The living room fell into an oddly heavy silence after Noah's question.
Anathasia and I exchanged a glance. Not tense, just… thoughtful. We'd never really cared about who "went first" or who came after.
"Confessed first…" I murmured, rubbing my temple lightly before glancing at her. "Did we even have something like that?"
Anathasia tilted her head, then slowly shook it.
"No… not really?" She tapped her cheek in thought. "The closest thing we had was probably…"
She trailed off, then added plainly:
"When we slept in the same bed and you said 'I love you.' Yeah, that."
I nodded, casually reaching over to tousle the ends of her hair before looking back at Noah.
"So yeah… sorry to disappoint, but we didn't have anything grand like those dramatic confessions you see in anime or romance novels." I shrugged, letting my hand fall back to my lap.
Noah, for his part, looked utterly flabbergasted.
His eyes were wide, his mouth slightly parted like he'd just heard something completely unbelievable. It took him a moment to gather himself before he cleared his throat.
"Okay," he exhaled slowly. "Let me get this straight."
He pointed between us.
"You two… never actually asked each other out. Yes?"
We both nodded.
"And you're already at the point where you sleep in the same bed?"
"We do sometimes," I clarified. "It just depends if Anathasia feels like it that night."
Still, I nodded.
Noah frowned slightly.
"…You guys are childhood friends, right?"
Anathasia glanced at me.
Then her voice echoed in my head.
[Childhood friends?]
[Yeah,] I replied mentally. [It's the most believable explanation, especially with our living situation.]
She stared down at the table for a moment, arms crossed, before finally nodding.
[…Fair enough, I guess.]
She didn't push it further.
Noah, however, clearly had opinions.
"Childhood friends don't normally end up together," he muttered.
[Except that's just an excuse,] I thought.
"I think you're mixing real life with anime again…" I said through a strained smile.
Inside my head, Anathasia suddenly spoke up:
[Well… he's not entirely wrong. Childhood friends usually—]
[Can you not mix anime tropes with real life for five seconds?] I internally facepalmed. [We're not in high school drama, please.]
She went quiet, calmly sipping her tea like the picture of composed elegance.
I sighed softly.
"But… honestly, things just kind of… happened naturally," I said aloud.
Noah only glared at me.
"Yeah, because everyone just casually ends up in a relationship where they're in perfect harmony, cook together, and live like an old married couple," he shot back, his tone unmistakably salty.
He scoffed, downing his tea in one go.
"…Lucky bastard. I mean, happy for you. But still. Lucky bastard."
I fell silent for a moment, staring into my cup.
Was I really that lucky?
Maybe.
Or maybe it just looked that way from the outside.
"I mean…" I spoke quietly, gaze still fixed on the porcelain in front of me. "Maybe I am lucky to have Anathasia."
I paused.
"But really… we had to go through a lot to get here."
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her stilling beside me.
"We didn't just wake up like this one day," I continued. "We fought. We argued. We said awful things to each other at times."
A small breath left me.
"And that's… kind of what makes it real, isn't it?"
I finally lifted my gaze to meet Noah's.
"I'm not saying our relationship is better than anyone else's. Or that we're some kind of ideal couple. Nothing like that."
I glanced at Anathasia, her eyes shimmered just slightly, though she didn't look at me.
"All I'm saying is… what you're seeing now was built over a lot of moments. Good ones. Painful ones. Stupid ones."
My expression softened.
"People tell me I'm lucky. And… yeah, I get it. But sometimes it feels like that also erases everything we went through to reach this point."
I paused.
"Like how people call the rich 'lucky' without ever thinking about the effort it took to get there."
Silence hung in the air after I finished.
Noah stared at me. Not teasing, not joking, just genuinely processing.
"…Damn," he muttered under his breath, then let out a small, quiet chuckle. "My bad."
He leaned forward slightly, resting his elbows on his knees.
"You're right."
A faint smile crossed his face.
"The Kyle back then… wouldn't have been able to say something like that."
His tone was quieter now.
"You've changed."
A beat.
"And honestly? For the better."
The silence that followed was deafening, but at the same time, I felt a weight in my shoulders I never realized I was carrying being lifted.
The conversation carried on for a few more minutes. Mostly about what it was like being in a group with Arianne, and I guess Noah also hadn't expected that he was sitting on the same couch she once sat on.
But that was how everything wrapped up.
Now, the house seemed to breathe freely after the storm called "Noah" passed. Peace and quiet were finally back. Or so I thought.
As I stood by the kitchen doorway, the familiar clear white hair immediately caught my attention… along with another girl with light blonde hair that felt a little too familiar.
"These are pretty good, actually."
"Mhm! I agree, I agree! I feel like I could eat a dozen of them if I had the chance."
There in the kitchen were Anathasia and… Rania? Devouring the rest of the egg tarts I made earlier. It wasn't really a problem, but still—
Why are there two Outer Gods in my place…? I mean, one's always welcome, but…
"I'm glad you like the egg tarts, but… why exactly is Rania here?" I tilted my head slightly, looking between them.
Rania swallowed her tart before speaking.
"Of course," she nodded, her faint ethereal glow shimmering softly around her, the same presence she and Anathasia both carried. "I've actually come to ask teacher a favor."
Wait.
"Teacher?"
Rania nodded, then turned to Anathasia.
"Miss Anathasia is my teacher. In fact, all Outer Gods went through her tutelage before becoming fully pledged Outer Gods."
I froze, immediately shifting my gaze to Anathasia still calmly chewing the last egg tart in her hand. She finally looked up at me, finishing it in one smooth motion.
"What?"
"You're… a teacher? On top of being an Outer God?"
Her brows knitted together as she shot me a glare.
"What's that supposed to mean? Of course I am. Who else would teach the second to fourth Outer Gods aside from the first?" she scoffed, loosely crossing her arms.
"Besides, I'm the only one who can work outside the stratums anyway. I existed before the stratums came into existence, so obviously only I could show them the ropes."
She said it like it was the most obvious thing in the world. And with her logic… I couldn't really argue.
"So like… not only do you not follow rules and laws, override them… and now you're not at the top but outside?"
She nodded.
"Yeah. It's not hierarchy. It's ontology."
Then she just shrugged.
"Why are we talking about the nature of being now…"
"Right, Outer Gods and cosmic horrors… does that mean Rania's a cosmic horror too?" I glanced briefly at her before looking back at Anathasia.
"No," she replied simply. "That's just how she looks. She was a human like you years ago."
A small pause.
"But… she does have a form that's also outside mortal comprehension, like the one you saw from me back then."
"Wait," I cut in. "How exactly does a human become an Outer God in the first place?"
I scratched the back of my head.
"Is it through some sort of sacrificial ritual—"
"Hah? No, of course not."
Anathasia immediately cut me off, waving her hand dismissively.
"Humans can't become Outer Gods in the first place."
She leaned slightly against the counter.
"Rania had something we call an 'Existential Fragment,' okay? And there are only four of them. She happened to possess the third one by sheer luck and compatibility, that's why I only needed to awaken the dormant fragment embedded in her being."
I stopped short, my words dying on my tongue as I looked down.
"Huh… and where do these fragments come from exactly?"
"It's from something we call 'The Constant.' That's all I can say."
Her tone dropped.
"Don't try to conceptualize it, understand it, or even frame it as anything. You'll risk existential unraveling."
A chill immediately ran down my spine. It was rare that Anathasia sounded this serious, and that alone was enough.
"Alright… so from this Constant or whatever it is—"
The moment I said the title, something inside me pulsed.
Not my heart. Not my body. Something far more abstract. Something I didn't, no, couldn't understand.
It felt like an unseen warning… telling me not to even think about The Constant again.
Before I could process it, Anathasia was suddenly beside me, one hand gently rubbing my back as my vision slowly came back into focus.
"I just told you… idiot…" she murmured, lightly flicking my temple.