There's No Love In the Deathzone (BL) novel Chapter 161

Chapter 161: Chapter 156. Getting Away

"He had been non-active for more than a month, so he’s in high demand right now," Radia answered while lighting up his second Golden Needle--seemed like all the meetings and framework building seeping a lot of his mana. "Right now...let’s see--he’s either in the Capital or Area-12."

"Wait, wait, wait--" Han Shin raised his palms, looking at the guildmaster dumbfoundedly. "You’re telling me Bas willingly go to work just after he’s coming back from the cemetery?"

The Bassena Vaski, who always refused to do anything during the end of October and the beginning of November to hide himself from the world? The Bassena Vaski who was whining non-stop to Han Shin on his way to the Capital because the old man up there summoned him? Not to mention...

"While Zein is here all weekend?"

Radia just shrugged in response. "He said he needs to get away for a while, so...might as well send him to work," Radia lifted his fingers, making a circle coin sign.

"Get away from what?" the healer tilted his head, black eyes narrowed in confusion. Bassena looked fine when he called the magician last night, didn’t seem like the death anniversary left long-lasting pain as usual.

"Ask him yourself," Radia leaned back on his chair and closed his eyes to enjoy his Golden Needle.

"Oh, come on!" Han Shin yelled in protest. "You know he never told me anything unless he’s already at his wit’s end!"

"You two have a very strange friendship, you know that?" Radia shook his head, but still refused to give anything.

Han Shin slammed his body back to the couch with pouting lips. "Ugh--whatever. That means he’s fine and all anyway," he pursed his lips for a bit, but it was evident that he was still madly curious. So in the end, he turned to one person who was also the cause of his curiosity.

Yes--because why would Bassena Vaski the ultimate simp leave the place to work on the weekend rather than beg for a date with his first love?

"Zein, do you...know...uhh..." the words died in the healer’s throat when he saw the guide leaning on the armrest, brows furrowed and lips pressed behind covering palm. He had stopped rolling the marbles in his hand, and instead gripped them tightly. "Uhh...did something happen?"

Zein closed his eyes at the question, recalling the awkward silence between him and Bassena on their way home. For all his worth, Bassena didn’t look upset with Zein’s incessant rejection. He still bid the guide goodbye with a smile and a cheery voice.

But Zein couldn’t see the sparkling glint in those amber eyes as usual, and he knew then--he knew that Bassena was almost at the end of his patience. And Zein knew, wholeheartedly, that he was at the peak of his cruelty.

He saw it once, that dimmed gaze and disappointed face. He saw it on Zach, just a few days before the older man confessed his feeling. A bitter, rhetorical confession where the man already realized that Zein knew his feeling, and realized that Zein had no intention to reciprocate, and also realized that Zein still slept with him despite that. A confession made to relieve him of that feeling, and to make sure Zein knew how cruel he was.

In hindsight, Zein already expected this kind of reaction--no, he had been expecting this kind of reaction from long ago. He expected Bassena to get tired of his rejection. He expected Bassena to get tired of knocking on his wall, created from foolish fear. He expected Bassena to feel like he was used, with Zein’s constant indulgence and mixed signals.

But Bassena persisted in his innocent stubbornness, and somehow, Zein forgot about that.

Now that it came, he expected Bassena to take the other’s path; to come back saying he was tired of Zein’s cruelty and just end his pursuit.

And yet...

"Haa...so pathetic," Zein muttered darkly, with the tone he used to wear in the Deathzone--something he had been shedding slowly these past five years. It made Han Shin flinch in surprise, scooting away from the guide and staring at Radia in dreadful confusion.

But the guildmaster just closed his eyes with a smile, shrugging while enjoying his Golden Needle. Because he knew, those words that came out coldly were directed to the speaker himself.

Because yes--Zein did feel pathetic at his own ability to make things clear. Oh, he knew--he knew how much affection he held for Bassena. But as much as he wanted to spend his time with the esper, he felt the same amount of fear in his heart. Fear of attachment; fear of living a life; fear of the uncertainty of his future.

Bassena had asked him a simple request; to be the guarantee of his future. But how...how could Zein allow it when he wasn’t even sure he could reject Setnath’s soul from descending to his body? When he wasn’t even sure his ego would exist in the future...in the future he didn’t dare to dream much.

He didn’t want to tie himself to someone with that uncertainty, because if the worst thing happened, it would be much crueler on that someone rather than himself. In that case, he should have gotten away from Bassena. He shouldn’t indulge the esper and gave the man hope.

Zein sighed and stood up, feeling suffocated in this expensive lounge. Perhaps he should do what Bassena did; get away. But before he could make a single step, Radia suddenly spoke.

And that was good; Radia smiled and closed his eyes again. It would be better for them to calmly assessed their heart, rather than rushing headlong and hurting each other in the end--like him and Joon.

* * *

Zein’s ’getting away’ wasn’t different from Bassena; working. Using the excuse that he was substituting his absence on Thursday, he came to Mortix’s labs.

Unlike in Trinity, the labs weren’t desolate. Due to the sudden need to construct the best framework in a month and a half time, the labs keeping the shard and the Specter cores were in high gear. They were determined to produce more results that they could implement on their devices.

Of course, there was no way they could mention the shard or the specter cores in their proposal, but they could mention the devices born from researching those mysterious subjects. The assessor would only check on whether the devices worked as they intended, and wouldn’t probe into the development process, since it would be a violation of intellectual rights.

Which was why, the researchers were even more fired up to produce a result.

So far, they had finished devising the shard’s mana wave transcription. Now, the researcher could communicate with the shard even without Zein. The shard’s mana wave would be transcribed into words through a device, whereas they could type a word or a sentence in the device to be translated into the correct mana wave. They hadn’t gotten to the point where they could converse in long or complicated sentences, but it was just a matter of time and adjustment.

And these researchers were patient. They dedicated themselves to slowly and carefully asking about the purifying method. They could only get a few lines worth of explanation each day, but they were persistent and powered through every day, for the sake of improving their miasma purification device.

Zein only came briefly to check on their progress. At this point, there was not much he could do there, since everyone was focused on gaining the shard’s cleansing method. So after greeting the researchers briefly, he stepped out and walked through the now-familiar white corridor. He stopped in front of the door at the end of the long hallway, on the other side of the building, and knocked.

The shard’s lab had considerably high security, but it was still inferior to the one protecting this room. Even after all those identification from the elevator, there was still more measure here. He stepped not into a lab, but a scrutinizing room, where he was getting checked by a dedicated guard, despite being well known already. He also had to wear a specialized suit for contaminated areas and made sure his mask was on. Only then, he was able to come inside the lab.

It was different even from the first step--that was what Zein thought when he was here for the first time. The lab here was rather gloomy and more suffocating that the one containing the shard. It was understandable though, since the subjects they were in charge of were a seed of calamity:

The specter cores.