"What do you mean?"
Jurgen slid the pocket watch into his pocket with a slow, controlled motion, then lifted his gaze, scanning the room once more as though re-confirming its reality. A faint exhale followed, restrained but deliberate.
"Come on now…let's — let's not do that."
The pause between his words sharpened the certainty in them.
"Who else would've brought me here? And my necklace and pocket watch just… sitting there on the table of a room I don't even recognize."
"Well…"
Nemesio's voice trailed off slightly as he searched for phrasing that seemed less direct, his expression briefly shifting into something almost uncharacteristically uncertain. It softened the moment, not with tension, but with faint absurdity — like even he acknowledged how awkward the explanation might sound. There was no hostility in Jurgen's presence, only a quiet insistence on truth, the kind that came from exhaustion more than suspicion.
"You passed out yesterday."
Jurgen's gaze lifted slowly, studying him as though testing whether the statement held weight. He didn't fully reject it, yet he didn't fully accept it either — his expression suspended somewhere between disbelief and reluctant agreement.
"Well… you see…"
Nemesio's voice drifted again, slipping briefly into recollection.
"Oi… Bubbles, you keep clinging to me like I'm your girlfriend. What are you going to do when I'm starving to death?"
The sudden shift in tone fractured the atmosphere entirely.
Jurgen's voice carried toward Bubbles with dry irritation, his mouth already betraying him with exaggerated hunger, as though instinct had overridden dignity. Around them, confusion rippled. Even Viktor, who had been moving away moments before, paused mid-step.
"Is he okay?" Viktor asked, gesturing faintly toward Jurgen, his expression caught between disbelief and reluctant amusement. The same boy who had carried himself with sharp intensity in the arena now looked… entirely different.
Bubbles, who had been supporting him to prevent collapse, stiffened at once. A nervous hesitation passed through him before he slowly released Jurgen, stepping back on light, cautious feet as though distance alone might reduce danger.
Then Jurgen snapped his head toward him.
What followed was immediate chaos.
He lunged forward with sudden energy, chasing after Bubbles in a reckless, almost feral sprint that bore no resemblance to his earlier composure. Bubbles let out a startled sound, recoiling before breaking into a panicked run of his own, arms flailing as he fled in exaggerated fear.
They circled the space in disordered motion, Jurgen relentlessly pursuing, Bubbles desperately evading — until the absurdity of it overtook reason entirely.
"Let me just get a bite, you walking, round slab of meat!"
"Arghhh!"
In Jurgen's perception, distortion took hold. Bubbles warped in his mind into something enormous, exaggerated beyond proportion — a mass of meat-like inevitability fleeing him in desperate circles.
"And then you passed out."
Nemesio's laughter broke through the narration, light and genuine, as though the memory itself had only grown funnier in retelling.
Silence followed.
Jurgen stood completely frozen, eyes widened in exaggerated disbelief, his jaw slack in a stunned, almost cartoonish expression. His posture collapsed slightly under the weight of denial, hands hanging loosely at his sides as though his body had momentarily forgotten how to maintain dignity.
The sight drew another, louder laugh from Nemesio.
Jurgen snapped upright almost immediately, as though yanked back into awareness. He stammered, pointing loosely in Nemesio's direction, though even that gesture lacked conviction, his finger bending mid-air as though reconsidering the accusation halfway through.
"Th-tha — that's not true. I never did that."
The denial came out strained, but immediate all the same, as though refusing reality was still a matter of principle.
Nemesio's laughter softened into quiet amusement, easing back into composed calm as he turned slightly toward the door once more. He had already begun to leave, yet paused as though remembering something worth adding.
"Come join me. Perhaps we might ease some of that weight you insist on carrying."
Jurgen remained where he stood, the remnants of the memory still settling in his mind like dust that refused to clear. Exhaustion clung to him heavily, shaping his posture more than any thought did. Yet beneath it, he understood the intent, Nemesio wasn't speaking of physical fatigue alone, but something deeper that he never quite named aloud.
"Come now," Nemesio continued, voice light but steady, the faintest thread of amusement still present beneath its composure.
"Indulge me. Just this once."
For a moment, Jurgen did not move. Then, with a subdued exhale, his hand rose slowly to the necklace still in his grasp. His fingers tightened around it briefly—not in hesitation, but in grounding — before he brought it up and fastened it around his neck in a motion that lacked ceremony, almost indifferent in its execution.
Only then did he step forward.
He passed through the doorway, moving into the open air beyond.
Behind him, the door shut with a clean, decisive sound, final enough to mark the end of stillness, and the beginning of whatever came next.
"You're quite the actor," Jurgen remarked flatly.
Nemesio spared him a glance, brief, measured, his hands still resting neatly together, composure undisturbed as the words settled. There was no immediate reaction, only a quiet moment of consideration, as though he weighed not the statement itself, but the intent behind it.
"You mean the way I acted about your necklace and the watch?"
The reply came without defensiveness, smooth and even, as though the possibility had already crossed his mind before Jurgen voiced it. His gaze drifted forward again almost at once, attention returning to the path ahead, the matter dismissed with the same ease it had been acknowledged.
The space between them stretched into a calm silence as they walked, their pace unhurried, steady enough that even their footsteps seemed to fall into a quiet rhythm.
"So what are your plans once you join the Corps?"
Nemesio's voice broke through the stillness again, calm as before, yet carrying a deliberate weight beneath its simplicity. His gaze shifted toward Jurgen, not sharply, but with quiet focus, as though the question mattered more than its phrasing suggested.
Jurgen's eyes flicked toward him briefly, the glance fleeting, before returning to the path ahead. There was no hesitation in his answer.
"To get stronger."
It came out plain, unembellished, stripped of anything unnecessary. Yet beneath its simplicity lay something colder — an edge that suggested the words carried more than they revealed, leaving no room for reinterpretation.
Nemesio's gaze settled forward once more.
"Stronger?"
The word lingered as he repeated it, not in confusion, but in quiet examination. His hands remained behind his back, one resting lightly over the other, posture remaining composed, almost deliberate in its restraint. There was something about the answer that did not sit well with him — not because it was unfamiliar, but because it was incomplete.
"Why? To what end? Is there a purpose behind it?"
"My purpose is my business."
The response came quickly, edged with irritation that surfaced without restraint. It remained controlled, but unmistakable, as though the question itself had pressed against something Jurgen had no intention of exposing.
"I have something to achieve."
His jaw tightened subtly, the movement slight yet telling, as if the words alone were not enough to anchor what lay behind them. There was a faint pause, barely noticeable, where uncertainty threatened to surface, because if he searched for something clearer, something more defined, nothing immediate answered him.
The feeling was there, heavy and persistent, but without shape. And that absence was something he could not tolerate. Hating without understanding was not enough. He needed direction. He needed something to justify the weight he carried.
"And for that… I need power."
"Power… power," Nemesio echoed softly, the word rolling off his tongue with quiet contemplation, as though testing its weight rather than accepting it.
For a moment, he said nothing more.
"Jurgen…" His voice followed, steady, grounded, carrying a subtle shift in tone, less casual now, more deliberate.
"Do you understand what it means to hold power?"