End stared into the oppressive quiet, his sharp annoyance bleeding away into something far stranger, far more disorienting bewilderment.
She's insane. Completely and utterly insane.
That was the only logical conclusion he could arrive at after watching her. She had spiraled through a tempest of raw anger, muttering disjointed, nonsensical phrases to the uncaring night sky one moment, only to fall into an eerie, unnerving stillness the next. It was like watching a storm rage and then vanish in the span of a single breath.
The minutes unspooled, measured only by the soft, rhythmic patter of her footsteps against the damp rooftop tiles and the low whisper of the wind as it coiled around the rain-slicked parapets. Lilian moved in restless, predatory circles, her every movement exuding the contained energy of an animal pacing in a cage too small for its spirit. Her golden hair, loose and untamed, fluttered with every shift of the breeze, a chaotic banner in the moonlight. Though her eyes were distant, lost in some internal landscape he couldn't fathom, her breathing never once faltered. It remained steady, controlled, a stark contrast to the turmoil he had just witnessed.
Finally, her restless circling slowed, her steps losing their urgent rhythm until she came to a complete stop at the roof's edge. She lifted a hand, the gesture graceful and unhurried, brushing a stray strand of wind-whipped hair behind her ear. Then, she turned toward him with a startlingly bright, almost dazzling smile.
"Ah… I feel refreshed now," she said lightly, her tone laced with the genuine, unburdened warmth of someone who had just thrown off a heavy, suffocating cloak. Her personal storm had passed, leaving behind a sky of unnerving clarity.
End blinked at her, rendered momentarily speechless by the sheer velocity of her emotional shift. How could anyone change so completely, so quickly? The woman who only moments ago looked ready to tear herself, or the world, apart now stood before him beaming like a child savoring the impossible warmth of the first day of spring after a long, bitter winter.
He didn't know how to react, how to even begin to process someone who could cycle through three entirely different states of mind in less than ten minutes. Irritation, despair, incandescent joy she wore them all like fleeting costumes, slipping in and out of them as though none truly belonged to her.
But before he could decide whether to scoff in derision or sigh in exhaustion, something in her expression shifted yet again. The playful, almost innocent brightness faded from her face, replaced by a deep and unsettling calm. She looked at him, tilting her head with a bird-like curiosity, and though a faint smile lingered on her lips, her eyes were suddenly sharp like polished shards of ice catching the cold, distant moonlight. They held an ancient, knowing quality that sent a prickle of unease down his spine.
"You…" End's voice came before his thoughts could form a leash to stop it. His jaw tightened, a muscle jumping in his cheek as suspicion, sharp and sudden, flashed across his features. "Where are you from?"
The question came out harsher than he intended, sounding more like an accusation than simple curiosity. But he didn't take it back. Her story, her erratic behavior, the whole impossible picture of her existence it didn't fit. It was a puzzle with pieces from a dozen different boxes. And the way she had let slip certain words earlier… it gnawed at him, an insistent, uncomfortable feeling in his gut.
A heavy silence stretched between them, becoming more substantial than the night air itself. Lilian didn't flinch. Her gaze remained steady, fixed on him with an unnerving intensity, as though she had been waiting for him to finally ask the right question.
"…The Red Fog," she murmured, her voice barely a whisper, yet it cut through the night with chilling clarity.
End stiffened, every muscle in his body going rigid.
"The place you crawled out from." His voice was low, heavily guarded, each word carefully weighed. "Are you from [SEI]?"
The name tasted like ash and bitterness on his tongue. It was a cursed place, a name that sane people only dared to whisper in hushed, fearful tones. [SEI] the damned country where the Red Fog had first begun its inexorable spread, a creeping crimson plague consuming everything and everyone it touched.
For a fleeting moment, something flickered across her face was it surprise, or the ghost of a painful memory? but it was gone too quickly for him to be sure.
"No." She shook her head slowly, the movement precise. Her tone was firm, unwavering, leaving no room for argument.
End narrowed his eyes, his suspicion deepening. "Then where?"
Another pause descended, longer this time. The rooftop seemed to grow unnaturally still, the wind holding its breath, the distant city hum fading into nothingness. Lilian's gaze softened, but not with warmth with a profound and desolate distance. She wasn't looking at him anymore, but past him, through him, into some haunting vista only she could see.
"I have no nationality," she said at last.
The words landed with an eerie, impossible weight, echoing in the silence.
End frowned, raw disbelief coloring his voice. "No nationality? Don't mess with me. Everyone comes from somewhere. Everyone belongs to a place."
But when his eyes met hers again, the protest caught and died in his throat. There was no lie in her gaze. No defiance, no playful deceit, no hidden jest. There was only emptiness an emptiness so vast, so hollow and terrifying, it felt like staring into a starless void.
She looked like someone who had been utterly untethered from the world, a ghost who truly belonged nowhere.
For the first time since meeting her, End felt genuinely unsettled. Not by her chaotic unpredictability or her brazen attitude, but by the raw, aching absence that lingered behind her words and haunted her eyes.
"The Red Fog…" Lilian whispered again, her voice thin and brittle, as if the memory itself might shatter her. "I went in because I was running. Trying to survive." She let out a short, broken laugh, a sound that cracked halfway through. "I didn't know if I'd come back out. I don't think I expected to."
Her eyes clouded over, turning hazy with recollection, and for a brief, unguarded moment, the crushing weight she carried bled through her carefully constructed composure.
"By the time I returned," she continued quietly, her voice barely audible above the wind, "I tried to go back to the [Low] Kingdom. But the army had already sealed the place. The walls were shut, the soldiers… they wouldn't let anyone through. It's not something I like to remember. And I don't want to."
Her tone dropped lower and lower with each word, turning heavy, bitter, and saturated with a deep, weary resentment.
"Doing the dirty work for that bitch is hard enough," she muttered suddenly, the old venom slipping back into her voice. "But… I guess I should be thankful. At least I survived. At least I'm still alive."
End's lip curled faintly. She's being shameless again.