Chapter 188: I mean it

He had been sleeping on her sofa.

Iris dropped her hand and stared at the wall.

She was angry. She had not expected to be, but now that the first wave of shock had passed, that was what was left. It sat in her chest like a hot coal.

She was angry that he had lied to her, and angry that he had not told her the truth even once, when she had given him every chance. She was angry at herself, too, for being so foolish.

But under the anger, there was something worse.

She was confused. She did not understand why he had done it. She had thought she knew him a little. He had been quiet, and sometimes strange, but never cruel.

He had never raised his voice or broken anything or done anything to make her afraid. And yet he was also the one in the news report, the one who had killed his own father.

Both of those things could not be true.

Or they could, and that was what frightened her most.

"He betrayed me," Iris whispered.

The words came out thin in the empty kitchen, and they made her feel a little foolish. But she meant them.

She had trusted him, and he had been lying to her face the whole time. And not about something small. He had been hiding the biggest secret in the world, in her house, with her sitting twenty feet away.

What if he had decided to hurt her? What if he had been waiting for the right moment? A person who could kill an S-rank could snap her neck without thinking about it.

She had been sleeping peacefully each night with someone like that in the next room, and she had not even known.

Her hands began to shake.

She picked up the cup, but her fingers were trembling so badly that the tea sloshed over the edge. She set it down again, and a drop ran across the wood.

"Stupid," she said under her breath. "Stupid, stupid, stupid..."

"Iris."

She screamed.

It was not a loud scream. It was a short, sharp one, the sound of a person who has been startled out of her skin.

She jumped out of her chair so fast that it toppled backwards and crashed against the floor, and she stumbled away from the table until her back hit the wall.

Leon was standing in the middle of the kitchen.

He had not come through the door. She would have heard it. He had not climbed in through a window either.

He was simply there, a few steps away from her, with his hands at his sides and his clothes torn and dirty, looking at her with an expression she could not read.

"Calm down," he said.

"Stay away from me!"

"I am not going to..."

"Get out!" Iris pressed herself against the wall, her whole body shaking. Her voice cracked on the words. "Get out of my house! Leave me alone! I do not want you here!"

"Iris, listen to me."

"No! I do not want to listen! Go away!"

"I am not going to hurt you."

"That is exactly what a person who is going to hurt me would say!"

Leon stopped.

He had been about to take a step toward her, but he froze when she said it. He looked at her for a moment, and then he looked down at his own hands.

He took a step back instead.

"I am staying here," he said. "I will not come closer. Is that better?"

Iris did not answer. Her chest was rising and falling too fast, and her eyes were wide.

"I came to explain," Leon said.

"I do not want an explanation!"

"You are going to get one anyway."

"Then I will shout until you leave!"

"Then shout."

She opened her mouth, and then she did. She shouted at him to go away, and to leave her alone, and to never come back. She shouted that he was a liar, and that he had used her, and that she had trusted him.

She shouted that he had no right to stand in her kitchen after what he had done. Her voice rang against the walls and cracked on every word, and her eyes filled with tears.

Leon did not interrupt her.

He did not shout back, and he did not move. He stood where he was, with his arms at his sides, and let her say all of it.

Once or twice he opened his mouth to speak, and then closed it again. He was not good at this. He had no practice at it, and he did not know how it was done.

So he waited, and let her shout.

It took a long time. Her voice grew hoarse, and her breathing became ragged, and the words began to run together.

Finally she ran out of things to say, and she slid down the wall until she was sitting on the floor with her knees pulled against her chest.

The kitchen fell quiet.

The only sound was the slow drip of the tea from the edge of the table.

Leon stayed where he was. After a while he said, in a lower voice, "Are you finished?"

Iris did not look at him. She stared at the floor between her feet, and her shoulders shook once, and then again.

She wiped her face roughly with the back of her hand. When she spoke, her voice was small and rough.

"Why are you not doing anything?"

"What would you like me to do?"

"I do not know." She laughed, a short, cracked sound, with no humor in it.

"I have been screaming at you for five minutes. You could have stopped me. You could have... I do not know. Done something."

"I did not come here to do something to you."

"You say that."

"I mean it."

Iris finally raised her head. Her eyes were red and swollen, and her hair had come loose from its band.