Sweet Romance14 min read
My Little Sun and the General: A Campus Tale
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I returned to the garden of my childhood with my suitcase and a trembling smile. The courtyard smelled of fruit and flowers, and a wind chime sang like a small bell. White star-shaped flowers hung like little moons on the vines. My palms stayed empty, but my chest felt full.
“Beatrice,” the old man called out, his voice soft and rough like an old page. “You’re finally back.”
“I’m back,” I said. “It’s good to be back.”
He hummed a tune and then a loud clap of movement cut through the quiet. A young man—tall, precise, and remote—moved like a shadow. He did a small display of skill, made the old man laugh, and poured tea as if he had practiced the single gentle motion all his life.
“Don’t go making me lose every game,” the old man teased.
The tall man smiled, a small thing, and sipped his tea. He looked over at me like someone seeing the sun after a long rain. He did not speak my name. He simply said, “It’s good you came back.”
I had to bend my head so I would not stare. He had always been the kind of person who made people hold their breath a little. He was polite but too solemn to be easy, and there was a flavor of danger beneath his quiet.
The city university was shouting with new-year banners. I almost skipped in. My heart made a small jump when people turned and looked. I did not care about the looks. I was happy. I clutched Allison’s hand tight.
“Allison, hurry,” I said. “Orion’s waiting.”
“Don’t call him a baby,” Allison laughed and pulled me faster.
Orion Bonner had the kind of smile that made everyone around feel less sharp. He was my friend, my guardian, the brother-child who always treated me like someone precious. Branch Dumont—my real big brother—walked protective at my side with that cool, careful air of someone who had the money and the will to fix things. He had already told me he had prepared everything at school. He had prepared a surprise.
We reached our dorm, and Branch set down boxes and a robot on the tile. The robot folded small and cheerful, calling itself “K-9” in a voice like someone overdoing a radio drama.
“Branch,” I said, my voice soft, “you didn’t have to—”
He smiled, distant and gentle. “You will do fine here. If anything is hard, you tell me.”
I laughed too loud and pranced into the dorm like a child. The robot put each item neatly away. I felt a little dizzy with gratitude.
“Beatrice,” Orion said, bending to tuck my suitcase in the corner. “Remember, if anything happens, I’m only a call away.”
“I will. Thank you, Orion.”
Allison watched me play with K-9 and smiled like a cat with a full bowl. “Bea, you’ll be the happiest person here.”
I wanted to believe that. I wanted to plant my feet here and stay.
The first day of military training we all lined up like rows of blooming reeds. One voice cut through the crowd, low and cold and clear.
“I am your head instructor,” he said. “My name is Benedict Myers. Follow my orders.”
My heart skipped. That name—Benedict—felt like the sound of thunder in my chest. I had a memory like a small light slipping under water. When he looked at me once, my knees went soft.
I told myself it was coincidence. I told myself the man in front of us was a teacher, nothing more. He moved like a long shadow, exercises precise, voice low and firm.
“Start with posture,” he ordered. I tried not to think about his glance when he said it. He walked between lines and corrected shoulders and jaws and feet. Then he stopped.
“You, keep your head lower,” he said softly, and I felt something in my chest like a sweet ache.
I did not know if he remembered the face that had once sat next to his in the past, if he knew the name I once whispered to him on a classroom playground. I only knew he held me like a small secret in his stare.
One boy, loud and privileged, told him he should relax, that he could not train so hard. The boy lifted his chin, proud as a peacock. Benedict looked at him like a man looking at a weak branch.
“You are not fit to complain,” Benedict said.
“He’s King Draven Delgado’s son!” someone hissed.
I could see the boy’s face turn red. I could feel the hard line of Benedict’s jaw. He moved like a winter storm and ended the argument with a word that made the boy step back. The rest of us whispered.
I liked the feel of Benedict’s discipline like I liked the taste of hot bread. It was honest and without game. But when Benny—if I could shorten his name, which I did not do—spoke to me, the air between us changed.
“You did well today,” he told me once, low, when everyone else had left. “You moved like you were not made of silk. You were real.”
“Thank you,” I said. My chest fluttered like a trapped bird.
He watched me for a long time and then left with the same quiet weight he moved in.
The days spun out. Training was hard. I grew callous where shoes rubbed and my skin learned the sun. Benedict taught us survival, hands-on and strict. He kept a look for me, small and honest, and I felt something like warmth when he was near. Allison teased me and called him “the general” while Branch pretended not to care, though he kept sending me things and K-9 grew better each day, learning my laugh.
The first real test came on a hiking day. The orders were simple: sixteen kilometers, full pack. I tightened my straps and told myself I could do it. Branch had helped pack my things; Orion showed up at the bus to walk with us for a bit. I felt a tug of pride as the trees slid by.
We walked through heat and song. Benedict’s voice sometimes called out our numbers like a drum. His eyes returned to me more than to most. Once his hand brushed mine while shifting the umbrella to shade me, and every step after that felt like my heart had slipped a gear.
There were laughs and scuffles. Once a girl named Vivienne Alvarez—so fair and sharp she looked like glass—smiled the wrong smile. She wanted to hold the spotlight like a jewel. She always seemed close enough for trouble.
By the river, Vivienne and I went to pick a dropped bag. She smiled quick and sweet and said, “I’m so clumsy, will you get that for me, please?”
I moved in, hesitant. The water was colder than my hand guessed. A small push, or a slip—my memory is still fogged—threw me in. Vivienne’s face was pale and the air tasted of salt.
I did not remember the cold at first. I only remember thinking of Benedict’s hands and the sound of the water filling my mouth. Then arms, the strong arms of Benedict’s rescue, hauling me out like a small bird saved from a storm. He held me on the sand, my heart beating like a trapped drum. He told me to cough, to breathe. He smoothed my hair with hands that knew how to comfort. I was afraid and then I was safe.
“Did she do this?” Benedict asked, voice a very quiet volcano.
“She pushed me,” I said, numb.
Vivienne’s smile was gone. She melted into annoyance, then reheated into pride.
Later, when I was shivering in Branch’s spare shirt and Benedict sat me down and passed me tea, the campus watched and whispered. Some people clapped Benedict’s name like he was a hero. In my room, I called Orion, and he said nothing much. Branch came by and he was cool, and told me to rest.
That night, a strange fever came over me. The doctor said it was the water and a small infection. Benedict sat in the chair and watched me all night. He fed me medicine like someone cleaning a small wound. He said things to the nurses like commands, so they moved fast and careful. When my fever hit high and my skin burned, he stayed calm. He wrapped me warm and carried me to sleep.
I woke with a little life back in me. “Where am I?” I asked.
“You are with me,” Benedict said, and something in his voice made me feel lighter.
The next day there were whispers that Vivienne had pushed me. I remember the angle of her smile the moment before, and the way it went cold when Benedict pulled me from the water. I remember the look on his face, like someone who had been given a broken promise and knew how to make it right.
Vivienne tried to make it smaller. She tried to say it was a mistake, that her foot slipped. She tried to pretend she could not recall. But the river had many witnesses. A few students had seen the whole thing and one boy had filmed it on his phone. The video spread slow as sure cement.
I wanted to forget. But I could not. The watchful eyes of campus followed. I felt like a thin glass jar being held up to a bright sun.
The chance for punishment came like a quiet storm. Branch told me he would help. Orion asked if I was okay. Benedict asked one small question, and I had no right to refuse him. We arranged a meeting at the auditorium, where the student council and the sports teams gathered. People filled the room like stacked bricks.
“Let this be fair,” Benedict told me quietly. His voice carried like a calm bell. “No threats. Just truth.”
They dimmed the lights and the projector screen lit up. A thousand small sounds stilled. The person who controlled the video clicked play. The room watched the moment flow: Vivienne’s hand, a shove disguised as an awkward step, my small body falling into the water. It was like seeing a broken plate on the ground in slow motion.
Vivienne’s face at the start was a polished mask. For the first thirty seconds she smiled like a queen. Then she watched the screen.
“Wait, pause,” she said at first. “Someone is playing with the camera. That’s not—”
She looked at the screen, then at the hall. The smile froze.
“Turn it off!” she shouted, and the voice shook. People took out their phones to record her. Someone laughed. Someone said, “Was that deliberate?” like the wind asking a question. I could hear children whisper “did she”—the thought a small, cruel insect.
Vivienne’s lips trembled. Her fingers closed on a chair and the knuckles turned white. For a moment she looked small, like a piece of bright glass thrown to the floor.
“You’re lying,” she said, too loud. “I didn’t—this is a setup.”
“Set up?” Benedict asked slowly, his voice even. “Why would someone set this up?”
Vivienne blinked, then the swagger returned for a tiny breath. “I didn’t push her. She slipped. She’s making this up.”
“You pushed her,” said a boy from the back. A girl took a step forward and added the sound of her voice: “We all saw it.”
The hall hummed like a hive. Phones rose. Some people filmed; others whispered. The initial crowd watched with the hard, bright interest of bystanders who want justice like a show. The projector played the footage again, a crisp replay that left no room for fancy.
Vivienne’s face turned hot, then white. She laughed, but the laugh had no humor. “You can all look, you can all record. But I did not mean for her to fall.”
“Then why are you laughing in the video before she fell?” someone asked, and the laughter fell away from the room like dead leaves.
“I—I—” Vivienne’s voice broke. The audience watched her like fish watch a storm. Some hands went to mouths. Someone whispered, “I thought she was so pretty.” Another said, “Serves her right.” Someone else—an old student who had seen many things—pulled out his phone and played the footage slowly, at half speed.
Vivienne’s eyes slid around the sea of faces. The weight of the screen held her like a net.
“You think you’re above us,” Benedict said. He did not shout. He did not need to. His voice was clean steel. “You do not get to make another person suffer and then pretend you’re a victim.”
“You—” She stumbled. Her face shuttered like glass. “You can’t—this is wrong. This is slander.”
“You did it,” one of the witnesses called. A dozen phones flashed. People began to talk, slow and fierce.
Vivienne’s bravado melted into fear. She took a step back, and then another. The circle of recording devices closed in like a second skin.
“I won’t—” she said, voice small. “Please, you don’t understand, please.”
“You can apologize,” someone suggested. The suggestion was like an offered hand.
She snarled, the face of a cat exposed, “I will not apologize for an accident I did not make.”
One student stood and walked up to her—small, thin, and with a quiet gravity. “If you say you didn’t do it, then walk to the stage and show us your hands, and tell us why you pushed her.”
Vivienne stepped toward the stage, her shoes sounding small. Her face had the hue of someone falling. The lights from the phones were like curious moths.
“Please,” she said again, but the room ate the word.
“Why did you do it?” Benedict asked, just above a whisper, but I feel it as loud as the sea. The audience leaned in like a single, hungry creature.
Vivienne’s hands trembled and she looked like someone finally caught. Her voice was half-sob. “I—she’s everywhere. She laughs, and people look at her, and I want that. I wanted to scare her. I didn’t mean—”
The hall exploded with noise: gasps, shame, a few sharp curses. People started to clap at the end—a rough, sharp applause like thunder. Some were angry and loud. Some—mostly girls who had been on the edges of scorn—spoke softly, wounded, then righteous.
“You wanted her out of the way,” Benedict said slowly. “You thought making her afraid would make room for you.” His tone had the weight of someone who has seen a bad truth and holds it like a fact. “You chose to harm someone.”
Vivienne’s face crumpled. She staggered and covered her mouth. “I didn’t mean—please don’t—” Her voice became a thin, pleading sound.
People recorded. People whispered. Some stepped closer to take pictures of her red face. Some set the recordings live and the auditorium’s echo traveled out to phones like a second wave. I could feel the room watching the fall of a bright thing. Her denial slid to panic, then to pleading. She sank to her knees on the stage.
“Please—please, I didn’t think—” she begged. The auditorium’s silence roared. The crowd watched her change from proud to pleading in the span of a long breath. People hissed. Some shook their heads. Someone said, “Good. Let her see herself.”
A girl in the front row stood and lifted her phone. “I hope she learns,” she said.
Vivienne’s hands shook and she tried to stand, but her knees gave. She wet her lips and begged again and again. Her voice lost strength, and when she finally hit rock, she fell apart. Some students filmed as she wept, some clapped, some turned away.
At last, the student council president announced, “We will handle this through official channels. The university will also consider public discipline. In the meantime, Smith Hall revokes certain campus privileges. This is not a private matter. This is a community matter.”
Vivienne’s breaths came ragged. Her face went pale as bone. “No, please. I’ll do anything—” she said, and then, with a small, broken sound, she begged Benedict.
“Please,” she said to him. “Please, don’t let it follow me outside.”
He looked at her for a very long second. His voice was low and steady. “I saved her from the water because she was in danger. You will answer for what you did. The university will act. This is not for me to wipe away. This is to teach that hurting someone is a choice with consequences.”
She bawled. The auditorium did not need more. People began to clap and chant small things—“justice,” “truth”—a chorus both rough and necessary.
She crawled up from the stage and left in a police of whispering faces. Cameras followed. Voices recorded every waver of her hand and every small shock on her face. The video lived on, and the campus kept talking. For days, her name was a lesson.
When I left the auditorium that night, Benedict walked beside me. He kept a small distance, held by duty and care. “Are you okay?” he asked.
“I am,” I said, and I meant it. “Thank you.”
He looked at me, and his eyes were like very deep wells. “You are stubborn,” he said lightly, because even he had to use small words when the world felt too large. “But... you are also very brave.”
I blushed. “You saved me.”
“You almost drowned,” he said. “I would have been angry with myself forever.”
He kept walking with me to the dorms and stayed enough to ensure I was safe. Branch sent a quiet message, and Orion walked me part of the way, and Allison laughed and fussed and treated me like a treasure.
After the punishment and the storm, the days moved soft. Benedict taught me privately sometimes, letting me come to him like a small bird. He helped me learn to stand, to kick, to move my feet like springs and not glass. I learned how to protect myself and, little by little, to trust him.
We began to share small things. He learned the name I liked to be called—Bea—and sometimes he said it with a gentleness that made my cheeks hot. Sometimes he called me “my little sun,” in a joke that I did not expect, and I tried not to melt into the word.
One night, after training, he invited me to dinner. I asked him if he wanted something ordinary. He ordered the things I loved and watched me with a look like glass warmed. He let me feed him a bite of pudding and laughed when I spilled a little. He pressed a napkin to my face once, and I felt like the truest thing I knew was the warmth of the gesture.
“Why are you so kind?” I asked once, while he held the cup. He did not answer. He only said, “Bea, you don’t have to ask for kindness. Keep it.”
I said, “Do you ever—do you ever want to be more than an instructor?”
He looked at me for a long time and then down. “Sometimes,” he said quietly, “I want to be what my life looks like when it is happy.”
The words fell into my bones like a warm rain. I wanted to say so many things back. I wanted to tell him about the empty spaces I had held since childhood, about the small promises I had made to myself. I wanted to tell him I remembered a face from long ago and still did not even know if that face loved me.
We kept close. He came to watch the small competitions. I felt proud when he called my name. The campus started to hush in a new way when he entered a field. People knew Benedict was a man who kept things steady and right.
Brighter days came. I learned to ride a white horse in a red skirt and felt the sun on my face like an old friend. I moved through big crowds and felt Benedict’s eyes follow me like a map. Sometimes I would look away and find Orion nearby, smiling and patient.
One night, after a festival at the river, I found myself walking with Benedict beneath the lamps. The air smelled of fried sugar and the night had a soft, honest hush.
“Bea,” he said suddenly, and I stopped.
He took both my hands like a man anchoring the sea. “I know I am a rough harbor. I know I am not easy.” He swallowed. “But I don’t want you to believe you are alone.”
Tears came uncommanded, small and hot, and I let them fall. “You already taught me that,” I said.
He smiled—not so stern now—and then leaned in slowly. For one breath the world held and breathed with us. His lips touched mine, a kiss quiet and slow and honest. It felt like coming home.
I pulled back and laughed, a small, shaky sound. “Benedict,” I said.
“Call me Benedict,” he said.
We grew from there like a quiet plant finding sun. I learned that love can begin like a ladder rung by rung, each small touch a step, none of it forced, all of it real. He was mine not because anyone claimed me, but because he chose to stay and because I chose to trust.
Days changed the way light moves in a room. People whispered still; a few glowed with envy, others simply watched with the calm of those who love a good story. Vivienne’s fall had been seared on the campus; she had to answer for it and lost privileges. People observed how small cruelties become big when there is proof, and how truth will find a voice.
I kept my robot K-9 by my desk. Branch kept sending me parcels. Orion and Allison were the kind of friends who waited quietly while I learned how to step into something new. Benedict would call me “my little sun” sometimes, and I would pretend to scowl, but the name warmed me like a hand on my back. When I cooked for him, he would make a face like a child and then say it was the best he had ever tasted.
Once, on a calm night, I found Benedict looking out the window at the moon like he was counting something.
“What are you thinking?” I asked.
“About what you smell like,” he said softly, and I blinked. “About how the first day we met I thought you were like light.”
I laughed at that. “You are dramatic.”
“Maybe,” he agreed. He touched the edge of my palm. “But true.”
If I measure the shape of this story, it is like a line drawn from a courtyard to a stage to a quiet hospital room, and then back to the garden. It is the sound of Benedict’s steps when he comes to my room, the small beep of K-9 announcing messages, the flash of phones after Vivienne’s fall, Branch’s careful hands, Orion’s warm smile, and Allison’s loud, honest laugh.
At night, when all is quiet, I still think of the river. It is not the place I fear. It is where I learned who would keep me when I nearly fell. Benedict taught me how to stand; Vivienne’s downfall taught the campus that cruelty has a price; and Branch and Orion taught me that family can be many kinds of hands.
The last thing I did before I closed the door on another long day was wind the small watch Branch had given me. The metal felt cool and true in my palm. Benedict was beside me.
“I will count time with you,” he said.
I smiled and placed the watch into the inside pocket of my jacket. I could feel his hand over mine for a single second.
“K-9,” I joked to the robot, “don’t let Benedict steal my heart too fast.”
The robot chirped, uselessly clever. “Affirmative.”
Benedict’s breath ticked near my ear. He whispered, “You are my sun. You will always be my sun.”
I smiled and answered him, “And you are my harbor, Benedict Myers. And I will keep the little watch, and the robot, and the memory of that first cold water, and all the small brave things we do.”
Outside, the night streetlamp hummed softly. Inside, I wound the watch one more turn. The second hand moved and the room breathed with us.
I closed my eyes and let the sound of the wind chime fold into the small, steady beat of his heart. This is my life now—full of small brave things, small soft words, and the kind of love that is both shield and warmth. I hold the watch tight. K-9 beeps once. Benedict pulls the blanket up and watches me sleep.
When I wake, he kisses my nose and says, “Today we train. Today we laugh. Today we live.” Then he cups my cheek and adds, “Today I am yours.”
I press my forehead to his and for a long moment, I simply listen to his heart, sure and steady, like a drum that keeps me going.
The watch ticks. The robot hums. My little sun rises and he listens to it.
The End
— Thank you for reading —