When Lili finally stepped out of the medical wing, Her wounds weren’t fully healed yet, but they were manageable now. Pain had dulled, and her steps, though slow, carried strength. What she didn’t expect, was the silence that fell as she entered the corridor. Heads turned, conversations stopped mid sentence. One by one, soldiers straightened, some offering respectful nods, others lifting their hands in military salutes. Eyes followed her, not with suspicion or distance as they once had, but with reverence.
Lili blinked, trying to absorb it. She glanced sideways at her parents. Colin walked at her right, Astonia close at her left, her lips tight with pride and worry. Notori trailed a step behind, silent but fiercely present.
“Okay,” Lili muttered under her breath, “am I in some alternate reality?”
Notori arched a brow, but said nothing.
Lili’s gaze swept the hallway again. “Everyone’s looking at me like I’m some kind of… I don’t know… A hero?”
Colin gave a soft grunt, and Astonia actually smiled. Notori offered her a side glance with amusement flickering in his eyes. “Turns out dying for someone changes your reviews,” he murmured.
Lili rolled her eyes, but the warmth in her chest betrayed her. She wasn’t used to being acknowledged not for the darkness she carried, but for what she chose to do with it.
“You’re going to see Rafael?” Notori asked, hands tucked into his pockets, though his voice carried the quiet edge of curiosity.
“Yes,” Astonia answered, adjusting the strap of her bag. “Rafael wants us to continue our research in a more secure facility. We’re discussing the logistics today. The most probable option is Helena’s lab.”
Lili paused mid-step, her gaze lifting sharply at the name. “Helena?” she repeated. “She’s a nice woman,” Lili said suddenly, startling herself with the warmth in her voice.
Astonia and Colin exchanged glances, both visibly surprised.
Notori’s smirk curled slowly. “That’s when I knew,” he said, watching Lili with something between amusement and quiet reverence. “You weren’t just some killing machine with a mask and a mission. You saw something worth trusting.”
Lili turned her face away, color blooming in her cheeks as if the words had drawn a line too close to her center. “Stop it,” she muttered, half-laughing. “I’m not great at hearing things like that. I don’t know what to do with it.”
“You’re not supposed to do anything,” Notori said gently. “Just let it exist.”
Lili didn’t answer. Her fingers played with the hem of her sleeve.
She looked up again. “You should go talk with Rafael alone about this,” she said. “You’ll get more done without me around making people nervous.”
Colin gave a knowing smile, but didn’t argue. Astonia stepped forward and brushed a soft hand over her daughter’s shoulder.
“We’ll be back soon,” she said, her voice threaded with affection. “Don’t vanish again while we’re gone.”
As her parents walked off down the corridor, Lili stood beside Notori, watching them disappear around the corner.
“Lili, can we talk?” Notori’s voice cut through the hum of passing soldiers and low conversation.
She turned to him fully, blinking, caught off guard. His eyes met hers. “Sure…” she replied slowly, her voice softened by surprise.
Notori offered a small smile, one that flickered with both gratitude and nerves. “Let’s go to your room,” he said, nodding toward the hallway. “You still shouldn’t be pushing yourself too much with those wounds.”
She studied him for a second longer. “Alright,” she finally said, turning beside him. “But you better not try to lecture me about health. I’ve had enough of that from Margherita for a lifetime.”
He chuckled softly. “No lectures,” he promised. “Just… something I’ve been meaning to say.”
They walked in silence, shoulder to shoulder. At her door, Lili keyed it open without a word, and they stepped inside the familiar dimness of her small sanctuary. The door clicked shut behind them, and with it, something shifted.
Lili sat on the edge of her bed, her spine straight but her breath unsure. She watched him from the corner of her eye. Notori hesitated for a moment, his gaze flicking to the spot beside her on the mattress and for a moment it looked like he might sit there. His feet even moved in that direction but then he pulled away. He turned to the desk, dragged the chair back with a slow scrape, spun it around, and sat on it backward with arms folded over the top rail, eyes leveled on her.
Something cold brushed her skin, fear rippled across her face before she could hide it.
“Lili…” Notori began, voice quiet but tight. “You do trust me, right?”
Her head tilted slightly, confused. “Yes… I think so?” she replied, hesitant, her voice barely above a breath. “Shouldn’t I?”
“Of course you should,” he said quickly. He shifted on the chair, watching her with that expression he wore before battles studying every crack and calculating something deeper than tactics. “You know I’d never hurt you, right? Never, Lili.”
Her hands, resting on her lap, started to tremble a little and her eyes sharpened, narrowed with fear because she’d been here before, hadn’t she? Cornered by kindness that turned. Softness that broke into cruelty. Promises turned into betrayal.
Her voice cut through the silence. “The fuck, Notori?!”
He flinched, just slightly, but didn’t look away.
“What is this?” she pressed, rising now, her movements sharper, more instinct than intention. The shadows behind her stirred. “You walk me here. You sit like you’re about to confess you’re dying. Then you ask if I trust you? What is this, Notori?!”
Notori opened his mouth, but no sound came. His jaw worked like he was chewing words too heavy to swallow, eyes searching her face for a way out.
He inhaled slowly, then forced out the words that had been burning holes in his chest. “I just…” he began. “Lili, I know what you went through. What those monsters did to you. I know what it means when someone plays with your trust, with your body, with your mind. I know it’s not something you just… walk away from.”
She didn’t speak. Just watched him.
“And that’s why I’m afraid,” he continued, his voice cracking under the weight of truth. “Because after what I tell you, I don’t know if you’ll still want me near.”
He glanced down, fingers tightening on the chair’s back. His knuckles were white now. Fire flickered in his veins, restrained, barely held at bay.
“I just… I need to say it. Because it’s killing me, Lili. Keeping it in. Watching you every day, fighting like hell, burning brighter than anyone else here and knowing I feel something I shouldn’t.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “I care about you. More than I should.”
The silence that followed didn’t feel like silence at all. It rang loud and painful. Lili stared at him, and for the first time since waking, she looked more wounded than whole.
It wasn’t that she hadn’t seen it coming. Notori had always looked at her differently. She had caught the softness, the weight, the watchfulness in his eyes more times than she cared to count but she had chosen not to name it because it was easier to believe he saw her as a teammate than to accept the terrifying possibility that she could be loved by someone who had seen all the sharp and broken edges of her soul and still wanted to reach for them.
“Lili… please,” he said, voice low, aching. “Say something.”
Her mouth parted, but nothing came. Her breath caught like it had tripped on the stairs of her past, and everything she had buried clawed its way up at once—shock, confusion, fear… the ghosts of hands she hadn’t wanted, of voices that didn’t ask permission, of the twisting in her gut that told her even kindness could sometimes be a trap.
Notori saw it. All of it and his expression broke.
“I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable,” he said quickly, rising to his feet. “I just—damn it—I’m sorry. I thought… maybe you felt it too.”
Lili’s hands trembled in her lap, faint but unmistakable, as if even her body was afraid of what might come next. Her breath hitched once, twice, before words finally fought their way through the wall of her throat.
“And what would you feel in my place, Notori?” she asked. “If it were you with these scars?”
Notori froze, her words slicing through him more cleanly than flame ever could.
“Maybe I survived,” she continued, her voice trembling but firming with every breath, “but that doesn’t mean they didn’t break me. Pieces of me are still lying somewhere between in their walls. And no matter how many people salute me now, no matter how strong I seem, some parts of me still flinch in the dark.” She looked up at him then, and there was no anger in her eyes. “If you’re smart, you’ll look for love somewhere else. I can’t give you what you want, Notori.”
A moment passed, then another. His shoulders sank, but his eyes stayed soft. “I didn’t fall for you because I thought you were whole,” he said, voice roughened with restraint. “I fell because I saw someone who still stood up, who still protected people, even when she barely knew how to protect herself.” He took a slow breath, as if forcing himself to stop before he crossed another fragile line. “But I hear you, Lili, and I’m sorry if I made you feel like this was something you owed me. It’s not.” He stepped back, hands lowered in quiet surrender. “I’ll go.”
When the door clicked shut behind him and Notori’s steps faded down the corridor, Lili remained still for a moment, barely breathing. The silence that followed was deafening.
Her face buried in her hands, her shoulders trembling with the force of it, Lili cried in grief that had waited in the shadows of her soul for a moment she wouldn’t be able to hold it back. She cried for the fear, for the panic that still lived in her spine. Also, she cried for the desperation that clawed at her chest every time someone tried to get too close, for the ache of mistrusting even her own instincts, for hurting Notori even if she’d tried to convince herself that she didn’t care. And most of all, for the deep belief that maybe she was damaged beyond repair.
Notori didn’t walk far. His feet moved out of her room, down the quiet hall and when he turned the corner and leaned his back against the wall, breath catching in his throat, it hit him fully that he had broken the trust, the fragile, careful thing that had grown between them because he’d asked too much.His hand lifted to his face, pressing hard against his eyes, as if he could hold back the sting gathering there.
“I’m such an idiot,” he whispered into the hollow corridor, his voice raw.
In that moment, Notori loathed himself for believing that his desperate ache mattered more than her fragile healing, for forgetting that some wounds needed silence before they could be spoken to. He stayed there, crumpled against the cold wall, shattered and lost.
“Notori?”
He lifted his head slowly, eyes swollen and shimmering in the pale light. There stood Cova, her expression full of concern and something tender. Without hesitation, she lowered herself beside him. “What happened?” she asked gently.
Notori swallowed hard, struggling to weave words from the chaos inside. His voice cracked when he spoke, “I… I tried to tell her… I thought she might feel the same… but I broke her instead.”
His hands clenched into fists, trembling with the weight of unsaid truths and shattered hopes.
Cova’s eyes softened, reaching out to rest lightly on his shoulder. “I’m sure you didn’t break her,” she whispered, “Sometimes love arrives too soon, but it’s never wasted. Give her time.”
For a long moment, they sat like that, two fractured souls bound by silent understanding, beneath the cold flicker of the base’s unforgiving light.
“Easy for you to say,” Notori’s voice cracked. “I saw right there in her eyes. That flicker of doubt, the walls she built higher than ever before. I didn’t just stumble, I shattered the trust we had, the fragile peace between us.” He drew a shaky breath. “She fought to stay with us, with me… and I almost made her run away instead.”
“She’s scared, yes. But she’s stronger than you think.” Cova finally spoke after a moment of silence. “You have to believe in that strength… and in yourself.”
Notori sighed. It was a heavy sound that seemed to carry the weight of every fractured hope. His shoulders tensed, uneasy beneath Cova’s steady gaze. “Could you… go check on her for me? Please?” His voice was low, almost a plea, fragile.
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