SSS Talent: From Tra Chapter 539: An Awkward Clarification

Chapter 539: Chapter 539: An Awkward Clarification

Trafalgar continued without moving from where he stood.

"Could you stop pointing that bow at ? I don’t enjoy it nearly as much as you seem to."

Cynthia drew in a deep breath, held it, and let it go through her nose. The mana around her hand thinned. A mont later, the bow dissolved into particles of light and disappeared.

Trafalgar lowered his shoulders a fraction.

"Thanks. So, I thought this was Bartholow’s room. At least that’s what I was told."

Cynthia kept one hand on the towel, as if refusing to trust the world for even a second longer. "It is. This is my brother’s room."

Trafalgar glanced around once, partly to make the point, partly because he preferred looking anywhere but directly at the disaster the last minute had beco. "Good. That confirms I haven’t lost the ability to follow numbers."

Cynthia narrowed her eyes at him, color still lingering across her face. "Would you like to explain why you’re inside my brother’s room?"

"I could ask what you’re doing in your brother’s room first."

That earned him a sharper expression.

"What do you want from Bartholow?"

"I need to ask him sothing." Trafalgar inclined his head toward the door. "So I was going to wait here." His eyes moved to the still slightly open entrance. "Though you should be more careful. The room was left open."

Cynthia snapped back at once. "Barth left it open, not . I forgot my clothes in my own room, so he went to get them. The shower in my room isn’t working. I assu he left in a hurry and didn’t notice."

That did sound painfully plausible.

Bartholow forgetting the door while trying not to keep his sister waiting fit him so well that Trafalgar almost felt bad for suspecting the room had simply been surrendered to fate.

Almost.

Before he could say anything else, the main door opened again.

"Si-sister, I’m back with your clothes—"

Bartholow stepped inside carrying a folded set of clothes in both hands.

His voice died instantly.

He had not expected to see Trafalgar standing off to one side, nor Cynthia in front of him wrapped only in a towel, cheeks flushed and damp hair falling over her shoulders after the bath. His entire body locked so abruptly that it looked as though soone had replaced his skeleton with wood.

"Ex-excuse

for interrupting," he said.

Trafalgar raised a hand at once.

"Stop right there, Barth. Give her the clothes. This is a complete misunderstanding, so don’t let your imagination start doing laps. I ca because I wanted to see you. I’ve got sothing to show you."

That was too much information and not enough information, but it was better than letting Bartholow invent his own version, which would almost certainly be worse.

Cynthia crossed the space between them, snatched the clothes from her brother’s hands, and disappeared into the bathroom without another word, though the look she sent Trafalgar on the way there suggested she had not forgiven him for continuing to exist.

The door closed.

Bartholow remained where he was, staring at Trafalgar with the hollow shock of a man who had returned to his room and found his life under renovation.

Trafalgar spared him the trouble of asking.

"You left the door open when you went to get your sister’s clothes. I ca in because I thought you were out and decided I’d teach you a lesson for being careless. None of what happened after that was intentional." He gave him a flat look. "I need your help with sothing."

That last part, at least, reached him.

Bartholow swallowed and blinked twice. "Wh-what do you need, Trafalgar?"

Trafalgar opened the case quickly, took out one of the pages, and held it toward him.

"Do these letters look familiar?"

Bartholow leaned in.

The change in him was imdiate.

The embarrassnt, the timid awkwardness, the remnants of panic from the room he had just walked into—all of it receded under a brighter instinct. His eyes sharpened. His whole face woke up in a way Trafalgar had seen before, usually when old texts, obscure records, or half-rotten histories were involved.

Trafalgar almost smiled.

"You rember the two notebooks I gave you," he said. "This is similar. I need help working through it."

Bartholow took the sheet carefully, as if it were sothing sacred and brittle. "Y-yes," he said at once. "Yes, I rember. This really does look close to that." His voice gained strength without asking his permission. "The structure, the characters, the way the lines break... yes, yes, I can help with this."

"Careful," Trafalgar said. "I don’t want it damaged."

Bartholow nodded so quickly it looked dangerous. "I won’t damage it, I swear."

Trafalgar watched the excitent taking over him and finally let a small smile show. "So? What do you say?"

Bartholow lifted his head with the kind of expression other people reserved for being offered wealth or divine revelation.

"Yes. Of course. Let’s go to your room and start right away."

That enthusiasm was almost absurd.

It also made things easier.

"Good," Trafalgar said. "We can go now."

The bathroom door opened again.

Cynthia stepped back out, dressed this ti in casual clothes, hair still damp from the bath. The white cloth was gone, the color in her face had mostly faded, and the room instantly beca more survivable.

She glanced between them. "What were you talking about?"

Trafalgar answered before Bartholow could.

"n’s business. Right, Barth?"

Bartholow understood much less than Trafalgar was giving him credit for, but fear and instinct carried him through. He nodded quickly. "R-right."

Cynthia looked unconvinced. She also looked too tired to start a second battle.

"Well, I’m leaving," she said. "I ca to do what I needed." She turned to Bartholow first. "See you later, Barth." Her gaze shifted to Trafalgar and narrowed. "And you. Forget what you saw."

Trafalgar inclined his head once in agreent.

Bartholow, unfortunately, chose that mont to speak.

"Wh-what did you see?"

Cynthia went red all over again.

"N-nothing," she snapped.

This ti she was the one stamring.

Trafalgar watched her for a brief instant with sothing dangerously close to amusent.

’She’s completely different like this.’

Usually Cynthia carried herself like a drawn blade, all directness and edge, with enough confidence to make people step aside without realizing they were doing it. Watching that sa girl struggle through her own embarrassnt was disorienting in a way he had not expected.

He decided, out of rcy and self-preservation, not to say any of that out loud.

Instead he turned to Bartholow.

"Well, are we going?"

Bartholow nodded at once.

Trafalgar picked up the case and stepped out into the corridor while Bartholow lingered a second longer to say goodbye to his sister. By the ti he joined him outside, Trafalgar was already standing by the wall waiting.

He gave Bartholow a long look.

"Close the door."

Bartholow blinked, turned, and found the entrance still open.

"T-true," he muttered. "I got too excited and forgot."

"Yeah, I can see that."

Bartholow shut the door properly this ti, checked it again with his hand as if trying to recover a little dignity, and finally turned back.

Together, they started toward Trafalgar’s room.