Reti defined Tezette in a single word.
“Bad human!”
In Reti’s mind, Tezette’s image was the absolute worst.
She clearly remembered when they had first met at the temple in the Empire—
how he’d grabbed her roughly and coldly talked about whether to kill her or not, his voice void of any emotion.
“But that human probably knows where Elsez is…”
So Reti, caught between wariness and need, neither approached Tezette nor turned away.
As she stood hesitating, Tezette, who had been watching her with disinterested eyes, bit into a cookie and said,
“Want one?”
Reti was briefly tempted—but then remembered her first impression of him and stayed on guard.
Tezette didn’t care.
Back then, he had tried to kill her simply because he’d been taught that monsters should be killed. Now, Elsez had told him not to kill her, so he wouldn’t.
To him, there was no deep sense of right or wrong.
He took another bite of his cookie and looked away.
Looks… delicious…
Reti licked her lips watching the crumbly cookie vanish into his mouth.
The contents of the bag weren’t visible, but it was obvious the number of cookies was shrinking.
Still glancing nervously at him, Reti eventually crept over and sat beside him.
Tezette, who had been scanning the area with his expressionless eyes, turned toward the puff of fluff now beside him.
He silently pulled a cookie from the bag and held it out.
Reti blinked, hesitating briefly, then took it.
“He’s… nicer than I thought?”
A swirl of black mist rose around Reti as she gobbled down the cookie.
Tezette watched her in silence, then offered another.
And so the two sat side by side, peacefully sharing cookies.
After getting a few more cookies, Reti’s walls began to lower, and she spoke first.
“Do you know where the human is?”
“…The human?”
“Elsez.”
“No idea.”
“Then what are you doing here alone?”
Tezette’s green eyes blinked slowly at the question.
Only then did he seem to realize why he hadn’t gone to the meeting and had instead come to train on his own, like a habit.
“…Waiting.”
He remembered something from when he had first started living with the others under Ruel’s lead, not long after they’d met.
Tezette never did anything he didn’t want to—no matter how many times Ruel told him where and when to gather, if he didn’t feel like going, he wouldn’t.
He’d spend his time dismantling insect legs or napping in the bushes.
No one ever came looking for him anyway.
It had been that way in the orphanage too.
Even if he disappeared, no one noticed. Just like no one notices a missing ant, they didn’t care if a child went missing.
But when the biggest kid wasn’t around, everyone noticed instantly.
So Tezette got stronger.
To him, strength was the only way to prove he existed—to show that he was alive.
But when he met Ruel, he was already tired of desperately trying to be noticed.
“They won’t come looking anyway.”
But Ruel broke that expectation. She always found him.
Once, she told him to come study, and he ignored her, napping in a tree instead.
After searching below for a while, Ruel eventually spotted him above and climbed up the tree.
“Come down, Tezette. Let’s study. Everyone’s waiting for you.”
She never gave up—always finding him.
He found her persistence annoying.
They once got into a tug-of-war over training: Tezette refusing to go, and Ruel doing everything she could to drag him along—until they both fell out of the tree.
Even in that moment, Ruel had held Tezette protectively as they fell, taking the full impact herself and ending up with a mild concussion that knocked her unconscious.
That day, Rashiel—who never liked Tezette much—had come after him, and the two boys had gotten into their first real fight.
After all the commotion, Tezette thought for sure Ruel would finally give up on him. She’d nearly died, after all.
But…
“Tezette, there you are!”
The next day, she found him again.
Even with a big bump still on the back of her head from the fall.
The day after that, and the next one too—
Even after the bump was long gone—
She still kept finding him.
She coaxed, scolded, pleaded, and got mad, but never once gave up on him.
That made her—
So annoyingly persistent… and so beautiful.
But now, Ruel was gone.
“There’s no one left to come looking for me.”
Realizing he’d been unconsciously waiting for someone to come find him—despite knowing she wouldn’t—made his chest feel hollow, as if his heart had vanished.
Then, footsteps approached.
Someone stepped up in front of him, stopping just beyond the edge of the fountain where he sat.
“There you are.”
Tezette looked up to see Elsez gazing down at him.
And in that moment, he suddenly realized—her face overlapped with the one that had always come looking for him: Ruel.
“You were looking for me?”
“Yes! For almost an hour! The temple’s ridiculously big, you know…”
As Elsez half-complained, half-bragged about her effort, something dangled from her arm.
“Human!”
“Reti? What are you doing here?”
Elsez blinked in surprise at Reti’s unexpected appearance.
Reti launched into a fast-paced explanation of what had happened—how she’d woken up and couldn’t find Elsez, how she’d wandered the temple in search, and eventually ran into Tezette.
“This human gave me cookies.”
Hearing that, Elsez turned to Tezette with quiet astonishment in her eyes.
She still remembered how he had once tried to kill Reti.
Perched on Elsez’s shoulder, Reti leaned in to whisper in her ear.
“He’s a good human, I think.”
Elsez let out a breathy laugh at Reti’s sudden change in tone.
You were just calling him a bad human a minute ago… and now you’ve switched sides because of a few cookies?
Still, she was genuinely grateful. It meant something that Tezette, who once saw Reti as an enemy, had watched over her.
“Thanks for looking after my friend.”
Elsez sat on the fountain’s edge beside him and asked,
“What were you doing out here? You didn’t come to the meeting.”
“…Guess I was waiting.”
“For who?”
“Ruel.”
The moment that name left his lips, Elsez’s mind went blank.
That name… spoken so naturally, felt jarringly unfamiliar coming from him.
She’d assumed Tezette, who rarely showed emotion, had already moved on from Ruel’s death.
But that, she now realized, had been an arrogant assumption.
“Ruel… is dead.”
Tezette’s face twisted with pain as he said it.
For once, his deep green eyes overflowed with emotions rarely seen.
Just because he doesn’t show it… doesn’t mean he doesn’t feel it.
He simply didn’t know what names to give those feelings.
“Then… you miss her, don’t you?”
“…Miss?”
“You want to see her again. To talk to her, spend time with her… You wish she’d come find you again.”
Tezette had never “missed” anyone before.
His first memories began in the orphanage.
He had never had close connections—no family, no friends. So when people disappeared from his life, it meant nothing. Just another goodbye. Nothing more.
But now, for the first time, he understood what that empty feeling was.
The one that hadn’t gone away, even after he took power and destroyed his enemies.
And as he grasped the name of that unfamiliar feeling—
A single tear fell from his eye.
Even though he hadn’t cried when Ruel died.
“She probably misses you too.”
“……”
“Maybe she’s watching right now and thinking, ‘That kid’s still skipping out on everything, huh?’”
“How would you know that?”
Elsez flinched.
“Uh… if I were her, that’s probably what I’d think.”
It’s just… what I’d say.
“I’ll find her for you. No matter what. I promise.”
Tezette stared at her in silence.
A single droplet clung to Elsez’s lashes.
It was just water from the fountain.
Tezette reached toward it.
“Something on your face.”
As his fingers brushed her lashes, Elsez instinctively closed and reopened her eyes.
Whoosh—
The sound of the fountain masked even their breathing for a moment.
The droplet on her lashes transferred to his fingertip.
And in that instant, his green eyes filled with her image.
Against the backdrop of the sparkling fountain and bright blue sky, her platinum hair and golden eyes shimmered with moisture—
Radiant like sunlight.
That glimmer, in a single instant, filled his dry eyes and hollow heart.
And he wondered—
What is the name of this feeling resting on my fingertips right now?
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