Time seemed frozen at this absurd, precarious angle.
A wave of delayed, burning embarrassment washed over Erika for his meaningless, almost childish act of petulance. What was this? An attempted suicide? Or a more pathetic bid for attention?
The silence was broken.
"That's not…" Sela's voice came, steady, clear, not even breathless, as if holding the tilted weight were effortless. She paused, as if choosing her words, or perhaps simply stating a fact, "…what you should call me."
That's not what you should call me.
Not Sela, not Sister Sela, certainly not Lord Sela.
It wasn't a reprimand, not an order. Her tone even carried a thread of something extremely faint—almost resignation. But that only made Erika feel more awkward, as if his childishness had been pointed out with a precision that was more mature, more tolerant, and ultimately more distant.
And she didn't move immediately.
Her arm remained steady, maintaining that supporting force. The wheelchair stayed at that heart-stopping, half-fallen, half-suspended angle. She hadn't let him crash completely and take the impact; nor had she righted him, restoring safety.
Just… suspended.
Erika lay half-reclined in the chair, his body uncomfortable from the angle and restraints, blood beginning to pool unpleasantly in his lower body and head, causing a dull, pressing ache.
His gaze was forced onto Sela's inverted, unnervingly close face. He could see the slightly tense line of her jaw, the barely perceptible rise and fall of her chest as she breathed, even the immaculate fold of her habit's collar—forming a strange, stable geometric shape in his inverted view.
He opened his mouth, but didn't know what to say.
An apology? For the childish squirming?Thanks? For not letting him crash?Or to press on about the form of address?
None of them felt right.
He could only watch her inverted face, her perfectly calm eyes, feel the persistent discomfort and vulnerability of his bound body suspended in mid-air, and the cold, unwavering support transmitted through Sela's palm.
Silence fell again—heavier than before—thick with unresolved awkwardness, unspoken rules, and this deliberately maintained, suffocating imbalance.
Sela's gaze remained fixed on his face, utterly placid, as if reading a book long since opened.
Just as Erika was almost acclimating to this tilted, scrutinized suspension—
The balance shattered in an instant.
The supporting force vanished cleanly. The combined weight of the wheelchair and Erika himself finally obeyed gravity, irreversibly tipping backward.
Weightlessness struck again, sharper, more decisive this time. Erika instinctively squeezed his eyes shut, bracing for impact.
Thud!
A solid—though not deafening—impact. His back and hips, cushioned only by the restraint garment and the thin padding of the wheelchair, struck the cold, hard, smooth floor. The shock rippled up his spine, bringing a wave of dull pain and dizziness. Not lethal—just adding to his utterly disheveled, rattled state.
"Oh, so you like the floor."
Lynus's voice sounded nearby.
His tone, however, was entirely different from his earlier mania—calm, even tinged with thoughtful amusement, as if noting an interesting discovery.
Then the familiar, neurotic laughter burst forth again:
"Hahahahaha!"
But even that was brief, restrained, quickly tapering off.
Erika endured the lingering ache and dizziness from the fall and opened his eyes.
Sister Sela was gone.
The vast, empty room now held only the cold floor, the overturned wheelchair, and himself—bound within it, sprawled on the ground.
And Lynus.
He stood looking down at Erika with open curiosity. Had he entered at the exact moment Sela vanished and Erika fell? Or had he been watching from some unseen corner all along?
Contrary to Erika's expectation, Lynus made no move to help him up.
Instead, he casually turned and lay down beside him on the floor.
They lay there side by side—one tightly bound within an overturned wheelchair, the other completely relaxed, the fabric of his blue robe pooling loosely around him.
"So," Lynus said lightly, "does any of this feel familiar?"
Erika's mind was still occupied by the image of Sela's inverted, close-set face, her final words tinged with resignation, and her unnatural disappearance.
To Lynus's question, he only stared blankly at the pale, empty ceiling above, his gaze unfocused, unresponsive.
Familiar?The floor?The impact?Or this helpless, supine angle?
He couldn't tell. Nor did he want to.
Lynus seemed unconcerned by his silence. He simply lay there beside him, also staring at the ceiling, as if sharing a strangely quiet moment.
Just as Erika was about to sink back into that featureless blankness—
A glow flickered before his eyes, violently pulling his thoughts back.
The light came from slightly above and to the side. Erika instinctively shifted his gaze.
It was the back of Lynus's right hand.
An intricate, finely wrought Mark glowed there with a steady, gentle golden light, casting a faint, unnatural halo across the nearby air and the contours of Lynus's profile.
The light wasn't harsh, yet it carried a sense of contained, powerful energy, utterly out of place in this pale, cold room.
Erika's gaze locked onto the glowing Mark.
Familiar?
Staring at that light, feeling the dead silence and the cold alienness within his own body… something indefinable—a stir of emptiness and instinct rooted in life itself—seemed to be waking.
Lynus remained lying there, idly wiggling his fingers. The light on the back of his hand shimmered subtly in response.
"Remembering anything?" he asked softly.
His tone remained flat—yet threaded with a barely perceptible anticipation.
Yes… familiar.
The indescribable energy pulse emanating from the glowing Mark, the not-burning but warm vibrational sensation where that light touched his skin… something in the fragmented depths of Erika's consciousness resonated weakly.
Like a seed buried deep under ice, sensing a faint, impossibly distant breath of spring—instinctively trying to stir—only to be crushed back down by the immense, suffocating cold.
The feeling was fleeting.
Because all the intolerable, immediate, violent sensory assaults currently wracking his body acted like coarse, sharp sandpaper, instantly grinding that fragile wisp of familiarity into dust.
"Hmm?"
A dissatisfied, upward-tilting sound escaped Lynus's nostrils.
This "dissatisfaction" shattered his calm mask once more.
Erika didn't even see how he moved—only felt a sudden weight slam onto his body as Lynus flipped over, no longer lying beside him, but now kneeling directly on Erika's torso!
"Ungh—!"Erika was caught completely off guard. The air was brutally forced from his lungs in a pained grunt.
Lynus's weight, combined with deliberate downward pressure, made Erika's chest feel as if it were being crushed by a boulder. Breathing became agonizingly difficult. Each attempt to draw air brought in only a pitiful gasp before being cut off by even deeper pressure. Dizziness and oxygen-starved panic instantly overwhelmed him.
And that wasn't all.
Lynus's right hand—the one glowing with that soft golden Mark—was now pressed hard against Erika's face, almost completely covering his mouth and nose!
At this proximity, the Mark's light was glaring. Its unnatural warmth was pressed tight against his skin, merging with the force of Lynus's palm into a bizarre, invasive burning sensation.
"AAAAAAAAAAH—!"
Lynus himself let out a twisted shriek—whether from excitement or irritation was unclear. He leaned down even further, his face coming dangerously close to Erika's, now reddening and contorting from his own restricted breathing.
Lynus's eyes were wide, blazing with mania and a fanatical urgency.
"Say it! Say it! Say it! Say it…!!!"
With each shouted "Say it!", the pressure on Erika's chest and face intensified, the words hammering like hailstones against his near-shattering consciousness.
Erika was in agony.
His vision darkened, static crawling in from the edges. His ears filled with Lynus's frantic demands and the roaring rush of his own blood. His lungs burned, desperate for oxygen, every effort futile.
The spot on his face where the Mark was pressed throbbed with constant pressure and a strange, prickling energy pain. Inside him, the cold thorn-like sensation was violently stirred by the combined internal and external assault, sending sharp, gut-wrenching stabs of pain through his core.
His consciousness flickered like a candle in the wind.
He knew that if he didn't give an "answer"—even a single word—he would likely pass out from this mad pressure and suffocation, or worse.
Driven by oxygen-starved thoughts and a primal will to survive, his lips—pressed against the edge of the glowing Mark—moved.
Using the last scrap of air he could force out, he released a broken, almost inaudible whisper:
"Y… yes…"
He didn't know what this answer specifically referred to.
Was it an admission of the "familiar feeling"?Or a blanket surrender to all of Lynus's deranged questioning?
He was simply instinctively forcing out the word he hoped might satisfy the other—even if only temporarily—
Just for one possible, life-saving gasp of air.