By Zephyria Leonardo, who barely swallowed what he had in his mouth, unintentionally made a disgusted expression. But he quickly composed himself and leaned his upper body towards Flynn, who was sitting across the table, and said.
“Flynn, there’s something I’m curious about.”
“Huh?”
Flynn asked back, but also poured water from the canteen into a cup and slid it in front of Leonardo.
“What is it?”
Leonardo naturally accepted his consideration and gulped down the water in the cup to rinse his mouth. He was followed by a nagging to drink slowly, but he didn’t pay much attention to it.
“Hah-. I’m alive.”
Leonardo, who wiped the corners of his mouth with the back of his hand, pushed the cup back to Flynn and brought up the main point.
“My voice, I mean. You said I was unconscious for three days. But what happened in the meantime?”
At the direct question, Flynn blinked. Soon, he asked back with a vague nuance.
“What do you mean what happened? What… what kind of thing?”
“No, I was wondering why my throat went bad when I was unconscious. I really don’t remember anything? But did anything else happen, like my Magic Power… suddenly becoming uncontrollable… anything like that?”
Leonardo, who was asking the question he was worried about, dragged out his words while looking around, unlike before. Asking about the possibility of going berserk with his own mouth was not something he could easily bring up. He had been stressed about related matters throughout the subjugation, and now it was like admitting that he really couldn’t trust himself anymore.
Leonardo, who had been struggling to continue his question, glanced at Flynn with eyes that seemed to say, “You know, right?” Flynn roughly sensed his inner thoughts and shook his hand, answering.
“No, nothing like that happened. Rather, the problem was that Magic Power recovery was slow for a while.”
Flynn recalled Leonardo from a few days ago, who had been limp in the Legion Commander’s arms. It is impossible for an unconscious person to hide or control their Magic Power. But at the time, Leonardo had almost no Magic Power, like Theo, whom they had met in frost territory.
For a Mage, Magic Power is one of the main indicators of condition. But at that moment, he was so empty that he couldn’t even gauge his condition. It was as if he had burned his whole body white.
That emptiness had remained unchanged until just the night before. So, his current appearance, showing amazing recovery, was truly a miracle, as the medical officer said.
“For the past two days, Magic Power has been almost non-existent. It hasn’t been long since it came back like it is now.”
Meeting the vitality in Gold Eyes, Flynn felt like the emotions he had been holding back were about to rise again. But he held back and tried not to show it, answering Leonardo’s question calmly.
“So, of course, nothing you should be worried about happened. The medical team people also said that it’s a unique case that you’re recovering so suddenly like this.”
“Really? Then why…”
The answer he received was very fortunate, but at the same time, it planted another question. Leonardo tilted his head and trailed off, and Flynn continued with a slightly darkened expression.
“Maybe your throat is damaged because you screamed a lot. You had several seizures during the surgery.”
Flynn spoke calmly about that day full of the smell of blood. But the more he spoke, the more his expression gradually lost its composure.
Leonardo listened to the situation at the time coming from Flynn’s mouth with a fairly serious face. His appearance during the surgery that he heard from him was nothing more than the desperate screams of a barely alive corpse.
As he listened to the somewhat shocking explanation, some of the memories inherent in his subconscious leaked out.
‘It’s okay.’
Suddenly, a familiar voice seemed to be heard, and terrible pain pierced his nerves. Leonardo, suddenly startled, frowned and grabbed his left shoulder with his right hand.
“That day, the Legion Commander was all day…… Blaine?”
Flynn, who stopped speaking in the middle, looked at him as if asking why. Leonardo, who had his head bowed, buried his lips in his forearm and did not answer.
Flynn, noticing something strange, quickly approached him. Then, he looked at his complexion and asked urgently with a worried expression.
“What’s wrong? Does your shoulder hurt?”
Leonardo narrowed his eyes and slowly caught his breath, occasionally shrugging his shoulders. His rapidly unstable breathing showed a very uncomfortable expression.
Shoulder aside, the reason Leonardo couldn’t answer was actually because he felt sick.
He had often felt this nausea even while eating soup. He had the urge to put down the spoon, but he endured it, as he had been repeatedly told to consume even finely ground food to prevent dehydration and malnutrition. Of course, there was a hint from the medical officer that his body might show a rejection reaction because food had not been coming in for a long time.
But the nausea that was coming up now was not simply a rejection reaction to food. Along with the burning shoulder, it felt like his esophagus and stomach were surprised and rampaging. It was as if the memories engraved on his body were recreating that time at will.
Because of that, Leonardo remained motionless for about five minutes. It was fortunate that Flynn brought several pillows and cushions for him to lean back on; otherwise, the organs in his stomach might have twisted, and he would have thrown up everything he had just eaten.
Still, as he sat leaning back, he quickly regained his composure, and his stomach calmed down again. The pain in his shoulder was also bearable. However, when he lifted his head after wiping his face, he was met with Flynn’s face, which was anything but okay.
Flynn’s lips were twisted in a grimace. Seeing this, Leonardo blinked in bewilderment and asked,
“…Hey, are you crying?”
His verdant eyes were already moist, and his expression was clearly filled with sorrow. Tears hadn’t yet fallen, but his eyes were brimming with moisture, as if they would spill over at any moment. Startled by his face, Leonardo was at a loss for words. He just asked again in a bewildered and embarrassed tone,
“No, why are you crying…?”
Feeling embarrassed, Flynn turned his head away and retorted gruffly,
“Who’s crying—.”
He mumbled in a faint voice, denying that he was crying, and rubbed his eyes roughly. Leonardo, who would usually have teased him playfully, was so surprised this time that he remained silent.
The atmosphere suddenly became awkward. Flynn wanted to stab his own pathetic eyes, as the person who was actually in pain was watching him carefully. He had barely managed to hold back in front of the Legion Commander. Remembering Leonardo’s suffering and realizing that his condition was still not good, he seemed overwhelmed with indescribable frustration.
As he struggled to compose himself with his back turned, Leonardo approached on his knees, bent over, and sat down heavily beside him. Then, tilting his head, he looked up at Flynn’s face, which was deeply bowed. His glittering Gold Eyes offered clumsy comfort.
“Hey…, I’m okay. It’s just that the soup tastes bad.”
“……”
“…I’m really okay, you know? Don’t cry.”
Leonardo, who kept talking, carefully reached out and rubbed Flynn’s eyes. When his warm touch reached his face, Flynn twitched his eyes and closed them tightly before opening them again.
When he lifted his eyelids, he saw a beauty in front of him who looked even more pathetic with his added frailty. As he fluttered his golden eyelashes, met his gaze, and stared at him, Flynn didn’t know where to look and turned his head away, tossing out a curt,
“I wasn’t crying.”
Leonardo shrugged with an ‘as if’ expression. He chuckled and nodded as if to say, ‘Whatever you say.’
He wanted to playfully poke him, saying, ‘Why would you even cry over something so embarrassing?’ but when he thought that he was crying because of him, all he could say was, ‘I’m okay.’ The guy, who was older than him, had such a weak heart that he made people feel embarrassed for no reason.
As Leonardo sat with his knees raised and waited quietly, Flynn, conscious of their faces being close, cleared his throat and sat slightly apart. However, seeing that Leonardo’s complexion seemed okay, he continued the conversation as if nothing had happened.
“Ahem, anyway. So, that day, the Legion Commander stayed by your side all day, nursing you. Originally, they were going to soak your arm in salt water to draw out the poison through osmosis, but the poison had already spread too much throughout your shoulder, so that didn’t work either…”
Flynn went back to the story of the surgery and explained how Leonardo ended up screaming so much that his throat was hoarse.
Leonardo himself had told them that Illaptor’s poison, which had the same components as the core’s poison, reacted to sodium chloride. At first, they tried to use that to remove the toxicity, but Leonardo’s left arm was already in such a severe state that the method didn’t work. So, Flynn explained in detail, they had to cut open his shoulder and manually suck out the dead blood and poison.
As he listened, Leonardo nodded in agreement, but a chill ran down his spine for a moment. Manually what with the poison? Even though it was a medical procedure, he didn’t feel good thinking that some stranger had arbitrarily touched his left shoulder.
Because of that, Leonardo, with a displeased expression, asked Flynn sullenly,
“Wait, the poison… what did they do? Who did it?”
Flynn, who usually answered questions right away, hesitated for a moment at that moment.
And just then, the sound of the unit members saluting was heard from outside. The two people inside the cabin reflexively turned their heads towards the door.
Soon after, the door was flung open without delay, revealing someone against the backdrop of the setting sun.
Leonardo, narrowing his eyes, doubted his memory for a moment. It was the blue-eyed man whose lips had once been wet with red blood.