~ Episode Twenty-Two ~

A War Within the Mind:

Shinji’s True Feelings

“This whole thing is a big mistake. You don’t see that?”

He did.

“Do you really think this is fair to our girl?”

He didn’t.

“Brother, she deserves to know who she really is, and keeping it back from her puts us all in so much danger.”

Shinji knew that.

“Especially her.”

Oh, how he knew that.

“You know that, right?”

Shinji stared at the Book of Lodoss where Eri had set it down on the coffee table. He was frozen to the spot by the sight of it, all the secrets kept within its ancient pages. Secrets about the Original Five and their companions in an age so long ago. Secrets about the Black King and his influence over the once-esteemed deities of their world, the Kenah’dai.

Secrets about Eri Seruma and her true identity – Terra Sufocus, the messianic Child of Destiny – and the war waged between Humans and Monsters, just for her.

A war that continued to wage today, seven centuries later.

“What’ll hurt her more?”

The truth.

“A heart-to-heart talk with a friend—”

A total stranger in the skin of a boy she used to know.

“— who loves her?”

The Book of Lodoss taunted him with Evan’s words, those words, alongside a pain that squeezed apart Shinji’s lungs with an icy-steel claw – Viktor Sufocus’s own gauntlet. With the pain formed an acidic lump of apprehension that curdled at the base of his throat.

There was no getting around this.

“You tell her. Or I will.”

Shinji’s knees buckled. He sank back down on the couch next to Eri, took a deep breath, and counted backwards from ten.

It was time.

“Seruma – I have to tell you something.” He hesitated, running a dry tongue over chapped lips. “The truth is, Jarem – he was more than just the first Warrior of Fire. He was the Black King’s own son. He, uh – Jarem didn’t have any children when he died. No one to continue his bloodline, like the rest of our ancestors did. There was only his sister.”

Shinji stared deeper into the ancient secrets that whispered off the sealed-away pages of the Book of Lodoss. He grimaced through burlap sacks of gravel that stacked the pits of his guts.

“Seruma – I don’t – I don’t know how else to put this. But, the truth is that—”

But, the words didn’t come. They wouldn’t come, refused, blocked off by the acrid glob of anxiety lodged in his throat. Shinji took another deep breath and searched for solace in the image of his mother, her oil-painted gaze looming from over the fire place mantle.

“—You’re not the Warrior of Fire. Not really. The fact is – your ability to wield the Fire Hammer in the first place is a miracle – because – well, you have the power to harness all elements at will. And that’s because – Jarem’s sister, Terra – it’s you. You’re the Child of—”

But his words were cut off when Eri suddenly bumped against his shoulder. Shinji sucked back his surprise from the unexpected weight of her, the strawberry sweet softness of her hair against his cheek.

A sigh sounded in his ear on quiet, stable, breaths.

She was asleep.

“Seruma…” Unwanted warmth flooded Shinji as he tried to shift away, but her body tipped against him the more he tried to wriggle free. He grunted, embarrassed, and steadied himself against the backrest of the couch they shared. “Hey, wake up…”

But she didn’t. Shinji rolled his eyes, more so out of helplessness than annoyance at her. He couldn’t blame Eri for being exhausted.

It was because of her innate connection with the Kenah’dai: the headaches and vertigo that reacted to the Monsters’ divine existence, an intuitive radar for danger, as well as the eventual awakening of her mind’s muscle – all things he was warned would start to happen now. All things that must have been taking its toll on her body.

And, considering they’d faced five Monsters in less than a week…

It had to be the reason why she kept fainting in battle.

Shinji’s heart ached for her.

And here he was – hosting a meeting that would forever change their relationship as Star Warriors, would forever change their relationship as friends – only to find himself used as a crutch for the Child of Destiny to drool on as she slept off his mother’s favorite pasta recipe.

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He imagined Evan’s face, scrunched into a quake of restrained laughter at such an absurd outcome.

Or maybe he would wear scorn, instead.

A look of frustration, despondency, for the boy Evan depended on to lead them to victory against the Black King – Eri’s future.

The boy Evan called his bestie.

“I’m not playing around anymore.”

Evan Williams – Shinji’s best friend. The boy who had always encouraged affection and open communication between them. The boy who had always encouraged honesty and emotional vulnerability between them.

The boy who was always there when Shinji needed him most.

The boy who made Shinji’s heart flutter.

The boy who, after so many encounters with Monsters together, Shinji found himself starting to develop new feelings for…

…Feelings he didn’t quite understand yet…

…Feelings that terrified him.

His chest tightened around the thought of Evan. Then, even tighter around the thought of Evan wearing an expression of disappointment, disgust, disownment.

“You’re being delusional.”

Shinji launched the thoughts away with a shudder and took in a deep breath through his nose that brought drowsiness intermingled with Eri’s signature perfume. A meditative calmness lapped over him in slow waves.

The weight of stress, anxiety, fear – all the things Shinji carried on his shoulders like that of the world – lifted from his muscles, leaving behind the tingles of relaxation.

Eri shifted against him, the flesh of her cheek against his cheek, the weight of her body against his weight, the smell of her lung-swelling strawberry fragrance in his nostrils – her little snoozing gasps in his ear.

Shinji struggled to swallow. Despite the fact that she was only asleep, the sound of her – the sound of her voice, doing that – stirred alive something inside him that set his face on fire, numbed his brain with an electric tingle he couldn’t comprehend.

He looked for guidance in the oil-painted eyes of his parents that leered at and judged him no matter the angle he stood in the parlor. Shinji stared into the darkened pools of his father’s eyes, the radiant emeralds of his mother’s.

With every breath he took, there was the strawberry intoxication of Eri Seruma. A girl he used to know. A girl who owned his life. A girl whose fate balanced on his very shoulders until she rightfully had no longer a use for him.

Shinji sank with nervous rigidity into the couch cushions, unable to disengage from the chemical influence Eri had over him. His dozy eyelids fluttered closed as he dared to listen, to feel, the warmth of her gasps and shudders in his ear.

The heat in Shinji’s face started to swell involuntarily down the length of his body, activating sensations, urges, he never expected to feel for her before – arousal.

Desert-dryness formed on his tongue, alongside searing claws of shame that tore his insides to ribbons. He wanted to move, wished he could move. Desperately needed to shake Eri awake, to get her off of him.

But, it was no use. He had no voice to rouse her. He had no strength to move.

The devil inside him yearned for the girl he used to know to stay asleep sidled against his trembling body. The devil inside him yearned for this, the excitement of her feel, her smell, her sounds.

Shinji tried to swallow again, desperate to reclaim any ounce of willpower to repel the Child of Destiny’s unconscious and involuntary influence over him. Her power over him. “S … Seru…”

But, it was no use.

Shinji was losing the everyday war he so carefully waged within himself.

Shinji was losing control of himself.

His hands folded together in his lap, clammy and jittery, kneading at the knuckles with nervous desire he had no idea what to do with, except to let it wash over him.

It was a struggle just to breathe against Eri’s sweet strawberry fragrance, the swell of butterfly warmth in his lungs it induced.

She nestled into the crook of his neck, mumbling things about elves and war hammers. Shinji shivered with eyes closed, leaning into the burn of drunkenness for the girl he barely knew anymore, the girl he disallowed himself to reacquaint with outside of his prophetic obligations to her.

The girl who Shinji, at one time in an ancient age, considered his only friend.

His best friend – his life line.

The first girl he ever fell in love with. The only girl he could ever fall in love with.

But, even if things were different…

…Even if she wasn’t who the prophecy said she was…

…Shinji’s love for Eri Seruma was too painful to bear.

Just then, an electric graze coursed across his thigh. Shinji’s eyes shot open to find her hand there. Mere centimeters from his own hands, cupped together, sweat-dotted.

Psychic electricity sparked between untouched flesh. An invisible warmth emanated off of Shinji’s fingers that encouraged them, with ribs-crunching palpitations, to glide towards hers.

The urge to caress Eri’s fingers…

The need to graze her knuckles with his thumb…

But the oily stares of his parents were watching him. His mother was watching him. And behind her emerald gaze radiated Shinji’s duty as the Warrior of Earth – appointed leader for the Star Warriors.

He knew what needed to be done.

Knew what could not be done, and refused to give in.

Opa’s warning lingered: “You’re a descendant of Arissa Lockhart, a once decisive leader for a whole country. Act like it.”

And yet shame still hung in Shinji’s piston-pounding heart as he simply sat there in silence – aching, terrified, silence – as the girl he was in love with, the girl he’d loved since childhood, slept soundly against his shoulder.

His clammy hands tightened together.

But, it was no use.

Face and brain on fire, Shinji let himself nuzzle against the lushness of her ginger hair, shuddering through a bout of shallow breaths as the flood of intoxication, budding excitement for her, drowned him whole.

“E … Eriya…”

Weakness for the girl he inhaled on every breath was the only thing that made sense anymore. The sky-cutting walls around his heart began to fall. The Mithril fortification that kept his hands clasped began to crumble. He kissed across her temple in slow and tender pecks, placed his forehead against her crown.

“Eriya … I …”

She stretched into him, shivering from his gentle kisses. “Mm … Shinji…”

Shinji shuddered at the sound of his own name, urged onward as he breathed Eri in as much as possible on labored gasps. Drunken needfulness became a conduit that dared his stubby labor fingers across his thigh – a quivering pilgrimage towards where her slender artist fingers awaited his caress.

The thrill of it rushed through him like nothing else.

Like bliss.