"A-anko wants..." the woman slowly lowered her hands from Devan's chest to a more dangerous place.
She felt she had to help—she, Anko Mitarashi, though messy and a bit crazy, could still think with some clarity. "D-devan is worried about something," she told herself; her mischievous hands couldn't help but move while an expectant and somewhat happy smile appeared on her face.
"Hmph, no, no, no," the necromancer shook his head, pushing Anko's hands away as he sighed lightly. "There's no time, I need to go for a walk, Understand?" Devan said, wanting to see if he could influence more people's minds to earn more points in the Fractured Mind Counter.
"Rejecting me," the woman thought. She didn't resist when she felt Devan's hands grab hers and move them away; instead, a small stinging pain appeared in her heart, and that small sting quickly grew with the necromancer's words.
Anko clenched her teeth, lowered her head slightly, and clasped one hand with the other in a strange motion. "A man, Devan, is angry with Anko, Right? Right?" the woman asked.
"Tsk!" Devan clenched his teeth tightly. "That tone—Isn't that the same tone widowed women used in the kingdom?" he recalled his old life in his other world, inhaled sharply before exhaling.
"I don't hate you, Anko," he said. However, he didn't turn his head to look at the woman; instead, his eyes remained on the newspaper. "..." Anko slightly lifted her head to look at Devan's back.
She stared for a moment at the man who had entered her mind like an unsuspecting thief, who had asked her about her happiness in Konoha, and who, somehow—strangely and crazily—had stolen her heart.
Her teeth chattered, her gaze grew a little more intense. "Anko wants to have you, just for me, Do you understand? Just for me, forever, for always," she swallowed those words; deep down, she knew her strange attitude was making Devan drift away from her.
Anko took a small step forward, her right hand extending to softly touch the necromancer's back.
"Why... d-do you reject m-me?" she asked, trying to hold back the negative emotions in her mind. Her voice sounded like a violin with strings about to snap; her hand trembled constantly, and visible sweat ran down her face.
Devan didn't turn around; he kept staring at the newspaper. "Why are you talking like those damn widows from the kingdom?!!" he almost shouted but held those words back in his mind. Annoyed at having to remember those widows from his old world, Devan didn't reply.
Even so, the necromancer could feel something inside his heart tickling, stinging, and aching. However, that feeling only made him more irritable.
"D-does it bother you that Anko is a p-pervert?" the woman asked, remembering how she was always the one who initiated their intimate encounters. And now that she thought about it, Devan had never taken the initiative to get close to her—not even for a hug.
Anko swallowed hard. "Why? Why don't you love me? Why don't you hug me? Why don't I matter to you?" Several thoughts swirled inside her mind; however, despite all those thoughts, she never stopped to think that she and Devan had only known each other for a few days and that her feelings had appeared overnight.
Anko stomped her foot with some force, clenched her teeth in anger, her eyes shining brightly, her body trembling. She turned around and ran toward the cabin, opened the door, went inside, and slammed it shut.
...
"Hmph," meanwhile, Devan was still looking at the newspaper. He didn't want to turn around. "This, damn it, hurts a little... does that mean I've grown attached to this woman?" he thought to himself, his hands gripping the newspaper tightly.
"Increasing the Fractured Mind Counter is the only thing I should do for now," he repeated to himself. After all, he didn't want to feel that kind of emotion for a woman. It wasn't that he was gay—it was just that he had never felt the need to look for a partner. Devan threw the newspaper aside, turned his head slightly to look back at the cabin, and squinted for a moment.
"Why does it hurt more and more?" Devan suddenly raised his hand to rub the part of his chest where his heart was. Anko's attitude had awakened a strange feeling of protection, affection, and guilt in him.
"Maybe I shouldn't have said no, after all..." Devan shook his head, cutting off his own words. "What would Master Randall tell me if he saw me thinking about a girl?" Devan asked himself, recalling the solemn look of his old teacher.
He ignored the cocktail of emotions weighing on him. With a long sigh, he walked to the front door and went out, ready to try influencing someone else's mind again.
Devan walked through almost every place in the Land of Waves. He spoke with a boy whose father couldn't afford to buy him clothes, with a girl angry because her boyfriend had cheated on her, with a woman tired of married life, with a hungry fisherman, with an old man who wished to be young again.
He talked to all of them—spending more time with some, less with others—always with one goal: to awaken resentment in their hearts.
Finally, just as the sun was setting, Devan calmly returned to his cabin.
However, when he opened the front door of his residence, his nose was not welcomed by the typical smell of a dinner cooked by Anko, nor by the lights turned on inside the cabin. Instead, he was met with a cabin where the lights were off, the yard was dry from unwatered soil, and there was a strange smell.
Devan's nose caught the scent, and at that moment, his eyes widened, his mouth slowly opened, and his body loosened. "This is..." Devan remembered his life in his old world—his life in the Konoha cemetery. The familiar smell made his body feel a sudden chill.
"No." Fear and guilt ran through his body; anxiety struck his mind, and above all, a voracious remorse threatened to devour his soul. "I—It's impossible!!! You can't do this to me, damn b****!!!" The first emotion that surfaced in Devan was rage.
The necromancer breathed heavily several times. Something inside him told him to leave this place and never come back, and another part of him—dominant and powerful—urged him to find out the source of the smell.
A man, Devan, ran quickly toward the cabin, terrified that his thoughts were real. He kicked the wooden door, shattering it. The smell grew stronger; he ran frantically toward the source of the odor, and at that moment, he fell to the ground on his knees.
The man breathed heavily, his eyes wide open, his mind collapsing under the flood of emotions. With a trembling body, he approached the source of the smell only to confirm what he had thought minutes before.
Devan's neighbors heard a piercing scream, like that of a man standing before the grave of his family—a scream full of emotion—and many thought of what had recently happened with Tazuna.