itbomm

chapter 9: the smile in her eyes

[2 Years Later]

Life goes on, as it always does. Two years passed by in a blink of an eye, and Athanase was only nine years away from turning 16 years old.

Wild.

'Athanasios died after he turned 16, didn't he?' he thought, lounging up on a tree branch.

The details regarding the original had been... fuzzy. Most details were vivid, and it makes sense considering he used to reread Toska over and over again to the point he had dreams of the damn fanfic in his previous life. He was fairly confident that Athanasios died at the end of chapter 12 due to Claude making the announcement, but there was nothing that indicated how and why Athanasios died. His speculation was that it was a suicide, due to Ijekiel rejecting him in the previous chapter, but he doubts that the author would let it be something as simple as that.

(He knew that Verena also disappeared in the beginning of chapter 11 — likely suffering the same fate as all the jealous young women who sought Ijekiel's heart: retribution for messing with Jennette.)

And yet, Athy told him that Athanasios died by getting poisoned. Was it the same as the fanfiction? But that didn't really make sense. The fanfiction was intended to be the author's self-indulgence in wanting to write a story focused on First Princess Athanasia while throwing in a twin brother just so she had another person to confide in. The author even stated word for word that they loved Athanasios, so it just doesn't make sense for him to die. Unless they were the type of author who loved to torture their favourite characters, but regardless, that didn't make sense — the author even agreed that the best form of torture was to leave the characters alive.

It wasn't often that he wanted to curse out that sleep-deprived Starshine-Dreaming for never commenting further on the work. After all, he knew that they were busy with their own life, so he wasn't too pissed about it. Apparently, they tweeted something about wanting to do a rewrite, but that was nearly two years before Athanasios died... damn.

Also, the rewrite ended up never happening, and instead the author got into a new fandom!

Not that he blamed them — after all, they wrote some fanfics for his minor ships due to their fandom hopping, the unpopular or unacknowledged ships. He didn't expect them to write Eugene x Dice fanfiction for The Tale of Three Tragic Brothers, though... honestly? He never even considered it until reading a few. It wasn't his ship, but their relationship would've made sense.

Still... it would've been nice for Athanasios if he had someone other than Athanasia and his fiancée, the villainess of his story. His death was just... unresolved.

'It'll just have to be another mystery of this world,' Athanasios frowned, watching his unofficial pet — the white and black furred catlike creature — climb up onto the branches, joining him as they proceed to take a nap. 'Maybe I'm not supposed to know the ending because I was born as Athanasios. What do you think, Ori?'

Officially, the not-cat was named Orion. Unofficially, their name was Oreo. Nevertheless, he often called them by the nickname of "Ori". They weren't much of a cuddler, but they liked to hang around him, and often followed him around at a distance. It'd be nice if it was his familiar or something, like how Arjen and Arien had their guardian.

Ori meowed at him, and simply fell back asleep as if nothing happened.

"I don't know what I was expecting," he shrugged.

And then, an abrupt snap in the back of his mind causes him to straighten up in his seat atop the tree's branch. He blinks in the utmost confusion, and Ori curls up around themselves tighter, as if anxious.