🏆 THE AMBY AWARDS 2023 TOP PICK - DIVERSE LIT 🏆
It's Rin and Hye-jin against the world. Or so it should have been.
Nagara Rin and Joon Hye-jin, college sweethearts and passionate gamers, have lived a fairytale marriage. Not even a decade after did...
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I drew my foot back to kick a stray pebble which was in my way. Some part of me recoiled in glee as it skittered forward against the force of the metal tip of my boots, eventually coming to stop behind Mirani's foot.
"Don't move about without thought, Seline," came the adventurer's stern remark. Since we separated from the main group, she hasn't looked back to check on us. Not even once. Did she rely on purely her instincts in keeping track of every movement around her?
I crossed my arms but didn't bother expending energy to do anything more. Besides, she had a point. I shouldn't be moving around too much since we're technically on the nether beasts' territory by now.
Just that I wasn't in the best moods since this morning before we even broke camp. Yesterday was one of those days—one where I wasn't sure if sucky or suckier. Getting paired up with Rin—sorry, Kora—and being expected to get something done had been the worst punishment the heavens could devise for me. If our lives from the real world haven't been enough proof of what we could accomplish together, I didn't know what else would.
But it's not like people in Solarlume would understand, much less if we didn't tell them. People here probably find love and stay in it for hundreds of years hence until they die. They wouldn't understand what it's like to have that hope, that sense of security, only to have it shattered in their faces by no other than the one who was supposed to give it in the first place.
That's all I ever wanted from the beginning. Just someone who would be there through all the good and bad times, someone who would tell me it's going to be fine. Someone who didn't vanish halfway, leaving me to clean up the messes I didn't even make.
"I know that look, Seline," Arzo's voice zipped through my thoughts, reminding me of the world I had no choice but to consider my new reality. I turned to find him beside me, his face a curated expression of worry. I hated seeing it being directed at me. "What's bothering you?"
I looked away, training my gaze at the back of Mirani's head. I didn't have to be one of the writers of this game to know the adventurer was probably listening in on our conversation even if she didn't want to. Enhanced senses and all that.
"What's gotten in you, suddenly asking that question?" I said to Arzo. From my periphery, I saw him with shoulders slumped and walking with kind of a dragging gait. "Here I was assuming you lot didn't really care about me, save for Heather."
A look of shock rearranged Arzo's features. "Are you joking?" he shook his head. "Of course, we care about you. These last few weeks didn't prove that?"
I thought about it. Revery had taught me the basics of handling magical energy as a spiria. Trink was kind enough to show me how to swing a sword around without impaling myself. And Arzo...
He had always backed me up whenever I raised an opinion, even during this joint mission with the Dragnasand. Being a psalm spiria, he sure had a way with his words. "It did," I scratched the back of my head, my fingers brushing the knot of vines Kora had made for my hair yesterday. Cold gripped my limbs, freezing them in place. How come it didn't drop away in my sleep?
