CHAPTER 4 "I Need You"

  Seline could already see the gray iron door of her apartment building entrance. They were approaching her home, and now only a few meters remained before the moment of farewell arrived.

  Like all the other buildings in this district, the gray monolithic structure loomed over the treetops growing near the entrance, its walls cracked in places, its plaster peeling away. Step by step, as they drew closer, every roughness and flaw of the building became sharper.

  "So this is where she lives..." Dan thought, surveying the concrete monolith. "The neighborhood borders mine, yet it feels so different... How can a girl like her live in a place like this?"

  "W-we're here...", Seline whispered, her voice quiet and tinged with sadness.

  They stood before Seline’s entrance – an island of awkward silence in the cold sea of night. Dan saw how her gaze slid over him, catching on his shoulder, the asphalt beneath their feet, lingering briefly near his neck – anywhere but meeting his eyes. He saw her nervously fidgeting with the keys to the entrance door in her hands.

  Her lips trembled. She opened her mouth as if wanting to say something – to thank him again, to say she was glad they’d met, to simply say goodbye – but instead, only this escaped:

  "...I... I should go... it's... cold." Her voice sounded thin and uncertain.

  Dan nodded. A small, almost imperceptible gesture. His face remained impassive, but inside, something clenched painfully. He wanted to say something, but could find no suitable words beyond the banal:

  "Bye."

  Seline hesitated. Trying to hide her agitation, she turned hurriedly and almost ran into the entrance hall. The door slammed shut behind her with a dull thud, cutting her off from him.

  Dan remained standing. Motionless. He stared at the dark rectangle of the door, behind which the warmth of her presence, her flustered breathing, her embarrassment had vanished.

  "Hm, interesting," he concluded, looking at the slammed door.

  Something foreign, something new raged in his chest. Not the cold void of a millennia-old observer, but chaos. The image of Seline – her wide, blue eyes, first filled with tears of fear, then shining with gratitude, and in that last moment by the entrance... embarrassed, avoiding his gaze – pierced his consciousness like a red-hot blade.

  "What is happening to me... what is this?" the Lord thought, trying to order his thoughts. "It's not magic... I sensed no mana in her body... what is it then..."

  He turned and walked back.

  Seline leaned her back against the slammed door of her apartment, her palms pressing into her burning cheeks.

  "Idiot! A complete, hopeless, utterly brainless i-d-i-o-t!"

  She slid down to the floor, hiding her face in her knees. Every second of the farewell replayed in her head with the humiliating clarity of 4K footage of her shame: the nervous fumbling with the keys, that idiotic declaration "It's cold..." instead of "Will we see each other again?!" And finally, her back, vanishing like lightning into the doorway! She hadn't just failed to ask for his phone number – she had fled from him as if he were a leper!

  "He thinks I'm crazy! Or an ungrateful pig! Or... or that I'm afraid of him!" The thought pierced her like an icy needle.

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  "Afraid? Of him? After what he did... how he... No!" There was no fear. Not a shred. It was something else. Embarrassment that crushed her chest like a boulder. Awkwardness. And a wild, uncontrollable desire... for him not to leave. For him to stay. At least for a minute. Just to stand beside her a little longer.

  Seline jumped up, darted to the window, and pressed her forehead against the glass. The street was empty. No one. Only the dim streetlights. He was gone without a trace. As if he had never been there.

  Despair, sharp and salty with tears, washed over her in a new wave. She had lost him. The chance gifted by fate itself had been trampled by her own feet.

  Dan retraced the same path he and the mortal creature had walked side by side just minutes before. But now, the path felt longer and slower. Why? What had changed? His face showed no emotion, but inside, utter chaos reigned.

  Passing the spot where the three drunken louts had tried to harass them, he suddenly felt someone tug his coat sleeve. He immediately looked down at the sleeve, but... no one.

  "What's wrong with me..." Dan shook his head. A deep breath. But it didn't help dispel the strange sensation. Or rather, the desire. The desire to become a shield again. "Why..."

  He quickened his pace, but the path grew even longer, and time seemed to stop as he found himself back in the alley where the unconscious thugs he had, despite his aversion to causing pain, ruthlessly scattered on the ground, were no longer lying. Dan tried to analyze the situation that had driven him to deal so mercilessly with those pitifully weak humans. A desire to put them in their place? Or just a surge of rage at their mockery? No. There had been far more terrifying and brutal situations, yet in none of them had he lost control so easily. Something completely different... something new...

  A memory, like lightning, seared through his mind. Blue eyes, like the ocean, pleading for help and salvation. Could it be... Could *they* have been the catalyst? He found no other explanation. Not a desire for justice, not a desire to protect the weak – they were all weak... but a desire to protect *those eyes*. That fragile mortal. He had been *afraid* for her.

  "Huh?! Impossible... that I was afraid?! Is this really how that base human feeling feels...?"

  The Lord's face twisted in incomprehension. He didn't understand this feeling. This desire. What caused it? What dictated it?

  "Oh, come on... impossible! That I, the Lord of Darkness, got scared?! Pfft. Nonsense."

  With that thought, Dan pulled a pack of cigarettes and a lighter from his coat pocket. Slowly, he drew one cigarette from the crumpled pack and was just about to light it when a sudden voice interrupted the ritual:

  "Hey, man! Spare a smoke?"

  A man who had approached quietly from behind gestured his request.

  "Oops, sorry, didn't mean to scare you..."

  "Huh?! Scare?! Me?!" Dan's eyes seemed about to pop out of his head at such a statement. But he silently took another cigarette from the pack and handed it to the man:

  "It's fine. I wasn't scared."

  "Coulda fooled me... You look like you've seen a ghost... Anyway, suit yourself... thanks," the passerby smiled. "Worried?"

  Not waiting for an answer, the stranger lit up and walked on, dissolving into the alley's darkness, only the cigarette smoke indicating his direction. He left Dan alone with his words.

  "'Worried'... I don't... I don't know what that means..." The Lord thought, watching the man go. But deciding to understand the meaning, he pulled out his smartphone, opened the browser, and quickly typed the unfamiliar word into the search bar: 'To worry' - to be anxious about something, to suffer because of something."

  "To be anxious, to suffer." The read words echoed in the Lord's mind, causing even greater confusion. The Lord who hadn't hesitated for a second even before the face of the Creator Himself. The one who had gone against the Creator itself. He remembered that day as if it were today. Back then, he hadn't worried; there hadn't been a shred of anxiety...

  What had changed? Why was he afraid? This girl... was she... more dangerous than the Creator? No. He wasn't afraid of her. He was afraid for her... that someone would hurt her again... that someone would wrong her again...

  Dan managed to stop the torrent of thoughts. He surveyed the dark, deserted alley – this island of human grime and forgotten walls. And in this mundane setting, his decision sounded, quiet but utterly irrevocable:

  "Decided."

  The air around him thickened. The flickering light in the alley dimmed. Dan, the Lord of Darkness, who had sealed his power for long centuries, shattered the shackles. Deep within, chains restraining primordial power, ancient magic older than reality itself, snapped. He felt a cold wave of inhuman force surge through his veins, chain by chain, seal by seal. For her. For the blue eyes in the darkness.

  His voice sounded quietly, but with an iron will, cutting through the sudden silence:

  "Rin! I need you."