The first time one of the younger maids called me handsome, I assumed she wanted something.
A day off. Permission to raid the kitchens. Assistance moving furniture.
That seemed reasonable.
"You look handsome today, Master Darien," she said while setting a pitcher beside my breakfast.
"What's broken?"
She blinked.
"Pardon?"
"Nothing. Thank you."
Her friend giggled from the doorway.
That should have been my warning.
Up until then, I had been the duke's strange son. The boy who talked to his horse, spent too much time exercising, and occasionally shouted at things nobody else could see.
After the prisoners arrived, apparently, I became something else.
The young master who fought slavers.
The young master who brought home two orphans.
The young master who had somehow developed shoulders.
Personally, I thought the shoulder development deserved less attention than the rocket launcher.
Nobody asked me.
The younger household staff weren't strangers who had suddenly materialized to admire me.
I'd grown up around them.
Elsie helped in the kitchens and possessed the terrifying ability to know when the bread would be finished without consulting a clock.
Nell assisted the housekeeper. She had once caught me sneaking pastries before dinner and demanded half as payment for her silence.
Both were around my age.
Until recently, our conversations had concerned food, chores, and whether Veronica was in a mood that made approaching the training grounds hazardous.
Now Elsie sometimes forgot what she had come to tell me.
Nell smiled differently.
And my face, traitorous little bastard that it was, responded by getting warm.
I had faced armed men without blinking.
One girl tucked her hair behind her ear and asked whether I wanted another biscuit, and suddenly I couldn't remember the word for biscuit.
This was unacceptable.
"System," I thought afterward, "am I suffering from a status effect?"
"Possession?"
"Brain injury?"
Very thorough.
Completely useless.
The problem wasn't that I didn't understand what was happening.
The problem was that understanding it didn't make it less awkward.
I had lived eighty-eight years before arriving here.
I'd been married. Raised children. Held grandchildren.
Now I was fourteen, going on fifteen, and occasionally discovering that my voice had decided to explore an entirely different register halfway through a sentence.
My memories hadn't stopped that.
Neither had my dignity.
There was a whole person in my head who remembered paying bills, burying friends, and falling asleep beside the same woman for decades.
There was also a growing boy attached to that head.
He apparently had opinions.
Mostly embarrassing ones involving blushing, getting tongue-tied, and becoming intensely aware of where to put his hands during ordinary conversations.
Pockets were useful.
I thanked whichever tailor invented them.
But Elsie wasn't some prize the universe had delivered because I believed hard enough.
Neither was Nell.
They were people who worked in my family's house.
And I was their employer's son.
That mattered whether my cheeks understood it or not.
My solution was training.
A magnificent solution.
A healthy solution.
A solution Veronica immediately recognized as me avoiding something.
"You requested additional drills," she said.
"Yes."
"Voluntarily."
"Yes."
"After completing your normal drills."
"Is there a question coming?"
She leaned on her spear.
"What did you do?"
"Nothing."
"What are you about to do?"
"Also nothing."
Her eyes narrowed.
Then she looked past me toward the courtyard, where Nell and Elsie were carrying folded linens.
Both waved.
I waved back.
My practice spear slipped out of my other hand and hit the ground.
Veronica looked down.
Then she looked up.
"Oh."
I considered fleeing the country.
She didn't tease me as much as I expected.
Which was worse.
Teasing I could survive.
Thoughtful silence made me want to confess crimes I hadn't committed.
Instead, she handed my spear back.
"Again."
We trained.
Footwork first. Then controlled spellcasting. Then movement with the carbine, followed by the increasingly humbling discovery that knowing where I wanted my feet to go did not always convince them to arrive together.
My body kept changing.
Sleeves shortened. Boots tightened. Distances I had measured perfectly a month earlier became slightly wrong.
Once, I caught my shoulder against a doorway I'd passed through a thousand times.
Veronica saw.
Of course she saw.
"You're growing," she said.
"I'd noticed."
"Then stop expecting yesterday's body to obey today's measurements."
That was irritatingly sensible.
I added balance exercises.
Living in an animated world complicated the whole process.
I'd called it two-dimensional since the day I opened my eyes, but that wasn't quite right.
If I were literally flat, turning sideways would have solved a lot of my problems.
Sadly, I remained visible from every angle.
Things had depth. Rooms extended behind doors. A cup had a back even when I couldn't see it.
My body occupied space.
What changed was how everything appeared.
Edges were clearer. Colors settled into distinct areas. Shadows often formed clean shapes rather than the messy gradients I remembered from Earth.
Faces carried expressions with almost unfair clarity.
Especially mine, apparently.
A blush here didn't politely hide beneath realistic skin tones.
It announced itself.
One afternoon, I examined my reflection after training and discovered a pink band across both cheeks.
"Subtle," I told the mirror.
My reflection looked unconvinced.
Touch was ordinary in all the important ways.
Cold water was cold.
A bruise hurt.
Splinters remained evidence that the universe was run by an asshole.
My arms looked smoothly drawn, but they weren't smooth in the sense of painted wood. Skin stretched when I moved. Muscles tightened. Sweat ran down my back and made my shirt uncomfortable.
I could see the difference between a drawn surface and a flat surface now.
This world had the first.
Not the second.
Even the dramatic expressions had limits.
Veronica didn't actually grow enormous when she was angry.
She just possessed the rare talent of making the entire training ground feel smaller.
And despite extensive personal disappointment, people did not automatically freeze while I delivered an internal monologue.
I learned that lesson during spear practice.
Painfully.
Training helped.
Not because it made me stop noticing other people.
It gave my attention somewhere useful to go.
I practiced opening Pocket Dimension without staring at my hand.
I worked on placing Fireball precisely rather than making it bigger.
The carbine reservoir became part of my evening routine: inspect, replenish, dismiss.
Rocket practice remained restricted to approved days at the quarry.
Dad had become remarkably firm about the phrase "approved days."
Apparently, there were limits to ducal patience.
When I wasn't training, I helped Milo with his reading.
He would sit beside me in the library, frowning at a page while Lottie drew pictures at the next table.
One evening, she showed me a drawing of myself.
Big shoulders. Black rifle. Enormous smile.
Beside me stood Milo and a much smaller girl holding his hand.
"That one's me," she explained.
"I suspected."
"You're smiling because we're staying."
I looked at the picture for a long moment.
"Yeah," I said. "I am."
The actual conversation happened with Veronica.
Naturally, she cornered me when I had nowhere dignified to escape.
We were putting away practice equipment.
"You've been careful around the younger staff," she said.
I nearly dropped a shield.
"Have I?"
"Yes."
I considered pretending not to understand.
Then I remembered she had known me since I was two.
Dangerous territory.
"I don't want anyone getting the wrong idea."
"What idea?"
"That being friendly means I've promised something. Or that they have to be friendly because of my father."
She studied me.
"That is worth considering."
I looked down at the shield strap.
"They're nice people."
"Yes."
"And I don't think I'm ready."
There.
A truthful answer without explaining that my memories included an entire previous marriage.
Veronica took the shield from me.
"Then don't court anyone."
It sounded almost insultingly simple.
"What if somebody gets upset?"
"Be kind. Be clear. Don't make promises to avoid an uncomfortable conversation."
I nodded.
"And don't flirt with someone for entertainment if you already know you intend nothing."
That one landed where it needed to.
By the time I reached my room, I'd made a decision.
Eighteen.
I wasn't treating it as a magic switch.
I wouldn't wake up that morning with every uncomfortable question answered.
But it gave me time.
Time to grow into this body. Time to attend the academy. Time to understand what I wanted beyond a lifetime of fantasies about a world I had only imagined.
And time to make sure whoever stood across from me could choose freely.
No courting before then.
No collecting hopeful admirers because it made me feel like a protagonist.
Friendship was fine.
Kindness was mandatory.
The rest could wait.
I'd survived fourteen years without a system.
Surely I could survive a few more without a romantic subplot.
A week later, Elsie offered me a biscuit and asked if I would walk with her in the gardens after supper.
I thanked her.
Then I explained, awkwardly but honestly, that I wasn't looking to court anyone.
Her smile faltered.
That felt awful.
But she nodded.
"Friends, then?"
"Friends."
She handed me two biscuits.
I considered that a promising diplomatic outcome.
The following morning, Veronica added another circuit to my training.
"For what?"
"Dropping your guard."
"I was being emotionally responsible."
"You can do that with your spear up."
I raised it.
Somewhere beyond the courtyard, a bell announced the morning post.
My academy letter arrived before breakfast.
Apparently, my next growing pain came with tuition.