Chapter 645: Side Story 2. Dance of Flame and Shadow - 4
"Haa...I feel so stupid," Agni muttered while burying his face in his hands.
He let himself drown in another self-deprecation moment for five seconds before raising his head again. In front of him, lying on his bed, was the son of his older, dead colleague. A young face, barely out of adulthood, looking even younger while sleeping calmly instead of glaring and barking like a mad dog.
Trying to face a wraith with just two beginner daggers and his wit; how foolish, an amateur mistake at its finest. And it made Agni realize something that punched him in the gut.
"Fuck, he’s just a kid."
Agni exhaled heavily. Of course, he was just a kid. The first and last time he saw the kid before was when he was just joining Nolan Hertz’s squad. The kid was...ten, probably. Hadn’t even awoken yet. He never saw the kid again because the squad kept being sent to secluded areas, and they were rarely in the main base.
Leaning back on his seat, Agni took a deep breath and slowly calculated in his head. If the kid was twenty now, he would be...fifteen when his father was sentenced to the Borderland. After five years of rarely seeing the old man, he had to face another four years of absence before the old man died.
The kid’s father died before they could see each other again. They couldn’t even meet during the unfair court-martial, so the last time the kid saw his father should be...six years ago.
"Haa...I shouldn’t swear too much," Agni sighed again, probably for the hundredth time that day alone. "But what should I do with this kid?"
He let out another sigh and got out of the room, slipping into the headquarters’ emergency stairs and lit up a cigarette. Laying his back across the staircase, Agni took a moment to close his eyes and let memory take him back to where everything went wrong. The point that brought the boy to this reckless decision.
Was it the moment when they were sent to the Borderland? No, if he had to trace it back, he might as well started the moment Nolan Hertz accepted the promotion to lead a special squad instead of staying in the main base doing desk work.
Should he choose to stay back, he wouldn’t have to be sent here and there and trapped in that damnable mission. But that wasn’t who Nolan Hertz was. He didn’t want to stay inside an office. He wanted to get out and save more people from dungeons.