"The Guild Master left as soon as he heard the news about Kyle. Because of everything surrounding me, I was forced to remain at the hospital. Even if I hadn’t been, though, I had no interest in going to greet Kyle.
After all, I’d known about the event from the very beginning. I was the one who had allowed it to happen.
Falling back onto the bed, I stared blankly at the ceiling.
Initially, I’d considered claiming that I’d rescued Kyle from the same lab where I’d saved Soran and Rowan’s sister. In the end, however, the biggest problem was that the general public believed Kyle had been lost in the Land Beneath.
If he suddenly showed up out of nowhere, people would naturally start asking questions. I couldn’t exactly say, "I just happened to find him while casually strolling through the laboratory of an organization that experiments on people."
That’d be a whole new problem.
This was for the best.
Kyle was a public figure after all. And nobody knew that Soran had been kidnapped.
"Haa."
Scratching the side of my head, I leaned back, ready to get some rest. Just as I turned, however, a knock echoed from the door. Before I even had the chance to respond, it slowly opened on its own.
Alright, fuck it.
Just tear the door already!
What even is the point of a door if everyone just barges in without my permission?
I turned to the side, catching sight of disheveled locks of blonde hair as a pair of green eyes immediately locked onto me. Her face was flushed, and with both hands resting on her knees, she struggled to catch her breath as her lips opened and closed several times.
It seemed like she had rushed to get to me.
Eventually⎯
"K-kyle!"
She found her voice again as she looked at me.
"They’ve found him. They’ve... found⎯"
"I know."
I calmly cut her off as Zoey abruptly stopped.
"The Guild Master was just here with me. He’s already explained the situation to me. As far as I’m aware, they’ll be bringing him here soon. From what I’ve heard, he’s still conscious but a little malnourished. He’ll be fine, though."
"Ah... I see."
Finally, Zoey seemed to have calmed down as she managed to recover herself from the fluster. Not without suddenly adding, "So, I... I thought that you’d like to know, but I guess you know. I should’ve seen it coming. Right. But..."
Lifting her head, our eyes met again.
"You are quite calm."
"...Am I?"
"Yeah."
I’d thought about feigning surprise when Zoey first arrived, already having guessed the reason for her visit, but the moment I saw her, I gave up on the idea. I wasn’t really in the mood to put on an act.
Instead, I simply looked away from her and stared at the ceiling.
"From the start, I knew that he was fine."
"....."
There was no reply after that.
I found the silence to help with my headache, but of course, that silence wasn’t going to last for a very long time as Zoey’s voice reached my ears once more. This time, however, her voice was a lot softer than before.
"You know... about everything that I said before, I⎯"
"Let me stop you right there."
I raised my hand to stop her from speaking.
Already guessing what she was trying to say, I saved myself from worsening my own headache.
"You’re probably trying to apologise to me, right?"
I didn’t even need to look at her expression to guess what she was trying to do. It wasn’t even her tone that gave her away. That much, I could already guess based on previous patterns that she had displayed.
The silence that followed pretty much confirmed my guesses.
I sighed.
At the rate things were going, she was probably going to apologise every time we met or something happened.
I planned on making sure that wouldn’t happen.
It’d be pretty annoying if she apologized every time she saw me. Just thinking about it made me... er, wait?
I blinked slowly.
Wouldn’t that actually be pretty funny?
Thinking about her lowering herself every time we crossed paths, muttering, ’I am deeply sorry about everything that I’ve done...’
Keke.
"Apolo⎯Ehm."
I cleared my throat.
Darn intrusive thoughts.
"I get it. You feel sorry about the way that you treated me and the words that you previously said. You’re probably thinking that I’m not as selfish as I made myself out to be after rescuing Rowan’s sister, and all of that, right?"
"....."
Zoey didn’t speak once more.
This further confirmed my guesses.
"You’re probably thinking that I might actually not be such a bad guy and that maybe I’m so anti-social that I struggle to express myself and all of that. Maybe that was the true reason behind my actions or lack of reaction based on Kyle’s supposed death."
There were many mysteries that existed in this world. There were so many that I struggled to keep up with all of them. But of all those mysteries, the ones that I was most curious about were regarding Zoey, and the ones that were supposed to belong to the games that I had once worked on.
To what extent were they like the game characters I’d once worked on? I already knew they weren’t exactly the same, but even then, I knew them well enough to have a rough idea of what they were thinking and how they would act.
It was for this reason that it wasn’t hard for me to guess what she was thinking.
Even in the games, she was like this.
She⎯
"Eh? What...?"
"Hm?"
"Wait, what are you...?"
"Eh?"
I blinked my eyes, turning my head to look at Zoey as she gave me a strange look.
With her finger covering the top of her lips, she resisted before speaking, "I wasn’t really... coming here to apologise or anything like that. To be honest, I was here to talk about something else, and while I did have thoughts about apologising, it wasn’t really what I was trying to say. I..."
Zoey scratched the side of her face, her lips pursing together as the tip of her ears turned red.
My toes suddenly curled.
Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait...
"But, you know... ehm, you can take it as me trying to apologise? I mean, yeah... You did cover what I was trying to say."
Fanning herself, Zoey stood up.
Her face appeared to be getting redder by the second.
My toes curled even further.
"Err... Okay, so I’ll take my leave, haha."
She looked everywhere but at me.
I couldn’t look at her either. Oh, that lamp was there before?
"I’m... I’m going. I hope... er, you recover well."
With a laugh, Zoey moved outside the room, leaving the entire place in a state of utter silence.
Just moments prior, I had wanted for nothing but the silence, but at this current moment, I wished nothing but for the silence to fade as I brought the covers up to cover my face. But just as I did, a face peeked from the side of the door as she stuck her tongue out.
"⎯⎯!"
So I was right!
I hastily sat up, but just as I did, the door opened. Zoey’s expression shifted into one of surprise as several figures walked in. Among them, one immediately caught my attention.
He looked pale, and his clothes were a mess, but I recognized him instantly. He stopped in place, and our gazes met.
Time seemed to freeze in that moment as neither of us moved.
Until⎯
"I’m back."
Kyle’s voice reached my ears as he stepped forward and wrapped me in a hug, a warm smile spreading across his face.
At first, I was caught off guard, but as I felt his embrace, I eventually found myself smiling as well, returning the hug.
As I did, I caught sight of all the other faces in the room.
See?
I looked particularly in Zoey’s direction.
I’m not such a bad guy.
All is good.
End of Volume [2] ⎯ The Butcher.
I promised more romance, and it should’ve been present given the outlines I had, but in the end, I pushed it back a little since it didn’t fit the theme that I was looking for. Especially given everything that was happening to Seth.
It’ll come, but at the right pace.
There was a lot of preparation done for the upcoming one. Hopefully, it’ll be the craziest one yet.
Ah, but.
The start will be quite slow.
It’s time for Seth to take a rest from all the action.
Next volume :
Volume [3] ⎯ The Judge