Mereka berbagi pelukan penuh rasa malu sambil menangis tersedu-sedu dalam diam, mengatupkan gigi rapat-rapat dan berperang dalam pikiran mereka sendiri...
Mereka duduk seperti itu selama beberapa menit yang panjang dan penuh getaran.
Sampai langkah kaki yang berat dan berirama menggema di koridor batu di luar.
Selphira sedang berjalan di lorong bersama Victor.
Ia dengan sengaja menggodanya. Ia berbicara dengan ketenangan yang santai dan tanpa beban seperti seorang wanita yang telah menemukan titik saraf percakapan yang paling tepat untuk ditekan, secara santai menyindir Victor tentang presentasi mendatang yang jelas-jelas lebih suka tidak pernah dibahas lagi oleh Victor.
Victor membalas dengan martabat kaku dan penuh perhitungan dari seorang pria yang telah selamat dari satu 'penghinaan' publik yang menyiksa, dan telah bertekad bulat untuk sama sekali tidak memberi Selphira kepuasan untuk mempermalukannya yang kedua kalinya.
Dipandu oleh peringatan panik Matilda, mereka berdua berjalan langsung menuju pintu kamar Sirius.
Cahaya yang sangat terang dan menyilaukan memancar dari ambang pintu di ujung koridor.
Selphira merasakan riak mana yang jelas sepersekian detik sebelum matanya menangkap cahaya tersebut. Itu adalah energi penyembuhan. Konsentrasinya rendah, terjalin dengan frekuensi yang halus dan spesifik, tujuannya tidak dapat disangkal.
Di sampingnya, Victor berkedip. Kilatan yang tiba-tiba itu menarik perhatiannya, dan ia menatap ke ujung lorong dengan kebingungan yang ringan dan biasa. Karena tidak memiliki kepekaan super tajam Selphira terhadap tanda mana, ia tidak bisa membaca pesan yang disampaikan oleh cahaya tersebut.
Selphira tidak berlari maju. Ia tidak memperingatkan Victor, dan juga tidak mengubah langkahnya.
Sebaliknya, ia hanya memalingkan muka selama sepersekian detik. Matanya menyipit tipis saat pikirannya yang cemerlang merumuskan sebuah hipotesis tanpa suara. Ia menyimpulkan kehancuran emosional, mata yang bengkak, dan kebutuhan mendesak untuk melenyapkan bukti fisik sebelum ada orang yang masuk. Ia menyimpan kesimpulan itu di dalam kepalanya, merapikan ekspresinya sepenuhnya, dan terus berjalan dengan langkah santai dan tanpa beban yang persis sama.
Saat mereka melangkah melewati ambang pintu, Sirius sedang berbaring rata di atas ranjang. Luna duduk di kursi tepat di sampingnya.
Keduanya memasang ekspresi tanpa cela, bagaikan batu yang tak tertembus... Selphira hampir merusak penyamarannya karena ingin tertawa keras melihat mereka, tetapi ia menahannya dengan wajah datar yang ironis.
Tidak ada sedikit pun bekas kemerahan di mata mereka. Tidak ada setetes darah mikroskopis pun di bibir bawah Sirius. Cahaya penyembuhan lembut yang tadi berkelebat ke koridor telah menjalankan tugasnya dengan sempurna, menyapu bersih reruntuhan fisik dari kesedihan mereka. Yang tersisa adalah sebuah potret yang dikurasi dengan sempurna: seorang komandan yang tabah dan sedang dalam masa pemulihan, serta putrinya yang tenang dan penuh perhatian. Tepat seperti apa yang diharapkan dunia untuk dilihat, dan sama sekali tidak lebih.
Selphira tidak mengatakan sepatah kata pun tentang hal itu.
Victor, yang tidak tahu apa-apa dan merasa tenang, sama sekali tidak menyadari sesuatu yang janggal.
Memilih untuk secara sengaja mengabaikan kerentanan yang mendalam dan memalukan apa pun yang baru saja terjadi di dalam keempat dinding ini, Selphira langsung pada inti kedatangannya. Ia berjalan mendekati ranjang, tatapannya tajam dan analitis, lalu bertanya persis kepada Sirius bagaimana perasaannya dan apa ingatan jelas terakhirnya.
Interogasi yang menyusul sangatlah spesifik.
Ini bukanlah pertanyaan sopan tentang kenyamanan dirinya. Ini adalah pertanyaan verifikasi tingkat tinggi yang hanya akan dipahami oleh Sirius. Ia bahkan meminta detail samar dari kehidupan masa lalunya, urutan peristiwa militer yang pasti, nama-nama rahasia, tanggal, dan logika mendasari yang menghubungkan semuanya.
Selphira menyampaikan pertanyaan-pertanyaan tersebut dengan ritme dingin dan metodis layaknya seorang insinyur yang sedang menjalankan diagnostik pada mesin yang rumit. Sirius menyamai ritmenya dengan sempurna. Ia menjawab setiap pertanyaan dengan presisi militer yang tajam, melontarkan data yang benar kembali bahkan jika otaknya yang baru bangkit tidak sepenuhnya memahami mengapa wanita itu mengujinya begitu agresif.
Akhirnya, Selphira mengembuskan napas lega yang perlahan dan tenang.
They had shared a shy hug while ugly crying behind the gritted teeth and inside their minds...
They sat like that for several long, trembling minutes.
Until heavy, rhythmic footsteps echoed in the stone corridor outside.
Selphira was walking down the hall with Victor.
She was actively teasing him. She spoke with the breezy, effortless placidity of a woman who had found the absolute perfect conversational nerve to strike, casually prodding him about an upcoming presentation Victor clearly would have preferred to never discuss again.
He replied with the stiff, carefully reconstructed dignity of a man who had already survived one excruciating public ’humiliation’, and had firmly decided he was absolutely not going to give Selphira the satisfaction of a second one.
Guided by Matilda’s frantic alert, the two of them were heading directly toward Sirius’s door.
A brilliant, intense light spilled from the doorway at the far end of the corridor.
Selphira felt the distinct ripple of mana a split second before her eyes processed the glow. It was healing energy. The concentration was low, woven with a delicate and specific frequency, its purpose was undeniable.
Beside her, Victor blinked. The sudden flash caught his attention, and he stared down the hall with mild, mundane confusion. Lacking Selphira’s hyper-tuned sensitivity to mana signatures, he couldn’t read the story the light was telling.
Selphira didn’t rush forward. She didn’t alert Victor, nor did she break her stride.
Instead, she simply looked away for a fraction of a second. Her eyes narrowed slightly as her brilliant mind formulated a silent hypothesis. She deduced the emotional breakdown, the puffy eyes, and the desperate need to erase the physical evidence before anyone walked in. She archived the deduction away, completely smoothing over her expression, and continued walking at the exact same relaxed, unbothered pace.
When they stepped through the doorway, Sirius was lying flat on the bed. Luna sat in the chair right beside him.
Both of them wore expressions of flawless, impenetrable stone... Selphira almost broke character laughing hard at them, but she resisted with an ironic flat face too.
There wasn’t a single trace of redness in their eyes. There wasn’t a microscopic drop of blood on Sirius’s lower lip. The delicate healing light that had flashed into the hallway had executed its job perfectly, sweeping away the physical wreckage of their grief. What remained was a perfectly curated portrait: a stoic, recovering commander and his perfectly composed, attentive daughter. Exactly what the world expected to see, and absolutely nothing more.
Selphira didn’t say a word about it.
Victor, blissfully unaware, didn’t notice a thing.
Choosing to deliberately ignore whatever profound, embarrassing vulnerability had just transpired within these four walls, Selphira cut straight to the point of being here. She walked up to the bed, her gaze analytical and sharp, and asked Sirius exactly how he felt and what his last clear memories were.
The interrogation that followed was incredibly specific.
These weren’t polite inquiries about his comfort. They were high-level verification questions that only Sirius would understand. She even asked for obscure details of his past life, exact sequences of military events, classified names, dates, and the underlying logic connecting them.
Selphira delivered the questions with the cold, methodical rhythm of an engineer running diagnostics on a complex machine. Sirius matched her rhythm flawlessly. He answered every single query with crisp, military precision, firing back the correct data even if his newly awakened brain didn’t entirely understand why she was testing him so aggressively.
Finally, Selphira let out a slow, quiet sigh of relief.
"Seems like the crystallization process didn’t warp or damage your mind," she murmured, speaking almost more to herself than to him.
Everything aligned perfectly. His memories were slotted in the correct chronological order. His demeanor was entirely consistent with the imposing man who had marched into the subterranean ruins years ago. His emotional and tactical reactions operated well within his established historical parameters.
Where it truly mattered, Ren’s reversal was an absolute, flawless success.
Victor stepped closer to the edge of the bed, a warm, genuine smile breaking across his face.
"Julius and Arturo are tied up with the city’s work right now," Victor explained, his tone ringing with profound sincerity. "But they will be here to welcome you back the second they can."
He paused, a familiar, teasing glint returning to his eyes. It was the specific kind of humor Victor deployed when delivering news that wasn’t exactly bad, but was undeniably uncomfortable. "I have to warn you, though... You’ve fallen quite a bit behind. We’ve all successfully completed the thousand-day method while you were sleeping. It’s going to take you a few years to catch up to us."
Sirius processed the jab with total, unbothered equanimity. The petty competition of cultivation ranks simply didn’t register on his radar. He had far heavier things weighing on his soul right now.
Selphira pulled up a chair and sat down.
"There is a massive amount of intelligence you need to catch up on after being trapped as an idiot statue for years..."
She launched into the grand debriefing. She laid out the entire, bloody tapestry of the past few years. She detailed Orion’s horrific betrayal. She explained the grueling years she had spent operating in the shadows, conducting desperate, unheeded research. She recounted how every single one of her paranoid theories was violently validated the day Orion finally launched his catastrophic coup.
Sirius’s aura flared.
The temperature in the room lowered as a sudden, suffocating fury rolled off the commander. His jaw clenched, his eyes darkening with the sheer, violent rage of a man discovering a profound treason of unimaginable scale.
But Selphira didn’t stop talking, and the painful betrayal rage slowly dissolved as she explained the aftermath. She told him that the war was already over. The coup had been crushed. Orion had been utterly defeated. She outlined the horrifying intelligence they had forcefully extracted from Orion’s own mouth right before his absolute downfall.
Piece by piece, in chronological order, she rebuilt the world he had missed.
However, Selphira deliberately left one massive piece of intelligence off the board.
Komentar Chapter (0)
Login buat ikut berkomentar.
Belum ada komentar di chapter ini. Jadi yang pertama!