Chapter 43: A Promise
Something changed about Aria.
No, calling it a change is an understatement.
It was better to say that she had seemingly transformed entirely into another person altogether.
The Aria that he knew, even after becoming friends with some of the male characters in the novel, was never this... clingy after all, even after witnessing some of them die a gruesome death.
At most, she just simply shed tears for them.
But that was it.
She never fully clung onto them desperately like this.
And while the reason why Aria had never been this clingy before in the novel could be attributed to the fact that she knew about Aurora’s regression ability already before she even became close with some of them to begin with and knew that she’ll end up seeing them alive again in the next timeline, Eric still felt that there was something much more deeper than that when it came to him specifically.
Regardless, that wasn’t entirely important right now, since...
"Aria, I need you to get off of me. Right now." Eric said as he tried pulling Aria off of him.
However, no matter how much he tried pulling Aria off of him with what little amount of strength and energy he had left, he couldn’t even manage to make her budge a single inch.
Even worse, it seemed like Aria wasn’t willing to let him go or respond back at all, and instead, she clung even tighter to him more than before.
"Seriously, why are you behaving like this? We haven’t even known each other for that long." Eric sighed and then thought about it for a little before waving a waiter over in order to get the check.
Under these new circumstances now, there was absolutely no way that he was going to continue staying here any longer and eat what he considers to be way below average food.
There was only so much he could tolerate after all.
And so, as soon as the waiter came over to him with a concerned look on her face and handed him the check, Eric quickly paid for the bill while leaving a very heafty tip behind, and then tried standing up as though Aria wasn’t here whatsoever.
But since Aria was positioned right on top of his lap and had her head burried into his chest, Eric couldn’t even manage to get a few inches off of his chair before he was forced to sit back down again.
"Aria, at least let me get up and leave. You can continu-"
"NO! NO NO NO NO NO!" Aria suddenly yelled as loud as she could, causing everyone in the restaurant who wasn’t already looking at her and Eric to turn their attention toward them.
Then with absolute terror and desperation on her face, she looked up at him and shouted, "I’VE SAID PLEASE ALREADY, HAVEN’T I? SO WHY ARE YOU STILL TRYING TO LEAVE?"
"..."
"Do you not know how miserable I was the last three days without you, holed up in my room and sobbing all day because I thought you were actually gone from my life for good? Cause I know for damn sure that you do! After all, you know everything about me!"
"..."
"And yet despite all that, you still have the nerve to tell me you want to leave right to my face? Did you seriously think I was just going to let you go the moment you said that, huh?! Is that how little you really care about me, asshole?! Because if that was the case then you should’ve never came to meet me at the cafe on that day to begin with!"
"Wait Aria, you’re wr-"
"I know, I know! I know that you’re the one person in this entire world who cares about me more than anyone else does! I know that! Otherwise you would’ve never have shown your face in this wretched world and helped me out in the first place!"
"..."
"But you know what? You should’ve also fucking taken into account just how much that would’ve affected me in the long run! You should’ve known that there was a chance that I would’ve become deeply attached to you after all that! It’s in human nature, after all! Something you clearly seem to know very little about!"
"..."
"Or maybe perhaps you did take that thought into account but assumed that I was just someone too guarded and distrustful towards others to ever let anyone else into my life besides my best friend! Just like how you described me before, back when we were trying to meet the person who murdered my parents! Yeah, I bet that’s fucking it!"
"..."
"And now that you’re done helping me and finished whatever else it was you came here to do, you’re just going to leave, is that it? You’re just going to throw yourself away like your life doesn’t matter anymore and return back to wherever you came from?!"
"..."
"Well, it does matter!"
"..."
"It matters to me!"
"..."
"Because even if you’re not truly gone forever in the literal sense of it and are only gone from this world or whatever you want to call it, you’ll still disappear from my life, and I can’t accept that!"
"..."
"So if you really care about me like I know you do and want me to continue being happy, then please... stay here in this world for me."
"..."
"I don’t think I can live without you anymore..."
"..."
Once Aria was finally finished with her desperate outburst, her strength seemed to leave her body all at once, and she collapsed onto Eric again as she quietly sobbed.
Eric, who was now being stared down by almost everyone in the entire restaurant like he was some kind of heartless asshole, genuinely couldn’t help but blink a couple of times as he looked down at the back of Aria’s head and tried to make sense of everything that Aria had just said.
But no matter how hard he tried thinking, literally nothing she had an outburst about made sense to him.
Like seriously, what did she even mean by him showing up in this wretched world to help her, him throwing his life away once his task was finished as if it didn’t matter to him at all, and him trying to return to wherever he came from?
Did Aria hit her head somewhere really hard sometime after their last meeting or something like that and he just hadn’t realized it yet?
Because that was the only logical explanation he had for her being so clingy right now and spewing out absolute nonsense.
’Really, this is just giving me a headache now...’
Well, regardless of the reasoning why Aria was being like this right now, there was one thing that Eric managed to understand from all of this, and it was the fact that Aria was worried about him ’leaving’ this world and him disappearing from her life.
And while he didn’t know whether Aria meant he was trying to die, or whether she’d meant her words literally, Eric knew that he needed to calm her down immediately and convince her to get off him before she caused any more unnecessary problems for this damned body of his.
But what could he even do exactly to even get her to slightly calm down at this point?
Eric wasn’t good at comforting people after all, far from it actually despite managing to somehow calm her down once before back when they were traveling together to find Celeste.
Besides, he didn’t want to accidentally slip up again and say something that might set Aria off, dragging this out even longer.
However, even though Eric was unsure of what he should do or even what the best course of action was to take at this very moment, for some reason, he began raising his arm towards her head and placed it ontop of her head subconciously.
And before his mind could even begin to fully process what he was doing, he was already gently stroking Aria’s head while she slowly stopped soaking his shirt with her tears and looked up at him again with reddened eyes.
It was extremely uncharacteristic of him to behave this way, even compared to the times he had done things for Aria simply because something inside him had wanted him to, and he knew that, but yet...
"Okay." Eric calmly stated as his fingers continued to gently comb through her soft hair and stared directly back at her.
"Okay... what?"
"I won’t leave."
"..."
"Not now, and not ever. If that’s how you want it."
"..."
Eric then stayed quiet and continued to stroke Aria’s head for a few more seconds before slowly bringing his hand to a stop, and then gently pressed her head against his chest after noticing that Aria was still looking at him skeptically.
"Listen to it."
"..."
"Do you hear it?"
"Hear... what?"
"My heartbeat."
"..."
Aria didn’t answer.
Instead, her trembling slowly began to lessen as she listened to the steady sound coming from his chest.
"I’m alive." Eric said quietly, "I’m still here."
"..."
"Shouldn’t that be already good enough proof that I won’t go anywhere? Especially when I could’ve at any time within the last 3 days?"
"..."
"Besides, no matter what you think, I’m not just going to abandon you in your time of need. At least not like this."
"..."
"So stop thinking that I’ll disappear the moment you let me go."
"..."
"Because I won’t."
"..."
"You have my word."
"..."
Once Eric saw that Aria appeared to be much more relaxed now despite her still making direct eye contact with him with tears in her eyes eyes and was still positioned on top of his lap, he didn’t say anything else and simply went back to stroking her head.
Aria on the other hand, stared back at Eric without moving at all, as though she was trying to look for at something inside of him, but as the seconds passed, she slowly lowered her head against Eric’s chest and let the gentle sound of his heartbeat calm her again.
She knew that Eric was right.
If he really wanted to, he could’ve left her and gone back to whatever world or dimension he came from at any point over the last three days, while she had been bawling her eyes out thinking he was gone forever, and she would’ve been completely oblivious to it.
And yet he didn’t.
He still remained here even after everything.
He had even shown up in public again near her workplace, probably because he knew she was in pain and wanted to reassure her that he was still there.
If that wasn’t enough to prove to her that he wouldn’t be going anywhere she couldn’t reach him anytime soon, then she didn’t know what would.
She did feel bad about it though.
There was no doubt in her mind that Eric initially had the goal of helping her out in this world and then leaving to return back or whatever after successfully doing so but decided to stay behind instead because of her.
It may not be obvious at first, but while she had been crying her heart out during these last 3 days, she had also been thinking about his actions as well in order to better understand him.
And while she didn’t manage to really get anywhere with that, she did at least realize that after he had told her about her skin cancer and helped her confront the person who murdered her parents, he had gotten himself into dangerous incidents that, while appearing unavoidable and sudden on the surface, may have actually been avoidable all along when it came to him.
For example, despite having the ability to fully heal himself when she had no idea he could at the time, he still chose to go to the hospital after she practically forced him to, all without disclosing his ability to her. Then, he got himself into that extremely hectic fight with Aurora, seemingly in order to leave this world without making it too obvious.
It wasn’t until the second day of him being in the hospital that he felt bad for her and probably vanished from the hospital with no trace left behind in order to fully heal himself back at his penthouse.
After all, only a couple of hours before he suddenly disappeared from the hospital without any sign of where he had gone or what had happened, she had been crying in the waiting room, terrified that Eric might not make it out alive.
The other incident where she had came to his visit his penthouse after failing to convince her best friend Aurora that she shouldn’t go after him anymore followed pretty much the same line of thinking as well.
After all, his penthouse suddenly exploded, a dead body was supposedly found inside, and yet Eric himself was now sitting right in front of her perfectly alive as though nothing had happened at all.
To anyone else, that might have looked like a simple misunderstanding.
Maybe the dead body belonged to someone else.
Maybe Eric had somehow escaped before the explosion happened.
Maybe he had just gotten lucky.
But Aria couldn’t bring herself to think that way.
Not after everything she had already seen and know about him.
Because in her eyes, that was too convenient of an explanation, similar to the incident at the hospital.
Like his penthouse just suddenly exploded right after she somehow wasn’t with him anymore with no witnesses whatsoever, and a dead body was just randomly found there soon after?
Anyone would’ve clearly thought that the owner of that penthouse was the one who had died.
And yet, just like before, he came back.
Not because he had failed.
Not because he had nowhere else to go.
But because he knew that she would suffer without him.
That was why it was so clear to her, especially now, that he had been trying to leave this world this entire time, and she felt extremely guilty about it.
Because even though she wanted Eric to stay more than anything else in the world, a part of her couldn’t help but feel as though she was forcing him to remain somewhere he had never planned to belong.
And yet...
Even knowing that, she still couldn’t let him go.
"You promise me that you’ll never leave me, right?" Aria looked up at him again and asked with a more calm and stern look on her face.
"I promise." Eric replied back without any hesitation whatsoever.
"Then pinky promise me." Aria then extended her hand and her pinky out in front of him.
Seeing this, Eric couldn’t help but shake his head in disbelief for a couple of seconds before simply also extending his own hand and hooking his pinky around hers.
"It’s a promise." Eric said.
Aria smiled brightly despite the tears still lingering on her cheeks after that, then went back to resting her head against Eric’s chest, completely unaware of the awkward position she was still in or all the stares coming from everyone in the restaurant.
It wasn’t until Eric tapped her on the head and asked if she could get off him now that she finally realized what position she was in, and she quickly climbed off of his lap with a blush spreading across her face.
Still, even as embarrassment rushed through her, she couldn’t help but stay extremely close to Eric’s side and sat at the chair closest to him while wrapping her arms around his fully knowing that he would be annoyed by it.
Unfortunately for him, this was the punishment she was going to give him for making her cry for 3 days straight, and she had no plans of letting him off the hook until her heart was satisfied with it.
Just as the two of them sat there in the buffet quietly as though the entire world was at peace and everyone inside of the restaurant finally started to go back to minding their own business however, all of a sudden...
Cough! Cough!
Eric suddenly coughed up blood onto the table.
However, Eric didn’t react to the blood coming out of his mouth whatsoever, and instead slowly turned his head towards Aria.
It was clear that he was more worried about how she would react to this rather than himself, and he was probably even hoping that she wouldn’t make a big deal out of this.
Too bad her mind had already started to go blank the moment she saw the blood dripping down from his lips, and the last thing she could remember him saying before going into a state of frenzy again was...
"Ah... shit. Here we go again."