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The moment that he arrived, he was already surrounded by fanfare and an endless crowd.

“Hello, everyone!” He smiled sweetly at them as his open-roofed royal carriage moved past the crowd.

But Ronin could tell that sweet smile was fake.

Ronin was stuck inside the Temple of the Gods due to his duty’s as Zeriav’s assistant, but he had stuck a peering stone for a 2nd year student to hold up for him that he commanded with the one-word command.

He looked at Cermin from his glass. Even without reading his mind, he can tell what was in it.

He was happy to be back at school, but not for the crowd of people. His eyes shifted once in a while ass if looking for someone.

Ronin knew he was looking for him and sneered.

But then as Cermin surveyed the crowd for his friend, he saw someone else and his fake smile faltered.

There was Zeriav, wearing a hood and watching him. His face was hidden…

But his genuine delight and ecstasy upon seeing Cermin was visible.

Zeriav felt like he could die at this moment. To see Cermin again, after all these years…

He remembered all the lonesome times he spent having to repent in solitude at Mount Vrochi, at the temple. It rains almost every day on that mountain, and the walls are overrun with vines and cracks and flowers.

The flowers always reminded him of Cermin.

When he had first met him, and Volken introduced him to the group, he did not regard him with much special feelings.

But one moment, during the rain…

“Ah, it’s raining again. I forgot my umbrella.” 1st year Cermin cursed, as he took shade at the temple. “It comes by so suddenly all the time…..”

Zeriav was much taller than him that time, and towered over him.

“You cannot despise the rain for coming so suddenly. It’s the natural way of life.” Zeriav saud behind him.

Cermin grinned. “I don’t despise the rain. Actually, I like it because it allows for more plants to grow. And flowers too!”

Zeriav blinked, not expecting anyone to agree with him and wave away his notions about precipitation.

“You are fond of flowers?” Zeriav asked.

“I know, I know. It’s not a manly thing to like.” The prince scratched his head. “But honestly flowers are just so pretty and interesting. There’s never really one that’s like the other, even when people think they’re all the same.”

As he watched the water drip from the petals of the flowers in this temple, Zeriav had come to realize what he meant.

After looking at these flowers for so long in his years of silence and solitude, he had come to notice every single difference in them.

Even those of the same breed can have varying shades of petals, their shape, the number of stamen and how large the pistils were…

Somehow, in his loneliness, he was comforted with these flowers because of Cermin.

And now they have met again, and Cermin had bloomed.

He looked very different from the young boy he once knew that loves flowers and does not mind the rain.

There was a bit of maturity in him that made him able to hide his true feelings to the public. He always had an honest face and honest expression…

But somehow, he was now able to smile fakely and hide his real thoughts.

Zeriav disliked this change, but he knew it was what he needed to survive. Cermin had grown into a bright and alluring flower for both men and women to admire.

His body had developed, as well as his posture, making him less childish and more regal. His broad shoulders and large biceps were a testament to the strength he had developed from training.

At this point, Cermin was at Level 40. He was close to reaching the gap between him and Ronin.

Even Ronin himself noticed this gradual change too. Their training together during the Week’s End must have inspired him to train by himself and become stronger.

And of course, there was always this thought of ‘being strong enough to protect his friend from the hidden villain’.

Not knowing that his friend and the villain was the same.

But now that he had Zeriav once again….

Will he consider him a friend too?

Both Ronin and Zeriav waited for how Cermin will react upon seeing him again.

Eventually….

Cermin smiled back at Zeriav.

It was a welcoming smile, as if saying the words ‘Welcome back. I’m glad you returned, my friend.’

Zeriav felt a huge relief, and held his heart at this.

It was settled. He will talk to Cermin once this parade was over.

Ronin felt something that stirred in his heart after that smile towards someone else.

It made the anger rose higher than it did when his ego was being hurt. When his pride was being trampled on.

“Envy.”

He then heard the words in his ear. It was spoken by someone else.

He was transported to a memory of Ou again.

“You envy that girl?” Someone said, face still blurry as ever.

It was this person that he still could not make clear the face of. The friend that was the cause of his death.

He had never been able to recall his face clearly. Everything else has a haze surrounding him, but it was so much stronger over this person’s face.

It was like his mind was forcing him to forget. To never recall his face properly.

“I saw how you both smiled at each other during the homecoming parade.” Ou said with a harsh tone. “Did she become your friend?”

“Well….. Maybe. I hoped so.” The friend said giddily. “She’s a freshman. She haven’t seen me play football before, but she said she was already a fan of how I play.”

“Probably only a fan of how you look.” Ou scoffed.

“Oh come on, Ou! I can’t be friendly with anyone else anymore?”

Ou gritted his teeth. “Of course not. You can have friends, but…”

“You’ve been forgetting about me recently. Most of the time, I have to spend my lunches alone. Not just my lunches, but the whole day.”

He smiled bitterly. “I was used to that when we separated in middle school and high school, being alone. But I hoped that once we met again, we’d be like before. Close as always…..”

“But it was like I don’t know you anymore. This you that you present to the public. To people like her. Just so they would like you.”

The person just laughed off his concern, thinking it was a joke, and simply said:

“Hahaha! You’re just jealous, Ou. Damn…. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you’re being too possessive of me as your friend.”

His friend made a disgusted face.

“I don’t like possessive people at all. Makes me feel like they own me or something.”

Ronin snapped out of it, feeling very annoyed. The water at the Precipitation Scale had overflowed, and went drip drip drip into the floor.

He put the scrolls away, and touched his aching head.

But the images won’t stop. It showed flashes of a broken flower vase.

Ou was sitting beside that broken flower vase. There were flowers inside.

“Fine! If you think I’m being possessive, then you don’t deserve these flowers for your homecoming at all!”

He shoved the flowers inside a bit too forcefully, that’s why the vase had a crack.

He stared at it for a while, and felt like he could stare at the water dripping for hours.

He remembered every single day he spent just waiting and waiting for the day that he could see his friend again.

How he would be staring at the ceiling for hours, or outside his window at the stars the whole night….

Those repetitive days felt like a dream, and he wanted so badly to wake up.

He had bloomed from a boy to a man and yet nothing truly changes. When he was young, he had been alone because of his appearance and circumstance.

People either hated him or does not want to be friends with him. They saw him as a foreign object, an alien.

Even when he was born and grew in the same country as them, it did not matter. They mock or avoid him for being different.

Except for his friend. Ou only had that one friend, and when he lost him….

Solitude felt like forever, slowly suffocating him. Especially since his mother commited suicide when he was 8 due to financial problems and depression from constant discrimination at work.

But after he woke up from the dream and saw him again in college…

It went back to this all over again.

It seemed that solitude was his one and only friend.

“I hate you…. I hate that girl.” He said, plucking the petals from those flowers.

The water just kept on dripping and dripping, and he felt like it would soon overflow and fill the house and drown him.

And he really wished that would happen. Let him drown all alone and become a puddle himself.