I walked the streets of Fuyuki in silence. Medusa moved beside me, her gaze locked on her boots, fingers curled into fists at her sides.
Her shoulders were tense. The quiet between us had stretched unbroken since our flight, with neither of us breaking it.
My mind still lingered on the kiss from before, its texture, its warmth, and the soft scent I had catalogued despite her never using lip balm. It was a unique fragrance: a blend of sea salt, rain on stones, and something floral and sweet. Her natural scent.
A glance sideways revealed her current state to me in quantifiable data. Usually, her gait was eerily smooth, lacking the up and down bounce of a human stride. Now, her movement was uneven, slightly rising and falling with each step she took, where before it had been a continuous glide.
"You are afraid." She flinched at my words.
"...I am not—"
"Your physiological indicators contradict your statement." I took a step closer, and she took a step sideways, her body coiling in an automatic defense response.
"Are you afraid of my response?" Another step toward her, and she jerked away harder, fists trembling as she tightened her grip. "Or afraid of my lack of a response?"
Medusa banked three steps rightward at my last question, her side colliding with the laminate window of a storefront.
She tried to shift, but my palm settled on the glass right beside her head. My arm blocked her path forward. With her back against the window, she shifted to face me properly.
Her eyes remained locked on her boots, her glasses sliding a fraction down her nose, hands clutching her sweater.
I brought a single finger to her chin and tipped it up slowly, giving her enough time to pull away if she wished.
Our eyes met.
"Your attack was effective." Her skin was cold under my finger, colder than an average human's temperature should be. "It bypassed my defenses by exploiting a gap created by routine familiarity. And it was executed with a level of tactical precision that suggests you planned it for some time."
Leaning forward a fraction, I peered into her trembling pupils, her cheeks flushed and neck wine-red.
"The sensation of your lips on mine introduced a persistent variable in my mind that I cannot resolve through standard processing. Something illogical that refuses to be filed away."
Bringing my face close enough to hers that our noses touched, I opened my mouth.
"Tell me... What did you do to me?"
Medusa's breath hitched, body going rigid, and pupils blown wide, face burning.
One second. Two. Three.
She remained petrified.
Before I could press further, the sound of hushed whispers registered from around us. Bystanders had formed a loose circle, phones out, flashlights on. Some were already calling the police, frantically relaying what they were seeing.
"Sigh..."
Ultimate Hope, I noted, was currently being reported to the police for street harassment.
Bending down, one of my arm encircled her waist, the other wrapping around the back of her thighs, and pulled her up in a carry.
The people around us shuffled closer, trying to block my path, so I did what was logically sound and jumped, vaulting over that whole crowd under their collective gasps, landing quite a distance away, vanishing in a blur of speed before they could turn.
We slowed three streets away, Medusa still in my hold, her arms looped around my neck, hair rustling in the wind.
A tuft of her hair tickled my nose, and her scent exploded through my senses, exponentially concentrated than before.
Even though it was the second time I had encountered it, my sensory inputs could not categorize it, since it was a chemical compound that could not be parsed without enough knowledge of the Age of Gods.
"You carry the scent of a location that no longer exists in the current geological record." Medusa pulled back and glanced up at me.
"Is this the scent of the Shapeless Isle?"
Her fingers dug into my skin at that question.
"You can... smell it?" she asked.
"I can detect trace particles of volcanic basalt, old sea salt, and a floral compound that does not match any existing botanical database." A pause. "It is... something new."
Medusa's fingers went slack against my neck, her frame unwinding with each exhale. After nearly five breaths, her back settled further in my arms, forehead resting against my shoulder.
"The isle... where I used to live with my sisters. It was a... barren, and isolated place. My sisters hated it. But I..." She trailed off, her voice dropping to a whisper. "I liked that quiet, the sea, and those... flowers that grew in between cracks across rocks."
"It was the place where we lived before I became... what I became." She pressed her nose into my shoulder, glancing back over it at nothing particular. "There, I was just... a sister. A protector."
Silence fell.
And I didn't break it this time.
Instead, my mind processed her words against my own experience. Hope's Peak was a laboratory with scientists too obsessed with creating a perfect human through any possible means. That academy was less of an place to live and more of a cage, whose shadow continued to follow me even now, as my own Reality Marble.
I had never had a place where I was "just" Izuru. Either I was the Ultimate Hope, or someone to be worshipped. Only my time as Hajime had bits of "just" being, but that was being Hajime, not Izuru.
She shifted slightly, her grip tightening on me.
Glancing down, I noticed something new.
"Your scent is fading."
Pointing that out made her tilt her head.
"In approximately two years, those trace particles around you will degrade entirely, replaced by the scent of modern era. After that, the Isle will exist only in memory."
Her expression twisted for the first time, eyes glassing faintly, brow creasing, the blankness she'd worn from the moment of our first meeting finally slipping. For a second, maybe two, she looked like someone standing over a grave.
I took her reaction in, and my mouth moved before my thoughts.
"I will remember it for you. My analytical talent ensures perfect recall. It will never fade in my mind."
Medusa exhaled, long and slow, like she'd been holding that breath since the flight. A soft chuckle drifted out of her.
It was so different from my data on her that it took a moment for me to fully comprehend what had just happened.
I had barely gathered myself when she pulled her head down and rested her ear against my heart, listening to my heartbeat.
"Thank you, Izuru."
Her ear stayed against my chest. I kept walking, her weight negligible, the streets empty.
She could hear my unchanging heartbeat. It had been so for as long as I could remember.
Her ear pressed deeper.
Thump.
It skipped. Once.
I continued without a change in expression.
She definitely heard it.
But didn't point it out.
...
..
.
***
[200 Power Stones = 1 Bonus Chapter]
[10 chapters ahead on P@tr3on = [email protected]/Not_Aaryan]
...
[Authors Thoughts]
And our Izuru and Medusa chapters come to a close from here. We'll see where it goes from here. This chapter is shorter than usual, so I'll see if I can drop another one later, no promises though.
Take care, everyone!