On his end, when Aoba cut the call it was with a chuckle that dissolved into a sigh. From his perch in his satchel, Ren tilted his head in query.
“Aoba. You neglected to tell Declan we have already located three portals in close vicinity to the tower.”
Aoba flinched at the…reminder? If Ren hadn’t been Ren, he could have called it an accusation, but….
“…I know,” Aoba agreed, rubbing his temples as he started walking once again. “But it’s not like I’m going to jump into one just because I’ve found it. There’s no telling what’s on the other end and…I’m just not ready to go through all that again. Eventually I’ll have to but…maybe Declan’s right, maybe we can learn something at those libraries.”
It was worth hoping, right? Even if Aoba had watched dozens of people walk right through the portals he’d seen, free-floating and spinning with their distinct light, and not in the sense that Aoba had walked through the ones he’d encountered. No one had seen them, no one had reacted to them. They’d walked through them like sunbeams, to no effect on either the person or the portal itself.
Nobody was a “Chosen One” like Aoba was. The portals didn’t exist to them.
He managed to stop by Tess again, trading back one of his coins for a bag of rice, but by the end of the transaction his headache was knocking hard against his temples—entirely unrelated to the woman’s manner of barter, for the record. By the time he made it back to Declan’s door and had pressed his hand to the sensor, Aoba had a distinct pallor and was looking forward to doing nothing more than crashing the couch for a while.
no subject
“Aoba. You neglected to tell Declan we have already located three portals in close vicinity to the tower.”
Aoba flinched at the…reminder? If Ren hadn’t been Ren, he could have called it an accusation, but….
“…I know,” Aoba agreed, rubbing his temples as he started walking once again. “But it’s not like I’m going to jump into one just because I’ve found it. There’s no telling what’s on the other end and…I’m just not ready to go through all that again. Eventually I’ll have to but…maybe Declan’s right, maybe we can learn something at those libraries.”
It was worth hoping, right? Even if Aoba had watched dozens of people walk right through the portals he’d seen, free-floating and spinning with their distinct light, and not in the sense that Aoba had walked through the ones he’d encountered. No one had seen them, no one had reacted to them. They’d walked through them like sunbeams, to no effect on either the person or the portal itself.
Nobody was a “Chosen One” like Aoba was. The portals didn’t exist to them.
He managed to stop by Tess again, trading back one of his coins for a bag of rice, but by the end of the transaction his headache was knocking hard against his temples—entirely unrelated to the woman’s manner of barter, for the record. By the time he made it back to Declan’s door and had pressed his hand to the sensor, Aoba had a distinct pallor and was looking forward to doing nothing more than crashing the couch for a while.