Elara was now the ghost of her own past. Her body was completely pale white, as if she had seen a dead person come back alive right in front of her. Her long black hair draped over her like the white cloth on a dead person's body.
Her body was thin, so thin that one might believe she was a pair of bones rather than a living human. Her clothes, despite being small, looked very baggy on her.
Every part of her body was blistered. They were quite ugly, and every movement she made caused her excruciating pain. Just standing was very painful for her. Eric clearly noticed her heavy breathing.
For a moment, None of them spoke. They simply looked at each other.
Elara's red eyes were already scanning his entire body, quick and effective. She had assessed hundreds of men in her life; it had long become an instinct of hers.
The surroundings were calm. While she assessed him, he assessed her too. But he didn't want to overdo anything and kept a respectful behavior, thus he moved his gaze and barely took a glance around, just that was enough for him to know that the place was barely suitable for someone to live.
Elara looked up and down at Eric, her gaze sharp. "He has a respectful and dignified demeanor, his eyes are cold, and he seems to be missing something. The Aura pressure around him is quite strong. He is most likely a Lysi Nova. He seems to hold no hostility. But what is his purpose?"
"What purpose might such a dignified man have to do with this wilted rose?" She asked with a sharp tone, her brows furrowed. There was a self-deprecating remark hidden in her voice. She was trying to show a tough stance, but Eric could tell that she was just trying to act tough from how tightly she held the door to not collapse.
Eric was silent for a few seconds before putting his right hand on his chest, closing his eyes, and bowing down, "My name is Eric Heisenberg. I have come here to fulfill a mission. May I come in?" Eric was straightforward. He had to first get her trust, and the best way to get someone's trust is by being honest.
She wasn't any threat to Eric; if she were, he wouldn't have been so honest and direct.
Elara blinked twice at him, and her hands started to shake as she snorted coldly. "I do not accept charity. Do your business and quickly leave." She said as she opened the door more, making it let out more creaking noises as she gave way.
Eric stood straight and slowly walked in, nodding his head respectfully to her as he stepped inside.
Now he could see the room clearly.
The floor was grey wood, old and warped, announcing every step he took with a low creak. In the center of the room sat a large table, with two small sofas placed on either side of it. Drawers lined the walls, their contents spilling out carelessly — clothes, small necessities, things that had no particular place because there was no longer any particular order to maintain. In the upper right corner, a stove sat on a low table, and beside it a small cabinet that held her food supply, which was clearly not much. It would likely last for two days.
The windows were dirty, old, and cracked. Insects moved along the baseboards without any urgency, as if they had long since decided this was their home too. Her belongings were scattered across the floor without arrangement.
The room told a story he already knew the outline of. This was a woman who had once had people to manage these things for her. Status had been the structure that held her life together, and without it, the small details had quietly fallen apart. The mess wasn't laziness. It was what happened when someone had been stripped of everything that made the ordinary things feel worth doing.
Eric did not blame her for any of it. He looked around once and then let it go. She was already carrying enough without him adding to the pile.
Eric took a few steps towards the window and used his Meditation Aura to fix it. He also noticed a few illegal substance sellers. He used his Gravitation Aura to throw them away; Eric noticed a brave guy who was lurking around too closely. The guy's head was imploded by Eric.
Eric gave a cold gaze to the rest of the sellers, and the rest immediately figured out that it was best not to disturb this man's business as they scattered away in fear. Their bodies trembling.
Elara was still standing beside the door; she didn't even flinch at seeing Eric killing someone.
"Heisenberg, are you a royal?" Elara asked as she closed the door and tried to walk, taking the wall as support as she tried to get to the sofa.
Eric closed the window as he shook his head. "No, I am not a royal." He turned around and asked, "I will ask you to walk slower. I am not running out of time."
Elara snorted coldly, her eyes flickering with a cold light. Just as she was about to reach the sofa on the right side of the room, she tripped. It wasn't because she wasn't walking right, but because of a perfume bottle on the floor.
Eric took out his Gravitation aura in a second and used it to hold her lightly before making her stand straight. He didn't take a single step towards her or touch her physically in the entire process.
Elara's body just shone a little as her body trembled. Slowly, she walked to the sofa, every step seemed to take all her strength, but it also showed her reluctance to not rely on others, and Eric knew better than to add to her suffering. He watched her struggle with a neutral gaze as she sat down, closing her eyes and letting out a deep breath. She finally felt at ease. Even though her body was still hurting, this was much better than standing. She didn't thank him; her pride was too much to thank others for their help.
"This is not like the time when I helped Anna back then. She was just a normal lady who had been assaulted and had lost all hope, but despite wanting to die, she still had a deep desire to live inside. This lady is a prideful person who has lost everything. She is also an Aura user. The approach I took when dealing with Anna back then won't work." Eric knew that he shouldn't show pity or sympathy for her situation.
He had to recognize her.
She half-opened her eyes as she lightly gestured for Eric to sit down. Eric slowly walked and sat down on the sofa. The sofa was old and uncomfortable. The wool was filled with moths. Just sitting on it was very uncomfortable.
Elara noticed this and said, "Forgive me for not having proper accommodations to hold a guest properly." Eric nodded his head, not minding it.
She then asked him slowly, "So if you are not a royal. Then what is your work with me? I believe that I no longer have anything of value, even my body has long been undesirable." She asked with a sharp tone. Eric imagined a rose with thorns, the more he thought about her personality.
Even though the rose has wilted, the thorns were still there.
"I am from an organization that I can't name. It is related to helping others and bringing relief to their situation. I found the mission about your situation and came to help you." Eric said with a cold and plain voice.
"So I have turned into a mere entry of a mission in some random organization," Elara said as she chuckled; the laugh was her laughing at her own situation. "You must really pity me. Don't you?"
Eric shook his head, "No, I don't pity you one bit. I actually admire how you are still willing to live despite your situation."
"Admiration is easily earned; what matters is whether it helps. Considering how my life has turned out. It doesn't."
Eric was quiet for a moment. "You're right. It doesn't." He paused. "I'm not here to make your situation meaningful. I'm here because I accepted a task, and the task was to help you, and that is why exactly I am here."
"I don't wish for anything in return. Neither do I want your favour nor your body. I am simply here for my own interests. That is all."
Elara was looking straight into Eric's eyes. They were cold and emotionless, but seemed to hide so much in them. She could tell he was telling the truth. He was completely honest. Eric's words made Lady Elara's eyes flicker with a soft light, and her tensed shoulders dropped a little. But she wasn't gonna let her guard fully down from just one honest answer.
"You killed a man just now. Through my window without any hesitation." A pause. "And yet you told me to walk slower because you weren't running out of time. Which one is the real you?"
"The real me is the one you believe."
Elara's gaze dropped down to Eric's left hand. She realized that he was holding the armrest way too tightly. "So he is nervous too. Despite his acting skills being so good, He is worried about other things. He is indeed not an emotionless man." Elara smiled gently inwardly. She may look like she was completely unaffected, but she was nervous too. She was also confused about her own future. Every day felt like her last.
Eric's gaze also dropped down to her hands; she clenched them tightly. Eric realized her emotions at this moment, too.
Neither of them spoke; they simply looked at each other, recognizing each other's situation quietly.
She took another deep breath, and her body trembled as pain took over her, but she endured it.
For a moment, only her groans of pain and controlled breathing could be heard. The door's creaking and the cracks of the wood were no longer for the moment.
Then Eric slowly asked as the pain decreased, looking around, "When did you last eat?"
Elara's body stopped trembling as she looked at him with a gaze that seemed to say, "What do you mean?" Out of all the things she expected him to say, this wasn't it. "I had eaten enough." She answered. deflecting deliberately.
Eric slowly stood up and went to the stove on the low table. He opened her food supply and looked at it. There was even less food than he had thought; it was almost expired.
Eric slowly took out a small stove. This was a charm that was used to specifically store and preserve food. He had made his preparation before heading out of the Church of Serenity. He took the food out of the charm and refilled her food supply. He even left the charm there for her.
Elara's gaze softened at this; she understood his intentions even without any exchange of words between them.
Eric then moved to the wooden floor and started to fix it up. Just as he was walking around to find the spots that were the weakest, he stepped on a red string. It stuck to Eric's shoes as he removed it.
Elara gazed at the red string, and a sharp light spread across her eyes. She slowly said. "This was the string my sister and I used to make promises with. We once made a promise that we would always support each other." Eric didn't comment on it; he listened silently, as if he were the wind.
The warped, creaking grey wood was then slowly restored.
He did not fully restore them— but it was all stabilized enough that they no longer announced every step she took with that low groan. Her room became slightly quieter. It finally felt like she had some privacy.
Eric then started to collect her stuff that was lying around on the ground all over the room.
He picked up a small bronze mirror from the top of the drawer. It was face down. The handle was carved with small flowers, the detail worn smooth — not from neglect, but from years of being held in the same place by the same grip. He turned it over and set it upright.
Elara glanced at it from the sofa and looked away immediately.
The silence stretched. Then she spoke, quickly, as if the words had simply slipped out before she could decide whether to let them:
"That was the first thing I ever bought with my own earnings." A pause. "I remember I saved money for three months when I was sixteen."
Eric looked at it once more. He didn't place it face down again.
He moved to the drawer and found a long red ribbon tangled around the handle, knotted on itself from being shoved aside too many times. He began working on the knot carefully.
"That ribbon was from my hair the night I became first tier." Her eyes followed his hands. "There was a ceremony. They dressed us all. There was music." A short laugh, light and brief. "I don't even like red. It was just the color they chose." The laugh faded. "I kept it anyway."
Eric loosened the last knot. He folded the ribbon and set it beside the mirror.
"Why?" he asked for the first time in so long.
Elara blinked. The question seemed to surprise her — not its content, but the fact that he had asked at all.
"Because it was the first night someone looked at me like I was worth something." She said it evenly, without self-pity, the way a person states a fact they have long since made peace with. "Even if what they thought I was worth was a number on a ranking board."
Eric was quiet for a moment. His hands had stilled.
"Worth doesn't need a clean origin to be real," he said as he looked at her. Then he turned back to the drawer.
Elara looked at the ribbon sitting beside the mirror. She said nothing. But she didn't look away from them.
Eric then found a small wooden box. The small wooden box was behind a fallen drawer, half hidden. The lock was rusted, but the box itself was intact. The key was tied to it with a short piece of string, not to keep anyone out. Just to keep everything in.
Eric placed it on the table without opening it. He did not reach for the key.
From across the room, Elara watched him. Something in her expression shifted, very slightly.
"You can open it," she said calmly; the sharp tone of hers had lessened a lot. "There's nothing valuable."
He opened it slowly. Inside: a folded piece of paper, a dried petal that stirred and half-crumbled at the movement of air, and a small carved wooden figure. A person, roughly made. The kind of carving that belonged to someone still learning, or someone who had never cared about perfection.
He looked at it and waited.
"I made that." She said it quickly, with something defensive underneath. "When I was young. There was an older woman in the district who taught me to carve when there was no work. She said idle hands made idle minds, and idle minds in a place like this would kill you faster than anything else." A pause. "She was right."
"What happened to her?"
A long silence.
"She aged," Elara said simply.
The word carried everything it needed to carry. Eric closed the box gently. He had heard worse things said with more words. He wasn't sure why two of them sat differently. He did not put it back behind the drawer. He set it on the table, in the open, where it could be found without searching.
As Eric collected more of her belongings, he realized that it was all related to her past in one way or another.
By the time he reached the far end of the room, neither of them was speaking the way they had been when he first walked in.
She had not spoken this much in a long time. She wasn't sure when she had noticed that — only that she had, somewhere between the ribbon and the wooden box, and that the noticing hadn't made her stop.
Eric was quiet for a moment. The room had been warm with conversation, which made what he said next land the way it did.
"What is the name of the disease?"
Elara's smile didn't disappear all at once. It just slowly stopped being a smile. She looked at her hands for a moment — the same hands that had been relaxed and open in her lap — and she watched them close again without meaning to.
She slowly exhaled and said, "Blooming flower is the name of the disease. I am sure you must know about it already. I can tell you if you want."
Eric shook his head. He already knew all about the disease. This was a very troublesome disease that is spread through sexual contact. At first, the carrier at first only gets a cough before slowly forming a high fever, their bodies would ache, and they would become weaker and paler, causing every moment of their time to cause them immense pain. Slowly, blisters would start forming on their body.
These blisters caused even more pain on the carrier's body and would cause even more pain. These blisters could not be healed by Meditation Aura and required specific treatment. In fact, these blisters would absorb Meditation Aura before blooming like a flower and exploding. spilling out hot, boiling blood, causing bone-chilling pain, whichever thing the blood drops on would also get these blisters.
Eric was neither an Aura user of the Life nor the Birth Pathway, nor did he know any healer. But he had luckily allied with a Lysi Nova of the Birth Pathway. A disease like this was as simple as eating to cure.
Eric took out a small vase from his pocket filled with a thick red-black liquid and put it on the table in front of Elara. As he sat on the ground beside her, he closed his eyes and slowly let her take in the moment.
The solution to her biggest problem was right in front of her. She did not know whether to cry or laugh at this. Her body told her to take it, but her pride stopped her.
Eric slowly opened his eyes as he said. "The cure has already been given by me. The decision is yours." he paused for a while, "I hope you take the ones you won't regret."
Elara snorted coldly. But the small smile that formed on her face didn't match the sound at all.
She used what felt like the last of her strength to raise her hand. It trembled the entire way. She wrapped her fingers around the vase, uncorked it slowly, and brought it to her lips.
The liquid was warm going in. Then cold. Then bitter, deeply, thoroughly bitter, the kind that sits at the back of the throat and refuses to leave. She swallowed it anyway, all of it, and set the empty vase back on the table with a steadiness that surprised even her.
For one moment, nothing happened.
Then her body decided what it thought of the cure.
The convulsion took her without warning. Her spine curved, and she doubled forward, and the coughing that tore out of her was not the careful, controlled coughing she had been managing all evening — it was violent and total, the kind that empties a person. Blood came with it, dark against the handkerchief Eric had already placed in her hand before she could reach for one, and she coughed until her ribs ached and her eyes watered and there was nothing left to cough out.
Then, slowly, it stopped.
She sat with her eyes closed for a long moment. Just breathing. Not knowing yet.
Then she felt it — not all at once, but in pieces. Something was releasing in her chest. A loosening, deep and gradual, like a knot that had been pulled tight for so long she had forgotten it was there. The constant weight that had lived behind her eyes for weeks lifted so quietly she almost missed it leaving.
She opened her eyes.
Her hands were in her lap. She looked at them first — the blisters were receding, the skin beneath them returning to something she almost recognized. The color moved back into her like watercolor blooming slowly across wet paper, rosy and warm, filling in from her fingertips inward. The bones of her wrists disappeared back beneath returning flesh, not much, but enough to no longer look like something fragile that the world had forgotten to bury.
The dead skin fell from her in pieces, quietly, without drama, the way old things let go when they are finally ready.
She was still weak. That hadn't changed. Her hands still trembled slightly, and her body still ached in the deep, structural way that would take more than one evening to undo. But the pain that had defined every breath, every movement, every moment of the past months — that specific, relentless pain — was gone.
She sat with that for a moment. The absence of it felt strange. Like a sound she had grown so used to that the silence it left behind seemed loud.
"W-water," she said. Her voice came out rougher than she intended.
Eric was already standing. He returned with water, and she drank it the way she hadn't let herself do anything in a long time — without dignity, without performance, just drinking until the glass was empty.
Then he picked up the bronze mirror and held it out to her.
She looked at it for a moment before taking it. Then she looked into it.
Her reflection looked back at her — not the ghost that had greeted her every morning for months, pale and hollow and borrowed from some worse version of herself, but something closer to what she remembered. Not fully. Not yet. But the shape of the woman she had been was there again, underneath, visible.
She raised her right hand and touched her cheek. Just held it there.
Her eyes filled. She did not let them spill — that was a line she would not cross, not here, not in front of anyone — but they filled, and she did not pretend otherwise.
After a moment, she lowered her hand and looked at Eric.
It was not a large smile. It did not try to be. It was tired and real and carried everything the evening had been in it, and it asked for nothing in return.
Eric looked at her. The cold stillness that usually lived in his eyes had shifted into something quieter and less guarded, something that didn't have a clean name but was clearly there.
"Congrats," he said, "on becoming a blooming flower again."
Neither of them spoke after that. They simply looked at each other, and the silence between them was nothing like the silence that had been there when he first walked through that door. That silence had been a wall. This one was just two people, sitting in a room that had been through something together.
Eric was the one who looked away first. He cleared his throat once — the smallest, most human sound he had made all evening — and stood.
"I will take my leave." A pause. "Do something with it. The life you get back."
He didn't say I hope. He said it like a quiet expectation. Like he already believed she would.
Elara said nothing. She placed the mirror gently in her lap and closed her eyes, and the exhale that left her was long and slow and carried a great deal with it. The answer was in that breath. He could hear it.
He walked to the door.
His hand was on the handle when she spoke.
"Who are you, really?"
He didn't turn around. A small sound left him — not quite a laugh, but close. Warmer than anything she had heard from him all evening.
"Someone who finds things worth doing," he said, "and does them."
He opened the door and stepped out.
The air outside was cooler than he remembered. The district was quieter now, the lanterns lower, the street settling into whatever it became at this hour. Eric paused on the step and let his eyes adjust.
He looked at the pot beside her door. It had overflowed at some point — dead flowers spilling over the rim, dry and colorless, the soil long past holding anything.
But at the base of them, small and unhurried and entirely unconcerned with everything around it, a single plant had grown. Green and upright. Not flowers yet. Just like the beginning of something.
Eric looked at it for a moment.
Then he walked away.
Inside, Elara sat in the quiet he had left behind.
The room was different from this morning. The floor didn't groan. The window held clean light even now, in the dark, the way fixed things do. Her belongings had places. The box sat on the table where it could be found.
After a while, she reached into the drawer beside the sofa and took out a needle and a small pair of scissors. She found the red string from the floor — the promise string, hers and her sister's — and the ribbon from her first tier ceremony, still folded where Eric had left it beside the mirror.
She sat down on the sofa that Eric had sat on before and began to sew. Slowly, carefully, the way someone works when they are not doing it for anyone else. A handkerchief. Something small and useful and made from what had been lying forgotten on the floor.
The needle moved in and out of the fabric in the quiet.
She had not done something like this in a long time. Not because she had forgotten how, but because there had been no version of tomorrow worth making something for.
There was one now. Small and uncertain and not yet fully real — but there.
Her hands were still slightly unsteady. But they were working.
I hope you find what you are looking for, Eric Heisenberg.
She didn't say it aloud. It moved through her the way things do when they are meant only for yourself — quietly, without destination, like a wish released without ceremony.
May we meet again.
She kept sewing. The red string caught the lamplight as it threaded through. Outside, somewhere, the district made its nighttime sounds. She barely heard them.
For the first time in longer than she could count, she was not listening for what might come through the door.
She was just here. In this room. Making something.
That was enough.