My head almost exploded, taking the anxiety and anger with it and leaving something else in their place.
"Hey... come on. Just... calm down!"
She drew a sharp breath.
Her cheeks were faintly flushed, chest rising and falling a little faster than usual. I hadn't expected to see Raska like this—exposed, volatile, her carefully maintained armor of indifference cracked.
She'd fired the whole thing at me like a damn dragon's breath.
I stared at her, still trying to catch up with the pace of her accusations. She wasn't asking questions anymore. She was cornering me.
"That thing that attacked us on Floor Fourteen."
"...The thing? What do you mean by that?"
Her jaw worked once, like she was deciding how much of this to hand over. Then it clenched. Her teeth ground together with a faint tick-tick before her eyes snapped back to mine, sharp and unwavering.
"When it caught me by the throat, I grabbed its wrist on instinct. I wasn't even looking for a heartbeat. But there was no pulse. What I felt was an intense flow of magic... just like a monster."
No pulse. Just a core of magic, and the brief flash of glowing green eyes I remembered behind that mask.
Revis. Or maybe Olivas.
I couldn't be certain which, but the pieces locked together. It was only a hunch. Not anymore.
It's true, then. It's one of them.
I swallowed the names, burying the recognition before it could reach my tongue.
She held my gaze. The silence in the room was absolute, save for the rain.
"It called you interesting. Didn't it?" she pressed. "So where are you gonna hide? If it remembers you, that thing might come after you again. Where are you even supposed to hide from something like that?"
Her gaze lowered to her fist. It was clenched so tightly, a faint tremor running through it.
"So... please. Let me help you."
"..."
Then her voice softened again. "What are you hiding?" It was almost a whisper, more to herself than to me.
I couldn't tell whether she'd stopped pressing... or whether something else had slipped through instead.
I held her gaze, pulse louder in my ears than it had any right to be. There were a dozen ways to answer that. All of them opened doors I wasn't ready for her to walk through.
Her voice was sharp at first, but there was something underneath it now. Not just suspicion. Concern. That made it harder to lie. It also made me want to test how deep it went.
So instead, I asked the only thing that mattered.
"Why do you care?"
Something wavered behind her amber eyes.
Her lips pressed into a thin line. Even her ears and tail had gone rigid, as though the rest of her body had forgotten how to move.
She froze still.
For the first time, her confidence seemed to hesitate at the edge of something softer. Her gaze slipped away for a moment before returning to mine. But the certainty behind it faltered.
Her mouth opened, then closed again. Whatever answer she had caught in her throat.
Then, she finally spoke.
"I like you. I think..." She shrugged it off like it was nothing—or at least tried to. But she hid the embarrassment so poorly that her eyes refused to meet mine, her cheeks flushed just enough that it could've been mistaken for love... if I didn't know who she was.
"That's why I want to help you."
"Oh." I blinked. "Then you like me? Like... as a romantic partner?"
"Hah? Is that sarcasm I'm looking at?" She blinked, her breath hitching into a soft laugh.
She seemed to relish the quiet, taking a slow moment to pull herself together while a smirk continued to play at the corner of her lips. "So, you didn't fall for that?"
"Please. Spare me. Not so funny."
"What? Did I give your hopes a little nudge?"
"As if." I shot back, though I couldn't entirely deny how neatly she turned my own words against me.
She finally got herself under control, though the smile refused to leave her face.
"Nope. Liking someone and loving someone are two completely different things." She tried for a straight face, but that smug smile kept creeping back, quirking her mouth ever so slightly.
"Oh." I nodded thoughtfully. "I never knew."
"That's why you're still single."
"I'm single?" I frowned. "Who told you that? Just so you know, I do have a girlfriend."
"In your dreams?" She laughed. "Please. We both know you don't. And I know the way you were gawking at that girl." Then she leaned back with a smug grin.
"...Elara."
"..."
My lungs locked for a split second, and she pounced on the silence like a trap snapping shut.
"Bingo! That's a bullseye."
Heat rushed to my face. "Krrr! How—" I pointed a finger at her. "Stop messing with me!"
Raska laughed openly this time, shoulders shaking.
"Come on. That girl's way out of your league. If you want her to even look your way, at least become someone decent." Her eyes swept over me from head to toe. "Not... whatever this is."
I couldn't even argue.
She'd thrown the truth straight into my face and watched it explode.
...Damn.
She tilted her head, a mischievous smile tugging at her lips. "If you're that desperate, you can always hook up with me."
"In your dreams." I shot back without missing a beat. "Right back at you."
We both laughed, harder than either of us expected.
When the laughter faded, the room felt smaller than before. The air between us had changed again. This time, neither of us tried to hide it.
Raska cleared her throat, the corners of her lips settling back into their usual calm.
"Won't you at least tell me what I'm getting myself into?"
I looked at her. Directly into her eyes. "People hide things. Not only me. Everyone. Sometimes... knowing them only drags others into the same burdens they carry."
"What are you saying?" She held my gaze, unblinking.
"You could've ended the fight long before it turned into that mess."
I never looked away.
"You didn't."
Silence.
"Even after it pierced your shoulder."
"Even when you almost died."
"You still chose to hide it."
Her whole body locked up. Like she'd been struck by lightning.
"..."
"So tell me, Raska." I held there, letting the question settle before I let it fall. "What kind of secret is worth throwing your life away for?"
The silence stretched.
She didn't move. Neither did I.
Ever since she'd snapped that limb bare-handed—something the rest of us had spent nearly an hour just trying to scratch—something about it had sat wrong in my chest, a splinter I couldn't name. I still didn't know what it was.
But I knew this: I'd just pressed on the exact same place she'd been digging into me.
"I didn't need answers." My voice came out quieter than I meant it to. "I wanted you to understand me."
For a moment, she didn't react at all. Then something in her shoulders gave—not all at once, but like a held breath finally losing its grip. Her tail, rigid a second ago, dropped low and still.
She drew in a slow breath. Let it go.
Her tail, still low, gave one slow sweep against the floor—like she was steadying herself before stepping off a ledge.
"If I'd let that instinct take over..." Her eyes dropped to the floor, to some fixed point that wasn't really there. "...the fight would've ended."
A pause. Long enough that I almost asked. I didn't.
"...Including the people I care about."
She said it so quiet, the rain swallowed half the words.
But... I didn't need all of them to know what she meant.
The words landed somewhere behind my ribs before my mind caught up to them.
I didn't move. Didn't press. Whatever she'd just handed me, it clearly hadn't come easy—and some part of me understood that pushing now would only make her take it back.
We didn't speak for a while, letting what had happened here wash away with time. Time really is the best healer. Or perhaps... a grave digger.
"...Hey."
"..."
"What?"
"Can I..." She paused for a heartbeat, her gaze dropping to the floor before she shook her head. "Can I ask one last thing?"
"..."
"Tell me."
She hesitated, her fingers tracing the edge of the table. "I can trust you. Right?"
I held her gaze, steadying my own pulse. "Yes. You can."
She let out a breath she seemed to have been holding for the entire conversation.
"Is that all?" I asked, testing the sudden change in pressure.
"Yep. That's all."
She stood up, the tension in her shoulders finally uncoiling.
"Is that all you wanted to ask? Nothing else?"
Raska shrugged, her expression shifting from hunter to something... lighter. "I'll leave it at that for today. I'll catch up with you when the time comes."
I let out a breath of relief, forcing a grin. "Oh. Great."
A faint, dangerous smirk tugged at the corner of her lips. "I'm feeling rather generous today."
I pressed a hand to my chest and dipped into an exaggerated, mocking bow. "My deepest thanks, Your Majesty."
The room, once charged with the heavy static of a battlefield, now held a strange, fragile stillness. The rain continued its rhythmic tapping, but the intensity had shifted; it was no longer a storm I was bracing against, but a background hum to the quiet understanding that had just settled between us.
Raska turned toward the door, her movements fluid and devoid of the predatory tension that had defined her entrance, her tail swaying with a lazy, rhythmic confidence that sat at odds with the serious weight of the things we had just touched upon.
"Don't get used to it," she tossed over her shoulder, that signature smirk returning to soften the sharp lines of her face. "I'm not exactly known for my patience, and I'm definitely not known for being a saint."
"Wouldn't dream of it," I replied, leaning back against the pillows. My body finally felt like it belonged to me again, though the lingering ache in my muscles reminded me exactly how close to the edge I'd been.
She reached the door, her hand hovering over the latch before she paused. She didn't turn around, but her posture stilled, the playfulness in her voice momentarily eclipsed by a flicker of something more grounded—a genuine, quiet resolve.
"Whatever that thing in the depot was, and whatever you're carrying around in that head of yours... just try to stay alive," she said, her voice dropping into that measured, soft tone that she only used when she was being painfully sincere.
For once, I didn't have a retort.
She turned back toward the door and reached for the latch. My eyes followed her movement, only to catch on the table beside her.
The jagged tip of the scythe blade lay where she'd left it, the dark stone beside it still pulsing faintly.
My stomach twisted at the sight.
"Wait," I called out, my voice raspy as I gestured toward the table. "Why are you just leaving them here?"
I couldn't even look at them without feeling like they were burning hot.
Raska stopped, her hand hovering over the door latch. "I'm not stealing what you bleed to get."
"I don't need them. So you can have them."
She shot me an incredulous look over her shoulder. "Like hell I will. You killed it, you keep it. That's the unspoken rule we adventurers follow."
"Please. Just take them with you."
It wasn't an insistence; it was pure desperation. Every time my eyes flicked toward the table, the metallic phantom stench of the depot hit the back of my throat, tangled with the wet, clicking horror of the nightmare that had just clawed its way out of my skull. I just wanted them out of my sight.
"What am I supposed to do with it?" she asked, her voice sharp with practical annoyance.
"Sell it," I snapped, panic bleeding through my voice. "To the Guild or whatever. Please, just take them."
"If I try to sell them at the Guild, they'd start asking questions. Where I got them, what I killed, how I killed it... I can't exactly explain any of that." Raska fired back, her amber eyes narrowing as she glared at me. "And I don't want to answer those questions."
"Then what am I supposed to do with it? I've never even been—"
I choked on the words, snapping my jaws shut mid-sentence.
Damn it.
The moment I admitted I'd never been to the Guild, she'd ask why. Then the whole drama would start all over again.
And I definitely couldn't explain what was happening to me—something I didn't even understand myself.
Raska rubbed her temple, eyes pinched shut as though fighting off the headache I'd just handed her. She stayed that way for a second before looking back at me.
"Sure you want to keep your secrets from me?" Her voice dropped, flat and laced with heavy exhaustion. "Your lies and actions are telling two completely different stories, like you're caught up in something big."
I couldn't answer her. Instead I went dead silent, my eyes scanning the room, wandering blankly across the floorboards as my mind frantically searched for another angle to force her to take the damn things.
My gaze snapped back to her.
"Hold on," I said, my voice dropping as I changed tactics. "What about the Infant Dragon's magic stone?"
Raska frowned, her fingers resting against the doorframe. "I got it from Lili. But it was already damaged. I don't think it's useful anymore."
"What is it even for?" I pressed.
She drifted into thought for a second, her gaze shifting away. "...Don't know. Probably for using it as a synthesis core material..."
She trailed off.
I pointed a finger at the dense violet core resting on the table, stripping the problem down to pure, functional logic.
"If this isn't for a specific reason or property," I said, "this one is better than the quest item. Isn't it?"
The room fell dead quiet.
The words hung in the sudden, dead air.
Raska froze. Her eyes shot open, as though something she'd been looking at all along had only just come into focus.
...It clicked?
...Does this mean I won?
Her irritation vanished. The stubbornness vanished. Her face went oddly blank. Her eyes widened ever so slightly, her mouth falling open a fraction before slowly closing again.
"...Raska?"
She let out a slow, heavy breath through her nose. Her shoulders sagged under the weight of it.
"...Actually," she murmured, her voice flat, devoid of any smirk. "Fine. Whatever. Stubborn idiot."
She walked back, her movements sluggish, and picked up the heavy stone. With a weary sigh, she forced it into her pack. The opening protested against its size, the jagged edges dragging against the fabric with a long, ugly scrape as she shoved it deeper. By the looks of it, the thing was making a mess of the inside.
Raska either didn't notice or simply didn't care. She tightened the latch, her hand lingering on the pack for a second.
Neither of us spoke. The silence felt wrong.
"Raska, wait—"
"Just throw it," she muttered, cutting me off before I could start. "If you don't want it."
She turned on her heel without taking the jagged blade, opened the door, and stepped out into the hallway as the heavy wood clicked shut behind her, leaving me alone with the silence.
I let out a long, ragged breath, the sound swallowed instantly by the drumming of the rain. The silence wasn't oppressive anymore; it was just empty.
I looked down at my hands. They were still, but beneath the skin, I could almost feel the phantom hum of that strange, stolen magic.
Raska was right—I was holding onto secrets that could burn a hole right through me if I wasn't careful.
But for the first time since I'd woken up in this world, the knot in my chest had loosened. I wasn't just surviving; I was navigating.