[Three Years Later]
There was no fading for when sleep turned into dream. Just darkness, and then Lymur was suddenly somewhere, already in the middle of it, with no sense of how long he'd been there.
He was floating in something thick and cool that pressed against his skin from every direction. It was not quite liquid — it was heavier than water. Whether he was breathing, he couldn't tell.
Glass surrounded him, he noticed. A thick curved wall, close on all sides, enclosing him in a tube of some kind. Beyond the glass tube was a room. He could see it in pieces of metal platforms, glowing panels, cables running across the floors. Even the light was pale and a little blue.
It looked to be a laboratory.
Then he noticed someone standing outside the glass.
He couldn't have said when they appeared. They were simply there, watching. Blue hair, lighter than his own, almost luminous. And golden eyes that stayed in focus even when nothing else did.
The face wouldn't come together. Every time he tried to look at it directly, the details just slide away before he could catch them. Man or woman, young or old, he couldn't land on any of it. Just the eyes, and the way they watched him.
Something moved in his chest. There was this feeling of being recognized by something familiar. Like looking into a mirror and understanding, for the first time, that the face looking back is yours. But that couldn't have been the case, Lymur told himself. He couldn't even see the other person's face.
The person raised one hand. Palm toward him, hovering just short of the glass.
Lymur's hand moved before he decided to move it, pressing flat against the inner wall. It was the closest thing to real in the whole space. Two hands nearly touching through a barrier neither of them crossed.
The person tilted their head, golden eyes held on him one moment longer, and then everything came apart.
Lymur's eyes opened and he found himself not in a tube anymore, but in his apartment. He knew for sure he was awake now, if the morning light seeping through the windows was anything to go by. He lay still for a moment and let the dream dissolve like how it always did, with most of it going away quickly, the details dropping before he could hold onto them.
But the golden eyes always stayed and it was haunting him.
He sat up, ran a hand through his hair and thought about how three years of building a life here hadn't managed to give him the answers he truly wanted. He knew who he was well enough by now. What he was, how he thought, what he wanted, what he was capable — that much had never really been in question.
But whoever had made him, wherever he had actually come from — that part remained as blank and unreachable as it had been the morning he woke up in the forest with dirt on his face and nothing in his head.
He didn't know who he came from.
He got up and started his day.
◢◣◢◣◢◣
The streets were already busy by the time Lymur stepped outside.
Today, he had his hood up and his mask on.
It happened every few months. He'd wake up from that dream feeling quieter than usual, and on those days the city felt louder than it actually was, and the solution was simple: hoodie, mask, errands done quickly, back home to cook something.
Clean and uncomplicated just as he liked it.
The celebrity thing had snuck up on him, honestly. He hadn't planned for it, hadn't wanted it, and couldn't entirely explain how it had happened except that apparently achieving S-rank less than six months after registering was something people talked about, and once people started talking they also started looking, and once they started looking they noticed that he was, well — he looked the way he looked. Which didn't help. Three years in Xyrus and his face hadn't changed by a single day, which on top of everything else made people curious.
So.
Hood.
Mask.
In and out.
The general store was quiet and smelled like dried herbs and grain sacks when he arrived. He moved through the aisles with a basket, looking like any other person running errands.
He picked up carrots, potatoes, beef, and a few spices. Today was beef stew day. He'd decided somewhere between waking up and leaving the apartment that something warm and uncomplicated suited the mood the dream had left him in.
He set everything on the counter and leaned on it while the elderly cashier worked through them one by one.
"You know," Lymur said, glancing at the shelves behind the man, "you should think about selling adventurer emergency kits."
The cashier looked up. "Emergency kits?"
"Dried meat, bandages, water flask." Lymur paused. "Small shovel."
"...A shovel."
"It's important stuff."
"For what, exactly?"
"Burying your dignity after you get knocked out by a slime." Lymur paused. "Statistically the number one cause of early retirement among new adventurers. I read that somewhere."
The cashier stared at him. "You made that up."
"I made the statistic up. The dignity part is real." Lymur tilted his head. "Ask anyone."
The old man sighed. He had been working retail for thirty years and was no longer surprised by anything, so he just finished the tally and said, "Six silver."
Lymur paid, picked up his bag, turned around, and walked directly into someone.
The collision wasn't dramatic — a shoulder check, enough to knock the other person's basket sideways and send a few items bouncing across the floor. Lymur caught his own bag and they both went down at the same time to collect the items, reaching for things together in such a small space.
Then their hands landed on the same jar of something at the same time.
"Sorry," the woman said, pulling back. "That was completely my fault, I wasn't—"
"Don't worry about it," Lymur cut her off, and picked up the last two items and handed them over.
She took them back with a slightly sheepish smile, long elven ears peeking through soft pale green hair. She checked her basket quickly.
"Thanks," she said. "I have a talent for walking into people."
"It's a skill," Lymur said. "Underrated and keeps the day interesting."
She laughed, and then straightened, and then looked at him properly for the first time.
"...Wait."
Lymur felt the familiar chill of someone about to say his name in public. "Oh no."
She leaned forward a little. "Are you—"
He raised one finger. "Don't."
She stopped, then blinked. Looked at him for another second. Then her eyes went wide and she slapped both hands over her mouth.
Lymur glanced toward the cashier, who was busy sorting a stack of receipts and had noticed nothing. He exhaled through his nose.
"Thank you," he said quietly.
"You're Lymur," she whispered as she lowered her hands.
"Technically."
"I've heard so many—" She stopped herself and pressed her lips together. "Okay. Okay, I'm being normal about this."
"You're doing really great."
"I'm really not." She exhaled. "Sorry. Hi."
"Yeah, hi."
"I'm Alea."
"My name's Lymur."
She stared at him.
"...I know," she said.
"Right."
Lymur was not entirely certain how he ended up at a restaurant.
He had a specific memory of them walking out of the store and onto the street, and then somewhere between that and now, a table had appeared in front of him with food on it, and Alea was sitting across from him looking perfectly comfortable with the situation, and his beef stew ingredients were in a bag under his chair.
He looked at the table. Then at her. Then at the table again.
How, he thought. How did this happen?
"You look confused," Alea said.
"Hold on, I'm retracing my steps."
"You suggested the restaurant."
"Really? That doesn't sound right."
"You said, and I'm quoting directly, 'we might as well eat since you're already following me.'"
Lymur considered that. "That does sound like me."
She pointed her fork at him. "You're very strange."
"Nothing new." He picked up his own fork. "What do you do?"
"Botanical research. One of the labs in the academy district." She tilted her head. "Plants, mostly."
"So you spend your days staring at leaves."
"That's a reductive—" She paused. "Okay, sometimes yes. But there's a lot more to it than—"
"Do they stare back?"
She blinked. "What?"
"The plants."
"No, plants don't—"
"How do you know?"
"...Because they're plants."
Lymur nodded slowly. "That's what they want you to think."
Alea looked at him for a long moment. "You're an S-rank adventurer."
"Yes."
"The most celebrated adventurer in Xyrus right now."
"Allegedly."
"And you're scared of plants?"
"Whaaaat? No, no, no. Not scared," Lymur clarified. "Appropriately skeptical. There's a difference." He paused. "You'd be amazed how many monsters start out as plants. I have professional experience with this."
She stared at him.
Then she started laughing and she pressed the back of her hand against her mouth and tried to compose herself but mostly failed. "Okay," she said, when she'd gotten it mostly under control. "Okay, that was actually a good point."
"I have them occasionally."
"You're also a lot funnier than I expected. I mean, you aren't funny but the fact that you're not is what makes you funny. Does that make sense?"
"Sort of? What exactly were you expecting?"
She shrugged. "I don't know? Brooding, mysterious. Oh! The whole—" she waved her hand, "— legendary figure thing."
"Heh. I can do brooding if you want."
"Please don't."
"I'd need a moment to prepare."
"Genuinely, don't."
Lymur smiled behind his mask. He'd pushed it down around his chin somewhere between sitting down and the food arriving, which had been its own small risk but the restaurant was quiet and nobody had said anything yet. He took a bite of something and looked at her across the table while she talked about the research lab, about the particular plant species she'd been cataloguing for the last six months, about a colleague who had very strong opinions about watering schedules, and he listened attentively.
She was easy to be around. That was the simple version of it. Her energy didn't demand anything from him, didn't push, just moved freely and made space for him to respond or not respond as he felt like, and the talk found its own pace without either of them having to manage it.
At some point he looked at her across the table and felt this strange, directionless impulse that he identified after a moment and then decided to address directly.
"Alea... do you want to have sex with me?"
Alea stopped mid-sentence.
The table became quiet.
She looked at him and set her fork down, picked it back up, then set it down again. Then she let out a short laugh and pointed at him.
"Okay. Okay, you almost got me there."
Lymur tilted his head. "Got you?"
"The bit." She shook her head, still smiling. "The no-filter thing. I've heard about this, actually — people warned me, they said the adventurer Lymur has absolutely no tact, no common sense, says the most wildly inappropriate thing at the worst possible moment—" She laughed again. "And here we are."
Lymur smiled. "Yeah." He picked up his fork and took another bite.
Alea watched him.
"You're not going to say it was a joke?"
"No."
She was quiet for a moment. "...You were serious?"
"Well, duh."
She looked at him with a face that was working through several things at once. "You can't just — you can't just ask someone that over brunch."
"I did, though."
"That's not—" She stopped. Pressed her fingers to her temple. "Why?"
Lymur thought about that genuinely. The question turned out to have a more complicated answer underneath it than it appeared to be.
Why... he wasn't entirely sure.
It wasn't about desire exactly, or not just that. He didn't ask just for the sake of sex itself. It was something that felt like a gap he couldn't account for, like something important was missing in his life, but he couldn't figure out what it was or why it was missing in the first place.
It was an inexplicable impulse, like a "regret" he wanted to destroy. He had no idea why he would have such regret, though.
Lymur looked up for a moment.
Is this about you again? He thought, in the direction of the faceless golden-eyed person who kept haunting him.
He waited.
Nothing.
He hadn't expected anything.
He looked back at Alea.
"I'm not entirely sure," he said honestly. "It just seemed like something I was supposed to do at some point and haven't. And don't get me wrong, I'm embarassed about this, too."
She stared at him. "Wha — you can't be serious. That is the least romantic thing anyone has ever said to me."
"I wasn't exactly trying to be romantic."
"I know, that's—" She laughed despite herself. "That's somehow worse."
"Is it? I've been enjoying your company and found myself thinking about it, so I asked. Again, this is embarrassing for me as well, so it's totally okay to say no."
She looked at him for a long time. The playfulness in her had become a different quality of attention.
"So you're completely serious," she said.
"I've been serious the whole time."
"About the plants too?"
"Especially the plants."
She looked down at the table. The corner of her mouth moved. When she looked back up, something in her expression seemed like she made a decision.
"You're ridiculous," she said.
"...."
"And completely impossible."
"I guess?"
The corner of her mouth curved further.
"...That's a lot of your charm, isn't it?" She held his gaze for another moment. "...Fine."
......
The hotel room was quiet when the first morning light came through.
Alea got up slowly, naked and eyes still half-closed. She felt sore on her lower half but she had a small smile on her face.
Then she opened her eyes fully.
The other side of the bed was empty. Neatly so, the sheets were barely disturbed, like he'd been careful about leaving. No note on the side table, no sound from anywhere else in the room, not even in the bathroom. Just the morning light and the indifference of a hotel that didn't know or care what happened inside it.
She sat up slowly and looked around.
"...Seriously?" She rubbed her face with both hands and fell back against the pillow. "What an asshole."
Several streets away, Lymur was walking at a comfortable pace, bag of ingredients under his arm, mask back in place.
There was no guilt in his face. No particular satisfaction either. It had simply been what it was — a one-night stand, and now it was the morning after and he was going home to make beef stew, which he had been planning to do yesterday before things went sideways.
Though for some reason he himself didn't know, he felt like he'd scored a point against his golden-eyed ghost last night. And that, strangely, made him more satisfied than the sex itself.
"Sex is overrated."