Chương 82: Evelisse No More

POV: Evelisse Ardentia Mel had dropped off to sleep right after a quick post-lunch bath, and sis had gone downstairs to tell Milo about the update from Arkhay, which left me alone, perched on the edge of the bed, turning over what I'd done. Ever since I'd asked Milo the question about Nyx, I'd felt strange. Off, somehow. Had I been weird, asking something like that? It was far too personal, wasn't it? Who was I, even, to ask him such a thing? It wasn't as though we were—as though we were a... couple.

What if he thought I was being a creep about it? First I'd made things awkward by all but guilt-tripping him, and now I'd gone and pried into something that was frankly none of my business. We had far more pressing matters to worry about; Astrea, then Silvanis, then the ever-present threat of Ywain descending on us. So why had I felt the need to ask him those things at all? I sighed and let myself fall back onto the bed, feet dangling off the edge, and stared up at the wooden ceiling.

My thoughts kept circling, snagging, refusing to land anywhere useful, anywhere that wasn't this feeling, or this tangle of thoughts, or whatever it was. I wasn't familiar with any of it. I'd thought things had been going fine. When I was near Milo, I got a little nervous, a little warm, a soft, fluttering sort of thing in my chest that, strangely, made me feel comfortable. But when he and Nyx seemed to have some current running between them, I couldn't help wondering about it.

And when I'd noticed how gloomy he'd gone, because of her, I'd assumed, something else had risen up in me. A different kind of strange. This one was prickly, and it hurt, faintly. And before I'd managed to make any sense of what it might be, I'd already opened my mouth and asked who Nyx was to him. What was I supposed to do now?

"What are you doing?" Sis's voice, from the doorway. I glanced over, and there she was, still holding the letter. She was back sooner than I'd expected. I let my head sink down onto the mattress again, eyes returning to the ceiling.

"Still fretting over that question you asked him?" The words wouldn't come. I wanted to say something, even just a simple yes, but what came out instead was a breath heavier than I'd meant to let go.

"It's all right, Eve. You only asked a question. It's not as though Milo stormed off on you, or—" I shot upright, and sis stopped.

"But he might think I'm a busybody, a–and if he does, then—then I wouldn't even know how to—""Eve, calm down." Sis crossed to me and settled her hands on my shoulders, her brows drawn gently together, her eyes patient and warm, the look she used to give me when we were small and I'd worked myself into a knot over nothing.

"I really don't think Milo's thought about it that hard. No offense to him, but he isn't exactly sharp when it comes to this sort of thing."

"... Really?" She nodded, and let her hands fall from my shoulders.

"Though, I do think you could stand to be a little more... assertive." A beat.

"And by that, I mean right now." What? And so I found myself outside, sitting on the log. On my way down the stairs, I had caught sight of Milo and Nyx bickering over the hostages. The sight tugged at something in me; that prickly, unwelcome something, and before I'd quite decided to, I was already heading out the door. Sis had told me Milo had been out here with Nyx only moments before, and that the two of them had looked like they'd had something going on between them.

I'd tried to tell her it wasn't my place to interfere in that sort of thing, but what she'd said in return had made me rethink.

"There's nothing to interfere with in the first place, Eve. All you're doing is making sure he knows how you feel. How do you expect him to do anything you'd want him to, if he doesn't exactly have an explicitly clear idea where you stand?" I had never once named this feeling properly aloud to sis. Perhaps not even to myself.

"So go out there and talk to him. About anything, it doesn't matter what. All this running and avoiding, this being so careful and gentle about everything, it won't get a single clear thought through that easily-swayed head of his. You'll only make yourself more and more miserable, at this rate." She was right, and some part of me had known it all along.

I needed to face this feeling head-on, rather than let it fester and gnaw at me until I couldn't so much as think straight about the actual problems in front of us. I'd been feeling less and less like myself these past few days, and tiptoeing endlessly around the edges of it wasn't going to mend that. Then he appeared, Milo, stepping out onto the porch, the two unconscious hostages slung over his shoulders. This was likely the only chance we'd have to be even somewhat alone.

Once we set out for Silvanis tomorrow, moments like this would be hard to come by. I had to make it count. Since Milo couldn't fly while carrying three people, he had asked Luke for help getting us to Astrea. The two hostages were slung across Luke's broad back, and Milo sat up front, gripping the rope that bound them to keep the pair from sliding off somehow. I sat behind him. Luke was quick enough that we should reach Astrea and be done with the whole business well before dinner.

And this arrangement, at least, let me talk with Milo a little more easily than I might have otherwise. This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author's work.

"So... anything you wanted to talk about?" Milo asked. Of course he'd ask that. I hadn't said a single word since we climbed onto Luke's back.

"O-oh. Right. Um..." Oh, no. How was I even supposed to begin? I'd thought about wanting to make things clearer between us, but I hadn't given myself nearly enough time to work out how to start, or where the conversation was meant to go from there. Heat crept up into my face. This was mortifying. I was the one who'd asked to come along, and now here I sat, unable to string two words together. What had started as an attempt to sort things out was only making me look more pathetic by the second.

Milo was surely wearing that puzzled look of his, and I couldn't bring myself to meet his eyes to find out.

"Well… thanks anyway," he said. I did not expect that. I hadn't done a thing yet, so why would he thank me? When I finally looked over, he'd turned his gaze off into the distance, the wind pulling gently at his hair. It was such a simple sight, and yet one I couldn't remember ever really seeing before. That warmth rose up in my chest again; the familiar, comfortable kind, and I felt it spread outward, into my shoulders, down along my arms. Then I caught myself, before I could sink any deeper into it.

I'd embarrassed myself quite enough already; sitting here staring at him would do me no favors. He'd handed me an opening. The least I could do was follow his lead.

"W-why? I haven't done anything."

"Well, you came along," he said.

"That's something. Made the trip a little less lonely, at least." It struck me, then, how little I actually knew about Milo. He'd told me about his old world, that he'd been a college student, whatever exactly that was. Some sort of place of learning, I gathered. Not so different, perhaps, from Verdantis, the academy Mel had attended years ago. But beyond that? Nothing. I knew nothing of his life there. What his family had been like. Whether he missed them.

Whether there'd been someone he loved, back on the other side. Why had I never thought to ask any of it before? Maybe the shock of it all had scrambled my head at the time due to the sheer, impossible strangeness. He'd followed the tale of his old world almost straight into the business of the gods' realm, after all, and that had been a great deal to take in at once. Had he been lonely, back there? Was he lonely here?

"Do you... often feel lonely?" The question left me before I'd quite decided to ask it. His eyes widened, just a little. Then his gaze dropped to nothing in particular, and he stayed like that a long moment. Something in him seemed to sink, and I thought he must be looking back on his days in that other world. If it had been a good life, surrounded by people who loved him, then all of them were gone from him now, unreachable in a world he could never return to.

And if that life had held only pain and solitude, then perhaps he felt just as alone standing here. It had been a relatively short time, and already he'd had to shoulder so much, in a role he'd never once asked for. Through the silence, an urge kept rising in me; to take his hand, or his arm, or simply lay a palm against his back. Anything at all that might ease whatever was weighing on him. But I held myself back, for now. It wasn't my place to simply assume—"I think... I'm good now," he said.

He turned back to face forward.

"I mean—the place is a lot livelier these days, and you're all on my side." Something in my chest tightened, warm and aching at once.

"Can I... rant a little?" he said.

"Of course."

"So…back in my old world, I was kind of a pathetic person."

"Pathetic?"

"Yeah. Not that I'm all that much better now," Milo went on, "but I figure I'm at least a little bit better. I used to complain constantly. Blamed my failures on everything and everyone except myself." I listened, saying nothing, letting him find his own pace.

"My dad was a drunk and a hopeless gambler, too. I've got no idea whether he was a decent man before all that, but for as long as I knew him, he was a scumbag." His voice went flat on the last word.

"So... did your mother raise you on her own?" I asked. His face fell.

"N-no. Mom died when I was six... or so I'm told. A brain tumor, I don't know if that means anything to you." He let out a slow breath.

"They caught it too late. Back in my world, older folks are supposed to go for regular checkups, but my old man would just gamble the money away. And Mom, she was the sort who never made a fuss about anything. She just... accepted it. Accepted her fate." A pause.

"Or that's how the rest of the family told it, anyway. I wouldn't really know what happened. I was too small to remember." I didn't dare speak. I only watched the side of his face.

"But yeah, it made me bitter. Dad did less than the bare minimum. My uncles and aunts would come occasionally to give some pity money. I was envious of my peers, and I could not stand talking with them. I did poorly in school, moved away once I could get proper part-time jobs, and even then, I never really had what you'd call a social life. I didn't even have a girlfriend back there." Something in me eased, faintly, at that last part, and I was immediately, deeply ashamed of the relief.

How could I feel that, while he's telling me this?

"Mostly I just... immerse myself in stories. Made-up ones. We call those anime and manga; tales about people who don't exist." A wry, tired edge crept into his voice.

"They had it all. Good friends, warm families, partners who never left. Everything I didn't. It was an escape, I guess. Somewhere better to go." He was quiet for a beat.

"So…yeah. I was alone, back there. No friends, no real family to speak of. That's why, when I ended up here, it felt like a chance to start over. To try and get it right this time. I'm still an idiot, sure, but at least now I can do a little more than just complain about everything." I saw him pause, his gaze going distant, remembering, I thought, his first days in this world.

"W-well. Now that I think about it, I complained plenty when I got here too. Though a good chunk of that was Nyx's fault, honestly, she just slapped and kicked me around like a punching bag instead of giving me any kind of proper explanation for anything." For half a second, the urge rose to ask him about Nyx again, because, if I were being honest, I didn't think he'd ever really answered me the first time, but that would only make me selfish.

Here he was, laying his whole past open to me, and my thoughts had slipped straight back to her. This was his moment. Not mine.

"But like I said, I've got you all now. And Nyx has gotten a lot better lately, for whatever reason." Her again. Which was…fine. It was perfectly normal; he'd only mentioned their first meeting, and that she was kinder now. Which was good. It was good.

"... though, to be honest, she's been a bit out of character these past few days. Less aggressive, but sort of on and off? One moment she's her usual self, and the next she's asking these strange questions, and—" Why is he still talking about her? I wanted to hear about him. Not…not this.

"—I think I've got a faint idea why, actually, but it's really not something I should be dwelling on right now. And—shit, should I even be saying any of thi—" I didn't know exactly when it happened. Only that, all at once, my arms were around him. I'd wrapped them around him from behind, my face pressed against his back, the wind streaming past us and pulling at my hair. Beneath my cheek I could feel him go completely still; the moment my arms had closed around him, the words had simply stopped.

"W-wha—Evelisse?"

"Eve."

"... Huh?"

"Just... call me Eve."