Chapter 56
Undue Worth
Asher found himself floating in darkness, drifting through the endless void with neither the light nor the sound. It was overwhelming yet, at the same time, wholly soothing. There was nothing to distract him, nothing to besiege him, nothing to take over him whole--just stillness and silence, perfectly fused into one.
A mere blink of an eye later, however, it changed. The silence was no more, replaced by the sounds of the crashing waves and the chirping of the birds. Opening his eyes, he was met with a distantly familiar sight, one that he thought lay buried within the far depths of his memories, never to be dug up again.
He sat atop a fenced-off balcony overlooking a complex web of cobblestone streets interspersed with red-dotted rooftops and stone-built houses. The terrain cascaded downward in perfect harmony, all the way to the open bay flanked by a pair of mountains, feeding out into the sea.
The breeze was gentle and cooling, perfect for the mid-summer sun hanging on the clear, azure sky above. The world was tranquil, peaceful, and perfect. Tethered to the realm of purity that Asher hadn't experienced in a long, long time. Precisely since this day, in fact. Almost unwillingly, his gaze drifted away from the bay and to his left, to the other side of a table beset with a basket of fruits and a bottle of wine. There, she sat.
She wore her favorite, white nightgown, her black hair tussled to the side over the chair while she lay leaning lazily. One leg crossed over another, hanging limply, and the free hand that was not supporting her head playing gingerly with a glass of wine, swaying it left and right, while the pair of almost ruby-like eyes gazed toward the distance.
They swiveled toward him abruptly, craning up into a warm and loving smile. The cherry-red lips parted slightly to reveal two rows of perfect teeth. It was just as he remembered, as though he’d never lived past this day. A powerful memory seared in the depths of his soul. But why... why was he here, now? He wondered.
“What’s wrong, hotshot?” she asked with a chuckle. He smiled without meaning, relaxing deeper into the chair. He didn’t know why he was here... but he didn’t want to leave. Not just yet, anyway.
“... I missed you,” he replied softly.
"Missed me? My, my, you must have drank way more than I thought last night. Want me to make you a lemonade with honey?"
“No, it’s fine. It wouldn’t help.”
“It usually does.”
“With hangovers,” he said, closing his eyes and enjoying the breeze. “This ain’t it.”
“What is it, then?” she queried.
“An illusion? Hypnotism? A trap? A dream?” he said. “I don’t know, either.”
“Riiiight. Maybe you’re still properly pissed.”
“Ha ha, yeah, maybe,” he opened his eyes and looked at her again. “You promised you’d rat me out if they caught you.”
“...”
“You looked me in the eye and I made you promise,” he added. “You lied to me, Hannah.”
“I was gonna,” she said after a moment’s silence, smiling still. “I really was. But then the bastard started hitting on me. You look cute. Fuckin’ hell. How about after this we go do some loving? The guy couldn’t pick up a woman if she were naked and stretching on his bed. So... I decided not to. Out of spite. Nothing else.”
“...” Asher fell silent, biting his lip. It was being tainted... one of his favorite memories. One of the dearest moments of his life. “Remember Venice?”
“Venice? Of course,” she said with a chuckle. “I nearly drowned while you oh-so-passionately declared your love for me. It was straight up something out of a movie, ha ha ha. Haah, nobody could ever crack me up quite like you. In more ways than one~~”
“... haah,” Asher sighed and laughed silently; that was who she’d always been. Carefree. Undaunted. Unbothered. “I meant the second time. When we went there for a vacation.”
“Yeah,” she said. “We stayed in that bedbug-infested AirBnB. My God was it bad.”
“Ha ha ha.”
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
"I woke up in the middle of the night thinking you were finally open to some bite play. But nooope. Ha ha ha... why are you asking?"
“I asked you whether you wanted to retire someplace.”
“Yeah.”
“And you said no.”
“Yeah.”
“Why?” he titled his head toward her.
“... you know why, Ash,” she said, taking a sip of wine. “Did you honestly ever think I’d be fine as a housewife or something?”
“...”
“Or do you think you’d be fine not shaking hands with death almost every day?”
“I would--”
"--lies," she interrupted, her gaze hardening for a moment. "I've never met another person in my life as obsessed with walking that tightrope, Ash. You fronted tiredness and exhaustion, but deep down... you loved it more than me. You would have drowned both you and I had we ever retired. We were never more alive than when we held the trigger of a gun, Ash. For some... love is enough. For us, it wasn't."
“I died, too.”
“You did?”
“Hm,” he nodded. “I... I don’t know exactly how, to be honest. I was on a ship cruising through the Atlantic. Decided to take a cruise over a plane, just for the experience. And then, one day, I woke up... in hell.”
“Wow, hell? Did you meet Satan? Is he as hot as I imagined?” Asher grinned, shaking his head gently.
“I met something worse,” he said. “Apathy abound. No... not even apathy. Raw, unbridled hatred. I led an army, Hannah. Caused deaths of millions.”
“Sounds like quite a sight.”
“It was, hah. Nothing quite compares.”
“...”
“Was I a good person?”
“Hm?”
“I mean--not good. I know I wasn’t good. But was I so evil... to deserve this?” he asked as silence befell them. He locked eyes with her and endured the scrutiny of light, his heart churning like a drum.
“We saw evil, Ash,” she said. “You should know... no matter how bad we got, we were never evil. The fruits aren’t just ripe or rotten. There’s a litany of stages between. We lived on that thin line... balancing the best we could.”
“... and yet, it all rings hollow,” he said, smiling bitterly and closing his eyes.
“Why?”
“Because it’s just me selfishly reassuring myself... through you, of all people. God, I feel like shit. Staining your memory like this. Hah. If you really were here, you would have chewed me out like mad.”
“And you would have loved every second of it.”
“Probably, yeah.”
“Hey, Ash.”
“Hm?”
“It wasn’t your fault.”
“I’m doing it again.”
“You warned me not to go,” she added, her voice growing stranger and distorted. “But I didn’t listen.”
“Stop it. Please. Whoever is doing this.”
“You told me that it was a trap. But I was so desperate to find her.”
“Please... please...” he whimpered a plea.
“I had to find her, Ash. No matter what. I had to find our--”
“--STOP IT!!!!!”
Sitting up, he found himself in the cabin, doused from head to toe in cold sweat as though he’d just taken a dip in the pool. He was panting heavily, gasping and struggling for every breath, feeling his heart beating like mad, seemingly wanting to rip out of his chest.
He grasped his chest, leaning over and letting the flood wash over him, clinging to the straw of calmness in the maelstrom. Soon enough, began to laugh, not knowing whether it was out of desperation or pain, before getting up and walking to the living room, grabbing the jug of wine and downing it all in one go. He wanted the buzz, the confusion, the looseness of alcohol so that he could forget. But against his wishes, it did not come.
Retreating back into the bedroom yet again, he sat down and hung his head low, shoulders whimpering. It was unpleasant, tainting a sacred memory like that. Especially not knowing why it happened. It was as though someone deliberately made him recall and forced him to alter it. Knowing this world... that was just as likely as any explanation, he mused.
Shaking it off the best he could, he grabbed a quick meal and started working out. Though there were countless notifications swarming his peripheral--likely the rewards for clearing the Stage--he didn’t immediately check them out. For a moment, at least, he wanted to be divorced from everything else, separated from the hubris of life itself. He wanted to forget, once again, and bury that memory deep down inside his heart.
It was the last time he was truly happy, after all, and it was his safe haven. There was something explicitly diabolical about dragging up the deep dregs of one’s soul so blatantly to the surface, even more so than all the things they’d put him through before. It was as though they were telling him that no parts of him were safe, that there was nothing he could hold on to in sanctity, that every single inch of him, within and without, was beset for pain and suffering.
Just as his workout session ended and as he sat down to grab a jug of water, the fluttering of the wings caused him to look to the side. Qyne was there, and though he suspected she may have been the one who put him through it, judging from the lack of the snide smile as well as the fact that she’d only shown up now, that likely wasn’t the case.
“... what are you doing here?” he asked after he finished drinking.
“You survived.” she said.
“Wow. Did you realize that all by yourself?”
“How was it?” she ignored his jab, strangely enough. There was no contempt in words, not as much as before anyway, putting him on guard.
“What?”
“Meeting the An--the Prince.”
“... why do you ask?”
“Of all the places where he could leave his Spirit Imprint,” she said. “It was not for those who inherited his cause. But for you. For humans.”
“Oh,” Asher chuckled. “You don’t have to worry. It’s hardly because he thinks highly of us. Per his own words, it’s ‘cause of his pride.”
“You talked with him, huh? Tsk, filthy vermin. Wholly undeserving.”
“I’m not in the mood, Qyne,” he said.
“You never seem to be in the mood.”
“Yeah, well, I wonder fucking why?”
“What did you mean when you said that the Duke used you as a pawn?”
“H-huh?”
“When you told me that the Duke used you as a pawn,” she said. “What did you mean by that?”
"..." Asher fell silent, gazing at the pair of clear eyes. There was contempt within them, anger, an abundance of loathing... but there was also something he had never seen before: genuine curiosity. It was as though for the first time since the two of them met, she saw more than a flesh full of fleabags, even if it was purely for selfish reasons. "You haven't earned the answer," he replied, walking back into the bedroom. "Besides, if you are as clever as you claim... figure it out on your own. Isn't it beneath you to ask the so-called filthy vermin? You brainless bitch."