My teeth ground against my nails as I paced in front of the infirmary. Seated on the benches were Revery, Heather, Arzo, and Trink—all with grim expressions on their faces. After Kora collapsed, I flashed a distress signal that only Heather would know. A crimson streak against the blue sky. A scout's message.

It took all of my strength to swallow my tears as we hurried through the town, on our way to the nearest hospital. Heather had flown overhead, rushing through the streets with Kora in tow. Then, the need to start explaining came, much to my chagrin. I told them how I wandered for hours in the forest and how I found him wandering around.

"What about the perpetrator?" Heather asked, gripping my shoulders. Her claws could have torn my sleeves and my skin. "Did you catch them? Did they leave a trace?"

"I didn't have the luxury to look around," I remember saying, having collapsed against one of the benches of the infirmary's waiting room. Around us, people with a similar background of waiting on patients inside the locked door loitered inside with blank, passive looks. It could have been the one on my face as well, but checking myself in a mirror was the last thing on my mind.

Then, the door opened and a man in a pristine white coat stepped out. I vaguely remember him to have been the one who took Kora from Heather upon our entry. My soles thudded against the waiting room's musty floorboards, stalking towards the physician. "What's his status?" I asked. "Is he alright? What happened to him?"

The doctor, standing almost the same height as me, gave me a flat look. "Are you family?"

My heart hitched. "Sorry?"

"I can only give details to family," he told me. "That is according to the Healer Guild's pledge. Do you know anyone? When can they get here?"

I opened my mouth, to tell him I was right here. Nothing came out but a breath of air. Why...why couldn't I say it?

A hand clamped on my shoulder and I could feel myself getting pulled to the side. I let them, my eyes just glued to the tips of my boots. My fists clenched at my sides as another wave of tears threatened to blur my world and envelop me in their haze. The same hand on my shoulder moved to run up and down my back in comforting waves.

Heather's shadow, accopmanied by the folded wings and the barbed tail, fell over me. "I can't believe I'm saying this, but..." she settled on my other side. "I don't know anything about him beyond him being an adventurer. Do you know if he has a family? How can we contact them?"

I was here. But I stopped. And now...I couldn't even know what's going to happen to him. "Who else can we call?" I asked, my voice cracking and thick.

Heather hummed, thinking. "They said the immediate superior," she said. "He's an adventurer, after all."

Despite my chest tightening and shivers running down my spine, I raised my head to meet Heather's eyes. "Call Dragnasand," I said. "Call Cavya."

The dragonkin's lips pressed into a thin, thin line. She nodded, her uneven locks moving along with the motion. "I'll get him," she said, stalking off to the rotary phone booth at the end of the hall. Soon, the sound of gears and dials rotating to and fro replaced every clunking heartbeat in my chest.

After a few minutes, Heather's footsteps flitted back to our bench. "What did he say?" Revery asked, having glimpsed the question in my eyes. I just didn't have the strength to open my mouth. Not anymore.

"He's on his way," Heather said. "I heard some scuffling and him calling Nazran, so I assume he's arriving by a summoned beast."

She took one look at me, watching me stare at the locked room where the doctor disappeared to. "He'll be here before we know it."

A minute of silence passed. Two.

Eternity couldn't have arrived sooner.

Just then, the door leading to the busy street outside swung with such force to have ripped it off its hinges. A langkoor with a head of a cat and a thin rapier swinging from its sheath by his belt sauntered in. Immediately, everyone inside the room snapped to attention. Cavya's eyes picked out our ragged bunch from the crowd and trudged towards us. "Where is he?" the leader of Dragnasand Knights asked.

I pointed a shaky finger towards the door locked with some sort of magical incantation. Cavya whirled and approached it. This was the first time I noticed his slate gray tail swish behind him. Did he always have it? How come I didn't notice it?

The door to the patients' room swung open after Cavya's brief raps. The same doctor greeted the imposing langkoor. They exchanged a few words and were invited inside. We could only wait. I could only sit out here on my ass while Rin was in another room, dying or something. My nails picked against my cuticles—a habit I thought I stopped doing. It's taking so long. What's going on there?

I was about to stand up when I felt a strong grip on my arm. I traced it to Revery, subtly shaking her head at me. All of this must be so hard for her too. It might have gone the same way it had gone for Sonii, down to the last dot.

Which made my gut twinge tighter, squeezing the air out of my lungs. All this time, I thought about what would happen if I was out of Rin's life, if I was on my own. Would I have accomplished everything I claimed I would have had I not been held back the way I did? Never once did I consider how it would be if Rin was the one who was out of my life.

And now that I found myself in the middle of it happening, I had spent the last two hours bawling like an abandoned kitten. My heart had pumped countless liters of blood down my limbs, but never my face. I couldn't stop shaking. Couldn't stop my thoughts from going down that dark road.

I realized I was still afraid.

I was scared of losing him, even though I already did. Once.

But that night was different, wasn't it? I just wanted to be out of his sight, to find my own path. I never wanted him to get hurt. Not like this.

Then again, I've seen how he looked at me that night. When he agreed to what I asked of him and he agreed so easily, at first, I cursed him for giving in. For not throwing a fit like I did. For not fighting. But now I saw it. The pain dancing in his eyes as my faulty memory would have recalled it. How he wanted to reach out, to scream for me to not let go of him. How it killed something in him when he found out he couldn't.

It's the same suffocating feeling. Like I was slowly being smothered until my limbs gave out and every drop of life bled out of my veins.

The door slid open and Cavya stepped out, his face grimmer than when he went in. Before anyone could force me down, I stalked towards the langkoor and faced him. "What did the physician say?"

Cavya studied me with slitted eyes resembling a cat's too much. Finally, he blinked. Slowly. "They found a trace of a strong poison in his system, introduced directly into the bloodstream by the cut on his shoulder," he said. "They were able to neutralize the poison but there's the matter of the wound..."

"You're saying he'll live?" I prodded. Any matter regarding my tone was forgotten now. Who cared if I was talking to the leader of the Central Empire's strongest adventuring party?

He didn't reprimand me for my pointed question. I wouldn't know what I'd do if he did. "Yes, he will," he answered. "Seeing as you called his immediate superior, I assume you can't get a hold of his kin?"

There it was again. I averted my eyes and stalked off, leaving Heather and the others to talk to Cavya. I stepped out of the stuffy waiting room and went into the streets. The bustle of people going on in their lives, being as boring and normal as they could—I needed that. Even if I found the cityscape an annoying wallpaper during the night, at times like this, I missed it.

If only I could go back to a time when I thought I'd always have Rin on my side, I would. The ignorance of youth, the carefree laughs I threw in the face of heaven and at fate—I wanted to collect them and stuff them back into my soul. I would give anything to be able to go back to that time. To that life.

To that world.

The world where it was only Rin and I. The world where anything was possible so long as we had each other.

The world where we had been happy, even for a short while.

I stumbled into a tavern and collapsed into a table. Unlike that particular tavern in Suprana, the one who approached me to take my order was another spiria. "What would you have?" she asked in a perky voice unsuited for my mood.

"The most bitter liquor you have," I said. "And keep it coming."

She could only nod at that peculiar request and scampered off. Within seconds, I have a cup in front of me. A liquid with the consistency of water sloshed inside its walls. A derisive chuckle rattled my throat. Just like home then.

A whole lot like home.

After what seemed like mere minutes, I felt my shoulder being shaken. I groaned, my arm wheeling around to swat whoever it was out of the way. Don't bother me. A headache pulsed at the base of my neck. Coupled with the annoying stream of brightness passing through my eyelids, it's one heck of a hangover.

Had I spent the whole night drinking? Wow, Hye-jin, what a way to let go.

"Seline, come on," Arzo's voice bled through my ears. I could vaguely sense my head resting against my other arm which was draped against a surface which could only be the table. "They said he can see visitors now."

My eyes snapped open. Within seconds, I was out of the stool. I flipped a few ethrans into the table and trudged out of the tavern, faster than Arzo could catch up to me. The infirmary sped into view and I couldn't have ravaged past it as fast as I did. The locked door was propped open. When I got inside, a corridor full of more doors greeted me.

The doctor from yesterday got in my way. "Name of patient?" he asked.

"Ri–Kora," I said, catching myself before I blurted the wrong name. "Kora Chrysvern."

The doctor stepped aside and jerked his chin at the hallway beyond us. "Third door to the left."

I shouldered past him without another word. My heart thundered in my chest as I reached the designated door. Without wasting another breath, I cranked the handle and swung the door inward. The smell of fresh bandages and a mixture of flowery fragrances hit my senses. My eyes swept around the cubical room with barely anything inside it other than a table, a stool, and a bed.

My feet stopped in their tracks when I saw who occupied the bed. Sitting up, blinking at me like he was surprised to see me up this early in the morning, was Rin.

"Seline, I—"

His words cut off because, by then, I had crossed over and thrown my arms around him. I buried my face in his neck like how I used to do when I didn't want to face the world and wanted only to be with him.

I held him. Tight.

This time, I would never let go.