‘Just how long was I asleep again?’

Leo laid down on the bed, keeping his eyes closed and his breath steady as he leisurely allowed his body to fully awake.

The memory of those strange, seatbelt-like chains from the last time was still fresh.

The difference between the last time and how things went right now couldn’t be more clear.

‘It’s likely nanites…’

Reaffirmed in his belief, Leo kept his breathing stable for a while before… keeping his eyes shut for just a little longer.

‘What should I do?’

This one, all-encompassing question hung over his neck like an executioner’s axe.

‘Information, supplies, access to that hill…’

A short list of the main objectives ahead soon formed in Leo’s thoughts.

Information of how long was he asleep so that he could find out the timeline for his chance to return home.

Supplies to make any attempt at tackling the issue possible.

Access to the team’s truck, or what was left of it, in hopes of returning.

Three simple tasks.

Ask for the time, find a backpack that he lost sometime between falling down the cliff and waking up in this strange girl’s place, and then a heading on how to return to where he fell from.

A set of questions that could be easily answered within the span of a simple, organic conversation with the locals.

‘Judging by the progress, I should be able to speak their language in a day or two,’ Leo thought while directing his closed eyes to where he remembered the doors of the room to be.

‘I guess, for now, I should wait?’

A thought lingered on the edge of Leo’s mind. Fighting its temptation, he focused on the imagined position of the doors, using it as an anchor to place himself within the plan of the entire room he made in his head.

With this image, Leo finally focused on all that he could hear, straining his senses to their limits in his bid to record every tiniest noise.

The brutal injection he received back at that devil’s nurse place was quickly proving to be more and more vital to his survival.

Left all alone, without a single piece of useful equipment and with slim chances of ever coming back…

‘It may be slim… But I still have a fighting chance to make it!’

With the single desire to make use of his surprisingly lenient fortune burning in Leo’s soul, he took one last breath, and scanned the tapestry of sounds filling the picture of the room in his head…

And opened his eyes.

The room was dark. Merely the flickering glimmer of a candlelight reaching through the threshold of the door broke the otherwise perfect darkness.

The benefits of letting his nanites slowly wake him up finally revealed themselves, having Leo’s eyes adapt to the dark long before he raised his eyelids.

In a single instant, and even with the burden of the lingering weakness in his bones, he scanned the entire room, matching the matrix of the soundwaves he registered in his mind with the dark visuals of the room.

Everything matched.

The narrow bed he laid on. The huge, metal lock on the… inside of the door?

‘Wait, what?’

Leo’s mind froze for a second, glitching on such a strange notion.

A huge lock hung from the door and the metal bolt forced deep into the stone wall, barring anyone from the outside from pushing the doors open.

Meaning, Leo was the only one who could decide whether to open it or not.

This room lacked a single element that would be out of place.

His bed, the doors, the closed shuts on the lone window, a dark, weary figure brooding over a cup while gazing out through the gaps of the window shuts into the darkness of the night, the glimmering right of a candle causing the shadows to dance at the door’s missing threshold…

“You are awake, are you not?”

Leo took a slow and steady breath, desperately fighting to prevent his body from changing its constant pace.

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

In this kind of dark, it would be impossible for this girl to notice Leo’s opened eyes. Even he, with the help of his nanites, couldn’t peer through the dark to see anything beyond the general shapes of the dark figure.

And quite notably, the nanites helped to translate the entire sentence for him.

Still, he recognized the voice. The sweet, calming voice of the goddess bearing the face of the devil.

The girl moved a bit in her seat before breaking her calm and nostalgic act and taking a deep swing.

Unable to see the features of the girl’s face, Leo still easily noticed her throat moving as she readily gulped whatever she had in her cup.

“Haaa…”

The girl’s sweet voice as she exhaled with satisfaction turned into the one guilty pleasure he kept a secret from the world. And with a familiar tingle raising up his spine…

He recalled that girl’s face.

The moment when the head of the veteran leader of their squad went flying, bright red blood bursting out of his severed veins.

The sight of all of the squad members falling to the ground, dead within the first, unprovoked attack.

*Gulp*

Restraining the rising terror of the slaughter Leo miraculously managed to escape from, Leo swallowed his saliva.

It was quite the feat to do only that much when the horrors of that moment reawakened at the mere memory of that murderous beauty.

The face of the last guy that died, when he looked back at Leo, already aware of the fate that awaited them…

Unknowingly, Leo clutched his fist. And even though it was much more than just opening his eyes, the girl sitting by the window didn’t seem to notice at all.

By now, his momentary sympathy, longing for the comfort this girl appeared to represent…

‘Yeah, as if. I’m not the protagonist of this damned world, so there’s no way a silent, mysterious beauty is going to save me from the peril.’

This mere thought put a small smirk on the young man’s face, as he struggled to hold back his self-loath… self-reflecting laughter.

‘She said she’s going to take care of me, didn’t she?’ he thought as he recalled what happened the last time.

Still, with a dry laugh forcing its way to Leo’s lips, he breathed out before slowly raising up on his bed.

“Excuse me…”

The girl by the window twitched, quelling a much bigger jump her body initiated.

She took a deep breath and then slowly breathed out before finally turning her head towards the young man.

Still, the flickering light coming from below the door never dared to cross the invisible barrier and shed the veil of darkness on the girl’s face.

‘How fitting…’ Leo struggled not to laugh over his own naive thinking. ‘I guess now I know what she meant by that.’

Gently squeezing out his muscles, Leo started to warm his body up.

“Can you tell me, for how long was I out?” Leo spoke out in a calm and collected, albeit exhausted voice.

This time, the girl didn’t move at all. Only after a moment, she leaned her head to the side, seemingly allowing the candle’s flickering light to reach her face…

Only for this faint hint of light to obstinately refuse to touch the girl’s face.

(“I’m sorry,” but I don’t understand. Time? “You meant” time? What time?)

A wave of regret washed over Leo’s soul as he twice took on a slight grimace of dissatisfaction.

‘Not yet, huh?’

Even though it was obvious, Leo couldn’t help but internally whine for a short moment.

Still, shaking off this unpleasant feeling, he combed through his mind for a while.

“Me,” the young man spoke, pointing at himself. “Sleeping, out, unconscious,” he continued, putting out his tongue and dropping both his head and his eyes to the side, mimicking someone knocked out. He then raised his hands to the side of his face and closed his eyes, pretending to sleep. “How…”

In the end, this was one word that stumped him. For how was he supposed to refer to time?

Gritting his teeth as he declined every new idea that came to him as it relied on the ideas that this world likely has yet to figure out… Leo ended up raising his left fist before opening it up one finger at a time.

“One? Two? Three? Four? Five?”

The veil of darkness covering the girl’s face appeared to fade a little. Then, she leaned forward a bit… only to stretch out her arm and unveil a total of four fingers.

Then, after keeping her hand up for quite some time, she straightened her thumb… only to hold it still mid-move and then keep it half-straight.

“Foor.” Her beautiful, soothing voice returned as she attempted to repeat what Leo said. “Fiife”

Leo’s face twitched.

“Four to five, four and a half…” he muttered to himself, struggling to maintain the balance between his fascination with the girl, the terror she struck to the very depths of his soul… and the immense relief of learning the great news!

‘That means, there are still two ticks left! If I hurry, I might be able to return in just about two days!’

The hurdle of getting equipment to support his cause against the already overwhelming odds and then somehow finding a way to access the truck…

Those two were still problems left for Leo to solve, but for now, he allowed himself a single moment to celebrate his wondrous findings.

‘Wait, but how much time has passed from when I lost my consciousness to when I was found?’

Taking a deep breath to deal with the sudden doubt, Leo shook his head a bit before breathing out a second sigh of relief.

“Thank you…” Leo muttered as he lowered his head in gratitude.

The veil on the girl’s face grew nearly transparent.

Just a few hints of her face were enough to…

Strike into three cords of Leo’s soul.

The admiration, the terror, and… anticipation?

“This is…”

Whatever the girl wanted to say, had to wait. Her mouth suddenly closed as her face turned and locked on the nearby doors. At the same time, her presence… faded, seemingly merging into the darkness of the room.

‘Wait, I think I…’

Leo’s eyes twitched when he finally caught on to the distant noise. A noise that grew louder as its source quickly came closer and closer.

(“Don’t miss” anything! “Search” every “room!”)

The rattle made by several tens of feet running towards the doors of the room grew louder and louder, soon joined by the officers calling out orders.

The noise reached all the way to the doors, their feeble and crude look an obvious giveaway of their presence…

But those steps came… and went, seemingly ignoring the room even though passing right by the doors leading to it. The light of the torches shone brightly through the gap below the doors, bringing some much-needed light to the room.

“Gasp!”

Alerted, Leo looked to the side, only to find the familiar, beautiful face… currently twisted in panic while the girl’s hands rushed up to cover her veil-less face.

Her huge, purple eyes widened… only to then freeze as Leo stared at her with a slightly shocked expression of his own.

“Are you okay?” Leo politely asked, prompted by the strange mesh of his conflicting feelings fighting for supremacy over his soul.

The girl’s eyes twitched… and then moved a little bit up while she continued to give him the looks of a startled kitten.

But then, the girl’s beautiful face contorted as her eyes shot towards a small bracelet from which hung a fingernail-sized piece of crystal.

“Shit…” The girl whispered, her entire being suddenly fixated on the small, red light pulsing within the crystal. She then slowly raised her eyes while squeezing her hands down into fists. “She’s here.”