Chapter 29: Are You Really Noctis?

After saying "two and a half," Eris began turning the key she had inserted into the lock.

The metallic scraping from the other side of the door made my panic worse, but I took a deep breath and prepared myself to look as calm as possible. Keeping her outside was no longer an option, so I could at least open the door myself and preserve the illusion that I still had some control over the situation.

Before she could turn the key all the way, I pressed down on the handle and opened the door.

"All right, all right! I’m here."

A red-haired girl stood before me, the key still raised in her hand.

I had thought she was beautiful in the photos, but seeing her up close had a completely different effect. Her wavy crimson hair fell past her shoulders, with a few strands clinging to the sides of her face from how quickly she had rushed over. One of her eyes was bright red while the other was pale blue, and the contrast made her angry stare even more striking.

She wore a thin red jacket left open over a loose white T-shirt and black athletic shorts that exposed most of her long, shapely legs. The bag slung over one shoulder showed that she hadn’t hesitated for even a moment before coming here.

She stared at my face without saying a word.

As I stood in the doorway, I tried to choose the correct reaction. Smiling might make me look too relaxed, while appearing serious might seem like an admission of guilt.

In the end, I awkwardly raised one hand.

"Hey, Eris."

The anger on Eris’s face vanished for a moment.

Then she threw herself at me.

"Wha—!"

Her arms wrapped around my neck, making me stumble back a step. My back lightly struck the hallway wall, and Eris pressed me against herself tightly enough to make sure I couldn’t escape.

"You damn idiot!" she said into my shoulder. "If you ever do this again, I’ll kill you!"

I held my arms out to the sides, unsure of what I was supposed to do. Her crimson hair brushed against my cheek, and I could feel the warmth of her body through my thin shirt.

Normally, having a beautiful girl hug me this tightly would have been enough to make my heart race. However, what I felt now wasn’t simply surprise or excitement caused by her closeness.

The moment the faint citrus scent of Eris’s perfume reached me, blurry images stirred in the back of my mind.

Two children walking beneath the same umbrella on a rainy day. Small hands passing candy to each other under the table during a family gathering. A red-haired girl sitting silently beside me in a dark room...

Those memories weren’t mine.

Even so, being in Eris’s arms felt like reuniting with someone I hadn’t seen in years.

Trying to suppress the lump in my throat, I slowly raised my arms and returned her embrace.

"I’m sorry."

She must have heard the sincerity in my voice because some of the tension left her shoulders. After hugging me for a few more seconds, she suddenly pulled away and placed both hands on the sides of my face.

Before I could ask what she was doing, she pinched my cheeks hard.

"Ow! Let go!"

"I’m checking whether you’re real."

"Tearing my cheeks off won’t prove I’m real!"

Eris turned my face from side to side before narrowing her eyes and studying me. Her fingers were still squeezing my cheeks, making my words come out distorted.

"You’re not sick," she said. "You don’t seem to have a fever either."

"Normal people check that by touching someone’s forehead."

"Normal people don’t ignore their best friend’s messages for two days."

When she finally released my face, I rubbed my aching cheeks. I would have to add physical abuse from my childhood friend to the list of injuries White Snake needed to heal.

Without waiting for an invitation, Eris slipped past me and entered the apartment. She placed her gym bag on the small cabinet near the entrance, removed her shoes one at a time, and casually pushed them against the wall.

Instead of stopping there, she balanced on one foot, pulled off her short black sock by the heel, and threw it into the apartment.

The sock traced a small arc through the air before landing on top of the lamp.

"Eris."

She removed the other sock and tossed it over her shoulder. This one slid beneath the coffee table in the living room.

"What?"

"Why are you throwing your socks around my apartment?"

"I’ll pick them up later."

"Do you actually expect me to believe that?"

She continued into the living room as though she hadn’t heard me. Her bare feet made almost no sound against the floor, while the firm muscles in her legs shifted slightly beneath her athletic shorts with every step.

When she reached the couch, she removed her red jacket and tossed it over the backrest. Then she raised both arms above her head and stretched for a long moment.

The movement caused her loose shirt to ride up.

Her flat, firm stomach, navel, and the lower edge of her black sports bra were fully exposed for several seconds. Her narrow waist and the faint lines of muscle across her abdomen looked even more striking than they had in the photo she sent me a few days ago.

I looked away far too quickly.

Eris was Noctis’s childhood friend, and she trusted him. The reason she could behave so casually the moment she entered my apartment was that she didn’t know there was a strange man standing in front of her.

More precisely, she didn’t know that a strange man was living inside Noctis’s body.

That detail made me feel even guiltier for looking at her, though it didn’t stop my eyes from drifting back to her long legs a few seconds later.

I really was a terrible person.

Eris dropped onto the couch, stretching one leg across the cushions while letting the other hang toward the floor. The short hems of her shorts rode a little higher in that position, making the curves of her hips and strong calves even more noticeable.

She leaned against the backrest as though she owned the place.

"Can you bring me some water?"

"This is my apartment."

"Which means you know where the water is."

I narrowed my eyes.

"Why do you have a spare key?"

"You gave it to me last year after you refused to leave the apartment for three days. You wanted me to be able to get inside if something happened to you."

Noctis’s memories didn’t contain the entire event, but her words caused a small image to surface in my mind. Eris was laughing as she accepted the key while Noctis repeatedly warned her that she was only supposed to use it in an emergency.

In her eyes, ignoring her messages for two days had probably qualified as an emergency.

I brought two glasses of water from the kitchen. Eris took the one I offered, drank half of it in a single breath, and placed it on the coffee table.

Her gaze moved across my sweaty clothes.

"Why are you so sweaty?"

"I was working out."

My answer sounded as though I had said something perfectly normal, but the expression on Eris’s face made it seem like I had just told her I’d learned how to fly.

"You?"

"Yes, me."

"You were working out?"

"I know what the word means. You don’t have to repeat it."

Eris rose from the couch and approached me. After placing her hands on my shoulders, she gently turned my body, examining first my back and then my arms as though trying to confirm that I really was Noctis.

"When I invited you to the gym last month, you asked why you needed to leave the house just to walk on a treadmill."

"I thought differently back then."

"You considered climbing stairs an unnecessary waste of energy."

"I took the stairs instead of the elevator this morning."

Eris removed her hands from my shoulders and stepped back twice. As her red and blue eyes moved over me, the suspicion on her face grew more obvious.

"The way you talk has changed too."

The tension inside me returned all at once.

"How has it changed?"

"You’re more direct, and your voice sounds harsher than before. Even when you got angry, you used to drag out your words, then go quiet as though you regretted what you had said." She narrowed her eyes slightly. "Now you argue with me like you’ve spent years as a grumpy old man."

"Maybe I decided to become a little more confident."

"Your messages were strange too. You thought stretching out a few words and adding emojis at the end would make you sound like your old self, but it only made you more suspicious."

Learning that my message hadn’t been the perfect method of concealing my identity was rather discouraging.

"I want to change a few things before university starts," I said. "The way I speak and my physical condition are both part of that."

Eris continued studying my face, worry mingling with suspicion in her eyes.

"Are you really Noctis?"