Free Web NovelChapter 33: The Beginning Of The Journey
Mrs. Walbury’s apartment was nothing like what David had expected.
She pushed the door shut behind them and he walked in ahead of her, and the first thing that hit him was the quiet — the particular kind of quiet that came from a space that was looked after. His eyes moved slowly across the room.
The furniture was arranged with intention, nothing sat where it didn’t belong. Warm lighting. Shelves with actual books on them, not just for decoration. A rug that probably cost more than three months of whatever he’d been making before his awakening. The whole place felt considered, like someone had taken their time building a life in here and it showed.
He stopped walking without meaning to.
’She was definitely raised well.’
The thought arrived without bitterness, just observation. Good parents. Money — not flashy, but the kind that was quietly everywhere, in the quality of things, the absence of anything worn out or cheaply bought. He turned it over in his mind.
’This isn’t something people from my side usually see.’
At least, not where he’d grown up. He’d managed — scraped through, figured things out, made it this far — but standing in a room like this made the distance between his life and hers feel less like a gap and more like a different world entirely.
Mrs. Walbury had moved past him without fanfare, setting her keys down on the counter with a soft clink, completely at ease in her own space.
"Nobody’s back yet," she said, her tone easy, like she was commenting on the weather.
David glanced at her. "Nobody’s back?"
She didn’t answer straight away, just let the remark sit, and his eyes drifted back across the room — and that was when he saw them.
Portraits. Three of them, hung in a neat row along the far wall.
He went still.
Mrs. Walbury was in all of them — younger in a couple, but unmistakably her. And beside her, in the largest frame, was a man. Big. Broad across the shoulders, the kind of build that said hunter before anything else did. He was standing behind her with one arm wrapped around her waist, relaxed in the way of someone who owned the space they occupied. He was smiling.
Below them — Jenny.
A complete family, frozen mid-happiness, hung up on the wall like a fact.
David studied it longer than he meant to.
’So that’s Mr. Walbury.’
He said nothing. There wasn’t anything to say. He just let the image settle, rearranging a few things quietly in his head.
’Her life compared to mine...’
He didn’t finish the thought.
"Oh—" She turned suddenly, something clicking in her memory. "I’d better go stash this with the others." She held up the package briefly. "She sent chocolates off last night too, actually. Give me a minute."
Before he could respond she was already moving — into one room, then another, her footsteps disappearing deeper into the apartment. David stayed where he was, hands sliding into his pockets, still half-facing the portraits.
He looked at the man in the photo one more time.
Then he looked away.
She returned a minute later, hands empty, expression unbothered.
"Coffee?"
"Umm—" He tilted his head slightly. "Tea, actually, if you have any."
"Tea." She repeated it like she was filing it away, then turned toward the kitchen without missing a beat.
He watched her move into it — familiar with every drawer, every cabinet, not thinking about any of it, just doing it the way you do things in a space that belongs to you.
David didn’t stay still either.
She moved through her kitchen the way people move through spaces they’ve lived in long enough to stop thinking about — cabinet open, closed, another one, the soft thud of a box being set on the counter.
David drifted a step closer to the kitchen entrance without quite deciding to, watching her pull out a box of sachet tea and tear it open, fingers working with the same quiet efficiency she seemed to bring to everything.
She hummed something low and tuneless under her breath.
He watched her fill the kettle, the water rushing in a clean arc, then carry it to the stove. A click of the switch.
The faint tick of the burner catching. She set the kettle down and turned slightly to lean against the counter while she waited, arms folding loosely across her chest.
And it was right then, watching her stand there looking perfectly at ease, that David remembered.
She still hadn’t answered his question.
Not really. Not with anything that actually counted. She’d given him complicated and a soft smile and then walked him inside and made him feel like the subject had been left somewhere back in the corridor. He turned it over in his mind, looking at her profile.
"So..." he started, casual. "You never really answered me."
She didn’t look at him immediately. Just reached over and adjusted the kettle slightly on the burner, even though it didn’t need adjusting.
"Answered you about what?"
’She knows exactly what.’
"About the question." He kept his voice easy. "The one I asked downstairs."
A small pause stretched between them. Then she turned her head toward him, one brow lifting, and the look on her face was almost — almost — amused.
"Can you not take a hint?"
She said it lightly, playfully even, but there was something underneath it that wasn’t entirely a joke.
David held his hands up in a loose half-surrender.
"I’m just asking. There’s nothing wrong with asking."
"There’s nothing wrong with not answering either."
"That’s fair," he said. "But you invited me up."
She opened her mouth. Closed it. The corner of her lip twitched.
"I invited you up for tea."
"And conversation." He tilted his head. "You literally said that downstairs. *Just so we can talk.* Your words."
She let out a small breath — not quite a sigh, not quite a laugh, something in the middle — and turned back to the kettle as if it suddenly needed monitoring.
"That’s not what I meant and you know it." freewebnoveℓ.com
"I don’t know what I know," David said. "I’m just curious."
"Curious." She repeated the word like she was inspecting it.
"About you." He shrugged, leaning a shoulder against the doorframe. "I’m not trying to make it weird. I just — I don’t know. I want to understand you a bit. That’s all."
The kettle began to build, a faint tremor of heat moving through the silence between them.
Mrs. Walbury kept her eyes on it for a moment, and in that moment she looked — not uncomfortable exactly, but something he hadn’t seen on her before. Something quieter. Like a layer had shifted without her meaning it to.
She looked almost shy.
It lasted only a second before she straightened up, reaching for the mug.
"You’re very persistent for someone who just came up for tea."
"I’ll let it go," he said.
She glanced at him.
"I just think—" He let the sentence run a little before he finished it.
"Whatever it is you’ve got locked away down there, you don’t have to bring it out for me. I get it. Tuck it back with everything else you’re not saying." He said it without an edge to it, genuinely.
"I’m not trying to dig for anything."
She was quiet for a moment, pouring hot water into the mug, the steam rising between them.
’But, dammit. I really wanna know...but the only way I see it possibly happening is if I use my skill.’
Instantly, the system notification bloomed at the edge of his awareness, unhelpfully on time.
[Would player like to active skill OathBound Gaze ?]
He let it sit there for a second.
He knew what the skill did. One use, direct, cuts through whatever someone is holding behind their expression and pulls something real to the surface. He’d been thinking about it since downstairs, if he was being honest with himself.
But he caught himself.
’If I spend it here—’
He thought about it. A skill like that had a single on uses and he had no idea when he’d actually need it. A real need. Not curiosity — actual stakes.
He dismissed the notification quietly.
’Not tonight.’
He pushed off the counter and took a small step back, giving her the space he’d been slowly closing without meaning to.
She set the mug down on the counter and slid it toward him, and he picked it up, wrapping both hands around the warmth of it.
"Thank you," he said. Simple. No follow-up.
She looked at him like she was waiting for one anyway.
When it didn’t come, something in her shoulders eased — barely, but he caught it.
Little did he know that what was awaiting him tonight was the beginning of his Harem Conqueror journey.
