Chapter 151: Obnoxious

With that, he leaned in for another round. Bunny braced her palms firmly against his mouth, pushing back hard like a shrieking, cornered kitten being relentlessly shoved by an oversized, eager wolfhound.

He was a master of shameless persistence—a fair and accurate diagnosis Bunny had assigned to San ever since arriving in this place.

She finally lost her patience, snapping at him:

"You can be profoundly obnoxious sometimes!"

That single phrase felt like an accidental trigger. San froze instantly, locking his gaze straight onto her face.

Deep within his memories, the tall, towering silhouette of a man surfaced once more.

Why was it that, within San’s recollections, he could only ever picture his father’s retreating back?

Because of neglect.

As a small child, he was forever relegated to looking up, chasing after his father’s departing figure. His father’s footsteps never once paused for him, nor did he ever bend down to take his hand.

A glass liquor bottle shattered against the wall, sending sharp, jagged shards flying to slice across his cheek. He had huddled small in the corner of the room, feeling as helpless as a frail cosmic wildflower trembling in a gale.

"You can be profoundly obnoxious sometimes!"

Indifference, disgust, frost, and alienation... San could never comprehend why his father grew to detest him more with each passing day, when back when he was tiny, that same man used to hoist him up onto his shoulders to play.

The night wind across the observatory terrace lifted his mother’s pristine white dress alongside her gorgeous cascade of dark hair. She had stood quietly in place, watching the playing father and son with a gentle smile.

When she was first pulled out from a heap of corpses by his father, she had been emaciated to the bone, her hair dry and brittle, her fingernails curled, weighing no more than a stray cat.

Life as fragile as a floating duckweed, ready to perish at a moment’s notice.

The terror of Aberrations had already bored deep into her marrow, yet beneath his father’s meticulous care and patient devotion, she slowly regained her flesh and blood. Her hair grew thick once more, her sunken eye sockets filled out, and her sallow skin regained its health.

After enduring seventy-two days of absolute silence born of profound psychological trauma, she finally volunteered her first words to his father:

"My name is Astin."

His mother had possessed a gorgeous mane of long, dark hair; sadly, both San and Astin had inherited facial features that leaned closer to their father’s side.

Her absolute favorite flower was the cosmos blossom.

It refused to be tamed—transplant it to a flat plain, and it withered; cage it inside a flowerpot, and it simply died.

It belonged exclusively to the untamed wilderness, resurrecting from the soil buried by avalanches, blooming fiercely within the embrace of high mountains and vast steppes.

Which was precisely why she despised Terra, and ultimately chose to draw the curtain on her own life there.

"Obnoxious?"

Were the cutting, venomous words Astin had thrown at her any less hateful?

San muttered half to himself, "Why does everyone end up hating me?"

When all he had ever wanted was to draw a fraction closer to her.

San abruptly released his grip on her, turning away in silence to pack up the scattered instruments and mechanical components resting across the workbench.

"If you ever require firearm modifications in the future, you know where to find me."

"Welding an extra layer of thermal insulation alloy onto the thruster core tube will drastically reduce friction degradation."

"As for close-quarters combat gear, rather than heavy-impact axes or broadswords, a flexible trench knife will suit your frame far better."

...

His tone carried the polite, chilling distance reserved for absolute strangers.

He picked up a carbon-alloy-coated triangular trench knife, weighed it casually in his hand, and then flicked an empty soda can toward the moving target downrange.

With a fluid motion, San launched the knife. The blade flashed a cold arc through the air, pinning the can dead-center against the target’s bullseye.

That knife-throwing precision was genuinely impressive.

The can ruptured instantly, energy drink spraying outward from around the blade as if venting some unnameable frustration.

Could Bunny really fail to see through such childish antics?

In truth, both San and Astin shared a stubborn streak of immaturity—one preferred to wrap himself in a sharp, caustic exterior as a shield, while the other masked his deep-seated care behind an affected facade of nonchalance.

Instead of playing along, Bunny tossed a match right onto the dry tinder.

"I actually think Astin has a rather impressive talent for weapon modifications. He’d probably instruct me with a lot more patience than you."

"Maybe I should just go ask him instead."

Of all the names she could have dropped, she had to pick Astin’s.

Sure enough, San’s expression curdled into something genuinely grim. Clenching his back molars tight, he stubbornly fired back:

"Go on, then. Go find him."

Since Astin apparently beat him out in every conceivable way, why bother sticking around to play the clown in front of her?

Bunny feigned a retreat toward the exit, pausing to glance back over her shoulder:

"Guess I’ll be going, then."

San kept his back turned to her, sitting cross-legged on the floor in absolute silence.

Beneath his black compression tank top and tucked-up camouflage cargo pants, his bulging biceps were crossed rigidly over his chest.

He looked utterly indifferent, though his ears were strained to catch the faintest echo of her footsteps.

The woman’s steps faded further and further away, without a single pause in their rhythm.

The instant the magnetic door slid open and clicked shut again, San whipped his head around. Bunny was genuinely gone.

The empty armory was left entirely to him.

The last flickering spark of hope inside his chest snuffed out, and a suffocating wave of resentment surged to its peak. In petty retaliation, San began violently uncoupling all the firearm components Bunny had just assembled.

He even grabbed the puppy-faced backpack Bunny had left behind, punching it repeatedly as if the stuffed animal were Astin in the flesh.

Until a cool, skeptical feminine voice echoed unexpectedly from the dark corner:

"What exactly do you think you’re doing?"

Jumping in fright, San froze with his hand clamped around the stuffed dog’s head, caught dead-to-rights like a child with his hand in the cookie jar.

Bunny hadn’t left at all; she had simply slipped into the shadows and waited.

"I... I..."

San panicked, utterly mortified that his brutal assault on the "dog" had been witnessed from start to finish.

Snatching her bag back from his grip, Bunny inspected the plush toy—its snout was thoroughly bashed in and concave, looking comically tragic.

"San, you really are a child."