Chapter 287
There was something more personal, more fragile, hidden behind her refusal.
Something tied to the fundamental reason why she was willing to step into the clamor of the human world, accompanying Theo in an observation that might feel absurd to her.
Yet precisely because of that understanding, Theo's words shifted into a reminder that was firm and undeniable.
His voice remained low, but every word carried the weight of a reality they both often tried to ignore.
Theo looked at the figure before him, at the fragility concealed behind her composure, and reminded her decisively that the body Aldraya now inhabited was no longer an unshakable divine form.
It was no longer the spectacular shape of a Supreme Angel radiant with true glory, a being that might never have known thirst, hunger, or exhaustion.
This was a mortal body.
A human vessel made of vulnerable flesh, blood, and bone.
A body that could overheat under the midday sun, whose throat could dry from dust and clamor, whose stomach could growl in demand of sustenance.
Every breath was proof of dependence on the same oxygen as ordinary humans, every pulse an admission of a finite life cycle.
Aldraya's true perfection, her genuine grandeur, was now wrapped in a fragility that required care, that demanded acknowledgment.
"Must I be left behind again?"
Fuuuuuh!
"Quil-Hasa, that cowardly Omnipotent, abandoned me the moment my twelve siblings and I first opened our eyes in the Heavenly realm. Now, is it your turn?"
The question hung in the air, heavier than the hot gusts from the ride machinery.
Aldraya did not lift her head, but her gaze slowly rose from beneath her pale lashes, catching the sunlight and reflecting it back as a restrained glimmer of pain.
Within those eyes, usually flat like a frozen lake, Theo could see a distant and dark whirl of memory.
He did not see his own reflection there, but the shadow of an ancient departure, a first betrayal that had shaped the foundation of all her fears.
Aldraya did not cry.
Tears were a luxury, an expression too human and fluid for something that had once been so exalted.
Yet her sudden passivity, a lethargy seeping into the bone, spoke a deeper language of suffering.
Her upright body seemed to lose its framework, not collapsing, but like a fine marble statue beginning to crack from within, fissures invisible to the eye yet felt by every pore of the surrounding air.
The departure of Quil-Hasa, the Creator she called a "coward," was not merely abandonment.
It was a birth into absolute loneliness.
They, the thirteen Supreme Angels, had opened their eyes amid silent Heavenly glory, born in perfection of form yet empty of guidance.
The first four years of their existence were not a time of growth, but a long wait upon the throne of emptiness, staring at a heaven that never answered, groping for meaning without a father to point the way.
So when Theo spoke of being "left behind," he did not merely touch a small fear.
He touched the root wound of Aldraya's entire existence.
He awakened the trauma of cosmic solitude, the feeling of being a masterpiece abandoned in an unguarded gallery, brightly lit yet utterly silent.
Aldraya's question, spoken in a voice almost like wind whispering through temple crevices, was in truth a restrained cry of the heart.
Does everything eventually leave?
Is my mortal existence merely repeating the same pattern—created, then left alone to make sense of everything by myself?
"Where did you get the idea that I would leave you?"
Hearing that confession, which pierced the core of cosmic loneliness, Theo was not moved by an aura of pity nor compelled to offer gentle consolation.
Instead, a warm wave of irritation mixed with concern washed over him.
He saw how that immense past wound had suddenly become a wall, blocking even the simplest of actions.
Going to a stall to buy a drink.
He realized that behind the majestic angelic form and the mysterious flat demeanor sometimes lay an extraordinarily complex, almost childlike logic.
And to confront logic like that, words of compassion might not be the answer.
Without preamble, his hand moved forward.
Not to pat her back or hold her hand, but in a more spontaneous, physical gesture.
Theo's fingers reached Aldraya's pale, supple cheeks and gently yet firmly pinched them.
The pinch was not an act of roughness, but a grounding shock, a physical intervention meant to pull Aldraya out of the dark spiral of memory and back into tangible reality.
The hot midday air, the noise of the amusement park, and Theo standing before her—not a distant, unreachable creator.
The touch was another language, a way of saying, "I'm here, real, and not planning to vanish into myth."
"Does that mean we'll pause this surveillance? Stop watching them, just to order drinks?"
Aldraya's face, still holding the residual warmth and gentle pressure from the pinch on her cheeks, looked like the surface of a calm lake suddenly struck by unexpected raindrops.
Each drop was Theo's words, falling and creating ripples of confusion spreading outward from the center of her clear eyes.
Confusion.
That was the only sensation that dominated.
Theo's direct, uncompromising logic felt like a foreign language trying to break through a system of understanding built upon eternity and cosmic betrayal.
To her, every separation, no matter how small, carried the potential to become an abyss.
Anyone who turned away might never turn back.
Then came Theo, with his pinch and his question, shattering her assumptions and offering a nearly radical idea.
That there were departures that were temporary, and returns that could be relied upon.
That confusion then took shape as a question in return.
Aldraya's voice, usually flat like the horizon line, now carried a subtle tremor of deep astonishment.
She questioned the most practical matter, yet for her, it was the core of all her worries.
She asked whether Theo truly intended to halt, even temporarily, the serious and dedicated surveillance mission.
Could a grand purpose, like observing and recording the development of the love narrative between Ilux and Erietta, truly be paused for something as trivial as ordering drinks?
In Aldraya's mind, this was an extraordinary sacrifice.
It was like halting the observation of a star's orbit just to fetch a glass of water.
"There's no need to stop. Remember, one of the uses of RWIA that resides within my consciousness—and within yours as well—allows us to monitor them from anywhere.
We can continue observing Erietta and Ilux even while buying drinks."
Theo's head moved slowly, shaking in a gesture heavy with meaning, a denial that instead brought clarity.
The shake was not a rejection of Aldraya's needs, but a statement of the capabilities and preparations he had possessed long before this conversation.
Behind that motion lay the secret of a tool fused with his existence, a technology or power that rendered the concept of "leaving one's post" obsolete.
From his lips flowed an explanation that was simple, yet horizon-opening.
To be continued…