Paralyzed (Tboah!AlbeCale)

6) An Impressive intermission, aka timeskip

That night, the talking shadow man did not appear again. Cale was confident that he really was a dream, or maybe an imaginary friend.

Whatever the case, he did not come back at all.

This continued year after year. Cale was still an insomniac, but had gotten better medication, and slept at least 5 hours most nights. The terrors still appeared sometimes, with the full body paralysis accompanying them, but it did not happen every night as it did when he was younger.

Over time, Cale even forgot about the talking shadow man. In his mind, it was just a figment of his imagination; something he made up to deal with his fear.

What was the use in remembering that?

As he grew up, Cale's plan to act like a trashy person was successful. He drank in public most days, which contributed to his numerous bans from most inns and bars, and on the off days, he waltzed into public areas like they belonged to him.

He then would break things, yell, and basically take on the persona of a typical, arrogant and trashy noble... Times ten.

He also became better at hiding his exhaustion, and blamed his slurred words on alcohol. In addition, he legitimately started passing out at random bars, which helped his reputation.

Since he was eleven, he stopped attending events which invited an heir, and made his younger brother go in his stead. When events specifically requested the entire Henituse family attend, he shrank into the background or pretended to be a passed out drunkard.

When he was successful in the pretending aspect, he learned of many gossips and information tidbits thanks to his sleepy eavesdropping.

Lots of them had to do with him, but the rest were intriguing and made attending events like those a lot more entertaining.

As he quickly aged past 15, and then 16 and 17 as well, his personal relationships took significant damage.

Of course, he naturally drifted apart from every member of his family, but they were never that close to begin with. It could also be mentioned that he never found anyone he fancied.

Being with a partner was considerably hard unless they knew his secret, and that was a big risk all on its own, but Cale simply never felt the desire to share his life with a special someone.

In fact, he believed he would never feel any sort of yearning for another person's presence, whether that be romantically, sexually, platonically, or any other feeling of want.

He was good at being alone. It was what he was used to. The only person he would ever feel such useless heartfelt emotions for, would be his late mother.

And that was the only exception.

On the other side of the story...

Alberu Crossman had also forgotten about their chance meeting as the years progressed.

Most of his memory was spent towards his never ending studies, as well as other personal research to get ahead of his siblings. Never being able to let his guard down for even a second left little time to mull over faded memories.

He simply didn't have the storage space to remember any trivial incidents.

Being the crown prince of the Roan kingdom had given him a stressful childhood and overall lifestyle which he could only survive by constantly pushing himself to the limit.

But in doing so, his childish emotions nearly ceased to exist, and in its place was a shell of a boy who could barely support the expectations placed upon his shoulders.

His adolescence moved by swiftly, and his schedule was often packed to the brim. It was repetitive and familiar, which resulted in many years of similar memories lumping into one.

As he aged into a fine young man, his burdens and responsibilities could only grow larger with every passing year.

So, in summary, Cale has now turned 18 years old, and Alberu 23.

As time passed, both lived similar yet different lives.

While Alberu put in an astonishing amount of effort to raise his image and popularity, Cale worked towards stomping his reputation so far into the mud that it would never see the light of day again.

It seemed that these two individuals would never be able to take each other seriously. There were just too many differences for them to see eye to eye.

One could infer that they would live in their own separate worlds, and perhaps never even get the chance to officially meet.

In many ways they were similar, but there were more instances which displayed their opposing traits.

They were like two sides of a shiny coin.

Complete opposites, with a few things in common.

And to that, This humble narrator would stealthily mouth the words;

'Opposites attract.'

A/n: Nvmd this is deffo the shortest chap. Didn't feel like throwing in more nonsense filler words, so u get this amazing time skip instead of a chapter.

Thx for reading