Chapter 114: Stubborn Little Rabbit
"What’s the ssage?"
Raphael stretched as he settled onto the couch. He’d handed Elena the radio the previous evening and asked her to monitor it, let him know if anything ca through.
Sothing had.
She tuned the frequency, and a familiar voice gradually resolved out of the static.
"2027, July 10th. An invitation to all previous participants to convene once more. This ssage is courtesy of the esteed Ms. Erythra Epsloh."
Raphael’s brow tightened slightly.
"Today is the eighth. Two days from now. Invitation restricted to previous participants, no address given, which is interesting. Anyone who wasn’t actually there won’t know where to go."
He turned it over.
"These broadcasts always include the full year, which suggests these markets normally run every few months. An interval this short ans sothing specific happened. This wasn’t scheduled."
Considering who had sent the ssage, he was fairly certain it wasn’t routine comrce. Sothing had co up and the gathering was the cover for addressing it.
He shook his head. His current objective was close to completion, no reason to complicate things.
He turned and found Elena looking at him. Her ears were faintly pink.
"What? Sothing on my face?"
She didn’t answer. Raphael stood and shrugged on his jacket, then pulled the stack of bills from Sam’s cloth bag and counted it. A little over eight hundred Colin.
He handed it to her.
"First paynt. Eight hundred. Total debt is fifteen hundred, call it sixteen with interest. I still owe you eight hundred, I’ll have it in a few days."
Elena took the money, noticed the dried bloodstains at the edge of the bills, wrinkled her nose slightly, and pocketed it anyway.
"Aren’t you going to rest a little more?"
She’d noticed he was heading out.
"I’ll be fine. I can’t sleep anymore and I’m not hungry. Just sowhere quick to check on, won’t be long."
Elena rested her chin in one hand and watched him check the revolver’s cylinder, slotting in fresh rounds one by one.
"Is life always like this for transcendents? You ca back this morning covered in dried blood, completely exhausted, slept for a few hours, and now you’re ready to head back out like nothing happened."
She paused.
"I an, you’re allowed to rest. Give yourself so ti. Go sowhere, wander around, enjoy sothing for no reason."
Raphael listened and tried to produce an image of himself grinning on a roller coaster. He couldn’t.
Tried to picture leisurely shopping, talking with friends over nothing in particular. That one didn’t form either.
That kind of life was simply too far away. It had always been too far away.
"No. That doesn’t suit ."
He knew the hunting ground, the weight of iron and blood, the sharpening that ca from surviving one thing after another, those were his native territory.
The amusent park was not. And as for where all of it was leading, what the point of getting stronger actually was, that had always been blank.
He’d been pushed forward by circumstances for so long that purpose had stopped being a question he knew how to answer.
The thought made him drift slightly. He reached for the door handle.
Elena stood.
She slipped herself between his arm and the door, into the narrow space in front of it, and stopped there, facing him, blocking the exit.
"...What are you doing?"
He looked down at her. The space was small enough that she was right there, her shampoo faint in the air between them.
This was clearly an impulse. The color in her cheeks confird how unsettled she was underneath the performance. But she looked up at him anyway, directly, and held it.
"I’m leaving on the seventeenth. My mother called yesterday, she’s expecting
back. I don’t have much ti left here."
Sothing stubborn in her eyes. Almost defiant. His blue eyes and the scar across his brow made for an imposing angle from this close, and she didn’t flinch from it.
"So?"
Raphael turned the door handle. Her hand ca down on his and held it still, her pale fingers wrapped over his, refusing the motion.
"I haven’t properly thanked you for saving my life yet. I can’t just leave without doing that, and I can’t watch soone I owe that much deteriorate without saying sothing."
She kept her voice steady.
"I can see it. You’re living under low pressure all the ti, compressed, closed off, never letting anything through.
Everyone has feelings, no matter how much you push them away. And whatever you’re carrying, if it keeps accumulating, it will crush you eventually."
Raphael looked at her without expression and gestured for her to continue.
"So..." Elena drew the word out.
"I want to borrow one day from you. After everything you’re dealing with is handled. I want to take you through one ordinary day, the way a normal person would, go sowhere, try sothing, actually experience it."
She t his eyes without looking away.
"After you’ve genuinely tried it, if you still want to tell
it isn’t for you, then fine, I won’t say another word.
But you can’t refuse before you’ve even attempted it, like you’re facing sothing terrible."
Her gaze moved across his face, those amber-brown eyes clear and certain.
"Trust
on this. Learning to rest between things is more important than almost anything else.
Don’t let the weight bend your spine. Don’t let the clouds you’re carrying block out every bit of sunlight that’s still trying to reach you."
A pause.
"You have the right to choose the rhythm of your own life. You have the right to stand in the light, not always in the shadow."
Raphael looked at her for a long mont.
And then, absurdly, he felt sothing almost like amusent.
This small rabbit, not very tall, considerably stubborn, prepared to hold this position until he agreed or the door fell off its hinges, remarkably articulate about it.
He stepped forward, just once, deliberately. Elena’s instinct took her backward, and the door was right there. Nowhere left.
She raised one small hand and pressed it flat against his chest, chin up, stubbornly maintaining the last few centiters of space between them.
The force she was exerting was approximately equivalent to nothing.
He looked into her eyes without covering the examination.
She held it for a mont, then looked away, turning her face sideways, unable to sustain the eye contact, the red at the tips of her ears communicating clearly that her inner state was much less composed than her words had been.
"Interesting. That didn’t sound like you. Where did you lift it from?"
Elena made a sound like a small hiccup of indignation, shifting with the discomfort of soone who has been caught, and laughed awkwardly.
"A... a comic."
Raphael had already suspected as much. He leaned his head slightly closer, close enough that the warmth of his breath could just reach her ear.
"Which one?"
Elena shivered. Made a sound of protest. Pushed at his chest with a degree of force that produced no result whatsoever.
"Don’t get that close, it tickles, ugh, stop it—!"
No movent from him.
"Fine! Fine, I’ll tell you!"
She exhaled in defeat.
"One of those kinds of comics! The kind where the main character isn’t wearing anything!
Are you satisfied? Do you want
to tell you the title too, so you can go read it yourself and form an opinion?
My dignity is completely destroyed, I hope you’re happy, I hope you’re having a wonderful ti making fun of —"
She made a fist and hit his chest with it several tis, producing zero asurable effect, her cheeks puffed out in theatrical outrage.
Raphael looked at those amber eyes, not sharp at all right now, swimming slightly, unfocused at the edges, and saw through the performance completely.
He didn’t say so. He stepped back instead, the picture of soone graciously conceding a point.
"Yes, yes, my fault entirely, I apologize. Esteed and beautiful Ms. Elena Silva, I accept your invitation. I’ll give you one day. Just not today."
He reached past her for the door handle.
"Now, if you’d move?"
Elena blinked. The realization that she’d had leverage this entire ti seed to arrive sowhat late.
She stepped aside quickly and dove onto the nearest section of sofa, pressing her face into a pillow.
Raphael made a quiet sound that was almost a laugh. He opened the door and walked through it.
The door clicked shut.
Elena slowly lowered the pillow.
Her face was the color of an apple.
"What was I doing just now..."
She couldn’t explain it. Whenever she was near him, she stopped behaving like herself. Once or twice would be one thing, but every ti.
She’d had plans to recover her composure. Present a more serious impression. Undo so of the damage.
This had not been that.
"Elena. Elena. what are you doing..."
She drove her forehead into the pillow.
---
Downstairs, Raphael pulled out the note from the deepest corner of his jacket pocket, the one the vampire had passed through the attendant at the last eting, the instructions for where to bring the badge once he had it.
He unfolded it.
West side of Zexi City. Nightless Street. The Hiyori Nightclub. Underground mber’s suite 04.
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