Chapter 46 - 45. Where Paths Are Laid
"I...must have been more exhausted than I thought..."
Zein blinked at his dorm room’s ceiling, before staring at the clock that indicated breakfast had passed without his participation. Thanks to that, even though his stomach grumbled, his body felt refreshed.
He had worried that he wouldn’t be able to sleep soundly in the Unit’s regular, hard mattress after spending two weeks laying in Mortix’s bed, but turned out, once he laid his head on the pillow, he went straight to deep sleep, even though he usually slept the latest and woke the earliest.
"No one woke me?" he grumbled, and got up with a yawn. Staring at the SavAsh jacket draped over the bedside cabinet, Zein rummaged through the inner pocket to fish out an energy bar—what was left of the sustenance Bassena left him that night.
Haa...even though he woke up feeling refreshed, his mind still felt like a swirling mess.
Him sleeping late due to exhaustion was a remnant of their union; the guiding, the breach of his own principle. He spent a long time thinking about it—about why he could be swayed so hard, so easily. For seventeen years he maintained his stance, and it shattered in just under two weeks.
It was scary.
Attachment was a scary thing. It was the seed of imprint; a deadly blessing, a beautiful curse.
Zein hated imprinting. His mother was imprinted by an esper—there was not a shred of love between them, merely a convenience. But the esper died, and his mother went into spiraling despair, so much that she was willing to be married to a wicked man like the twin’s father. To this day, Zein had no idea whether he was the son of that nameless esper or that sorry excuse of a man that sold him off to a rogue guild.
But he knew he hated the idea of imprinting. No—he was scared of it. And so he was scared of catching the seed.
That attachment Bassena blatantly showed him.