Harem Apocalypse: My Seed is the Cure?!

Chapter 368: Thankful Mei

After Callighan left them, and after Gaspar thankfully dragged Williams away, the air finally felt breathable again.

Mei changed fast the second someone brought her clean clothes. Her hands still shook while she pulled the ruined top off, and for a moment she had to stop because her fingers wouldn’t work right. Too much adrenaline still stuck in her system. Too much leftover disgust. She forced herself through it anyway, threw the fresh clothes on, and came right back before Pamela had even finished laying out what she needed.

Keith was still barely holding himself together.

Pamela told Mei to help her, so she slipped under one of Keith’s arms while Pamela took the other side. He tried to walk on his own, but most of his weight sagged into them after two steps. Every time his feet dragged wrong across the ground, his face tightened, and he let out these small rough breaths through his teeth like even that much movement hurt. Mei kept one hand firm around his side and tried not to think too hard about how warm his blood still felt through the fabric.

Between the two of them, they managed to get him inside the house.

They laid him down on the sofa carefully, Pamela guiding his shoulders, Mei steadying his legs so he didn’t drop awkwardly at the last second. Once he was down, Mei stepped back and just stood there, watching.

Pamela got to work immediately.

Most of the damage was on Keith’s face. Williams had clearly gone for that on purpose. The right side of Keith’s face had swollen badly already, especially around the eye. The skin there had darkened into a nasty bruise, and the eyelid looked puffy enough that it would probably get worse before it got better. His lip was split. There was dried blood along his jaw and fresh blood around one cut near his cheekbone that Pamela cleaned away.

Williams really hadn’t held back.

Mei stood near the arm of the sofa with her arms folded tight, watching every movement Pamela made. Five minutes passed like that. Maybe a little more. It felt much longer. Keith stayed quiet except for the occasional hiss when Pamela cleaned a cut or pressed somewhere tender.

Finally, Mei asked, "How is he?"

Pamela didn’t answer right away. She finished wiping blood from the corner of Keith’s mouth, checked one of the cuts again, then leaned back a little.

"I want to say thankfully, or maybe miraculously, the injuries aren’t that deep," she said. "He looks worse than he is. He won’t keep any lasting damage from it, at least from what I can see right now. But he’ll need stitches."

The breath Mei let out came from somewhere deep. She hadn’t realized how hard she’d been bracing until that moment.

Pamela noticed anyway.

"I always knew this rash boy would get himself beaten like this one day," she muttered while reaching for more supplies. "He runs his mouth like pain is something that only happens to other people."

There wasn’t much malice in her voice. Mostly tiredness.

Pamela had known Keith longer than Mei had as well, long enough to be unsurprised. Ever since she had met him, he’d been the type to say exactly what he thought without slowing down long enough to wonder whether it was smart. He pushed. He provoked. He stepped into fights that didn’t need him and sometimes into fights that very much did. It didn’t take a genius to see that.

If he hadn’t been Lucy’s younger brother, Mei had a feeling he might’ve ended up dead already.

And even Mei, who had only known him a little over a week, already knew enough.

"He is an idiot," she said.

She said it with her arms crossed, but her fingers dug so hard into her sleeves that the fabric pulled tight over her forearms. Her eyes stayed on Keith’s bruised face while she spoke.

"An idiot, yes," Pamela said with a small nod as she kept cleaning blood from his skin. "But everybody needs an idiot like him on their side at least once."

She paused, glanced up at Mei, then back at Keith.

"I don’t know exactly what happened out there," she went on, "but he was trying to help you, wasn’t he?"

Mei didn’t answer.

She didn’t need to. The answer sat too heavily in her chest to turn into words.

Without Keith stepping in when he did, Williams would have ruined her in every senses of the terms. There wasn’t any softer way to put it. Mei looked down at the floor for a second, teeth clenched, and said nothing.

Pamela exhaled through her nose and shook her head.

"God. This place is no place for you kids," she said. "Not really. Not ever." She adjusted Keith’s head slightly and reached for the needle and thread she’d prepared. "But once Callighan finishes his war with Marlon, I think he’ll let you go. So don’t work yourself into despair yet."

Mei’s head came up at once.

"What?"

Pamela looked mildly surprised by how sharp that came out. "That war is the only thing keeping him moving right now," she said. "That’s what I think, anyway. Once it’s over, he may let all of you leave. Or he may leave himself. Men like him don’t usually stay put after the thing driving them burns out."

Once the war ends.

Mei stared at her, but her mind was already running ahead of the room.

She thought of Ryan. Of the others. Of the fact they were already caught in this mess and caught on Marlon’s side of it, whether they had chosen it cleanly or not. If Callighan won, that didn’t mean safety. Not for them. Maybe especially not for them. And Gaspar wanting Ryan dead, or something worse than dead, was not a detail she could push aside anymore.

"I can’t wait that long," Mei said.

The words came out lower this time, but there was more truth in them than in anything else she’d said since coming back inside.

Pamela gave her a look that held pity and a kind of hard realism at the same time. "Unfortunately, you may not have much choice except to wait."

Mei said nothing.

Pamela thought waiting was the only option because Pamela didn’t know what they were planning and after what happened today, Mei was even more serious about leaving this place.

"God... what the hell happened?"

The voice came from the doorway.

Mei flinched first, then turned, and the relief hit her almost immediately.

Tommy.

He looked wrecked too, just in a smaller, sadder way. The side of his face had bruised up from where Williams had hit him earlier, and there was a dark patch spreading across one cheek that made Mei feel bad the second she saw it. In everything that happened after Williams grabbed her, after Keith got dragged into it, after Callighan beat Williams half to death, she had nearly forgotten Tommy had tried to help too.

He stood there looking between Keith on the sofa, Pamela stitching him up, and Mei in her changed clothes, like he was trying to piece the whole thing together and hating what he was finding.

Mei swallowed and looked at the bruise on his cheek again.

"Sorry," she said quietly. Then she added, "And... thanks for earlier."

Tommy had tried to help her too, and that counted.

"Yeah..." Tommy said, then glanced at Keith sprawled on the sofa before looking back at her. "I mean, are you okay?"

Mei gave a small nod.

"Yes..."

It came out quiet, almost automatic. She didn’t have the energy for anything bigger than that.

Tommy followed her gaze back to Keith, and his expression tightened hard.

He didn’t need anybody to explain it to him. Keith’s swollen eye, the blood crusted at the corner of his mouth, the split skin, the way he was lying too still between groans, it didn’t take much to figure out what had happened, or why. Tommy’s jaw worked once, anger and guilt and helplessness passing across his face in a messy mix before he shoved it down.

Pamela straightened from beside the sofa and wiped her hands on a cloth.

"Watch over him," she said. "I need to grab something."

Then she was gone, leaving the three of them alone in the room.

For a few seconds, nobody spoke.

Mei looked at Keith.

His breathing had evened out a little, though not by much. One side of his face was swollen badly enough to change the shape of it, and the skin around his right eye had gone dark and ugly. The other eye twitched, then fluttered open halfway, unfocused at first. He stared at the ceiling like he wasn’t entirely sure where he was.

"I..." He swallowed and winced immediately after. "Is this hell or something...?"

Mei let out the faintest breath through her nose.

"Is that what you think I ended up in?" She asked.

Her voice was dry, and the look she gave him was even drier.

Keith managed a weak chuckle at that. The sound barely got out before he turned his head and spat a little blood to the side.

"Ugh... fuck, that hurts..."

"It’s becoming a routine for me to see you get beaten up and then complain about it," Mei said, sharper than before.

Keith made a rough sound that might have been a snort if he hadn’t been in that much pain. One hand twitched over his stomach, fingers curling a little into the fabric of his shirt like he thought about sitting up and knew better halfway through the idea.

Mei looked at him for a second longer.

Then she stepped closer.

She reached down and took his hand.

It was a simple movement, but it made Keith turn his head toward her. His good eye focused on her face this time, slower now, less hazy.

Mei held his hand between both of hers for a moment. She looked at him with an expression that didn’t sit easily on her, not because it was false, but because it was too open. Too unguarded. Hurt still lived in her face. So did anger. But beneath both of those, there was something quieter and harder to hide.

"Thank you," she said. "Sincerely."

Keith stared at her for a beat, like he hadn’t expected that to hit him harder than the punches.

Then a small smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.

It looked crooked even before the swelling ruined it.

From a few feet away, Tommy huffed a laugh.

"Well, trust me, it’s way more normal for me to see Keith get his ass kicked than it is for you," he said, a grin breaking through despite the bruise on his cheek. "You’re just getting introduced to one of his main personality traits."

"F... fuck off," Keith muttered, voice cracking into a groan by the end of it.

That got an actual laugh out of Tommy. The sound loosened something in the room. Not much, but enough to make it feel less like they were all holding their breath inside a bad memory.

Mei let go of Keith’s hand slowly, though her fingers lingered for a second before pulling back. Then she straightened and turned toward Tommy.

"We need to leave," she said.

Tommy’s smile faded.

He nodded.

His eyes shifted to Keith, then back to Mei.

"Yeah," he said quietly.

Keith let his head sink deeper into the sofa cushion and shut his good eye for a second, breathing through another wave of pain. But he didn’t argue.

They all knew she was right.

Mei crossed her arms again. "I’m serious," she said. "I’m not staying here until Callighan and Marlon finish tearing each other apart. I’m not waiting around to see what happens if one of them wins."

Tommy looked at the doorway Pamela had gone through, then toward the windows, like the walls themselves might be listening.

When he spoke again, his voice dropped.

"I know."

He stepped closer.

His gaze moved from Mei to Keith one more time.

"I promise," he said. "I’ll get us out of here."