Dante was silent. This was the kind of tragic backstory he would often see in shows and various works of fiction that made him feel like it was a bit overused and melodramatic. Most of the time, he struggled to empathize because he had grown up perfectly, with no real tragedy to speak of.
Couldn't writers or creators produce media with a protagonist who grew up without any trauma? Did everyone seriously have to possess loads of baggage that could cripple any normal person?
However, hearing it live from a real person seated right beside him, especially someone he was growing to care about, left him feeling extremely conflicted. On one hand, he wished he could magically transport back in time and prevent those traumatic events from happening so Beatrice wouldn't have to suffer.
On the other hand, it was the same issue of not being able to fully empathize, since he had no similar experience himself. Heck, Dante hadn't even experienced basic loss yet.
His parents were both alive, and so was his uncle as well as his cousins. His grandparents on both sides did not live in America, so he hardly knew them, and even when they did pass, he did not have too strong feelings of loss.
A few classmates had passed due to various complications and illnesses like sickle cell anemia, a hole in the heart, and more, but they were loose friends and it didn't affect him much other than making him sigh at the fickleness of life.
He could not, for even a second, pretend to understand what Beatrice was going through. Even now, despite the undulating waves of emotions in her voice, it was just a narration of events to him.
He wasn't there to witness it, to see her mother fight like a crazed beast to protect her crying and scared daughter. He probably would never understand her mother's guilt that she brought this upon her daughter by giving her the passive ability to use her superpowers before she could mature.
He would also never understand the satisfaction of Beatrice's mother as she had successfully protected her beloved daughter, as well as the tearing sadness that she could not see her grow up into the woman she was now.
There was also the young and impressionable Beatrice in her formative years who was struck with fear and helplessness. All she knew was that she was spending some fun time with Mama, and suddenly these strange aliens and mixed breeds who were shouting slogans of hatred towards pure humans were trying to hurt them.
She had to watch as these grown adults who she was taught to greet with respect and be polite to were red-eyed and trying to kill her. She had to watch her mother scream in pain with every wound that spilled her blood all over the place, even as she gently comforted the young her, assuring her that everything would be alright.
Eventually, they escaped, but her mother was bedridden and the last hope young Beatrice had that her Mama would be okay was wiped away by a shake of the doctor's head. There was only a void of despair and sadness as she couldn't accept this truth.
Before the attack, she had been throwing a tantrum and coercing her mother to buy her some nice-looking sweets. How did it go from that to this? Why did this have to happen? What did she or her mother ever do wrong?
It would have been more painful but easier if her father had hated her or been cold to her because of what happened, but he spent every moment with his daughter, reassuring her that it wasn't her fault and that he would always be there for her.
Her father overworked himself to be the best parent he could be in the aftermath, and this made things more difficult for Beatrice as she saw his fatigue build up from being both a patriarch and a single father pile up.
There was so much in between that Beatrice could not express with just words, and Dante understood that. So, rather than pretending to understand in order to seem sensitive, he remained silent and allowed Beatrice time to think.
Eventually, she sighed and stretched her legs out, placing them back on the floor. "Well, in the end, those factions that tried to remove my mother out of the picture in order to get control over me succeeded."
A darkness flashed in Beatrice's eyes as she smiled coldly. "But not in the way they thought."
"When I understood the cause and effects, I decided to embrace the inheritance my mother gave me and train myself to become strong."
"And strong I did become. After much hardship and suffering, I managed to excel at everything I did and got into the Eternal Academy. At that point, the factions that were watching in the shadows became restless because once I graduated, it would be hard to reign me in again."
"And so, I began suffering from many strange events within the school orchestrated by various factions and their representatives within."
Dante thought back to his own experience of almost being captured and felt like for the first time, he could understand. Assuming the Eternal Academy was a perfect bastion of safety was… well, it was not very smart.
If you were average and unremarkable, there was naturally no problem. However, once you showed the slightest uniqueness, they would descend upon you crazily. The level of uniqueness would also determine how crazy they would become.
As for relying on the protection of the headmistress…
Dante would rather not put his safety in the hands of a person who had only spoken a total of 19 words to him in his life. Beatrice likely felt the same way given her next words.
"Due to my potential and my background, the headmistress offered to protect me, but I refused. You may not know this now, in your first year, but the headmistress's interests are more… brutal… than even the greediest faction."
Beatrice glanced at Dante askance. "It's best not to be charmed by her demonic beauty and end up her pawn."
Dante's face became serious. "Don't worry, I haven't even seen her outside of the orientation."
Beatrice nodded and opened her palms. "Well, that's it for me. I guess you're right about there being a wall between me and others, but it was created by years of tough living and the inability to easily trust anyone outside my family."
Dante nodded. "I won't say that you should specifically trust me, but I also have to ask. Your experiences tell me that you are definitely a very opinionated and resilient person whose mind cannot be easily influenced by others."
Dante tilted his head in confusion. "So why offer yourself to me like this? I'd understand if you were the follower type who obeyed every instruction for the clan or the state and did not have thoughts of your own."
Beatrice smiled. "Do you believe in love at first sight?"
Dante nodded seriously. "I do. But that did not happen with you."
Beatrice was speechless. She could only go silent for a few seconds again and then speak in a smaller tone.
"I once asked my mother a very stupid question. It was a question that a curious child would ask, but even now, I cringe whenever I think about how rude it was."
"I asked her why she married my dad. After all, my father is not a superpowered person and is someone in the military. He has great genes, great combat talent, and rose to prominence with his own merits, but my mother is a literal monster whose presence made whole behemoth factions band together to get rid
of her, and even then, they didn't dare to do it directly."
"I naturally did not understand that much when I was a kid, but I did know that mother was powerful and confident while father always cowered in her presence and did not dare to be too ostentatious."
Beatrice became nervous, and her toes began to curl and relax slowly. "She told me the reason was due to how they met. She didn't exactly elaborate on the exact meeting at the time, but she told me that when it happened, she could quite literally feel that the wheels of fate had orchestrated that moment."
"Her answer was that father was her fated one and no one could replace him."
Beatrice then turned to Dante, and for the first time since Dante met her, her usually obscure and emotionally removed eyes were full of purity and sincerity.
"Ever since then… I have believed in fate. Especially after what happened and how father remained loyal to mother even up until now, I decided to wait for my fated one. I never got romantically involved with any male, and I never bothered to explore romantic relationships."
"The way we met, in that alleyway on the backwater planet at the tail end of the universe… that was my fated encounter."
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