Finding Contentus

Chapter 160: Lawless

If it were up to Lovouta, she'd have robbed the turning cogs of time itself if it meant being able to continue her Heart-to-Heart with Genesia forever. That is, until she came face-to-face with a resurrected nightmare at the end of the zip-line on a steel bridge that led to Akanto, watching her like an overgrown stickbug.

She turned to granite. Oh my fucking Lord.

"Lovouta?"

Her heart ricocheted against her chest. No matter how many times she blinked, the scarecrow did not vanish.

"What's wrong?"

This. Everything about this is so wrong. It goes against the laws of... She could not finish. "Listen, Genesia. I gotta go. I'll..." She trained her expression to appear as neutral as possible. "Can we pump later?"

Genesia's heart rate slowed to a sluggish rhythm as if to combat Lovouta's fast breathing. He did not respond for an awfully long moment. She had the faint image of his pupils dilating to become round black pools instead of vertical slits. If it were under better circumstances, she'd doodle the cute image, except, she could have sworn that he was scowling coldly, and that frightened her immensely.

"Trouble has found you," he deduced in a rather dead tone.

"It has. You know me, attracting trouble like flies to faeces."

"I'm about to find trouble myself like a dung beetle stumbling upon hills of dung."

"How far are you from Mettro?"

"My scar is bleeding."

"Bleeding?" Trepidation lanced through her.

"It must be the clash of territories. This doesn't feel like Mela's doing."

"Ra?"

Genesia was silent, then he whispered, no, he hissed, and it was like having her heart sliced from the slender yet swift cut of it. "What?"

Lovouta couldn't prevent herself from jumping as though avoiding a snakebite.

"Asemi. Alright. We'll pump later. Take care of yourself. And... it was really fun, getting to interact with you."

"Likewise. Take care." She hated how she shut the channel so abruptly. If only she could quell how disturbed she felt. Because standing there, in the flesh, looking right at her in unadulterated awe, dressed in all-white like a saint prettified by cosmetics beneath the sunless sky — was Simo.

Go away and never come back. She wanted to hurl those words at him. Then hurl the contents of her stomach. Her head spun from the disorientation of seeing him again as if concussed. She had never wanted someone to drop dead and stay that way as much as him. The vertigo was reinforced when she saw him, this animated corpse, offering his hand to her with an easygoing smile.

By reflex, she cringed away, wrapping her arms around herself like a second layer of heavy clothing from his prying gaze. "Never touch me again," she said in a loveless voice.

For she remembered how his hands had explored her skin.

[=====]

It had only been once, a quick thing, yet the memory kept her in a quivering dustbin of wariness. She'd been harassed by others before, but there was something inherently revolting about Simo's long fingers in particular, like they were expensive earthworms perversely bedding her flesh.

There was a day where Lovouta had confronted him directly about his misdeeds outside of lectures, telling him off politely, not caring how it would be perceived by those who watched. She was eighteen and he was twenty-two. He actually listened, expression earnest, arms folded, suggesting a truce.