Chapter 46: Breakdown of emotions
Eiden stared at the floating system window hovering in front of him, his brows furrowed slightly as he read through the details. His eyes scanned his status again, pausing at one particular line:
Height: 6 ft (Previously: 5.8 ft)
"Huh..." A quiet but noticeable change yet significant enough to cause trouble.
Standing just a few feet away, Sasha was staring at him with the kind of dumbfounded expression usually reserved for seeing ghosts or long-lost celebrities. Her gaze moved from his face down to his torso, and finally to his feet.
Without a word, she dropped to a crouch and tugged the hem of his pants up. "Sasha... what are you doing?" Eiden asked in a flat tone, but she didn’t answer.
She was checking if he was wearing any kind of platform slippers or secretly standing on his toes. But Eiden stood normally barefoot, flat, and grounded. No tricks, no lifts. Sasha slowly rose to her feet again, her eyes narrowing suspiciously.
"Were you hunching all this time?" she asked slowly, as if trying to solve an equation that didn’t quite make sense. Eiden blinked at her, suppressing the rising panic behind a carefully constructed neutral expression.
"Did you ever see me hunch my back?" he asked, voice calm but firm. Sasha hesitated. That was the problem. She would have noticed. She should have noticed. After all, she had known him longer than anyone longer than his own parents, even. As his childhood friend, she’d practically tracked every centimeter of his growth since kindergarten.
A height increase like this? Two full inches overnight? It was something she would have noticed in an instant. There was no way he had gotten height surgery either he hadn’t even disappeared for a day, let alone months. He was always home, within reach. So... what in the world had just happened?
Eiden’s thoughts spun like a slot machine stuck on red. Shit. What’s she going to think? And how the hell did I forget this would even happen?! He didn’t say anything aloud, but he instinctively activated his skill, Face Master, letting it help him portray the perfect amount of confusion and obliviousness.
Making up an excuse would only make things worse. Sasha knew him too well. There was no way she’d buy something like "You must be imagining it" or "I hit a growth spurt." Even people who barely interacted with him might eventually notice the difference but Sasha? There was no hiding from her.
So Eiden played dumb. But Sasha’s face turned pale drastically pale as if she’d just remembered something terrifying. Her eyes went wide with alarm as she suddenly grabbed his arm.