Chapter 38 : Doubts
Mother’s Milk kept staring at Mark across the table.
It wasn’t just the white hair throwing him off anymore. The guy genuinely looked different now. His features seemed sharper than before, and those pitch-black tinted glasses covering his eyes looked strange enough to make M.M. wonder how he could even see through them.
"What the hell happened to you?" M.M. finally asked.
Mark leaned back slightly in his chair.
"A lot," he answered casually.
Hughie looked more concerned than confused.
"You’re okay?" he asked carefully. "Last time I saw you, you were screaming, bleeding from your face, and then flying into the sky."
Mark rubbed the back of his neck.
"Well... sort of."
"That is not comforting," M.M. muttered.
"It was painful as hell," Mark admitted. "But at the end of the day nothing exploded and I’m still alive, so good enough."
Then he looked around the coffee shop briefly.
"Where’s Butcher?"
Frenchie stirred his coffee lazily.
"Billy disappears whenever explaining himself becomes an option."
"He’s somewhere nearby," M.M. added. "Meanwhile we’ve been sitting here the whole damn morning staring at that noodle shop."
Mark glanced through the window toward the street outside.
"Well, from what I can tell, this area mostly contains exhausted office workers and homeless people. Honestly feels pointless sitting here."
Then behind him, one of the waitresses suddenly stumbled after another customer accidentally bumped into her shoulder.
A coffee cup slipped from the tray and flew toward the back of Mark’s head.
Before anybody at the table could react, Mark casually raised one hand without turning around.
The cup stopped midair instantly.
Frenchie froze halfway through lifting his drink.
The coffee floated smoothly across the air and settled into Mark’s hand like it had been placed there deliberately.
Mark took a sip.
Then immediately made a disgusted face.
"Fuck," he muttered while spitting it back into the cup. "This coffee tastes like burnt dirt."
The cup floated away from his hand and dropped neatly into a trash bin nearby.
Then Mark casually looked back at the table.
"By the way," he said, "do any of you have a hundred dollars? I suddenly want sweets."
Nobody answered him immediately.
Frenchie stared at Mark for several seconds before slowly lowering his cup.
"...You did not even turn around."
Mother’s Milk narrowed his eyes.
"And since when can you make shit float?" Mother’s Milk asked.
Mark immediately waved the question away like it annoyed him physically.
"Stop asking so many questions," he complained. "Do I look like a science teacher to you? Just give me a hundred dollars. My brain is aggressively craving sweets right now."
Hughie checked his wallet awkwardly.
"I only have fifty."
Mark took the money instantly.
"Good enough."
He stood up from the table while folding the bills into his pocket.
Then, almost casually, he glanced toward the noodle shop across the street.
"And by the way," he said, "you people should probably stop wasting time here. There’s no Compound V inside."
The table went quiet immediately.
Mother’s Milk frowned hard.
"...What?"
Mark adjusted the dark glasses slightly.
"I already checked the place," he replied. "Nothing there. Either the shipment already moved or it never arrived today."
M.M. stared at him.
"Hold on," he said slowly. "How the hell did you know we were here for Compound V?"
Frenchie narrowed his eyes as well.
"And more importantly," he added, "when exactly did you check the building?"
Mark looked at both of them like the answer should have been obvious.
"You people really ask too many questions."
Then he waved the fifty-dollar bill lazily in the air.
"No time. Sweets await me."
The next instant he vanished.
A violent gust of wind swept through the coffee shop entrance hard enough to rattle napkins and cups across nearby tables.
Several customers looked around in confusion.
Meanwhile Hughie, Frenchie, and Mother’s Milk remained staring at the empty spot where Mark had been sitting seconds earlier.
Frenchie slowly blinked.
"...Okay."
Mother’s Milk leaned back in his chair with visible irritation.
"This dude disappears for four days and comes back acting even weirder than before."
Hughie still looked toward the entrance.
"He definitely changed."
Frenchie tapped his fingers lightly against the coffee cup while thinking.
Then finally he looked toward M.M.
"So," he said carefully, "do you think perhaps we have been sitting in this miserable coffee shop for five hours accomplishing absolutely nothing?"
Mother’s Milk looked through the window toward the noodle restaurant across the street.
Honestly—
The more he thought about it, the less he liked any of this.
"I think we need to tell Butcher," he said finally. "This shit is getting way too weird."
Frenchie stayed leaned back in his chair.
"He was already strange before."
"Yeah," M.M. replied, "but now the guy’s pulling new abilities outta nowhere every damn time we see him."
He started counting them off with visible irritation.
"First the red force beams. Then flight. Now he’s making objects float and moving fast enough to disappear."
Mother’s Milk shook his head.
"That should worry people."
Hughie stayed quiet while listening.
M.M. had always been careful around supes. It didn’t matter whether they acted friendly or casual. Experience already taught him where blind trust usually ended.
Just because a supe laughed with you didn’t mean they thought like you.
And once they stopped thinking like normal people, things got dangerous fast.
Meanwhile—
several blocks away, Mark sat outside a dessert shop eating directly from a massive bucket of ice cream while empty candy wrappers piled beside him on the table.
The Six Eyes burned through energy at a ridiculous rate. Ever since the adaptation finished, his brain constantly demanded sugar like he was fueling a machine instead of a body.
"This cannot be healthy," he muttered before taking another spoonful anyway.
Then he pulled out Hughie’s phone with his SIM.
His own phone was long gone somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean after the accidental flight toward London.
The moment he unlocked it, dozens of unread messages appeared immediately.
Almost all of them were from Annie.
Mark stared at the screen for a few seconds before finally pressing call.
The line connected instantly.
Annie answered so fast it almost sounded like she’d been waiting beside the phone.
"So you finally remembered there’s another person on Earth worried about you?"
Her voice carried genuine irritation underneath the relief.
"You vanished for five days."
Mark leaned back in the chair thoughtfully.
"Okay," he said carefully, "hypothetically speaking, would you believe me if I said I went deep sea fishing and a fish ate my phone?"
"No."
"That’s unfortunate," Mark replied calmly. "Because that is technically what happened."
*****
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👉 /Mark841
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