Chapter 34: Escalation

Back in the house, Victor closed his eyes for a moment, before pausing in his previous movements and turning towards Eve. She took her desire to take a break seriously and was reading one of his books at the moment, while Victor swiped the house in order to calm himself down.

"Doctor Ziffer," he called her out. When Eve looked up at him, Victor showed her a small, mirthless smile. "I wanted to make you aware that despite your efforts, your friends came to all the right conclusions."

Eve let out a heavy sigh and put the book in her hands to the side, not bothering to remember a page. It was a classical romance novel—these kinds of books bored her to sleep. That didn't mean, though, that she was happy to hear Victor's words. The news he had brought was just what Eve was afraid of. Xia and Celina were good people, but both of them carried that certain quality in them…

Most manga and anime protagonists Eve knew of shared that quality. Like all these fictional characters, Xia and Celina belonged to a sort of people who would eagerly sacrifice their lives if it would save their friends, or even if it wouldn't—they will try, anyway. At most, Eve could hope that they will come up with some worthwhile plan while they were at it—like trying to kill Victor in his sleep. 'Yes, that sounds like something Xia would try to do.'

Eve's thought made Victor's face stony again—not because he feared to be killed in his sleep, but because it reminded him of his sins. Eve noticed his reaction and threw a sour look at him, before lowering her eyes to pick at her nails.

"Since it was your fault in the first place, you are going to be the one to explain Xia and Celina what I think about all that," she said.

"They won't believe my words," Victor argued. To be fair, he was as unwilling to speak with them about the incident as Eve, but he'd accept that duty if his point wasn't as valid as it was.

Eve distracted from picking her nails for long enough to scratch her chin in thought. Victor was right—if anything, he'd be lynched on the spot. "I will stand nearby and nod."

"They… Miss Qiao will think I'm threatening you into submission."

"Won't she think so anyway?" Eve sighed again.

Victor nodded. "She already suspects it."

Eve fell silent. Many thoughts were swarming in her head. She hated these kinds of situations—awkward ones that required social skills to solve. She didn't want to lie to people that had become her friends, but neither did she want to tell them the truth. After all, what Victor did wasn't something that many people would've just let go, especially these two in particular. It was, surprisingly, Eve herself who felt the calmest about the incident.

'I can still say only part of the truth—that Victor went out of control and I needed to use force to calm him down. But… That still sounds to suspicious, isn't it? And it's a loss, no matter what I do. I can only dive into this and hope for the best, I guess.'

"I have a suggestion, Doctor Ziffer," Victor spoke, causing Eve to lift her eyes to meet his and raise her brows expectantly. "Your friends come to plan and ask you by themselves later at night, when you will be alone. It would be the best time for you three to speak."

Eve scratched her chin. 'That sounds like a reasonable idea. A telepath would know best, truly. At this point, I almost wish I was one, but then, I can't imagine how that'd distract me from work…'

⠀

Following her plan, Eve spent the rest of the day as she planned—normally. If there was some element of avoiding her friends, it was less about her desire to avoid them and their glances and more with her natural inclination to find hobbies that didn't require human interaction. And one of these was always with her, right inside of her head—the project of her life, her unfinished magnum opus, and there was always something new to add or change in it.

When the night came, this was what Eve was busy with, as she slept peacefully in her bed. She had no inklings about the two people who sneakily left the living room, moving extremely carefully to not wake Victor up—a useless attempt, as he was only pretending to be asleep from the start. With bated breath they entered Eve's bedroom, one that Victor didn't ask back despite Eve's wounds being long healed. After seeing her lying down, one of these people, Celina, came up to Eve and leaned in.

"She's asleep. Damn, I don't think we can wake her up without waking everything in a hundred meters from the house," she whispered.

"Watch and learn, Lin-Lin," was Xia's quiet answer.

She crouched near Eve's sleeping form and put a hand on her mouth. Then she pinched Eve's hand, hard.

The pain was strong enough to trigger all the warnings in Eve's peaceful until now DreamscapeEdit. It was felt even through the thick veil that Eve always felt being put between her body and her mind whenever she entered this place, especially in her sleep. During the latter time, Eve wasn't able to feel her body at all before—even the sound of Celina shouting to wake her up and the shaking she gave her Eve only felt after being awoken. This time, she felt the pain first.

She woke up with a start, gasping on reflex, only to find out that her mouth was closed by someone's hand. For a brief second, she panicked, until two familiar faces in front of her registered in Eve's mind. She slapped Xia's hand, but the soldier held steadfast, and Eve could only throw glares at her.

"Sh-h. Be quiet, Sister Eve," she said. Only when Eve nodded in understanding, did Xia took her hand away.

Eve immediately sat up, her heart still beating fast from fright and her head free of any sleepiness now. "Were you trying to kill me? Did you mistake me for someone else, by chance?"

"I'm sorry, Sister, but it was necessary." Xia gave Eve a cute, innocent, unremorseful smile. "We came to help you!"

Eve frowned, looking at Xia, then at Celina, who nodded in agreement with the former, and then at her nails, who never asked anything from her besides being cut from time to time, and maybe, just maybe, a good filing. "Thank you for consideration, but I really don't need it. Actually, I don't even think what are you talking about," she added, catching herself.

The temptation of answering unasked questions was great, Eve admitted. 'Victor must have had a lot of practice to be able to pretend to not notice them as he does.'

"It's about what happened between you and Victor this morning. Say, he really did nothing awful to you? He didn't threaten you into silence or anything like that?" Celina whispered from the side.

Eve pursed her lips, trying to come with some softer words to explain what happened then. A half a minute later she gave up and said it how she could—with utmost bluntness and a lot of annoyance. "I wasn't clear with you from the start, because this was exact reaction I was afraid of. But yes, Victor lost control over himself and kissed me. I kicked him in the groin, and there was when it all ended. It really isn't such a big deal."

Celina gasped and then gulped as her face turned darker. Xia just narrowed her eyes. There was a steely, murderous intent in her gaze. Eve couldn't help but feel the hairs on her neck standing up, despite seeing that it wasn't directed at her, but at someone else, someone in Xia's mind.

"You can't think this way, Sister. It was just a first step. Next time, this dog will do something worse. Will you forgive him that too?" Xia said in a deadly serious, chilling voice. "We can't keep staying around him."

Eve started to pick her nails to avoid Xia's eyes. Celina was looking back and forth between the two of them with hesitation written on her face. "H-hey, Xia, Eve, there's no need to be so tense. Kraust got his due already. We can just move on… somewhere far, far away…"

"No," Eve said resolutely. The matter blew up, just like she dreaded it would, but Eve wasn't going to let that interrupt her research. Victor, in his best, was a powerful ally to have, and very useful for her end goal—too powerful and too useful to miss out. She gathered all the composure she could find in herself and met Xia's eyes. "If you won't believe my words now, you won't believe anything, and if you don't, then there's really little I can do. Victor is my problem, and I can deal with him. Do you trust me in this?"