Leonidas gave a faint smile before lowering his head once more, the exhaustion clinging to him like wet cloth. Admitting it still felt unpleasant in some strange way, but Hommy's lessons had a habit of proving useful no matter how much one wished otherwise. The odd man's methods were crude, irritating even, yet they always seemed to leave something behind when it mattered most.
Nearby, Bubbles nearly sagged with relief the moment Jurgen's eyes regained clarity. He pressed a hand softly against his chest before allowing himself a fleeting smile, the kind carried by someone who had spent the last few minutes suffocating beneath worry they were too embarrassed to admit aloud.
"About time," Nyugen said with an easy grin.
There was a warmth in his voice now that had not existed earlier, a strange familiarity formed within less than a day of knowing one another. Under normal circumstances, such closeness should have felt forced, perhaps even foolish, yet surviving death beside someone has a way of shortening distances between people.
But after enduring something like this together, it no longer felt impossible to imagine the four of them standing at the top someday, battered and insufferable as they were.
So perhaps there was no harm in believing it early.
Arrow, meanwhile, remained seated upon the scorched ground with one knee raised loosely against his chest. He let out a quiet scoff before lifting his gaze toward the sunlight finally breaking through the clouds above them.
Relief did settle within him at seeing Jurgen regain his senses, though pride still held his expression hostage. He was not the sort to wear concern openly, especially not for someone standing only a few feet away.
At the very least, not yet.
Hommy paid little attention to Jurgen's salute. As far as he was concerned, being heard was enough. Recognition meant nothing beside results.
His gaze wandered across the ruined surroundings afterward, sharp and searching, as though counting heads without needing to speak the numbers aloud. Then, after a brief pause, his voice suddenly cut through the air.
"Takumi!"
A young, timid-looking young man nearly stumbled over himself while hurrying across the ash-strewn ground, a steel tray balanced nervously in his hands with several neatly arranged cigars resting atop it.
The poor thing looked as though the slightest harsh glance might cause him to collapse outright.
Hommy stepped forward and leaned close enough for their faces to nearly touch, his rough breath brushing against the trembling boy's skin.
"Keep me waiting like this again, and i'll end ya" he muttered, calm in a way that somehow made the threat worse
Takumi froze immediately.
And for a brief moment, despite the destruction surrounding them, despite the blood and smoke and exhaustion weighing over the ruined district, the scene almost felt absurdly normal.
A soft, nervous chuckle slipped from Takumi as he quickly adjusted his glasses before they could slide completely off his face, his hands fumbling slightly beneath Hommy's suffocating stare. The boy had clearly grown somewhat accustomed to these exchanges over time, though not enough to stop fearing them entirely.
Hommy merely grunted in response before hanging a freshly lit cigar from his lips with practiced ease. The faint ember glowed against the dim atmosphere while he took a long, unhurried drag, exhaling smoke slowly into the cold air around them. It was a habit so deeply ingrained into the man's existence that imagining him without a cigar almost felt unnatural.
Morning, midnight, bloodshed, conversation — it never seemed to matter. Smoke simply followed him wherever he went like an extension of his presence.
Takumi used to nag him about it sometimes.
Not boldly, of course. Never boldly.
He would quietly suggest ridiculous remedies in passing, like drinking freezing water to "cool his lungs down," whatever that was supposed to mean. The advice itself made little sense, though strangely enough, Hommy never outright dismissed it either. Perhaps because the boy was too harmless to bother arguing against.
The fragile calm lingering across the ruined district lasted only a few moments longer.
Then a scream tore through the air.
It came sharp, violent and full of panic.
Every head turned instinctively toward the disturbance, exhaustion vanishing from their expressions almost immediately. After everything that had already happened, after surviving a battle that would have probably ended lives, the last thing anyone expected was another commotion erupting from within their own ranks.
A healer suddenly came hurtling across the ground, crashing violently through debris before rolling to a stop several meters away. Another had collapsed onto his knees nearby, clawing desperately at his own throat while harsh choking sounds forced themselves from his mouth. His eyes bulged with terror as he struggled for air that simply refused to come.
And standing beyond them was Hazel.
No, not standing.
Thrashing.
She looked less like a person and more like something cornered beyond reason, her entire body trembling with such violent emotion that even the atmosphere around her seemed disturbed by it. One hand remained stretched protectively over Thorner's lifeless form while fury and grief twisted together across her face so intensely that it became difficult to separate one from the other.
For a moment, no one moved.
No one spoke.
Because there was something deeply uncomfortable about witnessing raw despair take shape so openly.
Then the mist began to spread.
Dense fog erupted outward from Hazel's body in heavy waves, swallowing her form almost immediately as she scooped Thorner's corpse into her dissolved form. The vapor thickened rapidly while she fled across the ruined battlefield, desperate and frantic, as though movement alone could still save something already lost.
But the district offered her nothing.
No forests. No shadows capable of hiding her.
Only ruin, only open land stripped bare by destruction, leaving her exposed beneath the broken sunlight like an animal trying to flee across an empty plain.
She had barely drifted far before Hommy appeared directly ahead of her path.
No sound accompanied his arrival.
One moment the space before her was empty, and the next he was simply there, standing amidst the drifting fog with the a simple emotionless expression resting upon his face.
Hazel froze.
Of course, in her current state, she could have passed through him effortlessly. She was mist now, untouchable and formless, capable of slipping past flesh as though it did not exist at all.
Yet she did not dare.
That was the terrifying part.
It was not restraint imposed by force, nor any visible authority binding her movements. Hommy exerted no pressure upon her body, issued no threats, raised no hand to stop her.
And still, she halted immediately.
Because somewhere deep within her instincts lingered the dreadful certainty that disregarding his presence would result in death so absolute there would not even be enough of her left to regret it afterward.
The fog quivered violently before collapsing inward, forcing Hazel to materialize once more.
And honestly, that was the moment the true absurdity of the man standing before her settled into my mind.
A person capable of erasing emotions as casually as another might brush dust from their sleeve was already horrifying enough. But a man who no longer needed to use that power because his mere gaze alone could produce the same effect…
That was something else entirely.
That was the sort of man people learned to fear long before he ever gave them a reason to.
Thorner's body struck the ground with a heavy thud beside her.
The sound alone seemed to shatter whatever composure Hazel had left.
She trembled violently beneath Hommy's presence, her breathing uneven and fragile while sweat rolled down her face in thin streams, glistening beneath the ruined sunlight like rainwater slipping down cracked glass. It was difficult to tell whether she was frightened, grieving, or simply collapsing beneath the unbearable pressure of both at once.
Hommy's expression hardly changed.
If anything, he merely looked annoyed now.
Not enraged. Not bloodthirsty.
Just tired of dealing with unnecessary trouble.
"Ya attack my subordinates," he muttered slowly, irritation roughening his voice as smoke drifted lazily from his lips. "My cleaners. And ya run off to where?"
The words were not shouted.
That somehow made them worse.
Several members of his division quickly moved forward afterward, grabbing Hazel by the arms and forcing her still, though even then their restraint felt almost ceremonial. Nobody truly believed she would attempt escaping again while Hommy stood directly in front of her. The seemingly crazy man himself seemed barely concerned, as though this were nothing more than a conversation interrupted by unfortunate circumstances.
"That ya boyfriend?"
He drew another slow breath from his cigar, the ember briefly glowing brighter in the silence that followed.
The question lingered heavily between them.
Hazel refused to raise her head. Her damp hair clung against her face while her eyes remained fixed downward, silent and stubborn in a way that almost resembled self-preservation more than defiance.
For a moment, Hommy simply watched her.
Then he sighed faintly through his nose.
"Release her. She's not that stupid."
The men obeyed immediately, loosening their grip and stepping back without hesitation. Yet the instant they did, the atmosphere somehow became even heavier than before.
Hommy inhaled from the cigar again.
And this time, Hazel truly felt him.
Not physically.
It was something far worse than that.
His presence settled over her shoulders like invisible hands prepared to crush the life from her body at the slightest inconvenience. There was no dramatic surge of killing intent, no visible display of power, only the dreadful certainty that she was standing before someone capable of ending her existence with terrifying ease.
The memory surfaced abruptly within Hazel's mind.
Jurgen standing before Hommy earlier, the man's patience thinning the moment he was almost forced to repeat himself even once. There had been no shouting then either, no grand display of anger, yet everyone present had understood instinctively that making him say the same thing twice was the kind of mistake capable of shortening a lifespan.
The realization struck her hard enough to force her voice loose almost immediately.
"N-no… sir. He's not."
The words stumbled out in a frantic rush, her stammer barely holding itself together beneath the pressure crushing against her chest.
Then, just like that, it disappeared.
The suffocating weight pressing upon her dissolved so suddenly it almost made her dizzy. Hazel inhaled sharply without realizing she had been struggling to breathe at all, relief washing through her body in heavy waves while the tension locked within her muscles slowly unraveled. It felt disturbingly similar to surviving the edge of a blade one had only noticed after it stopped touching the skin.
What a save that had been.
And judging by the faint shift in Hommy's expression, he seemed mildly pleased she possessed enough sense to answer properly before his patience expired.
Hommy lowered himself into a squat before her, resting one arm lazily over his knee while smoke curled upward between them. He did not press her further about Thorner, nor did he seem interested in digging through whatever grief or attachment hid beneath her trembling silence.
Perhaps because he simply did not care enough to.
"Hopefully," he said quietly, raising a brow just slightly,
"ya won't do anything stupid, would ya?"
And despite the calmness in his tone, everyone listening understood the same thing.
That question was mercy.
A very thin kind of mercy.