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face
growing hot as he looked at her and gulped. “Has she talked yet?”
    “No,” Yata muttered with a sigh, shrugging
as he sat on his bed. He bounced on it before leaning back and crossing his
arms behind his head. “Did you bring her something to eat?”
    Keimaro nodded and reached into his bag. He
pulled out an apple and walked over to the girl, offering it to her. He watched
as she grasped the apple as delicately as she would a young child and blinked a
few times while looking at it. Then she took a small, experimental bite,
sinking her teeth into the fruit. A piece of the skin ended up on the corner of
her lips as well as specks of juice, but it didn’t matter. A small smile
stretched across her face, and she began to take larger and faster bites into
the juicy apple. Keimaro also pulled out a loaf of bread and handed it to her,
watching her devour the food as if she hadn’t eaten in days. “She seems pretty
hungry.”
    “Yeah,” Yata said with a resigned sigh. “Oi,
are you ready to talk yet?”
    “You really don’t know how to talk to
girls, do you?” Keimaro muttered and sat down beside the girl with a reassuring
smile. To be quite honest, neither did he, but he figured that maybe talking to
Mai would suffice as some practice in talking to females. “Hey, I’m Keimaro,
and that’s my friend, Yata. We are the two boys who saved you from the monster
on the hilltops last night, remember?” Smooth.
    The girl looked at him as if he were a
foreign being and nodded lightly upon finishing the apple. She placed the core
on the table beside her and then folded her hands neatly across her lap. “My
name is Aika,” she said in a soft, innocent voice. “I … umm … I’m the princess
from the empire of Faar. I was kidnapped by Spartans and was taken through a
forest. In the forest … it was extremely dark. There were odd creatures
everywhere. The Spartan soldiers, as you probably already knew, are well-known
for their melee combat. They were able to fend off many of the vicious beasts
that came to devour us. However, every time blood was shed, stronger and larger
beasts came in a brutal attempt to slaughter us all. A small troop of soldiers
tried to escort me. They burned the carriage as a decoy to lure the beasts
away. The large, black tiger-like creature slaughtered the rest of the escorts
and chased me. That’s when I found the two of you, simply lying underneath an
apple tree upon a hill. Might I ask what you were doing there, next to such a
dangerous place?”
    Keimaro was first surprised that this girl
was even speaking their language. Well, he had read somewhere that all humans
spoke a common language in this continent. Her accent was different, but it
made her all the more attractive to Keimaro. Wait, this girl that they happened
to meet outside of the barrier was actually the princess of one of the largest
three empires on the continent? That wasn’t good. They had an extremely
important person living inside of their barrier! It would only mean that the
Faar Empire would target Bakaara, jeopardizing the safety of the citizens. This
was a lot to process.
    “Uh….” Keimaro also wasn’t particularly
sure how to answer Aika’s question. What were they doing out there? It was
somewhat hard to explain, especially to an outsider who wouldn’t understand the
feeling of being isolated from the world and trapped within the barriers.
    “We were simply gazing at the stars,” Yata
intervened, clearing his throat in an attempt to change the subject. “Either
way, it’s going to be rough if you want to get home, princess. It could take
some time, actually, but you’re welcome to stay here for the time being. We
just need to figure out a way for you to fit in with everyone else.”
    Aika blinked a few times in confusion, not
sure whether or not to be scared of her current situation. “Where exactly am I?”
    “You’re in the small village of Bakaara,”
Keimaro said with a sigh, finding no reason