Chapter 82: Getting Friend-Zoned by My Own Primary Anchor

Chapter 82: Chapter 82: Getting Friend-Zoned by My Own Primary Anchor

I didn’t ask why.

Rei was the least important person I should be thinking about right now.

I left Lab Three with the heavier bracelet cold against my skin and the muted absence of Gianna’s anchor sitting like a bruise behind my ribs.

Why can’t I feel her?

The guild vehicle assigned to me was waiting in the private bay.

I climbed in, sealed the doors, and let the autopilot take the first sky lane toward the residential block. The city moved past the windows in indifferent streams of light. I watched it for a while, then took out the phone Jenna had given me days earlier.

The contact list was still short.

I opened the thread with Gianna and stared at the last messages, the ones that had ended with her blocking me after a stupid joke, then unblocking me when the medical alert hit.

The cursor blinked in the empty field.

I typed, deleted, typed again.

Eventually I hit call before I could talk myself out of it.

Jenna told me not to reach out.

The line rang four times.

I expected it to go to silence or a rejection tone. Instead, the connection clicked open.

She didn’t speak.

I listened to the sound of her breathing for two full seconds before I found a voice.

"It’s me."

A longer pause.

"I know," she said. Her voice was quiet, stripped of the edge she had carried that morning.

"The ID showed up."

"I won’t keep you. I just... needed to say something while I still could."

"Then say it."

"I’m sorry. Not the useful kind of sorry that fixes anything. Just the real one. I don’t expect you to answer it or accept it. I only wanted you to hear it from me and not through someone else."

Silence stretched on the line. Somewhere on her end, a door closed.

Footsteps moved across a floor.

"I asked for a week," Gianna said eventually.

"I’m going to take it. Don’t call again unless something is actively on fire."

"I understand."

"Do you?"

"I’m trying to."

Another pause.

When she spoke again, the words were quieter.

"The expansion is stable. Mira already ran a remote diagnostic while I was in with my mother. I felt like losing my core, but nothing happened. I’m stronger. That part is real. The rest of it..."

She exhaled.

"The rest of it, I need time to look at without you standing there making it harder."

"I understand. Take all the time you need."

There was silence.

"Take the blockers. Do the drills. Follow what my mom says."

A faint, humorless breath that might once have been a laugh.

"And Revien?"

"Yeah?"

"If that thing says anything about me again, I want you to tell me."

The request landed quietly, but there was no softness in it.

"It won’t."

"What?"

"It only used you to exploit me."

My voice stayed steady even though the words tasted like metal.

"I’m going to put myself to work. Stop whatever I tried to build with you- everything that wasn’t purely functional. I’ll be your support whenever you ask for me. I’ll train with you whenever you want. Nothing more. No more reaching. No more asking for time I haven’t earned back."

Silence stretched on the line long enough that I thought she might have ended the call.

Then Gianna spoke, quieter than before.

"You make it sound simple."

"It isn’t. But it’s the only version that doesn’t keep hurting you."

"And if the class decides simple isn’t enough?"

"Then the blockers do their job, Mira adjusts the frequencies, and I keep reporting every crack until we find a way to live with the thing inside me without it touching you again."

Another pause. I could hear her breathing, controlled, the same way she breathed when she was resetting after a hard spar.

"You sound like you’re already walking away."

"I’m trying to give you the distance you asked for without making you the one who has to keep drawing the line."

"That’s not the same as staying."

"I know."

The quiet that followed felt heavier than any argument we had ever had on a training mat.

Somewhere on her end, a chair shifted. When she spoke again, her voice had lost the last traces of the earlier edge and settled into something tired and final.

"One week," she said.

"Don’t call. Don’t message. Don’t show up at my door with another apology that makes this harder. I’m not willing to lose my power over a simple training support."

"Is that what you think of me?"

The silence stretched longer.

"..."

"Understood."

A soft click.

The line went dead.

I sat in the sealed vehicle with the phone still raised to my ear for several seconds after the connection ended, listening to the absence she had left behind.

The autopilot continued its path through the sky lanes. Neon washed across the windows in indifferent bands of color.

I lowered the phone, locked the screen, and let my head fall back against the seat.

The rest of the drive passed without another word from the system or from me.

When the vehicle finally descended into the bay, I stepped out, rode the private elevator in silence, and entered the apartment.

The lights rose automatically. Everything was exactly as Jenna had left it: clean counters, the faint scent of the meal she had prepared the night before, the low hum of the city pressing against the glass.

I set the phone on the table, walked to the center of the living room, and opened the system interface.

Two tickets hung in the inventory, unclaimed and quietly luminous.

One Bronze.

One Silver.

The rewards from a quest that had been completed at the exact moment Gianna asked for distance.

Fifty points of favorability purchased with trust I had then tried to hollow out from the inside.

The system had gotten its number. I had gotten the tickets.

She had gotten a week away from me and a core expansion she had never asked to receive in that way.

I stared at the tickets until the edges of the interface began to feel unreal.

"Are you happy?"

[Yes.]

The single word arrived without hesitation, without softening, without any of the dry commentary the system usually layered on top of its replies.

Just confirmation.