Empress Natsume ✓

II

First Love

✾

She stared at the Sakura trees outside of her room, leaning on the sliding door.

It was near noon and she was taking a break from her task, sewing for three hours, cooking for an hour, reading books for two and half hours. She would go back to her task after her break.

She smiled, visualising herself when she was still a child, climbing one of those Sakura trees while the servants are chasing after her for her to take a bath and make her look decent, her hair was sticking from everywhere and there's a dried saliva that dripped from her mouth across her cheek when she was sleeping.

Her friends words still lingers in her mind

"You're not Natsume"

Three words that almost made her cry.

That's right, she's not Natsume. Natsume is wild, she hates flowery designs and too girly things and accessories, she hates her hair being tightly pinned on her head, she hates being dressed up, she hates her life being controlled, she loves playing samurai, she hates indoors so she would play with her friends outside and came home late and full of dirt and---but does it matter now?

It's been two years since she last do that, she was no longer free, she's now caged, gone was the carefree and mischievous Natsume.

Her friends always came to her house to fetch her to play with them if she wasn't at their meeting place but they ended up being driven away by their servants at home under the order of Lady Chou. Natsume must focus on her lessons, she doesn't have time for any children's play.

There was also a time when they ran into each other by coincidence and they would invited her to play with them but she would always decline

'I have an errand to run'

'Mother will be mad at me'

'Sorry, I can't. They're expecting me at home'

Is what Natsume's usual excuses but she normally doesn't care about those, she also doesn't care about her appearance when she's going out of the house, but now she's well dressed and her hair is pinned on her head, she go to bath and comb her hair without being forced to.

After being rejected by Natsume so many times, they don't go to her house anymore or greet her when they ran to each other. She's a stranger to them, she has changed.

Perhaps it was because of the slap and the sharp words she received from her mother that wakes her up from her lovely dream with unicorns and rainbows. Lady Chou never slap or raise her voice to her daughter, that was the first time.

She can't be herself, as what her mother says.

'You can't just leave your responsibilities and duty for freedom, when you became an adult, you'll realize the importance of responsibilities and duty, our family depends on you because you carry our family name and you're the only child of Lord Takahiro. One wrong move from you and our whole family will be doomed, you can't act foolishly and carelessly like a child before, act like a grown up woman Natsume, you can't always hide behind me and your father. You will soon leave the shelter you called 'home' since you're little, you'll be send far away from here and you will be all on your own, all of the people around you are strangers with no one to depend on but yourself. How do you expect to survive?'