“You……!”
Abrisius’s sticky gaze staring at him intently. When Seianes felt the Underground Energy rippling within those eyes, he couldn’t close his mouth.
Certainly, it had been closed since Abrisius met Amina.
“Abrisius, what on earth happened?”
The flustered Seianes asked Abrisius. However, Abrisius didn’t answer. Without erasing his sly expression, he approached Seianes.
“Who knows what happened?”
Instead of answering, he lightly touched Seianes’s nose. There was no reason to answer Seianes’s questions.
The fruit offered by the desire that took Seianes’s form. The moment he took a bite, the power that had been sleeping until now awakened and showed Abrisius a new world.
The first of those was Seianes’s love directed toward him.
The image of Seianes seen through the underground power planted certainty in Abrisius’s heart.
‘Abrisius, I love you.’
Along with the sweet words of love, he could see the size and flow of the emotions he held for Abrisius changing.
Love. At the very beginning, the love he held was a parent’s heart toward their child. Seeing the newborn child regard him as a parent, at first he felt only a sense of responsibility and pity.
But those feelings gradually changed as Abrisius grew.
He was happy when the babbling mouth called his name, and he was truly ecstatic when the child came running to embrace him as he grew. Saying no other child could be more lovable than this, he gave the child a name.
A child loved by the earth. ‘Abrisius.’
Thus, Abrisius grew abundantly in Seianes’s love.
As he grew, his childish innocence disappeared. The moment his lovable body underwent changes. The form of love Seianes held toward Abrisius also gradually changed.
Without Seianes himself knowing.
The changes in emotions occurring within him passed before Abrisius’s eyes. Seeing that flow, he felt an ecstasy that twisted his insides.
‘So you did too. You did.’
Thus Abrisius realized. Seianes loves Abrisius. Not as a parent but as a romantic interest. Perhaps the depth of those emotions exceeded imagination.
Complex emotions that even Seianes himself couldn’t understand were directed toward Abrisius.
“When I kissed you. What did you think?”
“What are you talking about……. Really. Why are you acting like this? I didn’t think anything! No, rather, you don’t seem like the you I know, so it’s creepy.”
“Really?”
But for that to be true…….
“You liked it so much though?”
The moment he covered Seianes’s soft and tender lips. Abrisius didn’t miss the changes felt within Seianes.
Fear, fright, vague terror about experiencing a situation for the first time, and a sense of betrayal. Negative emotions that scattered Seianes’s reason were terribly tangled.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
As if proving that, his heart pounded. Heat rose and fell throughout his body as a thrilling sensation paralyzed his entire body.
Seeing Seianes’s reason waver, Abrisius grabbed his hand. Heat was felt from the hand heated by excitement.
“Look at this, you love me too like this.”
“……!”
Like someone taking a pulse, Abrisius brought his hand to his heart. A pounding was felt, and Seianes’s expression was distorted with shock and horror.
Seeing him still seemingly unable to accept Abrisius, Abrisius decided to take a step back.
“But if you say no, there’s nothing I can do.”
If he approached further from here, it would obviously only create unnecessary trouble. His slightly curved eyes smiled alluringly toward Seianes.
“But still, I’ll make you look back at me somehow. By any means necessary, without fail.”
“…….”
“You’ll still love me, right? Because you said you’d love me no matter what I did.”
With those final words, Abrisius’s form scattered like the wind. As if he hadn’t been here, not even a trace remained.
“Abrisius?”
Seianes’s voice scattered in the air. He waved his hand searching for traces of the child who had already disappeared, but there was nothing to touch.
Left utterly alone, Seianes muttered with a devastated face.
“What on earth…… is happening? Why do you…….”
Have the Underground Energy?
Certainly, he felt that energy that Amina had blocked again. More intensely than when he first held him in his arms, no, the Underground Energy was consuming Abrisius so terribly.
Even though he wore the smile Seianes loved endlessly, he wasn’t the Abrisius he knew. Yes, rather, he was closer to Ircadeon.
His appearance at the moment he was defeated by Henelion and fell to the underworld. The man who lamented solely for not achieving what he wanted, and who laughed soaked in madness for his next goal. The goosebumps he felt then were imprinted in his mind and unforgotten.
And today, the terrible desire and madness he had shown then was being felt from Abrisius. He was so afraid. The fact that he felt those emotions from his child.
‘Where did that pure child go?’
At the same time, he was scared. He was afraid that the Abrisius he knew would disappear forever like this.
But before Seianes could do anything, his child had already left. All that Seianes, left alone, could do was search for the disappeared Abrisius.
Like thirteen years ago, when he first lost Abrisius.
* * *
“What happened here?”
When Cairens returned to the contaminated earth, ruminating over yesterday’s events again, everything was already in a mess.
Seeing the land he had tended to every day from early morning until night without rest covered in darkness again, he couldn’t hide his bewilderment. He couldn’t even discern where things had gone wrong.
To see the land up close, he bent down. As expected, no energy of life was felt from the soil at all.
“Everything died, all of it…… And.”
The scent of darkness wafting terribly. The strong power of darkness that pierced his nose was provoking Cairens. Wrinkles formed on Cairens’s brow from the pain that made his head ache.
“Did underground beings appear? Or…… who on earth did this.”
Just as he was stamping his feet in the incomprehensible situation, something heavy charged at Cairens from behind.
“Uwaat—!”
As his body tilted on its own, the startled Cairens collapsed with a thud. Losing his center with a scream, he who had fallen opened his eyes at the heavy sensation felt on top of him.
Who could it be?
Quickly raising his head and soon recognizing the identity, he couldn’t hide his bewilderment.
“Abrisius?”
“Hi, Cairens?”
Seianes must have prevented him from coming, so how did he get here? The fact that Abrisius, who was always so obedient and well-behaved, was on this land was absurd.
Whether he wasn’t afraid of Seianes’s anger or not, Abrisius seemed relaxed.
No, should he say he had become bolder instead?
Black eyes with a slight tinge of red gently swept from Cairens’s cheeks down to his chest.
Soon after, the terrible darkness that had taken deep root throughout the contaminated zone flowed out from within Abrisius. Cairens’s face contorted at the scent of darkness that pierced his nose.
He couldn’t understand why Abrisius possessed the Underground Energy.
“……So, that’s the desire you wanted.”
The feeling of having all the bare truth inside him thoroughly examined. The moment Abrisius’s gaze turned toward him, Cairens’s body flinched at the feeling of being naked.
He was confused by the emotions and situation he was experiencing for the first time.
“Why are you so confused?”
But before Cairens could say anything, Abrisius’s touch was slowly heading down below him. Before he knew it, the hand that had been tickling his chest slowly touched his heart.
His heart was pounding, announcing that he was alive. It was painful as if his breath would stop.
“Wh-what are you doing? What is this?”
“Wasn’t this what you wanted?”
Each of Abrisius’s words provoked his reason.
It was hard to maintain his sanity. His heart felt like it would burst. Just looking at Abrisius took his breath away.
Noticing that, Abrisius smiled quietly. To completely sever Cairens’s circuit of reason like this, he put his mouth to his ear and whispered softly.
“You said you wanted to know me. Don’t you want to use me to take revenge on the gods?”
The secret he had hidden from Abrisius. The moment he heard it through his mouth, Cairens’s pupils dilated.
