Being Alive is Hard (various! Yanderes x Reincarnated! Reader)

4. Being Capable

Sorry for any errors or confusion, I though I should update this before I had second thoughts...

Three years into you studies and you began to realize the lack of equality among the people of the church. Women washed clothing, learned to sew, and cook, and sing, and dance, and they got to play while the men got to learn to fight and got to hold weapons. Some branched off if they had magical abilities and learned how to use them—although from what you seen, magic was looked down upon by the church. Woman were lucky to become healers or just normal doctors, even if they were the smartest in their class. The fact that the men got down to business, that the men had jobs that meant more, that woman weren't trusted to carry firewood or even go beyond the wall of trees that was the forest...

It all angered you. It pushed you to want to leave the church for good.

What made you more angry was watching Nathaniel, the only other student in your class, fight wooden attack dummies. You and the Sisters would often watch Nathaniel train. His uncle, someone who he thought of as a father, would become the head of the church, also known as The Father of the church, and Nathaniel would be his shield, or the head knight. It was tradition apparently, for the heir to be skilled in combat. Nathaniel looked so proud of the fact that he was eventually going to be the head knight of the church, but you disliked the tradition. It disregarded skill and bravery and the head knight was chosen by blood.

Nathaniel would often glance back at you, Sister Morgan, and Sister Abigail for approval after serving a few hits on the stationary dummy. He wasn't doing anything special, he wasn't attacking a living being, he wasn't really improving any sort of useful skill like dodging and disarming. The most that he was doing, was learning how to properly hold a blade and even then, you weren't sure he was doing that right.

You thought back to your first day of schooling. Sister Morgan had dressed you in the traditional black skirt and blouse. She had walked you down a hall that was more outside than inside. Vines crept up the stone walls and flower grew through the cracks of the damaged wooden floor. You remember being told how Sister Morgan's half of the dormitory building had nearly burned down. It made you wonder why she was in a room farthest away from everyone else's and all alone. You then walked through a beautiful garden and further away was a wide vast field, a single wooden structure in the middle.

That structure, was where you learned for the next two years. That structure was where you ate, where you played, where you learned how much you really disliked Nathaniel.

On your first day, Nathaniel had slashed your uniform with a particularly sharp wooden sword. He said he didn't mean to, but you didn't believe him. The slice had been so close to your neck... so close and it looked like it would have been painful. If it wasn't for that big clump of metal on your neck, he surely would have nicked you.

The boy was a perfectionist, a whiny little perfectionist. He didn't just have accidents from what you had learned recently. Nathaniel had been training to use the sword since he was a little toddler according to the Sisters and even if he did suck, he had never actually cut anyone. It was no accident, you didn't believe it was. The sword wasn't even sharp enough to cut through fabrics without more force. You had snapped at him and ever since then, he had been a little more needy for attention. He was constantly trying to impress everyone around you. Yet you, you were not worth his time... or so you thought.

It didn't help that he always used his age against you whenever you showed your distain. He wasn't a little kid like you thought despite his stature. Actually, he was nine years old when you first met. He looked like a baby and he certainly acted like one, but apparently he was older than you by three years. You didn't understand why that would make him any more special, but apparently, it did. The sisters, Abigail more than Morgan, would constantly tell you to respect him as your upperclassmen.