"Oh, Commander!"
The voice that came from not far away shattered the tension that had been quite pleasant. As a result, the two people who had slipped out of the strange atmosphere turned their heads in that direction at the same time.
In the distance, beyond the undergrowth, about twenty members of the 1st Battalion were approaching. One of them at the very front waved his hand vigorously as if to point out their location, calling that it was this way. It seemed they had been waiting for the Commander to return before joining the base camp, and when he didn't show even after a long time, they had gone to search for him themselves.
Leonardo thought they looked as if they'd been in distress too, their eyes sunken and their appearances disheveled after just a few days without seeing them. However, he felt no emotion like pity and only looked at them with disapproving eyes.
He realized something was wrong when their gazes, which had been directed at their faces, lowered slightly. Even without deliberately following those gazes, he felt the grip on his hand tighten a little, and Leonardo was suddenly reminded of what he had been doing with their Commander.
Before he could even recognize the embarrassment rushing in, his body moved first. Leonardo hurriedly pulled his hand out of Hugo's, took awkward steps back, and kept a slight distance as if nothing had happened.
After doing that, he felt a little sorry for suddenly abandoning him, so he rubbed the back of his hand, where the sensation still lingered, and glanced up at Hugo.
Hugo, who had likewise been staring at the members, briefly looked at his own hand, now empty after its warmth had coldly escaped, then raised his head. He'd thought something serious had happened because Leonardo had flinched and yanked his hand away, but now it seemed there was another reason.
Hugo's gaze, with one eyebrow slightly raised, went back to the members and then shifted to Leonardo again. As he silently studied the eyes that flicked up at him as if gauging his reaction, a small laugh slipped out before he knew it. When Leonardo was acting shamelessly, he hadn't cared about the members' eyes at all.
Other than that small laugh, there was no particular change in his expression, but the laugh sounded disbelieving, making Leonardo feel oddly embarrassed.
Because of that, he stood still with a somewhat displeased expression, and Hugo strode over and gently wrapped his right arm around Leonardo’s back and shoulder. Then, with a faint smile, he said,
"Let's go together. Those guys have been waiting for you too."
"...What?"
This time, the words telling him not to lie almost burst out of him.
Leonardo started moving as if being pushed along by Hugo, who was holding his shoulder and forearm close. He looked up at him with a furrowed expression as if asking what he was doing all of a sudden, but Hugo only gestured with his eyes to go, patting his shoulder.
The 8th Platoon Leader, who had been anxiously waiting for the Commander, relaxed the stiff expression on her face when she saw the two approaching from afar. Then, with a sigh, she also looked at Leonardo with a slightly displeased face.
She seemed to have no understanding of his earlier wandering around the area, even if he wasn’t going to run far.
Leonardo also showed a hint of displeasure as he was forced to approach them. Even so, his eyes quickly scanned the faces of those who'd been waiting and the surroundings.
Seeing that the number of heads roughly matched the total number of 1st Battalion members on the peninsula, he figured they might already have achieved their goal and regrouped. He was anxious, wondering if the two had been caught.
And as he feared, a familiar face was visible among the members, smiling awkwardly while holding a bundle. Spotting Kenis, Leonardo flinched for a moment and swallowed dryly. Then his eyes moved even more restlessly.
The only thing that could be considered fortunate was that Alec Siles was nowhere to be seen.
As if noticing Leonardo's anxious gaze, Kenis subtly sent an OK sign by touching the tips of his index finger and thumb under the bundle. Leonardo, who had been glancing around, caught the sign and finally let out a small sigh of relief in secret. It seemed they had succeeded in sending him away without getting caught.
"You were all gathered here."
"Commander, we've been searching for a long time."
Before they knew it, the 1st Battalion members crowded around Hugo and Leonardo as they came closer and surrounded them. Amid the voices welcoming the Commander and the occasional glances brushing past him, Leonardo tried hard to look confident. He kept a brazen expression as if to say, "So what?"
Hugo, who had glanced at him, lowered the arm that had been around his shoulder and soon asked, carefully scanning the members,
"Where is Kenis Weber?"
The 8th Platoon Leader grabbed Kenis’s forearm, who had been cleverly hiding among the platoon members, and brought him out. As a result, Kenis, now standing right in front of the Commander, looked up at him with a very tense expression.
As he shrank back, worried that he might be scolded, Hugo simply patted his shoulder lightly without saying much, confirming his complexion didn’t look bad. At that touch that seemed to say, "Relax," Kenis, who had been stiff as a board, smiled awkwardly and scratched the back of his head.
It was quite a heartwarming sight, but Leonardo, watching from the side, couldn’t shake the sense that his presence here was out of place for some reason. It felt like he was floating alone, like oil on water.
As if to prove that, no one was openly staring at him, but gazes with unknown meanings would brush against him and slip away right before their eyes met. The strange irritation those actions gave him made Leonardo chase them off with a very unpleasant expression, as if asking what they were looking at.
At that moment, when he was on edge, a voice suddenly called his name amid the chaotic conversations.
"Mr. Blaine!"
At the particularly clear sound of his name, Leonardo turned his head with a puzzled face.
Someone pushed through the members and abruptly appeared. The face that approached him head-on looked as if it had been eagerly waiting for this moment to meet again.
It was Flynn.
His face wasn’t very bright, his expression was deeply furrowed, and his shoulders rose and fell hard as if he had run over in a hurry. He looked like he had a lot to say, as if he were about to confront him over something.
Wondering what he was trying to say by rushing out like this all of a sudden, Leonardo slightly furrowed his brows and quietly looked at him. Flynn’s sudden appearance cut off the others’ conversations, and now the attention was openly fixed on this situation, which felt very uncomfortable and embarrassing.
Flynn, who had been catching his breath for a moment while facing Leonardo, took one more step closer and grabbed both of his hands. Looking into the golden eyes that widened at the sudden contact, he spoke while pressing down on the emotions that seemed ready to spill out,
"Welcome back."
Those words carried quite a lot.
Not only were they unexpected, but the voice, held so tightly in check, was slightly trembling, so Leonardo couldn’t hide the dazed look for a moment. In the clear eyes that blinked up at him with both hands held, there was worry for him, not anger.
Not long after resolving to be brazen, Leonardo thought he must look pretty stupid right now.
What he had braced himself for, when he directly made a contract with Alec Siles instead of immediately returning to the group, was the cold treatment, restraint, disregard, and other unpleasant things that would be poured on him once he came back. However, contrary to those thoughts, what reached him now was completely different from what he’d expected.
"I'm glad you're safe."
Perhaps his nose bridge stung after saying that, because Flynn’s brows twitched slightly. Strength entered the hands holding him, passing his feelings to Leonardo as they were. Thanks to that, he could tell the person in front of him meant it, and that this dazed moment was real.
The wind that blew at just the right time and shook his hair opened up his narrow field of vision, which had been walled up as a defense mechanism. As a result, the gazes of the numerous people standing behind Flynn pressed in on him again.
This time, everyone was looking at him openly, without a single person avoiding his eyes, and it wasn’t as unpleasant as he’d thought. As if something in him had shifted in that brief moment, their gazes looked a little different.
Rather than wariness and rejection, it seemed like they, too, had something ⊛ Nоvеlιght ⊛ (Read the full story) they wanted to say.
Leonardo, who had been looking around for a moment, turned his eyes back to Flynn.
...Somehow, he felt strange.
Looking into the clear eyes filled with heavy emotion, he found it absurd that he himself felt like he had "returned."
