"Oh~"
Irregular sleep habits always gave people headaches. Shade only realized it was time to get up when he vaguely felt someone pawing at his hand.
Opening his eyes today required even more determination. Shade only vaguely remembered falling asleep around four or five in the morning, and it was now seven on Wednesday morning.
"Mia~"
Shade muttered softly, though he was really blaming himself for playing too late at the banquet.
"Meow~"
But the cat's voice seemed to come from rather far away, and amid the meowing, Shade heard a young girl's laughter.
When he opened his eyes, he saw Tifa standing by the bed, smiling at him.
"Shade, Miss asked you all to go have breakfast."
"All of us?"
Still half-asleep, Shade froze for a moment, then abruptly sat up in bed.
The morning sunlight shone through the window of the third floor guest room at Galina Manor. The warm early-winter sunlight still carried a delightful warmth. Snow had piled into a thin layer on the windowsill, and with his exceptionally sharp dynamic vision, Shade could see that it was still snowing outside. Though he could not see the manor's courtyard from the bed, it probably had a layer of snow as well.
The bedroom was quite warm. Little Mia lay sprawled on the windowsill, glaring fiercely at Shade, and there was clearly more than just Shade in this bed.
In a daze, he remembered that after midnight last night, he had played the Herding Game in the garden with everyone while braving the snow, then rowed with Angelina across the reopened Schluch Lake, and finally joined a fencing duel somehow held on the manor's second floor—a safe duel involving heavy armor and blunt swords coated in White Ash.
After completing the trials of "strength, Wisdom and Charm,"