Rain fell on the side of the road. The mist started to rise from the ground where the rain fell. The town of Onerous slept, leaving only the singing of the droplets, pounding the paved stone, leading only to this strange calmness that Amadan felt.

Aria lounged near the window, on her lap was her white lance. Her eyes were in the rain outside the window. Her hair rested on the chair. She noticed Amadan’s stare and smiled.

“Is there something in my face?” She said gently.

Amadan shook his head. “No. I am wondering if you’re going to travel soon.”

Aria rested her lance on the side, leaned her back on the chair, and folded her arms beneath her breasts.

“Yes, I assume that you are coming with me.”

That shook Amadan. He held an expression of disbelief.

“What? Do you expect me to leave you behind? I do intend to make you carry my luggage. You asked for it. And I will happily do it.”

The rain doubled. Amadan scratches the back of his head. His eyes glancing sideways, not meeting Aria. Aria held a smug expression, she dragged her chair near Amadan and smiled at him.

“I wouldn’t leave you behind. Or make you wait for thirty-years while I travel around and do something. It is more fun to have a companion.”

Amadan stood up. He saluted.

“Well, Captain, I’d be under your care. I hope that I can help you.”

“Let’s see,” she placed a finger on her red lips. “You can cook for me, carry my stuff, and I won’t have to worry about stuff. You see, Amadan. I was a lone fighter, hating on myself, cursing why I was doing all of this. I loved being alone, and I’d test someone for thirty-years first before I let them close to my heart.”

Amadan raised a brow.

“Then why are you so accepting of me?”

“I learned my lesson once,” she winked, awkwardly, as if she had never done it in her life. Her cheeks flushed red. Amadan held a baffled expression.

“That’s amusing.”

“I am trying to make you laugh.”

It was hard for Amadan to consume all of this. Here he was lost in the world, and yet his only worry was to find a new home. Did he think of this when he decided to sign up for that strange academy island located in the Atlantic Ocean? He was supposed to enter that academy and yet here he was in this new world. He thought that there was no way back. No place to go back home. Time and space seem so large that it made him cling to a thigh of a kind woman who saved her from cold.

Amadan choked. He held his face up and showed weakness. He couldn’t but help but let out a sob out of his mouth. To be accepted and be treated well despite not knowing anything about him. It was a warm feeling that he wouldn’t dare to betray

***

For her life, she had not seen the Bleak Walker cry too much. She liked to think so that she didn’t. For her, he the Bleak Walker she knew was a strong man, stern, unbreakable, and beyond someone, she could understand. She did hate him, and she did so because of his fervor. When people died he didn’t weep or maybe he did, and that she never saw him.

Whenever there was trouble the Bleak Walker never cries. Heck, even before he became a Bleak Walker, he acted like one, a person whose emotions were stored away, bottled inside of him. He acted hard as steel, keeping his mind single-minded for a purpose she did not know about.

She recalled the day she looked at him. The man whose emotions seem so fake to her. How could a man who barely shows any emotion truly love her? Thirty-years, the man chased, thirty-years she was reluctant, thinking, that it was an act, a long act that this man devoid of emotions plays.

As she became harsher he became sterner than steel. No matter what his grim single-minded behavior never went away. And only when he was on the verge of death, that her stubborn, reluctant heart didn’t want to let go. She had mistaken him for something and did not believe what the man had been through. To become harder than steel. To bottle it all up in hopes to look gallant and stern in front of the woman you love.

In front of her was a fragment of that young man. A young man whose heart wasn’t as hard as steel. She couldn’t help but thought, that maybe, it was her that pushed him into becoming a Bleak Walker, Walker that walked all kinds of hell, forced to play a game of tag between those who grew fond of what he became.

“Ah,” she thought to herself, unable to calm him. The broken woman appeared, the mask of calmness broke, shattered, and she found herself looking away, unable to offer comfort.

It may not be her.

But she was the same.

She liked to believe that she was another.

That it was never her.

Yet she was a warrior. That was all she was and it broke her.

She found herself unable to find the words of comfort.

The mask that she wore shattered to pieces. She couldn’t form it. She could only turn away from him. She was after all the fool who stabbed herself out of grief. The woman who had sacrificed her child to a cause that was won without sacrificing that child. She was a weakling who wore the mask of the strong. She understood why she had made him wait for thirty-years in that past life. How she could not accept for that long.

She hated what she saw in him. It reminded her of a foolish woman who hardened herself to take on the pain. To keep herself from breaking. To fight a war and bear the weight of the world alongside the heroes. Aria couldn’t find any words of comfort, all she could do was turn away.