Guide To Surviving Prison Is Getting Screwed By General Lily! [BL]

Chapter 81: Three Days, Breakfast, And The Administrator’s Office!

The ceiling was white. That was the first thing Ruaan noticed when he opened his eyes. free𝑤ebnovel.com

He stared at it for a long time before he understood that he was looking at the infirmary ceiling and not the ceiling of his room.

He blinked as everything slowly came back. The field. The ambulance. The arm. The watch.

He pressed both hands over his face and breathed. Harolin was really dead.

"You’re awake."

He moved his hands.

Seo was sitting in the chair beside the bed, pulled close. He had his manga closed on his knee and his broken glasses on. The expression on his face was similar to the first time they had met at this same infirmary.

"How long?" Ruaan said. "How long has it been?"

"Three days," Seo said.

Ruaan looked at the ceiling again.

Three days.

The doctor came in as if he had been waiting for the sound of voices and stood at the end of the bed with a clipboard and the specific manner of someone delivering information they had prepared.

"Your fever returned," the doctor said. "And this time, it was significantly stronger than the first time. The shock compounded with the existing weakness in your system." He checked something on the clipboard. "You’ll need at least two more days of rest before any activity. Fluids. No stress."

He looked at Seo when he said no stress, which Seo received with a pleasant nod.

The doctor left.

Ruaan looked at the drip in his arm. At the thin tube. At his own hand lying on the white sheet.

He thought about a hand falling off a stretcher. About the watch on a burnt wrist.

"Why do you look normal?" Ruaan said. "Like you don’t care at all."

Seo looked at him.

"Harolin is dead," Ruaan said. The words felt strange and wrong in his mouth. But it was also completely true, and that combination was the worst thing he had ever experienced. "You wanted him. You were obsessed with him. And you’re just sitting there."

Seo was quiet for a moment.

"I’m sad," he said. Simply. "I’m just used to people leaving."

Ruaan looked at him.

Seo did not elaborate. He just looked back at Ruaan with an expression that was genuine and also held something older underneath it that Ruaan had not fully understood before. fгeewёbnoѵel.cσm

"He was here," Ruaan said. "He was here, and now he’s not." His voice was doing something he was not managing properly. "I never gave him the apology. I found out about his mother, and I was going to tell him that I was sorry, but I never got to."

"I’m sure he knew," Seo said.

Ruaan looked at him.

"Men like Harolin always know," Seo said. "He didn’t need you to say it."

Ruaan’s eyes went wet.

He turned his head toward the wall and breathed and told himself he was not going to do this in the infirmary. He had already been unconscious for three days. He was not going to spend his first waking hour crying in front of Seo.

He cried anyway.

But it was not loud. Just the kind of crying that came when something had been held back for three days and found the first available exit.

Seo put his manga on the floor.

He leaned forward and put his arms around Ruaan and held him and said nothing, because anything he could have said would have been wrong.

Ruaan cried into his shoulder and started thinking about his time with Harolin.

He thought about Harolin saying ’we’re together now’ in his thick and seductive voice. But now, he was no longer here with him. There was no coming back from the moment.

"I’m here," Seo said quietly. "Whatever happens next. I’m here with you."

Ruaan did not answer.

He cried until he didn’t anymore and then stayed in the position until his breathing evened out and the infirmary was quiet around them.

.

.

It was Sunday.

Seo walked Ruaan to the cafeteria. He hadn’t had anything to eat for the past three days except the soup that was forced into his mouth when he was unconscious. He ended up vomiting everything.

The doctor had told them to take a short break and also let Ruaan walk to the cafeteria himself and eat something light.

Cullen was already at the entrance when they arrived.

He had clearly been watching for Ruaan because he turned the moment they came through the door. His eyes went to Ruaan’s face and then to Seo’s hand near Ruaan’s shoulder, and something in his expression went sharp.

"You can go," Cullen said to Seo. "This is not a place for greys."

"I’m fine here," Seo said pleasantly.

"I wasn’t asking."

"I know. I’m just telling you what I want. Isn’t it obvious? Cullen Ray?"

Ruaan walked past both of them toward the nearest table.

Finn appeared. He had been near the service counter, and he crossed the room without being asked and put his hand on Ruaan’s arm gently and walked him to a corner table, away from the door, away from the main sight lines. He pulled out the chair, and Ruaan sat in it, and Finn went to get food without saying anything.

Behind them, at the door, the argument had escalated.

Cullen’s voice carried. He was not a quiet man when he was angry, and he was angry now, pointing at Seo with the specific intensity of someone who had been waiting to have this conversation and was not holding back.

Seo responded to each point in the same unhurried and completely unbothered tone. Cullen’s volume went up. Seo’s stayed the same. Which somehow made the argument worse.

Ruaan ate the food Finn put in front of him because his body needed it and because focusing on eating was easier than listening to the argument at the door.

The door burst open.

Lev came in immediately without knocking. He looked like someone who had heard something was happening and wanted to see it. His eyes moved across the room and found Ruaan immediately.

He looked at Ruaan’s face. At the weight under his red eyes. He could tell Ruaan looked miserable.

Lev started laughing loudly. Like someone who had confirmed the exact thing that they had been thinking.

"Look at you," Lev said. "The one person who actually refused to look at anyone else for you and death got him before I could." He shook his head. "I didn’t even need to do anything. It handled itself."

Ruaan put his fork down.

"Shut up, Lev," he said.

"I’m just saying what everyone is thinking. He’s gone, and now you’re sitting here looking like—"

Ruaan was at his side before Lev finished the sentence.

The punch connected cleanly. Ruaan was not a man who hit people regularly, but he had been in Blackmere long enough to learn a bit of violence, and also, the thing Lev had just said about Harolin’s death was something that made him deserve something worse than a punch.

Lev went sideways and grabbed the wall.

"Shut up," Ruaan said again. His voice cracked on it. He was not going to cry. He was not going to cry in front of Lev.

Cullen was there. His arm went around Ruaan from behind and turned him away from Lev, and Ruaan put his face against Cullen’s shoulder and stopped fighting the thing that had been building since he woke up this morning.

Finn pressed a napkin into his hand. Ruaan held it and breathed.

Behind him, Seo’s footsteps. He could tell without looking.

Seo crouched down in front of Lev, where he had ended up on the floor.

He looked at him for a moment. At the face. The hair. The eyes that were doing something embarrassingly close to attracting despite the circumstances.

"Pretty," Seo said thoughtfully. He reached out and touched Lev’s lower lip with two fingers. Lev went slightly pink and did not move away, which told Seo everything he needed to know about leverage. He touched his long and soft hair next. "Very pretty."

Lev’s chin went up so fast that he heard his neck crack as Seo yanked his hair hard enough to bring him back to the floor.

He leaned close to his ear.

"The only person allowed to make Ruaan cry is me," Seo said, very quietly. "Not you. Not anyone you send. Not any plan you have." He released the hair. "I’m going to count to three for you to leave and never appear here again."

Lev nodded as his eyes burned with tears.

"One."

Lev was already moving.

He was out the door before Seo reached two.

Seo stood up and straightened before he turned around.

Ruaan had his face against Cullen’s chest. Cullen’s hand was on the back of his head, awkward and careful, the way someone held something they were not sure they were allowed to hold but were not going to stop holding.

Seo looked at that and folded his arms.

’Even with Harolin gone,’ he thought, ’I’m still losing ground.’

The speaker crackled, and everyone in the cafeteria went slightly still.

"Prisoner 2525." The announcement voice. "Report to the administrator’s office. I repeat. Prisoner 2525. Report to the administrator’s office."

Ruaan lifted his head from Cullen’s shoulder. He looked at the speaker on the wall, then at Seo, Finn and Cullen.

’Me,’ he thought. ’The administrator’s office.’