酷视

But how exactly I was supposed to find the source of the smell I could barely even notice? How? Just how?!

The sense of my powerlessness struck my soul like a burning spear, searing the emotional and mental wound in the pain of how useless I felt. And out of this desire to do something, to raise our odds, to stand against whoever or whatever was pushing this aura, something that was extremely out of place on earth, on the people of this world.

Yet, no matter how hard I looked, there was hardly anything out of the ordinary around us. Save for Cassie who, for some reason, found this moment to be a good time to confront us, everyone else on the street was pretty damn normal.

Sure, they were staring at the three of us, following their natural curiosity to see how this cheap drama would play out. And as annoying if not embarrassing as it would normally be, right now I was actually happy with how things were.

After all, what would someone who actively tried to affect me or Fay do right as his scheme would start bearing fruit? Because unless they\'ve read the same novels that I did or learned it in any other way, they would be doing their absolute best not to stare at us!

And right now, practically everyone on the street turned their eyes towards the drama, eager to learn more about its background and even more interested in how it would play out.

\'Is this stench barely noticeable because whoever created it wanted to hide it?\' I thought, still carefully looking all over the area. \'Or maybe we just happened to stumble upon it?\'

I didn\'t really have much hope for such a coincidence. Not when just two days ago my aunt came storming to my old place, fully covered in that awful stench!

\'Maybe it\'s actually something natural to this world? Maybe people who only follow their emotions to the letter can produce it? Or maybe it has something to do with whether they are extremely evil or extremely kind?\'

I gritted my teeth as I threw yet another sweeping look around the place. And yet, save for Cassie and apparently Irene, one of her bitch friends who stood some distance away and observed the situation with a complex mix of emotions mixing in her eyes, I couldn\'t see anything ordinary.

\'Worst case scenario, I will just summon the portal and shove Fay out of harm\'s way,\' I decided, already preparing myself for the worst as seconds trickled by, stretching in my perception to entire centuries each.

Only a few seconds had passed, yet for me, they felt like an eternity. Only when Fay tugged on my sleeve did I free myself from this strange state of extreme focus.

"You found something?" I asked, rapidly turning my eyes to Fay… Only to see her slowly and lightly shake her head.

"It\'s gone," she pointed out, finally making me realize that I couldn\'t even feel that awful yet faint stench.

As if it came to us on a gust of wind, only to leave, carried away by the same blow of air that brought it towards us.

That stench was gone. But the question of whose aura brought it remained.

Feeling deep into my thoughts again, I looked around and ended up locking my eyes on Irene\'s face out some distance away.

Those emotions I could see in her eyes… They were far more complex than anything I ever expected a bitchy gyaru like her to exhibit. And faced with this puzzle, I turned my eyes to Cassie…

Only to squint my eyes where from just a few clues, I managed to piece the whole picture together.

I was always weirded out by how a relatively calm and silent girl like her ended up with two outgoing and free-spirited girls like Irene and the other one for best friends. But judging from Cassie\'s pained and jealous expression as she alternated her eyes between me and Fay and the distant sense of guilt and regret I saw on Irene\'s face…

\'It seems like those two had some sort of talk, and that bitch over there ended up taking some sort of a fall,\' I thought, forgetting about the two girls the very moment I solved the puzzle of what the hell they were doing here.

Still, before I could turn my eyes away, when Irene noticed my stare, she suddenly turned her face to the side and blushed, as if ashamed of having me notice her. тн%ап?κѕ-!ϝ?σг$-&υ%∫іոϬ!-+

\'She acts as if she was just caught red-handed,\' I thought, squinting my eyes a little. \'Is it…\' For but a second, suspicion filled my mind. It entered my mind only to scatter when I nearly laughed it off out loud. \'Yeah, as if. She\'s too damn obvious to be the one behind that aura.\'

And as much as I was inclined to believe that the mess with Cassie was partially if not mostly Irene\'s fault… the mental stretch necessary to somehow connect that girl to my aunt was simply too unlikely for me to even account for it.

"Why was it so much weaker than back then?" I voiced out one of my doubts in a slight whisper, sharing my thoughts with my girl.

"I think…" Fay hesitated for a second, running some thoughts or analysis in her mind. "Maybe this time, it wasn\'t directed at you? Or even the two of us in particular?"

Fay leaned over my side and whispered to my ear, cleverly figuring out there was no reason to utter those words out loud.

Unable to pinpoint the culprit behind that awful stench, we had to assume they could be close. And there was absolutely no point in letting them know just how confused we were by this attack… assuming it was an attack in the first place.

I took another sweeping look through the area before taking a deep breath and then slowly breathing it out to calm myself down.

"We should leave," free of the sudden emotions, I finally made the rational choice. "We are like sitting ducks here. Let\'s get what we came here for and ditch."

The smartest course of action right now would be to instantly retreat, analyze what happened, figure out how it affected us, form a new, improved plan of action, and then return.

But how could I ask Fay to leave, now that we came so close to buying all sorts of alcohols that the inhabitants of her world already proved to hold extremely dear to their hearts?

And so, after making up my mind, I reaffirmed my hold over Fay\'s hand before gently pulling her forward as I stepped ahead.

"Hey! Stop!" Cassie shouted, forcibly reentering my perception as if she suddenly appeared out of thin air.

Somehow, somewhere along the line, I completely erased her presence from my mind, replacing her body with just some empty space.

But from the looks of things, she wasn\'t going to just let the two of us go like that.

She had no intention of ending the scene that she caused and just letting us go. Thankfully, I was well past the point where I cared for what she wanted.

"You\'ve lost the right to tell me or to even ask me to do or not do things back when I called you," I replied with a voice fully deprived of any sort of emotions.

I would achieve nothing by getting angry at her right now. Quite contrary, in fact.

The moment I spared a single emotion over this cheating bitch, I would be the loser.

"No," I added as a small, vicious smile appeared on my lips. "That was the case for me. You lost that right when you first considered the idea of going to that party," I announced, tightening my grasp over Fay\'s hand before decisively pulling her ahead.

"But I…" Cassie attempted to say something else, but at this point, I couldn\'t care less.

"I don\'t give a single shred of fuck of what "you"," I spoke, already annoyed by her persistence to keep us bothered. "I\'m not interested in knowing what happened at that party. Now, stop bothering us," I ordered calmly before turning my eyes away and moving even further away.

If anything, right now, Cassie was rooted in her spot, unsure how to act.

And this was the perfect opportunity for the two of us to leave!