Leonardo barely swallowed what he had in his mouth and unintentionally made a disgusted face. However, he quickly composed himself, leaned his upper body toward Flynn—sitting across the table—and said:
"Flynn, I'm curious about something."
"Huh?"
Flynn replied as he poured water from a canteen into a cup and slid it toward Leonardo.
"What is it?"
Leonardo naturally accepted the thoughtfulness and gulped down the water to rinse his mouth. Flynn nagged him to drink slowly, but he didn't pay much attention.
"Ah—. I can breathe now."
Leonardo wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and pushed the cup back toward Flynn as he got to the main point.
"It's about my voice. You said I was unconscious for three days. Did something happen during that time?"
Flynn blinked at the direct question. Then he asked back with an ambiguous nuance.
"What do you mean by 'something'? Well... what kind of thing?"
"No, I'm wondering why my throat is messed up when I was unconscious. I really don't remember anything at all. But was there, maybe, something like—you know—my mana... suddenly becoming uncontrollable... anything like that?"
Leonardo, asking the question he’d been worried about, dragged out his words while reading the atmosphere, unlike before. Asking about the possibility of going berserk with his own mouth wasn’t something that could be brought up lightly. He’d been stressed about related issues throughout the subjugation, and now it was like admitting he really couldn’t trust himself anymore.
Leonardo, struggling to continue, glanced at Flynn as if to say, You know what I mean by now, right? Flynn, having roughly caught the implied meaning, waved his hands and answered.
"No, nothing like that happened. If anything, the problem was that your mana recovery was slow for a while."
Flynn recalled Leonardo from a few days ago, limp in the Commander's arms. It's impossible for an unconscious person to hide or control their own mana. Yet at that time, Leonardo's mana was barely perceptible—just like Teo, whom they had met in Frost Territory.
For a mage, mana is one of the main indicators of condition. However, at that moment, he was so drained of energy that his condition couldn't even be gauged. As if his entire body had been burned white.
That emptiness remained unchanged until just yesterday evening. So his current state, showing remarkable recovery, was truly nothing short of a miracle, as the medical officer had said.
"For the past two days, your mana was almost completely depleted. It's only recently returned to this level."
Facing the vitality in those golden eyes, Flynn felt like the emotions he’d been holding back were about to surge up again. But he suppressed them, trying not to show it, and calmly answered Leonardo's question.
"So of course, there was nothing for you to worry about. Even the medical team said it's an unusual case for you to recover so suddenly."
"Really? Then why..."
The answer was very reassuring, but at the same time, it planted another question. As Leonardo tilted his head and trailed off, Flynn continued with a slightly darkened expression.
"Your throat is probably damaged from screaming so much. You had several seizures during the surgery."
Flynn calmly recounted that blood-soaked day. However, as he spoke, his expression gradually lost its composure.
Leonardo listened intently with a serious face to the situation at the time coming from Flynn's mouth. His own image during the surgery, as relayed to him, was no different from the desperate cries of a corpse barely clinging to life.
As he listened to the somewhat shocking explanation, suddenly a part of the memory buried in his unconsciousness leaked out.
'It's okay.'
Just as he seemed to hear a familiar voice, terrible pain pierced through his nerves. Leonardo suddenly flinched, frowned, and grabbed his left shoulder with his right hand.
"That day, the Commander all day long... Blaine?"
Flynn, who had stopped mid-sentence, looked at him as if to ask what was wrong. Leonardo, with his head bowed low, buried his lips in his forearm and didn't answer.
Noticing something strange, Flynn quickly came to his side. Then, examining his complexion, he urgently asked with a worried expression.
"What's wrong? Does your shoulder hurt?"
Leonardo frowned and occasionally shrugged his shoulders as he slowly caught his breath. His suddenly unstable breathing showed he was in considerable discomfort.
The reason Leonardo couldn't answer was that he felt nauseous, on top of the shoulder pain.
He had often felt this queasiness while eating the soup. He’d wanted to put the spoon down, but having been earnestly advised to consume even finely ground food to prevent dehydration and malnutrition, he had endured it. Of course, the medical officer had hinted there might be a rejection reaction from the body after such a long absence of food.
However, the nausea rising now wasn't simply a rejection reaction to food. Along with his shoulder feeling like it was burning, it felt like his esophagus and stomach were startled and thrashing about. It was as if the memory engraved in his body from before was arbitrarily reenacting that time.
Because of this, for about five minutes, Leonardo remained motionless. It was fortunate that Flynn had brought several pillows and cushions for him to lean back on; otherwise, he might have vomited everything he had just eaten as his internal organs twisted.
Still, as he sat slightly reclined, stability soon returned, and his stomach calmed down again. The pain in his shoulder also became somewhat bearable. But when he raised his head while rubbing his face dry, he could see Flynn's face, which was not okay at all.
Flynn's lips were tightly twisted. Seeing this, Leonardo blinked with a dumbfounded expression and asked:
"...Hey, are you crying?"
Those light green eyes were already moist—an expression steeped in melancholy for anyone to see. Although tears hadn't fallen yet, they were brimming, ready to roll down at any moment. Startled by that face, Leonardo was at a loss for words, not knowing what to say. He just asked again in a bewildered tone:
"No, why are you crying...?"
Feeling embarrassed for a moment, Flynn quickly turned his head and retorted somewhat gruffly:
"Who's crying."
In a small voice, he repeated that he wasn't crying and rubbed his eyes vigorously. Even Leonardo, who would usually tease him playfully with a laugh, stayed quiet this time, apparently quite surprised.
The atmosphere suddenly became awkward. With the actually sick person watching him cautiously, Flynn wanted to stab his own foolish eyes. He had barely managed to hold back in front of the Commander, but recalling Leonardo in pain—and realizing his condition was still not good, right in front of him—seemed to bring up an indescribable distress.
As he tried to compose himself with his back turned, Leonardo came over on his knees and sat down heavily beside him, bending his upper body. Then he looked up at Flynn's face, which was bowed low, his head tilted. The sparkling golden eyes offered clumsy comfort.
"Hey..., I'm fine. It's ✧ NоvеIight ✧ (Original source) just because the soup tastes bad."
"..."
"...I'm really fine, okay? Don't cry."
Leonardo, who had been speaking continuously, carefully reached out and rubbed Flynn's eyes. As the warm touch met his face, Flynn's eyes twitched slightly, and he squeezed them shut before opening them again.
When he lifted his eyelids, there was a beautiful person in front of him, looking even more pitiful with added frailty. As Leonardo fluttered his golden eyelashes and stared blankly, matching eye level, Flynn didn't know where to put his gaze. He turned his head and blurted out:
"I didn't cry."
Leonardo shrugged with a knowing expression. He chuckled and nodded as if to say, Whatever you say.
He wanted to tease him—why would he cry over something so trivial—but thinking it was because of him, all he could say was, "I'm fine." This guy, who was even older than him, had such a soft heart that he unnecessarily flustered people.
As Leonardo sat quietly with his knees up, waiting, Flynn, conscious of how close their faces were, cleared his throat and shifted slightly away. Yet, seeing that Leonardo's complexion seemed fine, he continued the conversation he’d been pretending to have.
"Ahem, anyway. So that day, the Commander stayed by your side all day, nursing you. Originally, they were going to soak your arm in salt water to draw out the poison through osmosis, but the poison had already spread too far through your shoulder, so that didn't work either..."
Flynn returned to the story of the surgery, explaining the circumstances that led to Leonardo screaming until his voice became hoarse.
The fact that Ilaptor's venom, which matched the components of the mother body's poison, reacted to sodium chloride was something Leonardo had told them directly. At first, they tried to use that to remove the toxicity, but Leonardo's left arm was already in such serious condition that the method was ineffective. Because of this, Flynn explained in detail that they removed it by cutting open the shoulder and sucking out the dead blood and poison one by one.
Leonardo nodded as he listened, but for a moment, a chill ran down his spine. Sucking it out one by one? Even if it was a medical procedure, the thought of some unknown person arbitrarily kneading his left shoulder didn't make him feel very good.
Because of that, Leonardo, with a displeased face, asked Flynn reluctantly:
"Wait, the poison was... what? Who did that?"
Flynn, who usually answered questions immediately, hesitated for a moment.
And just then, the sound of members saluting came from outside. The two people inside the cabin reflexively turned their heads toward the door.
Soon after, the door swung open without delay, and someone appeared against the backdrop of the profuse sunset.
Leonardo narrowed his eyes, doubting his memory for a moment. It was the blue-eyed man whose lips had once been soaked with red blood.
