Free Web NovelChapter 52: The hands of fate 2
Tami’s gaze remained fixed on the fire for a moment longer, the flickering orange light reflecting in his eyes as though pulling the memory forward from somewhere deeper than surface thought.
When he spoke again, his voice carried a quieter weight, less like narration and more like something being carefully replayed.
"When I woke up," he said, "I saw Maya sitting a short distance away from me."
He shifted slightly, glancing toward her as if checking whether she would interrupt, but she remained still, her attention resting on the fire in a way that made her expression difficult to fully read.
"She told me she had found me unconscious," he continued, "and that she had been taking care of me for the past day."
The fire cracked softly between them, sending a small burst of sparks upward that dissolved into the night air before they could rise far.
Yuto blinked once, the information settling in more slowly than he expected.
"She stayed with you?" he asked, his tone carrying a faint edge of surprise that he did not bother hiding. "And you two didn’t even know each other before that?"
Tami gave a small shrug, leaning back slightly as though the answer was too simple to require emphasis.
"Nope."
The single word lingered awkwardly in the air for a moment before Yuto’s attention shifted fully toward Maya.
She did not meet his gaze immediately, her eyes still resting on the fire as the light danced across her face, softening and sharpening her features in alternating pulses.
"Why would you stay with a stranger like that?" he asked.
For a brief moment, there was no response.
Only the sound of burning wood and the faint movement of wind across the hilltop filled the silence, carrying heat from the fire outward into the surrounding cold.
When Maya finally spoke, her voice was steady, unhurried, almost detached from expectation.
"It felt right," she said simply.
Yuto nodded slowly, but the answer did not settle into him in the same way it seemed to settle into the space around them. It was too clean, too unstructured, too detached from the kind of reasoning he was used to associating with survival. Maya did not strike him as someone who acted on impulse, nor did she seem like the type to extend trust into a dangerous environment without calculation.
That contradiction lingered in his mind longer than he expected.
It made her harder to understand than before.
More distant in a way that was not physical, but conceptual, as if he was missing the framework through which she interpreted the world.
He wondered, briefly and uncomfortably, whether he had misread her entirely since the beginning.
What kind of person chose actions like that in a place like this?
The thought refused to leave cleanly.
It circled.
Then it shifted, without permission, into something else entirely.
Maybe she stayed because she found him attractive.
The idea appeared abruptly, intrusive and uninvited, and immediately created a strange tightening sensation in his chest that he could not fully explain or dismiss.
Yuto’s gaze drifted sideways toward Tami.
The boy sat comfortably near the fire, posture relaxed in a way that suggested he had already let go of whatever tension the earlier conversation had stirred. His build was slightly rounded rather than lean, his skin warm-toned with a faint reddish undertone from exposure and exertion, and his dark brown hair fell loosely across his forehead in uneven strands that caught the firelight as he moved.
There was nothing especially striking about him in any singular sense, nothing that called immediate attention or suggested exceptional refinement.
Yuto lowered his eyes to his own hands instead.
Pale under the firelight.
Thin, angular, the structure of bone and tendon visible beneath the skin in a way that suddenly felt more noticeable than it ever had before.
Maybe being thin was not appealing here.
The thought developed further without invitation, pulling itself into speculative reasoning that felt increasingly irrational the longer he considered it.
Maya came from one of the Great Clans after all.
Maybe in her perspective, physical presence carried different meaning.
Maybe strength and appearance were not aligned the way he assumed.
Maybe someone like Tami, with a more solid frame and warmer coloration, appeared more wealthy, and therefore more attractive in a way he did not naturally register.
The thought was painful to him, and it plagued him, refusing to leave.
Yuto stood up abruptly.
The movement was sharper than necessary, breaking the rhythm of the moment.
Both Maya and Tami looked up almost at once, the firelight shifting across their faces as attention snapped toward him.
"Where are you going?" Tami asked.
Yuto turned slightly away from the fire, avoiding direct eye contact with both of them.
"Just scouting the area," he said. "Making sure nothing’s nearby."
Maya’s gaze lingered on him a moment longer than Tami’s.
"We’ll come with you," she said, already beginning to rise.
Yuto shook his head immediately.
"No. Stay here. If anything happens, I’ll call you."
There was a brief pause, as though Maya considered responding, but before either of them could press further, Yuto had already turned and walked away from the warmth of the fire.
The further he moved, the more the world changed around him.
The heat that had clung to his skin near the fire faded quickly, replaced by the sharp, unfiltered cold of the desert night. The wind moved more freely here, cutting across the open terrain with a quiet intensity that carried grains of sand against his clothes and exposed skin, each touch faint but constant, like the environment refusing to acknowledge human comfort.
Behind him, the fire became a small, distant point of warmth and color, shrinking as the darkness reclaimed space.
The desert stretched in every direction, wide and empty, its silence no longer passive but almost watchful in its stillness.
After walking a short distance, Yuto came to a stop. ƒгeewёbnovel.com
The wind continued around him, uninterrupted.
"Shinny."
The swordsman appeared beside him instantly, emerging from the darkness as though he had always been standing just beyond perception.
Shinny tilted his head slightly, his gaze moving across the empty dunes as if assessing a battlefield that did not yet exist.
"Why are we not with the others?" he asked.
Yuto exhaled slowly, the breath visible only in feeling rather than sight.
"We’re going for a walk," he said. "And we’re going to kill as much as we can."
For a brief moment, Shinny looked upward toward the night sky, expression unreadable beneath the dim starlight and violet haze that still lingered above the horizon.
Then he nodded once.
"Understood."
