Chapter 107: Coaxing the Villainess [Part-2]

Neo immediately summoned a diary and a pen from his inventory and began to write quickly, something which might convince her to communicate with him.

After writing, Neo immediately pushed the diary on top of the book she was reading, as he waited for her response.

Nora’s hand, which was about to turn the page, stopped midway in the air, as the diary landed right on the lines she was reading. For a long moment she did not move at all, and Neo held his breath, watching her fingers hover above the paper as if she was deciding whether the thing in front of her was even worth touching.

Slowly, her violet eyes shifted from the book to the diary, and then they began to move from left to right, following the lines he had written in a hurry.

[Nora, I know you are angry with me, and you have every right to be. I left without telling you anything, and I am sorry for that, I really am. It was never my intention to leave you alone, and I came back as soon as I could or maybe not. But Please, just look at me once, even if you hate me, because I only want to know that you are okay.]

Neo watched every small movement of her eyes as she read, his heart thumping so loudly in his chest that he felt she could hear it even if she couldn’t hear his voice. He expected something, anything at all, a frown, a trembling of her lips, or even a sigh of annoyance, but her face remained as calm as a frozen lake, and when she reached the end of the page, her eyes simply stopped there.

‘Come on, say something. Even if it is just a single word, I will take it.’

Nora lifted her hand and picked up the pen which was lying beside the diary. Neo’s eyes widened a little as he leaned forward on the table, unable to hide the eagerness which was spreading across his face, and he watched the tip of the pen touch the paper beneath his words.

She wrote slowly, each stroke neat and careful, in the same elegant handwriting he remembered from their childhood, and when she finished, she pushed the diary back towards him without raising her eyes even once.

[I am fine. You do not need to worry about me, so please go back to wherever you came from.]

Neo stared at those two lines for so long that the letters began to blur in front of his eyes. It was not the harshness of the words which hurt him, because there was no anger in them, no bitterness, no accusation, and that was exactly the problem. She had written them in the same way someone might write a note to a stranger who had accidentally wandered into the wrong room, politely and coldly, without leaving even a small space for him to step in.

‘She is saying that I don’t need to worry about her… but how can I not worry, when she is looking at me like this?’

He clenched the pen tightly in his fingers, as he recalled the girl who used to hold on to the edge of his sleeve whenever she felt lost among strangers, the girl who used to stay quietly beside him, never saying anything but never letting go either. The person sitting across from him now looked exactly like her, yet it felt as if someone had carefully taken away everything inside and left only the shell behind.

‘No, I can’t leave it like this. If I walk away now, then I will really lose her.’

Neo pulled the diary closer and began to write again, more slowly this time, pausing between the sentences as he chose the words with care, because he knew that rushing would only make it sound like an excuse.

[I won’t go anywhere. If you want me to leave, then you will have to look at me and tell me so with your own eyes, because I will not accept it from a piece of paper. And if you really are fine, then you should have no problem looking at my face for a moment, should you?]

After finishing, he looked at the words once, hesitated for a second about whether it was too stubborn, and then pushed the diary back in front of her with a determined expression, placing his chin on his hand as he began to wait again.

Nora’s fingers, which were holding the edge of the page, tightened slightly, so slightly that anyone else would have missed it, but Neo didn’t miss it. He saw the way her eyelashes trembled for a brief moment, how her gaze stayed fixed on the last line without moving, and how the pen in her hand remained still, as if she had completely forgotten what she was supposed to do with it.

The silence of the library stretched around them. Neo did not move, did not even blink, as he kept his eyes on her face, silently begging her to lift her head.

‘Please, Nora… just once.’

Finally, after what felt like an eternity, Nora’s shoulders let out a barely noticeable breath, and her head slowly began to rise, as the loose strand of violet hair she had tucked behind her ear slipped forward again, brushing against her cheek.

Her violet eyes met his directly for the first time since he had entered the library, and Neo felt as if the whole world around them had gone quiet, because this time she was not looking through him, and she was not looking past him. She was truly looking at him, with eyes that were still cold, yet somewhere deep inside them, so deep that he almost thought he had imagined it, something fragile flickered for a single moment.

Neo’s lips parted, as every word he had prepared in his mind suddenly vanished, and all he could manage to say in a low, shaky voice was,

“Nora… I’m back.”