Chapter 29: My Love

Frey finally seemed satisfied with the amount of public attention he had harvested from the sidewalk.

After blowing one last exaggerated kiss toward a group of girls near the curb, he straightened the front of his cream-colored jacket, flashed another shameless grin at a passing camera, and turned toward the coffee shop entrance as though he hadn’t just spent several minutes posing beside his car like a celebrity arriving at an awards ceremony.

The automatic glass doors slid apart in front of him, and the café’s atmosphere shifted almost immediately.

Several customers who had been watching through the windows turned their heads toward him, while the same girls who had been whispering outside quietly followed his movement with barely concealed interest.

Jet remained seated beside the glass wall, one hand wrapped around his coffee cup while the other rested near the half-empty plate of pastries in front of him.

He watched Frey step through the doors and casually scan the room, and the moment those familiar eyes began moving in his direction, Jet felt an uncomfortable premonition settle in his stomach.

He knew that expression. He had known this idiot for far too many years not to recognize when Frey was about to do something embarrassing.

Frey’s wandering gaze finally landed on him, and his entire face immediately lit up. Jet’s eyes narrowed at once, silently warning him not to do whatever ridiculous thing had just entered his head, but the warning was completely useless.

Frey’s lips parted, and an embarrassingly high-pitched little squeal escaped his throat before he suddenly threw both arms open.

"MY LOVE!"

he shouted across the entire coffee shop, his voice carrying so clearly that the conversations around them died almost immediately.

Jet froze with his coffee halfway toward his mouth, and even one of the baristas behind the counter stopped what she was doing to look over.

Frey apparently interpreted the sudden attention as encouragement because his grin widened further.

He stared straight at Jet with the emotional intensity of a man who had finally reunited with his lover after surviving ten years at war and called out, "Daddy! There you are! I’ve been looking everywhere for you!"

The café fell into absolute silence. Every head turned toward Frey first, then slowly toward Jet, then back toward Frey as the customers tried to process what they had just witnessed.

Jet could practically watch the emotional journey unfold across the faces of the girls who had been admiring Frey through the glass only moments earlier.

Confusion came first, followed by disbelief and a brief desperate attempt to find some innocent explanation for what they had heard.

Unfortunately, Frey’s delighted expression wasn’t helping. Realization gradually followed, then visible heartbreak, and finally several pairs of eyes moved toward Jet with unmistakable hostility.

One girl sitting near the window stared at him as though he had personally robbed her of an inheritance, while another looked between Jet’s completely black outfit and Frey’s expensive clothes with an expression suggesting she couldn’t understand how this suspicious-looking thug had somehow stolen the handsome rich stranger who had just arrived in a limited-production hypercar.

Jet felt a vein begin pulsing near his temple. His lips twitched as the murderous stares continued accumulating around him, and he finally lowered his coffee hard enough for the cup to click against the table.

"Shut the hell up, you idiot! Come sit down before somebody records this nonsense and ruins my life," he snapped, waving Frey over with obvious irritation.

Instead of showing even the slightest amount of embarrassment, Frey tilted his head, causing the long cross-shaped earring hanging from his left ear to swing gently against his neck.

He gave Jet a playful wink and answered, "Yes, my love," before happily making his way across the café with a ridiculous bounce in his step. Jet closed his eyes for a moment and seriously considered pretending he didn’t know him.

Frey’s performance continued attracting attention even as he crossed the room.

As he passed one of the nearby tables, a man dressed in business clothes leaned slightly toward his companion and muttered under his breath, "What a colorful setting..."

His companion didn’t even bother looking up from the tablet in his hand.

He simply took another sip of coffee before replying in a completely calm voice, "A juicy setting indeed..."

Jet heard both of them perfectly. His expression darkened further, and for the first time in his life, he genuinely wished a Dungeon Gate would open directly beneath his chair and swallow him before this situation became any worse.

Unfortunately, the universe refused to grant his request, and Frey reached the table without incident before dropping into the seat opposite him as though nothing unusual had happened.

Up close, Frey looked almost exactly as Jet remembered him from before everything had gone wrong in their lives.

His black hair still carried that deliberately messy style that probably required an unreasonable amount of effort to make it look effortless, his lean athletic frame hadn’t changed much, and the irritating gold tooth still flashed whenever his grin became too wide.

Even the way he leaned back in the chair carried the same careless confidence Jet remembered from their younger years.

There were no scars across Frey’s face, no exhaustion buried beneath his eyes, and none of the harder edges that years of fighting, loss, and surviving an increasingly dangerous world would eventually carve into him.

He was simply Frey...the same ridiculous bastard Jet had grown up beside, argued with, gotten into trouble with, competed against in school, and eventually pushed away when his own life began collapsing.

For several seconds, Jet didn’t say anything. He simply sat there looking at his childhood friend while the sounds of the coffee shop gradually returned around them.

Frey was alive. Healthy. Smiling. Completely unaware that the person sitting across from him had already experienced another ten years of life. Jet remembered the man Frey would eventually become, but more importantly, he remembered everything his friend had done for him when Jet himself had nothing.

Frey had loaned him money without demanding explanations, used his connections to help him secure work when no respectable Guild wanted an unawakened nobody, and continued reaching out long after Jet’s pride had begun turning every offer of help into another reminder of his own failures.

In the end, Jet had been the one who created the distance between them.

He had stopped answering calls, ignored messages, and convinced himself that disappearing from Frey’s life was easier than constantly standing beside someone who reminded him of everything he could never become.

Frey eventually noticed the prolonged stare and raised one eyebrow.

He leaned forward slightly and rubbed his chin as though considering something profound before asking, "What? Why are you staring at me like that? Don’t tell me my face somehow became even more handsome during the drive here. I know the possibility is terrifying, but please try to control yourself. We’re in public."

The ridiculous comment immediately dragged Jet out of his thoughts.

He blinked once before rolling his eyes and replying, "Your ego got worse."

Frey placed one hand dramatically against his chest as though Jet had deeply insulted him. "That’s impossible. My ego was already perfect. There’s nowhere higher for it to go."

Jet couldn’t stop a quiet snort from escaping him, and despite himself, the corner of his mouth lifted.

He reached for his coffee again and took a slow drink, allowing the warmth to settle in his throat before looking across the table at Frey once more.

This time, his expression softened almost without him realizing it.

"Long time no see, Frey," he said with a small smile. The words came naturally to Jet because, from his perspective, they were completely true.

Frey, however, simply stared at him. His eyebrows gradually pulled together, and after several seconds of obvious confusion, he leaned forward. "What the hell do you mean, long time no see? Bro, are you okay? We literally went to dump my ex at her place two months ago."

Jet stopped moving with the cup still near his mouth.

"What?" he asked before the memory suddenly returned to him, and his expression froze.

Two months ago. Of course. There had been shouting outside an apartment building, Frey arguing with his ex for almost twenty minutes while Jet stood nearby wondering why he had agreed to come, and Frey eventually announcing that he was emotionally devastated before asking where they should eat less than five minutes later.

The entire disaster had somehow ended with the two of them buying fried chicken after midnight while Frey complained that relationships were a scam invented by attractive people to destroy other attractive people.

Jet remembered the night perfectly. The only problem was that he remembered it from another lifetime.

For Frey, that ridiculous night had happened only two months ago. For Jet, the memory belonged to more than ten years in the past.

The realization left him silent for several seconds as his gaze returned to Frey’s face, and this time the difference between their perspectives struck him much harder than he expected.

Frey had experienced only two months since then. Jet had lived through ten years of poverty, regret, Dimensional Impacts, failed ambitions, and eventually death.

He remembered the distance that had formed between them during those years, the calls he stopped answering, the messages he ignored, and the help he repeatedly rejected because accepting it made him feel even more pathetic.

Yet none of that had happened to the Frey sitting in front of him.

To this Frey, they were still the same two idiots who could spend an entire evening helping each other through a breakup only to end up arguing over who ate the last piece of fried chicken.

Frey slowly raised his hand and waved it in front of Jet’s face. "Hello? Earth to Jet. Did your awakening fry something important in there? First you stare at me like some widow seeing her dead husband return from war, then you tell me long time no see when I saw your ugly face two months ago. I’m genuinely starting to think you got hit in the head."

Jet immediately caught his wrist and pushed the hand away, answering, "I’m fine. Stop waving your hand in my face."

Frey narrowed his eyes suspiciously. "You don’t look fine. You’ve been acting weird since I sat down."

Jet leaned back in his chair and sighed. "You talk too much."

Frey pointed at him with an offended expression. "That doesn’t answer my question."

Jet raised an eyebrow. "You didn’t ask a question."

Frey paused for half a second before waving the technicality away. "It was spiritually a question. You understood what I meant."

Jet stared at him for a moment, and Frey stared right back with the completely serious expression of a man defending an utterly ridiculous argument.

The sight was so painfully familiar that Jet felt the last trace of heaviness inside his chest disappear. There was no point trying to explain any of it, and he wasn’t ready to tell Frey that the friend sitting across from him had already been part of another ten years of memories that technically no longer existed.

Frey wouldn’t understand, and Jet didn’t need him to understand yet. Right now, it was enough that he was here.

Alive, annoying, ridiculously dressed, and still capable of embarrassing Jet within thirty seconds of entering a coffee shop.

Jet looked at him for another moment before slowly shaking his head, and a genuine smile spread across his face.