You and I Are So Alike

"Ah—"

It was an unexpected, simple blessing.

Before Shinn could react, before he could say thank you, before he could even consider what those words truly meant, Rau Le Creuset left behind that farewell-like remark, then turned around, opened the ward door cleanly and decisively, and walked out.

The metal door closed behind him with a soft click, separating the worlds inside and outside the room.

Shinn instinctively reached out, as though trying to grasp that retreating figure in the white uniform.

But his fingers could only sweep helplessly through the air. In the end, they caught nothing and fell limply, lightly, onto the bedsheet.

"...What was that?"

He muttered quietly to the empty room.

From beginning to end, he had been a completely unfathomable person.

At first, Shinn had thought he was a suspicious man in a mask who radiated danger.

But after talking for a while, he had found that the man could smile gently like an ordinary person. Yet at the end, he had revealed that meaningful, complicated smile again.

No, after going in circles, he was definitely still suspicious.

Even Shinn could clearly tell that a masked man who kept his mask on even outside combat situations had absolutely terrible taste.

"He... probably isn't a bad person, right...?"

He murmured to himself. During that conversation, he had constantly felt the man's probing gaze, as if it could see straight through his heart. But that final blessing... surely... had been sincere?

He had been concerned for a boy he had only met by chance, hadn't he?

Still, in that conversation about the world and hatred, Shinn could sense a bottomless darkness hidden beneath every calm word.

That feeling...

Perhaps that man, like him, had lost something important in this damned war.

That was why he had asked