Hello everyone, a new work has been released! If you find it appealing, kindly take a moment to check it out and consider adding it to your library.. [Ashes of God And Devil]
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{Chapter: 166 - Figuring Out With Pop Girl (2)}
Her question hung in the room like smoke.
Aiden froze, unsure if he had even heard her right.
It had taken him everything just to speak those words — to turn away, to give her an exit, to not be the man he had once been. And yet she answered before he could even exhale.
"Why?" he asked, voice low, uncertain, almost afraid of the answer.
Pop Girl tilted her head slightly, her silver-blonde hair sliding off one shoulder. The light in the room was dim, but he could still see her eyes — like frost in moonlight. Beautiful. Cold. Tired.
"Why can I accept it so calmly?" she murmured, echoing his question.
She smiled, but it wasn't real. It was a ghost of a smile, sharp at the corners like broken glass.
"Maybe…" She paused, eyes moving to a place beyond him, into a memory he could not reach. "Maybe it's because you're a real man. Or the only man left to me. Maybe it's because that night felt… too good to ignore. Maybe it's Stockholm syndrome. Or maybe I'm just still a woman, Aiden."
Aiden's mouth opened slightly, but he didn't speak. What was there to say?
He closed his eyes, recalling her voice. "Maybe it's just Stockholm syndrome. Or maybe I'm still a woman, aren't I?"
She had delivered those words with a steadiness that didn't belong to someone her age. But he knew—he felt—that they were a veil. She hadn't said she forgave him. She hadn't even said she wanted to stay. She had just… not run.
Pop girl folded her arms under her chest, more to contain herself than anything else. "You think I don't know what you did to me?" she whispered, her voice brittle. "You think I forgot the way it started? The way my wrists were pinned, how I stopped fighting after the first hour?"
"I remember everything," she added before he could speak. "I remember the pressure. The shaking. The way my body betrayed me even when my mind was screaming."
The words stabbed deeper than any blade. Aiden dropped his gaze.
"But what you don't understand," she continued, her voice gaining a quiet power, "is that I've seen worse. I see worse. Every time I close my eyes. You know what happens when your future sight shows you your own past trauma after it occurs? I saw you touch me. I saw how I'd lie there, quiet, afterward. I even saw the part where I stop hating you and start wondering what's left of me."
That finally broke him.
Aiden staggered slightly where he stood, as if her words had weight. He wanted to sit, but he didn't deserve to.
"You didn't speak," Pop Girl whispered. "You just left. After all of that, you disappeared like a coward, leaving a letter like I was some… contract you signed and walked away from."
He stepped forward, slowly.
"Pop…"
"Don't say my name."
Silence again.
"I didn't enjoy it," she said suddenly. Her voice cracked—not loud, but honest, vulnerable in a way few had ever seen her. "At first I was scared. Then I was confused. Then I just… I stopped feeling anything."
She looked away, her jaw trembling. "Until after the first hour."
Aiden looked down. His hands clenched. "I'm sorry," he said again. "I didn't want to be that man. I wasn't even myself that night."
"Then who were you?"
He raised his eyes to hers. "Someone who lost his mind. Someone too lost to see he was destroying the only good thing in front of him."
Tears finally welled up in Pop's eyes. She wiped them quickly, frustrated at her own reaction. "I hated you," she whispered. "I wanted to see you suffer."
"You still can."
Pop Girl shook her head. "That's not what I want anymore. I don't even know what I want. Maybe time. Maybe distance. Maybe to understand why you still look at me like I matter."
"Because you do," he said instantly. "Because I never stopped thinking about you. Because when I see you, I don't see a victim—I see someone I want to protect… but failed."
She rubbed at her arm, as if brushing off some invisible residue. Then looked up at him, voice calm again.
"But you came back, didn't you? Not just to say sorry — you didn't even bring that up first. You came to see if I could still be what you wanted me to be. You gave me that soft option—'rest, we'll talk tomorrow.' Like any of this is normal."
"I…" Aiden finally spoke, quietly. "I didn't know what you needed."
"You knew," she replied, eyes narrowing. "You just didn't want to hear it."
That made him sit.
The chair across from her creaked under his weight. And for a moment, they sat there, facing each other. No words. No breathing loud enough to disturb the stillness. Just the distance of a table, and an abyss of guilt.
Ten full minutes passed.
Ten minutes in which Pop Girl never once looked away.
Ten minutes in which Aiden finally began to understand what he had done — not just to her body, but to her soul. How he had taken a girl who had already known what it meant to be hunted, hated, used — and confirmed her worst fears about people.
Even if what came later had been beautiful. Even if she responded. Even if she clung to him afterward.
The start could never be undone.
And he had run from that truth.
"I saw it," Pop Girl said suddenly, her voice breaking the stillness. "Even before you left. I saw you walking away. Saw the way you didn't cry, didn't shake, didn't even look back. I saw your back in the corridor. I felt the moment you decided to be a coward."
"I wasn't running—"
"Then why didn't you say anything before you left?"
Aiden looked down. "Because if I did, I wouldn't have left."
Pop Girl nodded once. "Then we'd both be prisoners."
His jaw tightened. "I thought… maybe I was saving you."
Her laugh was short, sharp, painful. "You can't save someone by disappearing, Aiden. You save someone by staying and facing them. By letting them spit on you, scream at you, rip your skin off word by word until their pain is out in the open."
She leaned back slightly, her eyes gleaming with the first signs of tears. She blinked them back.
"But you just left. Like it didn't matter."
He shook his head. "It mattered. You mattered."
"Then why didn't I get to decide what happened between us?"
"I thought if I controlled something, I could make sense of my world. I didn't think about yours."
Pop Girl looked at him.
And for the first time in the entire conversation — she cried.
Just a few tears. Quiet, slow. They didn't fall like rain; they hung on her lashes, stubborn and shimmering. Her voice was steady, but her heart bled through her silence.
"I can't change the past," he said, breaking the silence gently. "But I can stay now."
"You say that like it's a favor."
"No," he answered. "It's just who I am."
Another long pause.
Aiden rose to his feet again.
"I'll leave now," he said. "Tomorrow, you'll have full access to any room you want. You don't need to stay confined anymore. I'll… I'll make sure you're given the choice you should've had from the beginning."
He didn't reach for her. Didn't try to comfort her. That right had been stripped from him long ago.
He turned, walking toward the door.
Her voice stopped him.
"…Aiden."
He froze, spine stiff.
He turned around slowly. "Yes?"
There was something softer in her now. Something so delicate it might disappear if he breathed too loud.
"My name," she said quietly. "It's Mei. You can stop calling me 'Pop Girl.'"
He blinked, confused for a moment. Then nodded slowly.
Mei smiled.
It was the first real smile since it all began — not forgiveness, not invitation, but maybe… acknowledgment. A beginning.
He looked at her for a long time. Then nodded.
"Goodnight, Mei."
She didn't reply.
But after he left, alone in the stillness of her room, Mei let the first tear fall. And for the first time in a long while, it wasn't from fear. It was something far more confusing—and far more dangerous.
Hope.
---
The night was long.
As Aiden didn't sleep much.
When Aiden finally left her room, carrying the fragile weight of her name—Mei—like it had been carved into his chest, he didn't sleep. Not really. He sat on the edge of his bed, silent, cold, and still. Memories from before, during, after—all of them looped like a curse. Mei's voice echoed again and again in his head.
You didn't even look back.
He should've said more. Done more. But he had felt like a parasite in her presence. To speak would've been to make it about him again. So he had swallowed his words, nodded, and left.
Dawn broke slowly, the faint light stretching through the curtains like soft hands. It wasn't kind. It exposed everything.
By morning, Aiden forced himself to move. He found Kira first.
"She's awake," he said. "Free her."
Kira looked up from the lab notes with a brow raised. She could read him too well. "You sure?"
"I should've done it last night."
Kira gave him a long, unreadable look, then nodded once. "Alright."
---
Mei didn't say anything when the cuffs were unlocked. She stood slowly, like a deer unsure whether the danger was over. She didn't even glance at Kira—just rubbed her wrist with one hand and walked out of the room without a word.
Kira turned to Aiden, arms crossed. "You're making this harder on yourself than it has to be."
"I know."
"You're lucky she didn't burn this whole place down."
"I wouldn't have stopped her."
That silenced Kira. She looked away.
---
They didn't speak at first. Aiden simply walked beside her, maintaining a constant three-foot distance like it was sacred. Close enough that she wouldn't feel abandoned. Far enough that he wouldn't trigger anything. Mei didn't look at him once.
Still, she didn't leave either.
They strolled through the base. A few operatives passed by, giving nods or small smiles, but quickly backed off when they saw the air between them. The silence wasn't violent—it was just heavy. Like something lingering in a hospital room after the machines go quiet.
Aiden cleared his throat once. Then again. Finally, "...You hungry?"
"No," Mei said flatly.
*****
Hello everyone, a new work has been released! If you find it appealing, kindly take a moment to check it out and consider adding it to your library.. [Ashes of God And Devil]