NOVEL NEXT Chapter 43: The Confrontation
"Camella." The voice cut through the ambient chatter of the dining hall.
She glanced up from her barely touched meal to find a black-haired young man with wine-red eyes standing beside her table. Without missing a beat, she promptly ignored him and returned her attention to pushing food around her plate—a futile attempt at appearing busy.
"Mella," he tried again, his voice softer this time.
She felt someone grasp her wrist, and she didn't need to look up to know who it was. With deliberate precision, she placed her fork down and spoke.
"Don't touch me."
The next instant, her hand turned so cold that the young man felt like he was literally gripping a chunk of arctic ice. His fingers began to sting, then burn with the peculiar pain that came from extreme cold.
"Not until you listen to what I have to say," Auston said with firm resolve, his wine-red eyes beginning to glow as ether coursed through his system. His hand turned red-hot, steam rising where ice met fire in their eternal dance of opposition.
"Let go, Auston." Her words were measured, deliberate, each syllable carrying the weight of mountains.
"No." His grip tightened, the competing temperatures creating an uncomfortable equilibrium between them.
"Who do you even think you are?" She stood abruptly, the temperature around her dropping several degrees.
The loss of Azalea hurt more than she had ever thought possible. It was a pain that gnawed at her insides like a hungry beast, refusing to be ignored or forgotten. Now, thinking back to the time she still had with him, she realized he had never really been... happy.
Those moments when she could 'politely' convince him to accompany her on what she called reconnaissance missions—though they were really just excuses to spend time together—she would notice how he often drifted off into his own thoughts. In those quiet moments, when he thought no one was watching, he would look so profoundly lonely that it made her chest ache.
It felt painful to see him that way, especially as their shared experiences began to chip away at the walls she'd built around her heart. At first, she didn't understand what was happening to her. But seeing him constantly following Isabelle around like a lovesick puppy, acting like such a pathetic simp, annoyed her so much it consistently ruined her mood.
With time, she realized the truth that had been staring her in the face all along: while trying to understand what and who he truly was, she had unintentionally fallen for the crybaby without even knowing it.
She didn't believe it at first. The very idea seemed absurd. She had even stayed away from him for a while to see if it was just a phase, some temporary madness that would pass like a fever. But it never left. Her heart would race whenever he looked at her, and her anger would boil when he acted like a devoted fool toward her friend who didn't even like him back.
He was weak—constantly mocked, ridiculed, barely even acknowledged by the childhood friend he was so obsessed with. Until this moment, she regretted not taking matters into her own hands and making him hers. She could have made him fall for her, and maybe, with time, he would have forgotten about Isa. He would have fallen for her the way she had fallen for him. Maybe, just maybe, none of this would have happened. He wouldn't have disappeared and been presumed dead.
He was essentially a baby—a big, emotional baby. Whenever things got to him and he became overwhelmed, tears would follow as surely as thunder followed lightning. He never had the decency to control himself in public, and before she fell for him, she had been irritated by that trait just like Isabelle's many other friends. They found his behavior nauseating and unbecoming of a man.
He was weak, yes he was smart, but he was weak—that was an undeniable fact. So weak, in fact, that she could literally beat him senseless without using a spark of ether. That was how pathetic his physical abilities were.
But after that day, after that clumsy, desperate attempt at saving her, that one pivotal moment when everything changed, she became interested in him. And that interest had blossomed into something far more dangerous.
Love.
She loved him. She had tried so hard to deny it, to logic her way out of it, to convince herself it was anything else. But she couldn't escape the truth.
She truly loved that idiot.
That crybaby.
Her crybaby.
It hurt so much to know he was gone, and no matter how much she tried, she couldn't forget him. She couldn't forgive any of them for what had happened. After all, she had always known they never truly cared about him—even Auston, for all his saintly pretenses, had never liked Azalea. Perhaps it was because the young man was always orbiting around Isabelle, perhaps it irritated him, or perhaps there was something deeper.
Azalea never had lunch with their group, no matter how much he liked being close to Isa. He always stayed away from them during meals, and even when Camella tried to force the issue, he never budged. He always seemed to intentionally avoid... Auston.
Back then, she had assumed he was intimidated by Auston's presence and popularity. But with time, she had developed a feeling there was something more to it. After all, Azalea had always been a box of mysteries, wrapped in enigmas, tied with riddles.
"I am your friend," Auston said, as though the very words gave him some sort of divine authority over her.
"That, you are not. Now let go." At this point, they were already making quite the scene, but neither of them seemed to care about their growing audience.
"Why are you acting this way? Please, let's just talk." He sounded genuinely hurt, but his pain had no effect on her frozen heart.
"Let. Go. Auston." Each word was punctuated with finality.
"Is it because of that traitor Azalea?"
She trembled slightly, and he felt something shift in the air around them—something dangerous and unpredictable.
Silence stretched between them like a taut wire.
"He attacked me, Mella. Why are you acting like he's the victim here?" Auston asked, looking genuinely annoyed and frustrated. "I was trying to help him, and he repaid me by trying to kill me!"
More silence. The kind that spoke louder than words.
"Mella," he said, but she said nothing. Her hands had already returned to normal temperature, but her hair now obscured her eyes as she seemed to look down into some private abyss.
"Mella, come on, listen to—" He was about to grab her shoulder when another hand intercepted his wrist with surprising strength.
"That's enough, bug."
Auston frowned in annoyance, recognizing the voice immediately. "Well, if it isn't Mr. I-can't-mind-my-own-business," he said, turning to face Aden with barely concealed irritation.
"Let go of her," Aden said simply, his voice carrying the quiet authority of someone who was used to being obeyed.
"Nah, I don't think so," Auston replied, and suddenly a gleaming sword materialized in his free hand, its blade humming with barely contained energy.
Aden scoffed and his own weapon manifested in response. "Fine, then we do it the hard way."
Some battles, it seemed, were inevitable.