Chapter 140 - 135. No Rest For The Wicked
"Who’s that?" Bassena tilted his head at the name Zein mentioned suddenly. His eyes narrowed slightly, a little bit peeved that Zein uttered a random guy’s name in the middle of their ’date’.
Although of course, it was only Bassena who considered it as a date. For Zein, they were just coming out to pick up the autumn limited-edition chocolate that they ordered a few months before, and driving to the riverside to eat them. Using the same inconspicuous black car owned by a lot of people, they parked among other cars in the parking lot overviewing the river, watching people hanging out on the riverside while sampling the chocolate.
"An A-class guide," Zein told the guild’s vice-guildmaster, giving the esper a side eye while popping a cube of sweet potato-flavored chocolate.
"Oh, I don’t interact much with guides, since I always used the Temple before," Bassena shrugged. He took a chocolate from the box between them and fiddled with the wrapper, staring at the distant sky and a distant time, before adding with a wry grin. "Ever since I made the first batch of guides experience burnout every time..."
It wasn’t just the issue with his massive mana core, but also with his darkness. Most of the guides, who were delicate in nature and mentality, couldn’t handle the size and pressure of such darkness. Only the guides in the temple, as well as the Saints and Saintess, could handle guiding him.
Well, until he met Zein.
"Anyway, I agree," Bassena bit into the black-colored chocolate, tasting a hint of clove and faint tingling of black pepper within the slightly bitter dark chocolate. He frowned for a bit, before nodding and putting the whole thing in his mouth. "It’s a cute prank, he should do it more often," he ended it with a smirk.
Zein rolled his eyes in response. He already knew that Bassena was actually having fun with all of the speculations about their relationship. The first thing the esper did after finishing his press conference regarding his trial was to collect all kinds of articles and sent some funny and outrageous ones to Zein’s account. "Next time a rumor like that appears again, you’ll be my top suspect," Zein said with a flat tone, prompting the esper to laugh merrily.
"But the other one, who became the scapegoat..."
"Nora?"
"Mm, that--" Bassena paused to watch Zein rummaging through the box, looking for another one with sweet potato mousse inside. "You seem to trust him..."