I Wish You Well In Your Next Love, My Love - Chapter 36
“See that rock over there.”
There was a boy sitting, leaning against a gray wall. Long eyelashes cast deep shadows beneath his half-lowered eyes.
An Awakened.
His unstable, ragged breathing and the sharp, erupting energy around him were anything but normal. Sweat ran down his pale, fine cheeks as if he had been caught in the rain.
“Hit me with that.”
With what, hit what. I couldn’t keep my composure, my legs trembled uncontrollably.
Blood and corpses were scattered everywhere. The traces of battle were far too brutal for a thirteen-year-old child seeing such a scene for the first time to remain sane.
I pushed away the broken stone at my feet with my foot. I didn’t know exactly what he meant by hitting him, but whatever it was, I didn’t want to do it.
“If you don’t want to die, then kill me.”
Each syllable came out with difficulty, yet his tone was harsh, as if grinding the words out.
Were Awakeneds trained to abandon their lives without hesitation in situations like this.
The boy seemed long past any childish innocence, buried beneath gray dust. He did not fear death, and his mind and spirit already looked too tattered to mend.
But.
“…Sorry. I’m someone who saves people.”
Honestly, I was scared. Scared enough to nearly wet myself, even though I was long past the age for that.
The fierce energy radiating from him pierced through my whole body every second.
Calm down, calm down. When I took his wounded hand with my trembling fingers, our eyes met.
‘Ah…’
His face was filthy with wounds and dust, but his ash-blue eyes shone clear and bright like glass.
It was only for a moment, but his face was so beautiful that I forgot to be afraid.
I thought he would yank his hand away roughly, but the boy remained unexpectedly still. No, vacant might be the more accurate word.
Feeling his gaze fixed on me, unwilling to let go, I performed purification for the first time in my life.
Breaking the rule that trainees who had not received permission must never perform purification.
“Ugh…”
It felt as if a hole had opened in a dam, the strength draining out of me uncontrollably.
I had never learned anything like this.
Awakeneds and Purifiers were ranked according to their innate abilities. And unfortunately, I was a fourth-rank Purifier, considered lower tier.
The boy before me was second-rank, or perhaps even higher. Otherwise, it wouldn’t feel like this…
“Ugh…”
Even as I thought I might shrivel up and die at this rate, I couldn’t let go of the hand I was holding.
As he devoured the purification greedily, his eyes examined my tear-streaked face as if peering into me, or as if searching prey.
I think I felt a surge of exhilaration as the dangerously fluctuating energy gradually calmed. Then the boy released my hand first.
“I told you to kill me, yet you’re the one trying to die instead.”
Despite the rough words spoken in a tone far from childlike, his cheeks and ears were flushed red, as if painted.
“Your name?”
Drenched in cold sweat, I spoke with difficulty.
“A, Arvina.”
I had said it impulsively. I knew it was a mistake, but once spoken, the words couldn’t be taken back.
The boy only nodded and did not give his own name.
“Young Master Gerard!”
But when people rushed in all at once, I was able to hear his name as well.
Gerard. A name too famous not to know.
“We’ve received a support request from the Dastya Plains. We’ll escort you there immediately!”
He was going to be deployed again in that condition?
The people who came rushing to fetch him made a great fuss, yet they didn’t seem to care about his state at all. They treated him with great respect, but never asked what he wanted.
Even though he had been pushed to the brink of rampaging, Gerard moved without a word.
At that moment, as he was being led away surrounded by people, he suddenly turned back.
