Chapter 12: The Quiet Dawn VI
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Hari wobbled as she clung onto Leandro's arm for dear life. An inebriated blush spread across her cheeks, the same shade of the wine she had. She could barely walk in a straight line. A chuckle escaped her lips, driven more by the alcohol in her bloodstream than any real amusement.
"Leandrooo… you're going… too faaasht." She slurred, clutching his right arm right between the crevice of her breasts. "Uhh… my head…"
"Who told you to drink that much, hmm?" Leandro hummed, a frown marring his face. "Oh, right… I did."
"Damn right you did." Nani chimed in, holding his other arm, though in a less constricting way. Unlike her older sister, she was more sober. Of course, being more sober didn't mean she was unaffected, but she was holding herself quite good. She glanced at Leandro before she promptly looked away, tucking a lock of onyx-black hair behind a flushed ear. "But… I'll forgive you… in lieu of the fact t-that this turned out to be a wonderful night."
"Is that so?" Leandro managed to meet her furtive glances and offered a smile. "This isn't the last time we'll do something like this." Though the circumstances then will be vastly different.
"You better." She breathed out, leaning slightly closer to him. A hint of shyness prevented her from being more daring. If she was as wasted as Hari, perhaps she could have latched onto him like she used to do when they were kids.
'If only I didn't ruin everything…' Nari thought morosely. It wasn't the first time she chided herself for her younger-self's rushed confession. She often found herself reconstructing the whole scenario in her head, wondering if a slight change in wording, a different outfit, or a more brazen attitude would have made a difference.
Maybe there was an important factor she wasn't seeing, but she was too afraid to ask him now. Her pride wouldn't allow itself to be stepped on again.
The moon hung high up in the sky, like a lone eye overlooking the entire world. Its pale light espoused Nari's hair, adding that reflective sheen that Leandro wouldn't have thought possible—if only they were in a normal world, in a normal reality.
"You're doing some heavy thinking there, aren't you?"
Nari snapped her eyes to Leandro's, almost recoiling from the otherworldly gleam they met hers with. She shook her head. "Just…"
"Just?"
"Just… reminiscing." She admitted, reluctantly. She would have come up with a lie on the spot if she didn't know how good Leandro was at reading her.
"May I take the risk to guess it involves me, in some way?"
Nari huffed a sigh, either too weary or too tipsy to find it in herself to deny his 'guess'. "Maybe." She smiled secretively. It certainly didn't stop her from playing a bit with him. The verbal jousting always kept her wit sharp. "You have to pry it out of my head if you want to find out."
The way she looked at him in that particular moment, bathed by a faint ring moonlight, enhanced her beauty. This was one of the reasons Leandro believed this 'mirror Earth' he was in wasn't a normal one.
No human being, male or female, had any business being this attractive.
"I can read minds. Don't you remember?" He jested. It was a jab at a previous conversation they had in the past.
Nari frowned, before a smile broke in her face. Of course she remembered. "Then… what am I thinking about right now?" She challenged him with a defiant tilt of her chin.
"Not gonna say it. Poor Hari Noona is too innocent to find out about your more depraved thoughts, especially when they concern me." Leandro replied smoothly.
She rolled her eyes. "Idiot."
Eventually, they made it back to the car. Nari dislodged her arm from his and eased herself on in the passenger seat. Hari, instead, decided to stick to him, even after his continuous attempts to tuck her in the backseat.
"Hari? I know you're dizzy, but I need that arm to drive."
Hari tightened her hold on him, batting her intoxicated brown eyes at him. Her face was a blushing storm. "Y'know… Noona doesn't like it…" Her breath tickled his nose, bringing pleasant memories of the Cabernet Sauvignon.
"Like what?" He quirked one eyebrow up, wrapping one arm around her waist to steady her.
She leaned on the tip of her toes, completely uncaring of Nari, who was staring at them from the passenger seat with hawk eyes. "Y-You're going to get married one day and leave Noona behind." Despite the drunken haze no doubt clouding her judgment and her speech, there was genuine melancholy in her words.
It might not have been the first time she had such a thought. The wine had just pulled it to the surface. "That's far in the future. You shouldn't be worrying about this now."
Hari swayed a little, a pout growing on those beautiful lips. "I know… but… thinking about it makes me sad." She frowned, confused. "Why does it make me sad? I don't understand…"
"I wonder…" Leandro tightened his hold on her lithe waist and slowly cooped her up through the backseat door. "Why don't you sleep over it, Hari Noona?"
"I don't need sleep… I need answers…" She mumbled begrudgingly, though offered no resistance to his gentle pushing. She crawled on the seat, paddling forward on her knees—all the while giving Leandro a front-row view of her amazing backside—before she sagged down, head on her arms. "Don't… leave… Noona… behind…"
She fell asleep, her breathing evening out.
Leandro's face broke into a soft smile.
"She's really attached to you." Nari said as soon as he climbed inside, fastening the seatbelt across his chest. It was such an off-handed comment that it took him a while to formulate a response.
"That's what usually happens in a family."
"A family, huh?" She was not staring at him, seemingly content gazing at the outside scenery.
The engine hummed to life.
"We watch each other's backs, don't we?" Leandro pulled out of the parking lot and into the freeway, headlights guiding them. "The promise I made to you long ago… I've never forgotten it, and neither should you."
Leandro pulled that look again. Stoic. Stone-faced. An impenetrable shield that emotions seemed to rebound off of.
'So that one day I may protect you.'
How could she ever forget?
The memory of a kid whose eyes were too mature for his age. A bold claim that, for all intents and purposes, she should haven't placed a lot of thought into.
Nari stared at her lap, a companionable silence hanging between them.
"Do you ever…" The words were hard to pull out of her mouth, but she didn't want to leave the sentence unfinished. "... think about your parents?"
"I do." A curt answer. There was no visible sign of hurt in his tone.
"Don't you miss them?" Nari bit her bottom lip. Perhaps she shouldn't have asked that, but it was the knowledge that Leandro had never reacted in a confrontational manner when facing the harsh truth of his upbringing that made her bolder. "Don't you want to be with them again?"
He hummed, one finger tapping against the leather of the steering wheel.
"It makes no difference to me." Leandro didn't take his eyes off the road. Nari sat there with a rapt expression at each word that filled the distance between them.
'I've had to spend years without seeing Esmeralda, just to keep her safe.'
Back then, it was more out of circumstance. He'd never consider being apart from her unless it involved her safety. Still, the brief trip down the memory lane brought a wistful smile to the surface.
Nari's eyes were so intense that any weak-willed man would have wilted under them.
"I care about them. They care about me. There is no distance in the world that words can't reach. You can't fake the tears in my father's eyes, or the light quivering of my mother's lips. They're trying to be strong. And so am I. You'll find out that when you truly love someone, there's no limit to how far you'd be willing to go, or how limitless your potential can be. I know it sounds a little corny, but I… speak from experience."
He couldn't really tell Nari that he didn't see them as his real parents. Wherever they were, it was irrelevant to him. Obviously, there was a degree of 'familial love' between them—at least from Leandro's perspective. He cared about Myeong and Diego. Just not as much as he would otherwise have had it been Esmeralda in their place.
But the comparison wasn't really fair in the first place.
"..."
There was a brief lapse of silence. Nari must have been chewing over his words in her head, like she usually did when she tried to understand a particularly difficult puzzle.
Leandro wondered if it was his rather stoic nature that caught her interest in such a topic.
"I don't mind their absence. And they did drop by last summer to spend some time with me, didn't they?" Leandro elaborated in a low voice, mindful not to stir Hari awake. "Besides… I'm not alone. I have you and Hari Noona at my side, don't I? That should count for something."
Nari turned away, one hand holding her face, elbow resting against the door. "Yes." Leandro almost missed the smile that flashed across her face. "It does."
••••
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Halfway through their ride back home, the low fuel warning light switched on.
'I keep forgetting that these cars run on gasoline and not Axiodied Crystals.'
Leandro promptly pulled into a gas station. He glanced at Hari from the rear-view mirror. She was still asleep. 'She looks adorable.' Kinda like how a little animal would curl up to sleep. Adorable and defenseless.
He unlatched the seatbelt and opened the door. "Do you need anything from the convenience store?"
Nari responded by unlatching her own seatbelt. "I'll come with you."
"As long as you don't stray too far from me."
"I'm not a kid." She mumbled, pouting.
Leandro took off his coat and draped it over the snoring Hari. A big smile blossomed on her face as she buried herself into the garment, sniffing the familiar scent.
When he turned around, he was startled to see Nari behind him, arms crossed and eyes narrowed.
"You're quite sneaky, aren't you?"
"You made me that way." She didn't miss a beat. "It's the only way to catch you off guard. So? Did I catch you off guard? Is your heart beating fast?"
Leandro raised one eyebrow. "Why don't you check it out yourself?" He challenged.
The red on her cheeks deepened a little. "Whatever." Nari turned around, her ponytail nearly smacking his face, and stalked off.
'She's just as adorable as her sister.'
He chuckled at her reaction, before a familiar car pulled into the gas station. Its familiarity was soon explained when none other than Heo Seok stepped out of the vehicle.
'Quite a coincidence…' Leandro mused idly as he pumped gasoline into the fuel filler.
〔249 days until the 'integration'.〕
Waiting was hard. Of course, it would have been better if the Apocalypse didn't come at all, but it was inevitable. This temporary stint of peace was like a lull in a storm. A sweet reprieve, for sure. However, Leandro would rather not get too used to it.
It dulled the senses.
For someone who ate and slept in a hill of corpses, 'peace' was a nostalgic concept—not too foreign where he couldn't accept it, but adapting to a society where violence wasn't the primary method of conflict solution was a little disconcerting.
The Monolith skewed one's perception of reality and morals.
Leandro, after all, had once been an innocent boy.
That same innocent boy ended up stabbing a man in the throat.
Most people don't realize how capable of violence they are until there's a definite threat to their lives—or to the ones they care about. Esmeralda had been the trigger that made Leandro start taking lives.
'I wonder if I'll be able to see her again…'
Perhaps it was wiser to believe that'd never happen. Leandro didn't want to live with an emotional wound, or with a disillusioned hope that she might live long enough for them to reunite at some point.
It seemed so far-fetched that it was practically impossible, like trying to measure the distance between stars with a ruler. The same Gods that had him executed might be different here, or they might not exist at all.
'I hate all this introspection. All I want is a target to swing at.' Leandro had always been better using a sword than his head.
Once he was done filling the gas tank, he stared at the entrance of the convenience store.
Nari was taking a little too long to finish her business.
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