Hundred was a twelve-year-old boy who lived with his mother and father in the humble District 14 of the Kingdom of Theria. His life was once very happy.
He was an energetic boy, but in the area where he lived there were few children his age, so he grew up without friends. He spent his days fascinated by his father's old adventure books, reading them over and over until the pages went soft at the corners.
His father, Suly, worked as a farmhand on a nearby plantation. His mother, Tiara, kept the house. They didn't have many comforts, but they always had enough to eat and enough to wear, and it was a peaceful life. Each morning Hundred helped his mother tidy the house, sometimes even helped her cook. His mother was kind, always there when he needed her. His father was hardworking and well respected, and he loved teaching his son to read and write almost as much as he loved telling wild stories from his years as a knight. The stories were probably half exaggeration, but they always carried a lesson worth keeping.
Life was good, until the day King Albert Von Kennedy III died of tuberculosis. His firstborn son, Pattis Von Kennedy, was crowned soon after. And from that day on, Hundred's life turned upside down.
A month later the new king raised taxes on every business in the kingdom. Prices climbed, and Suly's earnings stopped being enough. He worked longer hours, came home more tired. After three months the family started rationing food, and Tiara took an afternoon job as a seamstress to help cover the gap. Some days both parents came home late, leaving Hundred alone for hours with nothing but his father's books.
One day, bored of the same old stories, he decided to take a walk instead.
While crossing a bridge over the river, he spotted a boy using magic, controlling the wind around a handful of small rocks. Hundred stopped and stared, completely hypnotized, then walked straight up to him.
"Hey! My name's Hundred. That thing you just did was incredible!"
"Nice to meet you, Hundred. My name's Damian."
"Damian? Now that's a name. Suits you well. You're handsome and you can use magic? Are you some kind of god-sent prodigy?"
Damian laughed. "Nah. I just know a few tricks with rocks. Nothing more."
"Still counts. The fact that you can use magic at all already makes you remarkable." Hundred leaned in, clearly impressed. "My dad says finding someone who can use magic is like finding gold in a mountain."
"I got lucky. My mom can use magic too, so I inherited it from her."
"That's wonderful. Your mom must be amazing."
"She is. Just not only because of the magic." Damian glanced over at him. "I'm sure your mom's special in her own way too, right?"
"She is. She's very kind. I barely see her these days though, because of her job. And that's basically because of the evil prince."
"Maybe he had a good reason to raise taxes," Damian said. "My dad's a knight. He says taxes like that keep the kingdom stable."
"Wait, what? Your dad's a knight?" Hundred's whole face lit up. "That's incredible. Your family sounds amazing."
"We're not as amazing as you think. We're just a normal family."
"Normal? Your dad's a knight and your mom uses magic. Hardly."
Damian sighed. "Let me explain..."
They spent the rest of the day talking about their lives, and Damian showed him a few more tricks before the sun started going down. Neither of them noticed the hours passing until the sky did it for them. Before parting ways, they agreed to meet at the same spot the next day.
Hundred said goodbye and headed home, already looking forward to it.
As he reached the gate, he could hear his parents shouting inside.
He sighed. Here we go again.
"Suly, tell me you didn't come home drunk again."
"...Leave me alone. I just wanted to relax a bit."
"Are you serious? You're wasting all our money on booze."
"Get out of my face."
"I'm not going anywhere until—"
"Shut up! You have no right to tell me how to spend my money."
A sharp crack of skin against skin cut through the wall.
"Suly! I swear, you'll regret this."
"Shut your mouth. You'll do whatever I tell you to."
"Suly, no. Stop. Please, stop!"
Hundred stood frozen at the gate, his hand still on the latch, listening to his parents tear into each other on both sides, words and worse.
Two hours later, the shouting finally died down. Tiara locked herself in the bedroom, and Hundred could hear her crying through the wall, the kind of crying that tried very hard to be quiet and failed.
He lay in bed that night feeling like his parents might come apart at any moment, like the whole house was a held breath. But he stayed still, and eventually he slept, holding on to the one good thing the day had given him.
The next morning, everything seemed almost normal again. Once his parents left for work, Hundred headed straight for the bridge.
Damian wasn't there.
He told himself his friend was probably just running late, so he waited. An hour passed. Then another. The sun crawled higher, then began to dip, and somewhere in that slow stretch of waiting, Hundred's hope started to fade.
By sunset, he gave up and went home alone.
That night, his parents fought again. And the night after that. The yelling came back morning and evening, sometimes over food, sometimes over a piece of furniture, sometimes over nothing at all, an unwashed cup left in the sink. Eventually his parents stopped fighting only because they'd started avoiding each other entirely.
Three days passed, and Damian never came back to the bridge.
So on the third day, Hundred went looking for him.
He spotted Damian from a distance, sitting against the stone wall near the bridge, slumped down like the weight of his own body had become too much to carry.
Hundred broke into a run, the sight of him pulling his legs forward before he'd even decided to move.
"What happened?" he asked, out of breath. "You didn't show up the other day. I waited for you the whole time."
"Leave me alone," Damian said, his voice flat and cold, nothing like the boy who had shown him magic tricks three days earlier.
"What's wrong? Did something happen? You can talk to me, you know."
"I don't want to talk."
"Even if I wanted to," Damian said, not looking up, "why would I talk to a stranger?"
"Stranger?" Hundred's face crumpled, somewhere between hurt and the edge of tears. "I thought we were friends."
Damian said nothing.
The silence stretched long enough that Hundred almost turned to leave.
"Sorry," he said quietly. "I didn't mean to bother you. If you want, I'll go. Give you some space."
"What are you talking about? Why would I want you to go?"
"You said you wanted to be alone."
"You just told me you're my friend, and now you're walking away like that?" Damian finally looked up at him. "A real friend would tell me a joke to cheer me up."
Hundred blinked, caught off guard. Then something in his face shifted, like he'd been handed a task he actually knew how to do.
"Wait, wait. I have one." He cleared his throat. "What does a duck say to its sweetheart?"
"...I don't know."
"Quack-quack."
It took a second. Then Damian let out a short, surprised laugh, the first real sound he'd made since Hundred arrived.
"Because they're ducks." He shook his head, almost grinning now. "Got it. And that sound was almost perfect, I'll give you that."
"Strange little talent of mine," Hundred said, wiping his eyes before it became obvious he needed to. "I can mimic a few animals. Not many people know that about me."
"That's the first joke a friend's ever told me."
"And that's the first joke I've ever told a friend."
"Truly?"
"Truly, truly."
They sat there for a while after that, not saying much, the kind of quiet that doesn't need filling.
"My father was killed three days ago," Damian said finally. "By a band of thieves."
Hundred's chest went tight.
"I'm... I'm so sorry." He didn't know what else to say, and for once he didn't try to fill the silence with a joke. "I can't even imagine losing my mother or father."
Damian stared out at the water moving under the bridge. "He was the one who taught me everything. The magic. Reading. How to hold a sword, even though I was never any good with one." He pulled his knees up slightly. "He told me once that being a knight wasn't about strength. It was about choosing, every single day, to protect something. I didn't truly understand what he meant until three days ago."
"You don't have to speak of it if it's too much."
"I know." Damian's voice cracked, just slightly. "I just don't know how to stop thinking of it."
Hundred didn't say anything clever. He just sat closer, shoulder almost touching Damian's, and let the silence hold both of them for a while.
"Growing up without friends is hard," Hundred finally said.
"...Yeah." A faint, broken laugh. "You're right about that."
"But now we have each other."
Damian didn't answer right away, but something in his shoulders loosened.
"You know, Damian," Hundred said after a while, staring at the river, "I wish we had real money. Maybe then my parents wouldn't fight so much. Things would go back to how they used to be."
"Sounds like you carry your own burdens too."
"Aye. I try not to dwell on it." Hundred picked at a loose thread on his sleeve. "I just want to find some way to make my mother and father happy again."
"Now that my father's gone," Damian said quietly, "my mother told me I'm the man of the house now. I have to help her, and my sisters, however I can." He looked down at his own hands. "The only thing I can think to do is become a knight. Grow strong enough to find the men who did this, and make them answer for it. The kingdom only takes knights from the age of fifteen. So for the next three years, I mean to train as hard as I possibly can."
Hundred was quiet for a moment, taking that in.
"Maybe I could become a knight too," he said. "They say knights earn good money. We could train together. What do you say?"
"I'll be training with magic, though."
"Doesn't matter to me. I'll train with swords, spears, halberds, whatever I can get my hands on. I'm going to be the finest swordsman in the whole kingdom. Then I'll have more money than I'll know what to do with."
Damian almost smiled. "All you ever think about is money."
"Not only money." Hundred sat up straighter, some of his usual energy creeping back in. "Girls too. And friends. And whatever money can buy."
"All right, all right." Damian shook his head, but the corner of his mouth had lifted, just barely. "Endless money would still be rather fine, though."
"See? Told you."
A beat passed.
"Hundred," Damian said.
"What?"
"Tell me another joke."
Hundred grinned. "Very well. Here comes another one."
From that day forward, Hundred and Damian became the closest of friends. They met every day after that, training together with one shared goal: to become knights of the kingdom.
And with that dream between them, they were willing to do whatever it took to see it through.