“Why… not,” Bayani repeated, stopping at the top of the stairs to catch his breath.

“Don’t mind him,” Peter said when he saw their hold give his boyfriend a baffled look. “His house is only one story.” He smirked, then took Bayani’s hand to follow James down the hall, their feet clomping on the old hardwoord floors as they walked.

There were only a few doors on the third floor, and the teenager’s seemed to be the furthest one away. It was nothing like what Cerys had been expecting to see when he opened the door. At least, it was certainly nothing like her room in her house. She and her friends stared as they filed into the room, and for a few minutes said nothing.

“This is your room?” Cerys finally asked. “It looks more like… I don’t, what are the words for it?”

“Like some of these things used to be in a castle,” Himeko started, but then she wasn’t sure what else to say.

“But then a teenager moved in, and wasn’t sure whether to keep it traditional,” Peter added sardonically, “or make it modern.”

He walked further into the room, not even stopping to think about manners, and peeked into some of the boxes that were laying around. Bayani followed him, just as curious about what was in the myriad of boxes. He ended up tripping over something on the floor and knocking one over, its contents spilling across the floor with a plastic cacophony.

“Sorry– so sorry!” He scrambled to grab the edge of the boxed and set it right, and then knelt down to collect its contents. “I’m not usually this clumsy.”

Peter stifled a laugh, but made no comment about the matter. He bent down to help Bayani pick things up. Cerys was soon at his side, looking over the gray cartridges before handing them over to be paced in the box. She gaped as she read the titles on two of them, and looks up at James.

“How did you– You seriously have two copies of Earthbound? This is incredible!”

James did not seem as impressed as she was. “I have a third around he somewhere, but it’s cracked.” He glanced around as though wondering where exactly he had put it. “Don’t worry about those old games; I was collecting for a while, but I’ve kind of slowed down.”

“Your collection is very nearly complete,” Himeko told him as she watch her fiend put away the last few games.

“he has a point there,” Cerys said, standing up and taking another look around. “It’s obvious that your family is really wealthy. You have this house, the furniture, everything a teenager could ever want! What do they do for a living. I mean, if you don’t mind my asking.”

“It’s quite all right,” James told her. “My father is the Baron of Carawick.”

Cerys laughed, shaking her head in amusement. “Oh, you are a joker!”

They others seemed equally dubious.

“Well, you do not have to believe me,” James replied with a shrug. “It’s just nice meeting people willing to be friendly to me.”

“Who wouldn’t want to be your friend?” Bayani asked. He was looking at James’s bookshelf now, and pulled out a hardbound book, then grinned at him. “Fellow players are always a welcome addition to my friends group!”

Peter read the title on the book that Bayani had found, and gave one of his rare smiles. “Dungeons and Dragons, eh? Maybe we should plan a game.”