NOVEL NEXT Chapter 55: Realization
Kai and his sister stepped out of the elevator, the old metal doors grinding shut behind them with a groan.
Once again, they were dragged back into Vorenhart's office — if it could still be called that. The room was destroyed beyond repair.
And there was Miyuki. The sharp gleam of her fishnet stockings caught the dim light with every subtle movement of her legs, while her unashamedly exposed cleavage seemed almost taunting. The long, white ears twitched idly, soft and almost angelic.
But Kai did not look at her. He couldn't. His gaze clung stubbornly to the floor. Guilt pressed down on him heavier than the cracked ceiling overhead. Every breath was shallow.
Mei stood on the opposite side of Miyuki, her posture stiff and uneasy, as though even the smallest step closer to her brother might shatter her fragile composure.
Her eyes were still red and raw, the faint shimmer of unshed tears threatening to betray her no matter how tightly she bit her lip.
She refused to look at Kai — refused to let her gaze brush his for even a heartbeat. To see his face would mean reliving everything, and she couldn't endure that.
So she turned her head ever so slightly, pretending to be focused on the ruined wall, her silence a mask stretched thin over the wound inside her.
She was hurt — deeper than words could reach — yet she clung stubbornly to her pride, as though denial alone could make the pain vanish.
Miyuki's crimson eyes drifted between them, reading their silence with unnerving patience. "You're both terribly hurt…" she murmured.
She didn't know. Couldn't know. The blood and bruises, the visible scars — those were shallow compared to what had carved itself between brother and sister. What lingered in the air was heavier, sharper than any blade: a quiet, gnawing rift of guilt and betrayal.
Miyuki's gaze lingered on Kai's arm — bent at an unnatural angle, swollen and discolored from the fracture. Her fingers, deceptively gentle at first, encircled his wrist with one hand and pressed firmly against his elbow with the other.
"This will hurt a little…" Then, with a swift, precise motion, she snapped the joint back into alignment. "There you go..." she said.
Her crimson eyes flicked up, expecting a sharp cry, a strangled grunt, or at the very least the twitch of a wince. But Kai gave her nothing. No scream, no hiss of breath — not even the faintest flinch.
Curiosity tugged at her. She lifted her gaze to his face.
What she found there wasn't the stoic mask of a soldier, nor the numbness of a man accustomed to pain. It was something else — something heavier.
His jaw was set tight, his lips pressed into a thin line, but it wasn't defiance. His eyes never rose to meet hers; they stayed fixed on the ground, lost in shadows, carrying a weight no injury could match.
That look — not of physical pain, but of guilt, of deep, suffocating remorse — unsettled her more than any scream would have.
"What's wrong?" she asked at last, her voice softening despite herself.
But there was no reply. He didn't even acknowledge her words, didn't so much as tilt his head. His stare remained nailed to the floor.
Miyuki finally tore her eyes from Kai and turned to his sister. "What's wrong with him?" she asked, her tone sharper now, almost demanding.
But when her gaze met Mei's, she froze. The same look stared back at her — not the hardened defiance she expected, but something far heavier. Mei's eyes carried the same hollow ache, the same silent torment that haunted her brother.
It wasn't the sort of pain a bandage or a potion could mend. It was deeper, lodged beneath the skin, eating away at them both in ways Miyuki couldn't name.
Usually cold, the minister — or the girl in the bunny outfit — was now puzzled and, more than that, worried about Kai and Mei.
"I'll take you to the Safe House!" she said, then lifted Kai with one arm and Mei with the other.
Kai's thoughts spun in a relentless, dizzying whirl. "Why did I lie to her?" The question gnawed at him from every angle, refusing to leave him in peace.
Was it that stupid revenge he had once plotted? Or had it been something else entirely — something he didn't even want to name, because admitting it would mean facing the truth of his own heart?
Mei, on the other hand, felt the same storm raging inside her, though her torment wore a quieter mask. "Why did he lie to me?" The thought hovered in her mind.
Did he feel the same way she did, or had she misread everything.
The world around them seemed to fade, collapsing into darkness.
The crumbling walls, the flickering lights, the distant hum of the city — none of it mattered anymore. All Kai and Mei could see, could feel, was each other, suspended in a fragile bubble where time slowed and everything else became irrelevant.
"Has the world always been this shitty?" Kai thought. He couldn't face the answers he'd been trying to find for so long, the ones he had asked himself again and again.
"I'm very smart…" he admitted reluctantly to himself, yet the confession felt hollow, swallowed by the gnawing realization that cleverness alone had not saved him, nor had it spared him from the mistakes that now sat heavy on his chest. "…but I'm just as stupid."
"Brother…" Mei's thoughts churned like a storm she couldn't calm. "You had two chances to lose your virginity… The first with Lilith, the second with Silfy…" Each scenario replayed itself in her mind.
She tried desperately to understand him, to unravel the knot of motives and secrets that had pushed him to lie. "You planned to kill me, so maybe you could have skipped Silfy… but that doesn't make sense. Why would you pass up free sex? And if you really did skip her, what about Lilith — you had every right to f**k her…"
Meanwhile, Kai's mind was a battlefield of its own, chaos contained within his skull. "Why…? Why…? Why…?" he muttered internally, over and over, as if repeating the word enough times could force an answer into existence.
"Maybe… only maybe… the problem isn't Kai, it's the other girls…" Mei's mind whispered the thought. For a brief, fleeting moment, a flicker of hope sparked in her chest. But just as quickly as it appeared, it was snuffed out, leaving only the cold shadow of doubt behind.
"No way…" her thoughts continued, racing faster than she could keep up with. "Silfy is 1256, but she looks like a child — exactly his usual type. And Lilith… she was completely helpless, once again fitting the pattern he always chooses… So the problem is—"
At the same moment, Kai's inner voice rang out, sharp and painful: "I… I'm the problem. I lost…"
Almost like a mirror of his thought, Mei's own realization struck her like a blow: "He lost—"
And then, impossibly, the two thoughts collided, overlapping in perfect synchronicity. "Lust..."
⬛ ⬛ ⬛
"That's right!" Feloria laughed, her choker bell jingling as her orange cat ears bobbed up and down with glee. She laughed as she looked at Kai and Mei through the enormous glass that watched the whole world.
Her eyes had to magnify them a hundredfold to see them clearly. "HAHAHA! Finally you understand! See, as a goddess, I can't fall in love with anyone from this world… So I'm glad you came from a parallel universe! HAHAHA! You won't feel lust for anyone except me!"
Feloria wrapped her arms around herself, breathing faster, cheeks flushing. "You are only mine…" she repeated.