Chapter 383
"Heeeeh… I did not expect you to still remember that 'date' with Ilux."
Theo let out a long sigh, the "Heeeeh…" escaping his lips not merely as air, but as a sound layered with meaning.
The breath lingered for several seconds, as though weighing and processing Aldraya's unexpected statement.
His relaxed, almost languid gaze remained fixed on the porcelain face before him, yet behind that calm exterior lay a sharp analytical readiness.
He was rearranging fragments of information, connecting the past with the present dynamic, and uncovering an irony deep enough to merit a response.
Then, in a voice that remained steady yet carried a questioning undertone, Theo replied.
He expressed his surprise that Aldraya, who had nearly been harassed by Ilux—his own personal student—during what was called that date, still retained and remembered the moments of conversation from that encounter.
His observation was like a scalpel cutting deeper.
It was not merely about memory, but about what one chose to remember and compare.
Theo seemed to highlight a contradiction.
A person who had been the victim of an unpleasant situation was instead holding tightly to the perpetrator's words, using them as a benchmark to measure the "annoyance" of someone else's actions.
"Ouch… let go. Your pinch hurts, Aldraya."
Hearing Theo's response, laced with subtle astonishment, Aldraya showed no change in her flat and cold expression.
That face remained fixed like an unshakable porcelain mask, a fortress refusing to be stirred by her savior's analytical inquiry.
Yet that very absence of change marked the firmness of her intent.
Without preamble and without moving a single facial muscle, her right hand moved swiftly and precisely, reaching Theo's right cheek.
The fingers that usually held weapons or wrote reports now pinched with painful precision.
This was not a playful or affectionate gesture, but a physical sanction delivered with full awareness and enough force to tighten the muscles of Theo's cheek.
A sharp and sudden pain spread, forcing a spontaneous reaction from the usually composed depraved samurai.
Startled by the direct assault, Theo immediately asked for the pinch to be released.
"No.
Now your left cheek will also take its turn."
Aldraya ignored Theo's request.
As if considering the plea an invitation to intensify the punishment, her left hand, which had been still, moved with equal speed.
Her fingers landed on his left cheek, pinching with matching strength, perhaps even slightly harder.
Now both of Theo's cheeks were caught in a symmetrical and painful grip, his face frozen in a distorted expression of surprise beneath two sharp points of pressure.
The pain doubled, not only physically but symbolically.
It was a sealing gesture, a declaration that further protest or inquiry would not be tolerated.
'An accident that bore sweet fruit.'
Realizing that resistance or self-defense would only fuel Aldraya's irritation further, Theo chose a different path.
He endured the sting of the pinches still embedded in both cheeks, accepting them as a consequence to be borne.
Yet his passivity was not total defeat.
With a slow and deliberate motion, his large gloved hand moved forward, not to forcefully pry Aldraya's grip away, but to cover the back of the hand that was still pinching him.
At first, his touch was a physical petition, a gentle request to stop conveyed through softness.
Then, with subtle yet certain pressure, Theo began to guide the movement.
He did not pull her hand away from his cheek.
Instead, he guided it, along with his own covering hand, to rise gradually.
Their arms lifted together into an unusual pose, their interlocked hands raised beside their heads, forming an arch between two faces now confronting one another at close range.
Their position appeared intimate yet tense.
Theo's and Aldraya's faces hovered only a narrow space apart, filled with shadow and warm breath.
Theo, who had perhaps intended to say something, fell silent at once.
Every word poised on his tongue dissolved as his eyes fixed entirely upon Aldraya's face from such proximity.
Up close, the porcelain mask seemed more intricate.
He could see the fine white eyelashes, the nearly invisible pores, and perhaps a faint glimmer of something living and profound behind eyes that usually resembled glass.
"I am very glad I could disguise myself within that foreign family… with you."
The silence hanging between them was not empty, but dense with all that remained unspoken.
For a full minute, no words crossed the space, no movement disturbed the pose of raised and interlocked hands.
Only locked gazes, the constant hiss of the train wheels, and the subtle pulse that might have traveled through their still-connected wrists.
Time seemed to crawl, crystallizing the moment into a living statue where anger, protest, and acceptance froze within stillness.
Then, after that minute passed, Aldraya broke the quiet.
Her voice emerged in the same flat tone, flat as the surface of a frozen lake on a windless morning.
There was no inflection of joy or sorrow, no crease on her brow nor smile on her lips.
Yet her words carried depth and the unexpected.
She stated plainly that she was very glad to have infiltrated that foreign family, the Bathee family, together with Theo.
"With you, I experienced a moment I will never forget."
After her statement about happiness lingered in the air, Aldraya continued with another brief sentence.
Her voice remained level, yet each syllable carried density.
She declared, shortly and without embellishment, that Theo had given her a moment she would never forget for as long as she existed.
The sentence was spoken not as melodramatic oath, but as a cold and absolute fact, like gravity itself.
For Aldraya, whose life may have spanned ages and unimaginable experiences as a Highest Angel, a "moment" deemed unforgettable must have been something extraordinary indeed.
Then, without warning or shift in expression, Aldraya acted.
Her head moved closer, and her thin, pale lips pressed firmly against Theo's left cheek, precisely where she had pinched him earlier.
It was not a fleeting kiss nor a formal gesture, but a deliberate and sustained contact.
She held it there, in silent connection between their skins.
The warmth of her breath brushed Theo's cheek, a sensation contrasting the usual chill she emitted.
Within that closeness, something more intimate and unexpected occurred.
Every twelve seconds, with a rhythm as steady as a ticking clock, the warm and moist tip of Aldraya's tongue touched Theo's cheek in a brief and subtle lick.
It was a strange rite, a cleansing—or perhaps a claim—expressed in the most primitive language of the body.
To be continued…