In the Federation's best hospital, Noel lay with an IV line in her hand. Her once-delicate face was now etched with exhaustion. Even after washing up and resting, she could not hide her fatigue. Notifications kept popping up in her news feed, but she paid them no attention. She turned to look at the apple on the table, her gaze unfocused, a flicker of fear passing through her eyes.
She stared at the apple, her fingers trembling as she muttered something under her breath.
"I-it's fine. That isn't Jonas. It's just an apple, an ordinary apple. Jonas isn't nearby. He isn't nearby..."
After repeating those words to reassure herself, Noel's fingers stopped trembling. She slowly calmed down, and her breathing steadied. She closed her eyes, picked up the apple, and parted her lips. "Jonas is scum, a pervert, a lunatic..."
She felt as though she had exhausted every curse she had learned in her life, but neither her lips nor her mind reacted at all.
What was going on? Why wasn't it working?
Noel was not doing this to vent her emotions, but to test something. She had thought that whenever she said something bad about Jonas or acted against him, her lips would seal shut, just as they had in the Parking Lot.
Did she have to intend to do something that would actually harm Jonas?
Noel put down the apple and stared blankly out the window, thinking about how to deal with Jonas. He was the most troublesome enemy she had encountered in all these years. How could she help Dorothy defeat him?
The moment she returned to the Federation, Noel had not thought about resting. Instead, she had looked up the major events that had taken place in the Federation and District 25 during her absence. After