Chapter 91. Catching Up to Something That Should Have Happened Already
Finally, the dam broke. Catherine set down her fork with a deliberate, metallic clink that sounded like a guillotine blade dropping.
"So about last night—" she started, her voice cracking slightly before she steadied it.
"I just wanted to say—" William interjected, the words tumbling out of his mouth before she could finish.
"I—"
"I—"
"... ..." Catherine tilted her head.
"... ...?" William raised one of his eyebrows.
They both stopped at the exact same instant. The two half-sentences collided midair, hanging between them like twin accusations.
For several agonizing seconds, neither spoke. The clock on the wall ticked with deafening cruelty.
They simply stared at each other, her eyes wide and searching, his dark and knowing, and the sheer absurdity of the moment began to seep through the cracks of their tension.
The dam didn’t just leak; it shattered.
A strangled sound escaped Catherine’s throat, a sound that started as a cough but quickly mutated into a genuine, startled laugh.
"Pfft... hahaha!" The sound burst out of her before she could suppress it, breaking the carefully constructed facade of the vice headmaster completely.
William stared at her for half a heartbeat, stunned by the sudden shift, and then his own composure crumbled. "Pffft... hahaha~! Oh gods."
Both of them erupted into laughter, a raw, unguarded release that shook their entire bodies. Catherine had to set her teacup down with unsteady hands to avoid spilling it across the table as her shoulders shook.
The laughter was hysterical, born from the sheer, ridiculous impossibility of their situation: two people who had shared something so intimate and shameful now struggling to breathe because they had both tried to initiate the same awkward conversation at once.
"That was... hahaha~! That was ridiculous!" Catherine managed to wheeze out, wiping tears of mirth from the corners of her eyes.
"Never do that again!" The flush on her cheeks wasn’t from shame anymore; it was from the pure exertion of laughing.
"Completely ridiculous," William agreed, leaning back in his chair, his chest heaving as he tried to regain control of his breathing. "I thought you were going to lecture me about proper conduct or something..."
"And I thought you were going to—" She cut herself off again, giggling. "I-I mean... We sound like we rehearsed it... Like some pathetic teenagers."
"We definitely did not rehearse it," William said, shaking his head, though the smirk still danced across his lips.
"No," Catherine said, her laughter dying down into small, shaky breaths as she looked at him. "We definitely didn’t."
Catherine shook her head, her hair swaying with the movement as she tried to catch her breath. The hysterical edge of the laughter began to fade, leaving behind something far more precious: genuine relief.
For the first time since she had woken up, the tightness in her chest uncoiled. Her shoulders, which had been held rigid like armor against a siege, finally relaxed all the way down, the last of the morning’s carefully maintained tension dissolving into something easy, warm, and dangerously familiar.
"Alright, alright," she said, wiping a stray tear from her cheek and leaning forward, resting her elbows on the table.
The vulnerability in her eyes was no longer fearful; it was playful. "Since you clearly had some grand speech prepared that you’ve now conveniently lost, you go first."
"Whatever you were going to say."
William let out a long exhale, running a hand through his hair. "Honestly? I don’t even remember anymore."
"My brain completely short-circuited the moment you started talking... The words just... evaporated."
"Coward," she teased, a genuine smirk playing on her lips. "You were probably going to confess some deep, poetic longing, weren’t you?"
"Me? Poetic?" William snorted, leaning back and crossing his arms. "I was probably going to ask if you’d accidentally put salt in the coffee instead of sugar."
"That’s about as deep as my thoughts get before noon."
"Oh, please~! You’re far too dramatic for that," Catherine countered, reaching for her cup but stopping halfway. "You probably had some elaborate excuse ready about why you were late for breakfast."
"I don’t remember either," William said, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper.
"My memory has been compromised by... external factors." His eyes flickered to hers for half a second, a deliberate, knowing glint that made her breath hitch before he quickly looked away.
Catherine laughed again, softer this time, the sound rich and genuine. "I think we’ve successfully made this more complicated than it needed to be."
"Complicated?" William grinned, the last remnants of the awkward morning haze finally lifting. "Catherine, we’ve taken a simple breakfast and turned it into a psychological thriller."
"A very poorly written one, at that," she added, shaking her head. "Too much subtext, not enough plot."
"Well, at least the breakfast is good," William noted, nodding toward the plates.
"It is... Almost worth the emotional trauma of trying to talk to you."
"Almost."
They sat there for another moment, the silence now comfortable, almost sweet. The phantom sensations of the night before were still there; the memory of heat and wetness still lurked at the edges of their minds, but they had built a temporary dam against it.
They had chosen to retreat into the safety of banter, using humor as a shield to keep from falling back into the abyss of what they had done.
"Story of my life, apparently," William said with a resigned sigh, though his eyes remained bright.
They settled back into the rhythm of breakfast after that. The morning light seemed kinder now, less like a spotlight on their shame and more like a warm blanket covering their shared secret.
The conversation flowed with an easy, unforced grace, the kind that only comes when two people have stopped fighting the current and decided to swim with it.
Neither of them needed to define what they were, nor did they want to; the unspoken truth was a third guest at the table, present but no longer threatening to overturn the furniture.
William listened to her talk, watching the way her lips moved, the way she animatedly described the day’s administrative headaches.
Somewhere in the middle of a remark about Kaela’s latest and frankly desperate attempt to sneak enchanted daggers into a basic combat training session, William felt a strange, grounding sensation settle in his bones.
’This is it,’ he thought, watching a stray crumb fall onto the tablecloth. ’This is what I was looking for.’
’Not some grand destiny or a throne of bones, but this... this mundane, quiet, and ridiculous morning.’
It wasn’t a dramatic declaration that stirred his soul, but a quiet realization: he wanted this. He wanted the banter, the shared coffee, the comfortable silence, and even the terrifyingly charged moments.
He wanted ordinary mornings that felt like something worth fighting for.
"You know," Catherine said suddenly, breaking off mid-sentence.
She was cutting a piece of toast with more precision than any piece of bread strictly required, her eyes fixed on the blade. "I keep waiting for this to feel strange."
William raised an eyebrow. "Strange like how...?"
"Waking up, seeing you sitting across from me like this, pretending we aren’t both disasters waiting to happen." She let out a soft, self-deprecating chuckle. "It doesn’t feel strange, though."
"In fact, it feels like... like it should have been happening for a long time already... Like we’re finally catching up to something."
"I’ve had the same thought," William admitted, his voice steady. "More than once."
Catherine paused, the knife hovering in midair. She looked up at him, her dark eyes searching his. "Have you?"
"Multiple times, actually." William leaned forward slightly, his expression open. "Somewhere around the second week of training you, I stopped being able to imagine my evenings without ending up here."
"Eventually... In this kitchen. With you."
He said it plainly, without the flourish of a romantic hero. There was no poetry in it, just the stark, unvarnished truth.
Catherine’s expression softened immediately; the sharp edges of the vice headmaster melted away, leaving only the woman who had screamed his name in the dark.
"That’s a very unguarded thing for you to say before you’ve even finished your coffee, William," she murmured, a fond smile touching her lips.
"I’m apparently at my most honest before caffeine hits my bloodstream," he countered with a smirk. "You should take advantage of this window of vulnerability while it lasts."
Catherine laughed, a rich, warm sound that seemed to fill the room. Without breaking eye contact, she reached across the table to refill his cup, the motion fluid and domestic.
The gesture was small, but it settled between them like a promise.
"Then I suppose I’ll have to ask my real questions early from now on," she teased. "Before your defenses go back up."
"That sounds like a threat."
"It’s an efficiency measure," she shot back.
But as the laughter died down and the plates were cleared, the atmosphere shifted. The levity remained, but beneath it, a new layer of seriousness began to coil.
William felt the weight of what he needed to say pressing against his ribs. The playful moment had served its purpose; it had cleared the air, and now he needed to navigate the storm.
"There’s something else I want to tell you," William said, his tone shifting. "I promise it’s not as heavy as last night, but... it’s connected to everything."
Catherine set her cup down slowly, her entire body turning toward him. The playfulness vanished, replaced by the focused attention of a woman who knew when danger or truth was approaching.
"Go ahead."