Chapter 174: Borrow

Thanks for helping me reach the 1.200 P.S. milestone: Bonus Chapter 1 / 3 (^_^)

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The sky was not yet fully bright when Runi left the mansion. Morning fog lay thick over the road, so dense that the streetlights were nothing more than blurry yellow halos hanging in midair. She hugged Erik’s bag of clean clothes close to her chest, her lips moving as she counted.

"Two sets of clothes. One towel. One toothbrush..." She paused, reached into the bag to check, then let out a breath of relief. "The toothbrush is here. That’s enough. This is the third time, Runi. Don’t check again."

Her phone vibrated in her pocket. A message from Lady Elowen read: "There have been reporters at the hospital’s front gate since last night. Use the back entrance. My mother has arranged a car."

"Back entrance, back entrance..." Runi muttered, typing back, "Understood," then rereading it twice to make sure there were no spelling mistakes before pressing send.

The small street behind the hospital was deserted. The metal shutters of the shops were pulled tightly closed. No cars, no birds. Only the sound of her heels against the wet road.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

And another tapping sound, half a beat slower.

...tap.

Runi stopped. That tapping stopped too.

"...Is someone there?"

Her voice vanished into the fog without an echo. She turned around. Behind her was nothing but mist, milky white and still as a wall.

"It must be... just an echo." She forced a smile, counted to three, then continued walking, a little faster. The second set of footsteps sounded again, this time closer, as though stepping exactly into the footprints she had just left.

"Don’t run," she whispered to herself, both hands tightening around the straps of the bag. "Sir Erik told me, if something happens, I must not panic. Calm down. Stay calm..."

A strange scent slipped into her nose. Ink. The smell of old paper soaked in water for too long, stale and cold. The air suddenly became thick. Every breath she drew felt heavy as water.

A tabby cat was lying on the lid of a roadside trash bin. It did not run. It remained there, trembling violently, its four legs stiff as though nailed to the lid, its fur matted with a glossy black liquid.

"Kitty?" Runi called softly, her voice trembling. "What’s wrong? What are you... looking at?"

The cat’s eyes were wide open. It was not looking at Runi. It was staring at a point directly above her head.

Plop.

An icy drop landed on the back of her neck. Runi jerked violently, letting out a tiny cry. Then another drop rolled down her spine, slowly, like a finger drawing across her skin. She raised a hand to touch it. Her fingertips came away pitch-black.

"Ink...?"

Runi looked up.

From the edge of the awning right above her head, long silver-white hair hung down, swaying though there was not a trace of wind. Then a face slowly emerged upside down, only a handspan away from her.

No eyes. No nose. No mouth. Only a smooth black surface like the face of a deep well, and where the eyes should have been, a bright red cross watched her intently.

"A... ah..."

The scream caught in her throat, escaping only as broken breaths. Runi backed away until her back hit the wall opposite her. The alley suddenly stretched to an impossible length, its exit in the distance swallowed by white fog. Her trembling hand pressed the first number in her contacts.

"Sir Erik... answer the phone... please, answer it..."

The screen lit up with the name "Sir Erik," then flickered. Black ink seeped from the gaps around the screen, flowing over her fingers and dripping onto the ground.

"No... no, no, no..."

The thing on the awning slithered down. It did not jump, nor did it climb. It flowed down the wall like a bottle of spilled ink, then pooled at the foot of the wall and rose into the shape of a woman.

Its glossy black body was marbled with white streaks like cracks across ice. Behind it, black tentacles gently curled, slow as algae beneath a lake.

"You pat your chest pocket twice." The voice did not come from that face, but from everywhere: the wall, the road, the mist itself. Light and curious, like a child’s voice. "You check the door three times. I counted all of it."

Runi did not run. Her knees shook so badly that she could barely stand, yet she pressed her back to the wall and spread her arms across the alley, as if behind her stood the hospital gate, the room where Erik lay.

"Sir Erik is injured." Her voice broke, but every word remained clear. "You will not get near him."

The red cross tilted left, then right.

"How strange. You are so frightened, yet you still stand here." A tentacle stretched forward, lightly touching Runi’s cheek, cold as well water in winter. "Let me borrow you. Only for a little while."

That body collapsed.

It melted like a candle held over fire, pouring onto the road as a thick black puddle. Then that black puddle surged upward, like rain falling back toward the sky, crawling over Runi’s ankles, coiling around her calves, slithering past her knees.

"Let go! Let go!" Runi kicked wildly, her voice completely broken. "Help! Someone... help! Sir Er..."

It reached her nose. Cold. Thick. Suffocating. Runi opened her mouth to gasp for air, and it rushed into her mouth, pouring down her throat like floodwater through a crack in stone.

Her cries for help broke apart into muffled, choking sounds. It poured into her ears, swallowing every sound in the world, leaving only a bubbling hum as though she were sinking deeper and deeper to the bottom of a lake.

Runi’s ten fingers clawed at her throat until blood appeared, but there was nothing to grasp. The cloth bag fell. Her eyes rolled back, and her body convulsed once, twice, three times.

"...Sir... Erik..."

Then silence.

The tabby cat let out a hiss, finally able to move, and shot into the fog.

In the empty alley, Runi slowly stood upright. Her head tilted at an unnatural angle, then gradually, little by little, turned back into place, as though she had just remembered how this neck was meant to work.

She blinked once... Twice. Then tried a third time.

A thin line of ink seeped from the corner of her eye. She wiped it away with her thumb, studied the black streak on her skin for a long while, then smeared it onto the wall.

She smoothed her hair. Picked up the cloth bag, opened it, and checked. Two sets of clothes. One towel. One toothbrush. She tied it shut. Patted her chest pocket twice.

Then she tried to smile. The corners of her lips pulled too high, high enough to expose her gums, then slowly lowered until they fit the exact shape of Runi’s smile.

"Runi" stepped out of the alley. Behind her, the ink stain on the wall slowly trickled down, then dried into a mark that would never wash away.

...

At the hospital’s back entrance, there was only a black car with tinted windows parked close to the steps.

Meira stood beside the car door, her golden hair tied neatly, sunglasses covering half her face. She looked no different from the private bodyguard of an important figure.

Elowen pushed a wheelchair out from the hallway. Erik sat in it, his right arm braced against his chest, looking like someone who had just been kidnapped.

"I can walk on my own," he said for the fifth time that morning.

"Your legs can walk." Elowen bent down, adjusting the thin blanket over his lap. "Your ribs cannot."

Felyn followed behind, one hand resting on Elowen’s shoulder, the bandage over her eyes swaying gently in the morning wind. She tilted her head toward the gate and smiled. "Runi is here."

"Runi" stood at the bottom of the steps, hugging the cloth bag to her chest. She was ten minutes late, something that had never happened to Runi.

"Sorry, I’m late." She bowed, the angle of her bow strangely precise. "The road was a little crowded."

Erik smiled. "It’s alright. Thank you, Runi. You had to run back and forth for me so early in the morning."

"Runi" froze.

Thank you.

She turned those two words over and over in her mind like an unfamiliar stone. Thank you for what? She had only brought a cloth bag.

The female soldier whose body she had once inhabited had carried wounded soldiers, stood guard through the night, eaten cold meals while standing.

No one had ever said those two words to her. Yet this man, with his arm broken and his ribs cracked, was thanking her for a cloth bag.

She lowered her head a little further, trying to imitate Runi’s gentle tone. "It’s nothing, Sir Erik."

Meira took the bag and placed it in the trunk, her nose wrinkling slightly. "Huh, what is that smell? It smells like ink."

"Runi" patted her chest pocket twice, where Runi always kept a ballpoint pen. "My pen leaked."

"Then replace it. If it gets on your clothes, it’ll be a pain to wash." Meira closed the trunk, then turned toward Erik, who was secretly using his left hand to try to stand. Her voice immediately softened. "And Master, please sit still for me. Be good."

Inside the car, Felyn sat beside "Runi" in the back seat and reached for her hand out of habit. "Runi’s hand is so cold."

"It’s still early."

Felyn gave a soft hum, then used her thumb to gently rub the back of that hand, slow and steady, as if trying to pass over a little warmth. "Runi" looked down at the finger moving back and forth over her skin.

She did not understand. No one had ordered this. The blind girl gained nothing from it either. She tried rubbing Felyn’s hand in return, but too hard, too fast, as though wiping away a stain.

Felyn giggled. "That tickles."

"Runi" stopped moving and silently memorized the word.

Tickles.

...

The Silver Moon mansion welcomed them with the scent of toasted bread. Carmilla stood waiting at the door, her apron still dusted with flour. She nodded to Erik in greeting, but her gaze lingered on his braced arm a little longer.

Meira had turned the first-floor living room into a recovery room, placing a bed beside the window overlooking the garden. The moment Erik lay down, Laviana pulled an armchair close, crossed her legs, and held out a tablet.

"You are home now, my star. Take a look at what people are saying about you."

The hashtag #LightningWings sat at the top of the trends. Right beneath it was a photograph of the hospital’s front gate: hundreds of people packed together, most of them Succubi, hand-painted banners held high, some even carrying large prints of Erik at the exact moment lightning wings opened behind his back.

Erik looked at the picture for a long time. "They are still standing there?"

"I told the reporters you would come out at nine." Laviana glanced at the clock, her red lips curving. "It’s only eight fifty."

She swiped to the final page. A social media account still completely empty, its profile picture showing Erik’s back amid rain and lightning, its username a single word: Erik.

"I created it for you. The password is Elowen’s birthday. No need to thank me."

Elowen blushed. "Why is it my birthday?"

"Because it is the only thing he definitely will not forget." Laviana placed the tablet in Erik’s left hand, her voice lowering. "The whole city is waiting for you to speak. If you do not, someone else will speak for you. And I do not enjoy hearing them speak at all."

Erik sighed, looked at his braced right arm, then turned to Elowen. "I’ll speak. Can you type for me?"

Elowen sat at the edge of the bed, her pointed ears lifting slightly at being given a task. Erik closed his eyes for a moment, then slowly dictated each sentence.

[I am Erik. I am still alive, my right arm is in a brace, and I have been forbidden from holding a spoon on my own for seven days.

Thank you to the people who held the line at the guard station that day. Those who fell before me. Those who carried their comrades out of the rubble. Those who could have run but stayed. I was only the last person to stand up, so the cameras turned toward me.

Go home early tonight. Eat a proper meal with the person you love. I will do the same, even if someone has to feed me.]

Elowen’s fingers paused over the final words, her face reddening all the way to the tips of her ears. "Do we really need to write that last sentence?"

"We do." Erik smiled. "It’s true."

She bit her lip, finished typing, then pressed post. Less than a minute later, comments poured down like rain.

[I’m really crying.]

[Wait, who is feeding him?? Who gets to feed Sir Erik??]

[My daughter was at that guard station. Thank you for still remembering them.]

Then, among those comments, other messages began to appear.

[Good acting. What man standing before a camera does not know how to speak prettily.]

[Traitor. He has dragged all of us men into the mud.]

[Succubi have never needed men to hold the line.] The account’s profile picture was a gray crescent moon.

[If his right arm is broken, break the left one too so they match.]

Only a few seconds later, fans flooded in to argue back. Some posted the entire recording of Erik carrying Elowen out of the rubble. Some cursed in language harsh enough that Elowen hurriedly scrolled the screen up.

Meira read the threatening comment over her daughter’s shoulder, and her green eyes turned a shade colder. Laviana said nothing, merely took screenshots and saved them in a folder titled "For Later."

Erik took the tablet, turned off the screen, and placed it face down on the bedside table.

"You are not reading anymore?" Laviana raised an eyebrow.

"I wrote it for the people at the guard station." He rested his head against the pillow and yawned. "As long as they read it, that is enough."

In the corner of the room, "Runi" stood still with a stack of clean towels in her arms. She had read every comment over Elowen’s shoulder, one by one, and counted.

Four hundred and twelve people said they loved him. Three hundred and eight people said they hated him. One person wanted his remaining arm broken too.

She waited for him to become angry. Any creature being threatened would bare its fangs. That female soldier had bared hers.

She herself had as well. Yet that man only yawned. Then, when Elowen secretly slipped her hand beneath the blanket and intertwined it with his left hand, he smiled. Not the polite smile from the hospital gate.

A different smile, one that wrinkled the corners of his eyes and made his exhausted face seem as though it had just been lit from within.

Strange. Three hundred and eight people hated him, yet one small hand was enough to erase all of it.

"Runi" turned toward the window. Runi’s face was reflected there. She pulled the corners of her lips upward, copying the smile she had just seen, the exact curve, even the wrinkle at the corners of the eyes.

The reflection in the glass smiled beautifully. But nothing inside lit up at all. She tried again. Still nothing.

"How strange," she whispered, so softly that only the glass could hear. Then she tilted her head to the left, then to the right.