her dress and pulled out a familiar, ornate box. "And as you can see, the method still works." She casually tossed a handful of candies at me. My hands operated on pure reflex—I caught them all mid-air.

  "See?" she giggled. "Still keeping you on a sugar leash."

  With a sigh, I began tearing open a rustling wrapper. "I remember a completely different story," I mumbled, popping a candy into my mouth. "Some princess first tried to brazenly kidnap me. Then she threatened to lock me in a basement if I didn't work for her. Then she hunted me through the entire city like a professional bounty hunter, and to top it all off—tried to use charm magic on me."

  Alexia smiled sweetly, looking at me with her red eyes. "Those are all lies, Greg. A figment of your fevered imagination. I am mercy itself." "Yeah," I nodded at Lianel. "You hear that? Mercy itself, complete with the skillset of a kidnapper."

  Lianel just rolled her eyes and turned back to the window. It seemed she was long used to the fact that her sister could rewrite history on the fly whenever it suited her.

  And I sat there, chewing my candy, thinking: "Alright, fine, I guess I'm a 'stray'."