"It's been a long time, hasn't it?" Kraft called out, not breaking his squatting rhythm, his suit still impeccably on.
Frieren stared at him for a beat too long, then shut the door with a soft click, cutting him off.
She found Kraft perched on the table, his hands clasped together as if he were a CEO about to deliver a pitch.
"Hey, Frieren!" he said.
Frieren's face remained impassive, but a faint twitch in her eyebrow betrayed her irritation.
She leaned into the doorframe, letting out a soft exhale.
Some things refused to change, even after centuries.
She observed Kraft's physique, noting how his form remained perfect and unwavering despite the centuries.
"Greetings," she offered, her voice flat as still water.
The wood of the doorframe felt solid and real against her back, a small anchor in this bizarre situation.
A wide, knowing grin spread across Kraft's face. He recognized her calculated calm.
"We shared a mere six months, yet I can still read you like a weathered scroll," Kraft said.
"'Just warming up for a volleyball game with the humans.' He nodded to the window.
"I know it's not winter, but an old elf must keep his form." He added
A chair was in front of Kraft. "Please sit down, Frieren," he said gently.
"Volleyball?" she said as she remained against the doorframe, a silent challenge to his invitation.
With a wave of his hand, a simple wooden chair slid smoothly from the corner to position itself before his desk. "You can't stand all the time. Please sit down."
Frieren eyed the chair for a moment before gliding forward and settling into it, her posture still perfectly rigid.
His gaze held hers for a prolonged moment, the air between them crackling with unspoken history.
The knowing grin on Kraft's face only widened. "One must keep up with the times, or at least with their hobbies," he said.
"Chasing the myth of the Temple of Sein... huh," he murmured, his knuckles whitening as his clasped hands tightened.
"So it was merely a legend after all..." The finality in his voice was as quiet as the fading of his grin.
Frieren did not need to answer. Her presence here, after so long, was confirmation enough.
"I see..." she said.
They both kept silent for a moment, unmoving, the only moving thing the balancing desk toy.
She kept staring at it, watching it sway left and right with a steady rhythm.
"Ahh, let's just bury that old ghost," he said, waving a hand as if physically brushing the topic aside. "What about you, Frieren? How was your journey?"
Frieren's eyes remained locked on the toy's hypnotic rhythm. It was easier than looking at Kraft.
"You... settled here? Now?" Frieren asked, her head tilting as she finally looked away.
"Ah, yes... For the past 200 years, I gave up my dreams. Then I just wanted to look for some hobby, you know..."
"Taiping Rebellion, Napoleonic Wars, American Civil War… heh, even the Zulu in Africa."
"World War One and Two were the most brutal, though," he added, his voice dropping as he stared into his coffee as if it were a scrying pool.
She kept staring, not fully understanding, but listening all the same."
"I was involved in all of them."
"Wars..." Frieren whispered.
Kraft's smile was long gone, replaced by a distant look that saw not the room.
Frieren, who had spent those same centuries in quiet isolation, could only grasp the edges of the horror he implied.
He spoke the names like a traveler reading forgotten place names , monuments to human folly.
"Have you fought?" Frieren asked.
"But you're no longer a fighter, though," she added, staring at the papers on the desk.
"I fought... but never to conquer. Only to protect," he said, the words feeling inadequate for centuries of conflict.
"I... was like the kind of hero in disguise..."
"Those humans... they start wars from naive conflicts and end them with complex decisions,"
Kraft said as he stared at the window, watching two people argue about the volleyball score.
Then he turned back to Frieren.
"I really don't understand politics... especially with those humans."
Frieren's brow furrowed slightly.
A deep, weary sigh escaped him. "So I emerged among them," he gestured vaguely to the world outside his window, "and started this company."
"So, you didn't answer me... how was your journey?" Kraft asked as he stood from the desk.
He held the cup of coffee.
He took a slow sip, letting the warmth settle him after unburdening centuries of weight.
What he had confessed relieved decades of repression, even if she only kept staring.
"Land of Aureole, huh..." he murmured.
Once he said it, Frieren's fingers clenched in the fabric of her cloak, the name Aureole striking her with the force of a physical blow.
"...To meet Himmel again and give him a proper farewell? That's what you told me hundreds of years ago..." Kraft said, holding the cup near his lips.
Kraft watched her over the rim of his cup, his gaze sharp and knowing. He had carried this memory of her dream for centuries, and now he laid it bare between them.
The silence stretched, filled only by the faint clink of his cup settling onto the saucer.
He was giving her space, but his patience felt deliberate, almost pressing.
He studied her—this elf who had chosen solitude while he had chosen the company of humanity's chaos.
"If I found that land..." Frieren began, each word a stone dropped into the silence between them.
"I never would have come here... I never would have met you." Her voice, usually so even, fractured under the weight of the admission.
A soft sniff escaped her, her gaze dropping to the floor.
"I... I failed to meet Himmel again, Kraft," she whispered, the words trembling as tears streaked in her eyes, painting her cheeks with a flush of grief.