Chapter 267
He was not afraid.
But he needed to know the parameters of the threat, as if he himself were a system diagnosing the possibility of a fatal failure.
Witnessing that calm—which was terrifying in its own way—Theo felt the need to take back control of a situation that was drifting ever deeper into metaphysics.
He drew a long breath once more, an attempt to soothe the surging waves of his own thoughts and adrenaline.
The atmosphere of the bathroom, once filled with sensual tension and then biological confusion, had now transformed into a strange space of existential consultation.
With a gentler voice, trying both to calm and to explain, he began to answer.
The answer was not simple, but it offered a sliver of hope.
Yes, this condition could be managed.
The threat of erasure from the RWIA was not an inevitability.
However, there was a single condition, a prerequisite that sounded simple but might be impossible in practice.
The key lay in the source of the problem itself.
Only the love that had triggered this paradoxical menstruation could become its antidote.
Love itself had to become the sedative for the storm it had created.
"So how strong are your feelings for me, Aldraya? At least, precisely?"
"I– I… love… love… love…"
Fhhhhh!
"A… ah… ah… I… I… lo-love…"
Fhooooh!
"I love… I love… I… I… love…"
'How many times has this been now, like a broken tape?'
Enveloped in steam that grew hotter and more blurred, that final question flew like an arrow, piercing the layer of artificial calm they had maintained.
Theo, with a voice braver than his own feelings, hurled a question straight into the core of the paradox he had just uncovered.
He questioned the magnitude, the volume, and the exact scale of Aldraya's feelings for him.
It was no longer a question about the abstract concept of love, but an emotional measurement demanding a personal and specific confession.
The air seemed to thicken as it waited for an answer, haunted by the image of the strange liquid in Theo's hand and the divine implications that had just been revealed.
Across from him, Aldraya stood—someone who had never been shaken by heat, cold, or shame—now suddenly resembling a cracked statue.
A strange and troubling change immediately overtook Aldraya.
Her upright body did not move, yet something had completely jammed within her vocal mechanism.
Her mouth opened, trying to form words, trying to release a sentence of confession that might have been stored somewhere in her immeasurable consciousness.
The sentence she wanted to say was simple, yet devastating.
A declaration of love, immense in its depth, directed at him.
But what escaped her lips was not a complete sentence, only fragments of sound—broken and repeated.
The sound stuttered and faltered, like an audio tape badly damaged at its most crucial section.
"A… ah… ah… I… I… lo-love…"
Only the first syllable managed to emerge half-clearly before becoming trapped in an endless loop of the same word, as if the word "love" itself were a labyrinth she could neither escape nor complete toward its intended object.
Theo watched with feelings tangled between tenderness and a strange ache.
The repetition continued.
Aldraya, her expression for the first time showing real muscular tension around her mouth and neck, struggled with all her strength to force the words out.
She was fighting something that was not a physical obstruction, but a blockade within herself—perhaps rooted in the structure of her existence as a RWIA entity, never designed for emotional declarations so direct and personal.
Each repetition of the word "love" sounded weaker, flatter, yet more cutting.
It was a damaged recording of a feeling too vast to be packaged into language.
Theo stopped counting after a while, because numbers no longer mattered.
What he was witnessing was not a failure to speak, but a tragic display of the feeling itself—locked in place, trying to break through the walls of its own nature and failing again and again, able only to echo its own name without ever reaching its destination.
'I didn't expect this to burden her. She really doesn't understand how to express "love," does she?'
"That's enough now. You don't need to force yourself into suffering just to understand something new."
Shooohh!
"You don't have to answer today. But someday, at any moment, you must answer it. Even slowly. Even haltingly."
A sudden and deep sense of regret seized Theo's heart, briefly driving away all the awe, confusion, and fear that had been churning within him.
Watching Aldraya struggle in vain, trapped in a loop of unspoken confession, he felt as though he were witnessing an unconscious act of torture against something pure.
The burden of proof he had demanded turned out to be too heavy, even for a consciousness that had passed through countless cycles of reincarnation.
That struggle was not something to be observed with cold detachment.
It was an unintentional assault on the honesty of a feeling that had not yet fully understood itself.
Moved by a gentle instinct, Theo decided to stop this torment, to give breathing room to the bewildered being before him.
His movements were slow and deliberate.
He raised his right hand, extending his index finger still damp with steam.
He lifted it to the level of his eyes, forming a subtle sign of cessation—a visual cue gentler than the word "stop."
Its position, aligned with his gaze, created an imaginary straight line between his intent and Aldraya's eyes, which might still have been trying to force the words out.
Through that gesture and a voice he strove to keep calm and reassuring, Theo conveyed both forgiveness and postponement.
He declared that Aldraya no longer needed to torment herself by forcing the application of a concept she had only just learned—a concept so vast and alien that it clogged her entire system of expression.
The pressure to define what might be indefinable, to measure the immeasurable right now, was officially lifted.
Yet beneath the relief offered, there remained a final demand, a deadline set firmly but without cruelty.
Theo clarified that this postponement applied only to today, to this stifling and turbulent moment.
Aldraya was allowed to retreat, to withdraw into her vast consciousness and process this storm of information and sensation.
However, at the next moment—be it tomorrow, the day after, or some point within their intertwined eternity—that answer would have to be given.
There would be no more escape.
She had to respond to the question of the magnitude of her feelings, in whatever way she could.
Even if the answer later came in stutters, broken fragments, or only the subtlest movement of the eyes, as long as it was honest and came from her depths, it would be enough.
'Calm down. Stay on her back. Don't let this hand go astray again.'
Theo's words of postponement were met not with speech, not with a nod, but with a movement that spoke far louder.
Aldraya, who had seemed like a cracked statue locked in a struggle with words, suddenly moved with a fluidity that recalled her natural composure.
Spontaneously, she turned her body, fully turning her back to Theo.
Her slender back, wrapped in a pale, wet T-shirt that now clung perfectly and revealed the faint line of her spine, became a still and meaningful sight.
The gesture was not a rejection, but a silent acceptance.
It was a way of saying that she understood, that she needed a pause, and that she entrusted herself once more to the cleansing ritual interrupted by the storm of confession and the horrifying reality of biology.
In that silent act of turning away, there was surrender—and perhaps an unspoken gratitude.
To be continued…