Abby and Violet (Yuri Light Novel)

I couldn’t understand why people seemed to look at me more than usual after a certain point in school. People always did, since Abby clung to my back so she could walk around the corridors without getting bumped into and even dragged away, but after crossing the entrance hallway, it felt like people’s stares were more intense than usual.

The reason why became very clear once I arrived at our classroom and turned my head around to tell Abby it was safe for her to let to.

“Abby, you can…”

I stopped midway. Behind me, in a conga line, was my wife, Mathilda, Stephen and Mathew, in that order, hands on the shoulders of the one in front. My cheeks, the whole face really, turned hot as I hissed at them.

“Don’t you have anything better to do?”

Mathilda took the lead, laughing as she stepped in to hug me, saying that they missed me and asking for me not to be mad. It’d be a lot easier not to, were it not the fact that she was calling me “Mama Violet”.

Abby was next in line for Mathilda’s affections, getting hugged and picked off the ground, Mathilda handing her to me and telling me to hug my “little wife” and stop sulking. I hate how that kinda worked, as I was now sulking because cradling Abby did soften my mood towards them.

“Morning, you guys,” I heard Vanessa’s voice coming from the side. She sounded a bit awkward, and when I looked, she was indeed feeling a bit like that, shifting her body as she looked at us. “Erm, happy new year.”

I returned her greeting and wishes of a happy new year as I made way for her to walk by and get inside the classroom. It was a bit dumb of my part as I was also getting inside. I guess it came across as me being polite, letting her in first, so it’s not worth stressing over it.

“Haah, you two have no idea how blessed you are, do you?” Mathilda then sighed once we all sat on our chairs. Abby and I shared a look between us and Stephen, wondering if anything had happened between them. If it did, Stephen was as clueless as us. Abby was the one who asked if anything had happened between the two.

“No, no, everything’s perfect,” Mathilda laughed as she waved away our question. “I’m talking about the news.”

“News? What news?”

“Didn’t you hear? Starting the 1st of January, so two days ago, marriage involving minors is no longer possible even with parental consent.”

I felt my heart drop to my lap and my previously still warm face lose all its heat, together with every single drop of blood. Looking at Abby, she wasn’t fairing any better.

“Ah, but you two are ok!” Mathilda added, alarmed by our reactions. “Any marriages celebrated before are still recognised! You two are still legally married!”

Abby and I sighed as we collapsed on our seats and against each other. That had been one of the biggest scares of our lives. As I calmed down, I recognised how stupid of a reaction that had been: Abby and I would soon turn eighteen, so we’d just submit the paperwork again when my birthday came knocking and get married again, this time without celebration as, for all intents and purposes, we already were.

Although… We could have had it with us wearing bride’s dresses this time around…

After that photoshoot where we wore some, there had been that feeling of pity we hadn’t. Then again…

Yeah, maybe in ten years, when we renew our vows, we could do that…

“Happy New Year guys!” Jessy’s voice chimed.

We greeted her back, and despite how cheery she was looking, I could tell something was weighing on her. Asking about it came out automatically, having had zero thoughts on whether I should or not.

“My… my pet turtle Donny died during the holidays,” Jessy admitted. “It got sick around the first day and died after the 25th.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” I told her, feeling genuinely bad for her.

“I didn’t expect you to have a turtle,” Mathilda said next. “I had you more figured as a rabbit owner or something.”

“Ma— Mum, has a lot of allergies, so we can’t have animals with fur,” Jessy explained, still smiling but a little teary-eyed. “I really like animals though, and turtles are cute, so they got one for me when I was little. Well, if there’s anything positive about this is that I was there to say goodbye to Donny… and that it made me realise that I want to be a veterinarian. Anyway… I’m going back to my seat.”

“Ok, erm, take care, Jessy.”

“Yeah, and show us some pics of Donny sometime,” Abby added to my words. “Me and my wifey also find turtles cute.”

Jessy gave us a brief smile and a nod before turning around and going to her desk. Abby whispered that Jessy really was a sweet girl. I didn’t agree or disagree with her as my thoughts were set on our furball. He’d be turning two years old this year, so he was still very young, or at least I thought so. How long do cats live anyway? Would Abby and I be around when he passes away and be able to say goodbye? I didn’t know, but my mind settled on one thing.

“Once we get home, I’m giving Oliver all the attention he asks for.”

“Pfft, hehe! Careful, babe, you’ll put him in even worse habits.”

“Should we get a pet when we start living together?” Mathilda asked Stephen.

“Like a labrador or a golden retriever?” he wondered. “Or a german shepherd?”

“Won’t we need a lot of space for those? How about a corgi or an inu?”

Stephen said that he prefers big breeds of dogs, but that was all that conversation could progress into as Miss Maple arrived right as the bell rang. Immediately after Miss Maple greeted all of us and asked if we had a nice holiday, Mathilda had her hand in the air, holding her math workbook, saying she volunteered to go to the board and solve all the homework we had been given. Miss Maple laughed, saying she appreciated the enthusiasm with a knowing look before saying that she had thought of doing things like that, but the school administration had requested her to have us fill out a questionnaire about what our plans for after graduating are. She explained that those were meant to have been handed to us before the holidays but since the staff was overworked, they postponed it to now.

“Might have come as a good thing, however,” she hummed as she distributed the papers. “Some of you might have put in some thought about it during New Year.”

I flushed a bit, that comment having hit home. I was really thankful that I was only being handed the questionnaire now, as otherwise, I’d have been stressing over it instead of fully enjoying my time with my family.

The paper we were being given was simple enough.

The top asked for my full name, school year, class, class number and student ID. Bellow it, was a table with multiple choices for what I wanted to do after graduating: continuing to study in a university, at a professional school, getting a job, or other. Each choice then had three brackets for me to fill out accordingly. At the very bottom, there was a section for my “Observations/Comments”.

I looked around for a second. My group was focused on filling them out, everyone having had made up their minds long ago. My classmates were a mix of people frustrated to be asked this when “it’s still so long until we graduate”, which… yeah, I guess that in a way they still had around six months, but do they not also realise that those six months will be gone in a blink of an eye? Anyway, there were those, there were the ones that, like my group, were focused on filling out their papers, and there were the ones scratching their heads trying to figure out what to write, either because they didn’t have any plans, or because they had but didn’t want to write them down or didn’t know how to.

Me?

I knew what to write and did so before really thinking much about it. Looking at what I wrote after though made me wish I had, or at the very least, that I had done so in pencil first, not jumping straight into using my pen.

I had opted for the “Other” category, wrote ‘housewife’ and ‘part-timer’ in front of it, and in the observations, I wrote:

“I want to be a housewife for my wife, Abigail Evergreen. To help make ends meet, I’m also panning on getting a part-time job, preferably at a library or bookstore, or anything that doesn’t require me to interact with a lot of people for extended periods of time and leaves me enough free time to take care of the house. I’m also starting to do some modelling on the side, so I also plan on doing that occasionally.”

The whole thing was devastating, but I think the last part was what was truly killing me. It all felt… too honest.

“Pfft hehe!”

“D-don’t laugh!” I hissed at Abby, who had just peeked at what had gotten me blushing again.

“I’m not! I’m not!” she told me, although she clearly wasn’t able to hold her snickering.

“Yes, you are!”

“Girls!” Miss Maple called from her desk, looking up from our workbooks to scold me and Abby. “You’re free to talk and discuss ideas with one another, but you have to keep it down, ok?”

We apologised as I slumped into my seat. Abby however wasn’t too bothered by the events, smiling at me with her endeared eyes. Then, she let out a quiet giggle and started writing again. I had only started wondering what she was writing before she handed me her sheet.

She had opted for “Studying at a University” option, wrote in front of it the name of the universities we had researched on, and in the observations wrote the following:

“I want to be a PE teacher, so I’ll go study at a university with a good curriculum and facilities. I’ve been looking into it and have come up with those three possible ones. I also want to make a nice home for my wife, Viole evergreen, and make sure that she doesn’t stress herself to an early grave.”

“…Is the last part really necessary?” I asked, my face set ablaze.

“You tell me,” she unapologetically hummed, her head tilted to better look at me as she held it propped up by the elbows, her smile so warm, loving and sweet that I had to fight back with all my might the urge to just pull her in and give her a kiss.

Things got a lot warmer soon after, when Miss Maple was done checking homework. She started collecting the questionnaires that had been filled out, and that meant Abby’s and mine were included. She was, as it was handed to her, checking what people wrote with a smile. When it came to us however, she froze for a second, her eyes being the only thing that moved as she read and re-read what we submitted to paper. I was again melding with my chair while Abby was blushing but looking quite happy about it too.

“I can’t tell if you’re being serious or not,” Miss Maple told us.

“We are being dead serious,” Abby chirped. “We are married, after all, right?”

Hearing her say that alleviated a bit my embarrassment. Of course we wrote that kind of thing. Unlike everyone else, we actually have to plan these things out together and have a commitment to making each other’s lives the easiest and the best we possibly can. When we were filling the forms, because we are a married couple and not just dating, we weren’t writing “I” this and that, but “we”, as it was required by our way more serious commitment.

“Ok, if you say so,” Miss Maple sighed as she shook her head. “It’s going to be an interesting parent-teacher meet… wait… Since you two are married to one another… are your parents coming, or will it be just the two of you?”

That was something we had thought about a few times but still didn’t have an answer for. Since we were still minors, it stood to reason that they’d come. However, on the other hand, since we were married, that meant that I was responsible for Abby, and Abby for me, so we were effectively emancipated from our parents.

“They’ll come if they can, but I guess it can be just us otherwise,” Abby told her.

“There’s your sister too,” I pointed out.

“Yeah, sis could come too, if they can’t,” Abby said.  “We can only tell for certain once we know the date.”

Miss Maple concluded that she’d prepare as if someone else was coming together with us just in case.

I for one felt a new wave of embarrassment, fearing that, if they came, they’d be shown what we wrote.

Time would tell.

◊◊◊

Today’s day at school was quite the hoot and it was done before any of us realised it.

My wife and I stood in front of the school gate with my sister, having just met. She had come to pick us up since it was supposed to be raining, something that didn’t come to fruition, and she had parked the car a bit far away, hence why we hadn’t gotten inside it yet. We were discussing whether we were going to eat something somewhere before heading home or not when I drifted my attention in the direction I used to live. Thoughts about my Mum popped up, like questions about how she spent her Christmas and New Year. Back then, we didn’t really celebrate them. I mean, we did, but… it was performative, I guess. Something we were supposed to do.

“Abby?” sis called out. “Did you see Mum?”

I looked at sis and shook my head, telling her that I was just lost in thought. Violet on the other hand gave my hand a little squeeze and an apprehensive look. I smiled at her as I returned said squeeze to let her know I was peachy-fine.

As we went back to talking about what we’d do now, I looked again in the direction of my old house for one last time, thinking that it’d be the final look, but my eyes locked up. I wasn’t seeing Mum, but I was seeing a very familiar red hair: my old therapist, Miss Francine.

She was walking with a brisk pace and towards us, still not having noticed us. Once she was more in reach, I called out to her, waving once I caught her attention. She crossed the street to approach us, smiling as she greeted our little group and wished a happy new year to all of us. She then looked at my sister and, still with her wide smile, said something that made us a bit uncomfortable.

“You three really look just like one another!”

By that, she meant me, my sister, and our Mum, the last one being the reason why sis and I were shifting in place and why Violet was glaring and stiff.

I however had questions and didn’t let the weird atmosphere stop me from making them.

“You and our Mum are friends?” I asked.

Miss Francine’s smile faded a bit as she looked at me before she answered.

“We were back when we were fifteen, and we are now, if only recently,” she said, her voice sounding sad and pained. “If you’re worried that I was friends with her while you and I were having our sessions, rest assured, me and her only made contact after you stopped coming.”

“How can you be friends with her after having heard what she did to Abby?” my sister asked, her expression now the same as Violet’s.

She didn’t answer right away. She crossed her arms and pressed a hand to her lower face as she looked away, thinking on how to answer that.

“I understand you don’t want to hear any of it,” she began after much squirming and pondering. “But would you just hear me out for a minute over some coffee?”

Maybe for worse than the better, I was curious to hear what she had to say. Sis was conflicted, having half a mind between insulting her and turn around and hearing her out. Violet… Violet of course didn’t want to hear any of it, but since the matter was about me, she’d go along with whatever I decided to do.

“We can always just leave whenever we decide we heard enough, right?” I suggested my sister.

“…Are you really sure you want to get involved?”

“look sis, I know we are all the better for not having her in our lives anymore, but… she is still our mother, so I’m a bit curious about how she’s doing. Aren’t you?”

“Please, Sophie,” my Miss Francine spoke. “I fully understand your feelings, really, I do. But please, won’t you just try and listen part of what I have to say? It might shed some light on why your Mum turned out the way she was, and—”

“I’m sorry, ‘was’?” Violet interrupted, her voice coming out coarse with anger. My therapist looked at her, surprised by my wife’s sudden words thick with that emotion. “You don’t mean to imply that she has changed, do you?”

“But… but she has,” was the answer Violet got, Miss Francine now appearing to be close to start crying. “There’s still plenty of work, but… you should see the regret she carries every day…”

That just about sealed it for me, and looking at my sister, I could tell she had decided the same thing: we’d listen to what she had to say.