Chapter 27 – A Question That Was Far Too Simple

Lyon got out of the car first. He adjusted his sports shirt, ran a hand through his badly cut hair in an attempt to fix it with his fingers, and avoided, with almost military determination, looking in the driver's direction.

Not up.

Not to the side.

Not anywhere that involved human eyes.

Behind him, Cya stepped out of the car with a calm movement. She adjusted her skirt with the same composure she used when fixing her hair, and her face, which had been so expressive during the last few minutes inside the car, was already returning to its usual blank expression.

Almost.

Because her cheeks were still a little rosier than usual, and the corners of her lips had the slightest upward curve. On anyone else, it would've meant nothing, but on Cya Hogwarts, leader of the Hogwarts Guild, it was practically a smile.

The driver noticed.

The driver noticed immediately.

In fact, the driver noticed before Cya had even finished closing the door.

'She's happy,' the driver thought, glancing at her from the corner of her eye. 'Guild Leader Cya is happy.'

It was the first time she'd ever seen her like this.

The driver had spent three years observing Cya, and during those three years, she had cataloged exactly six different expressions on her face: calm, mildly annoyed, moderately annoyed, severely annoyed, focused, and suppressing sleep during long meetings.

Happy wasn't on the list.

Happy was a new expression.

Happy was an expression that completely shattered the driver's classification system and forced her to add a seventh category at the last minute.

The driver took a deep breath, straightened her uniform, and approached the two of them with the most professionally professional smile she could manage.

"Do you need me to help with anything, Guild Leader?" she asked in the most neutral tone imaginable.

Internally, however, the driver was making a quick calculation.

A very quick calculation.

A calculation based specifically on a collection of cheap erotic paperbacks the driver had read during long waits in parking lots, in which, with statistically suspicious regularity, the main couple always ended up inviting a third person to join their post-car activities.

A third person who, in many of those novels, happened to be the driver.

'Could it be...?' the driver thought, her heart beating just a little faster. 'After everything they saw... are they going to...?'

Cya's answer came quickly.

"Just do your job," Cya said dryly. "Stay here. Watch the car."

The driver blinked.

"...Yes, Guild Leader."

"Sorry for the interruption."

"Yes, Guild Leader."

Cya didn't look at her again.

Cya turned around, calmly walked toward the hotel entrance, and didn't look back once.

And Lyon, who was still fixing his hair and remained firmly determined not to interact with any human being other than Cya for the next ten minutes, walked straight past the driver without looking at her.

Without turning his head.

Without raising his eyes.

Without so much as a movement acknowledging her existence.

The driver stood there for a second, her professional smile still frozen on her face.

'...Oh.'

'Oh, I see.'

'One of those cold guys.'

The driver processed this new information at lightning speed.

A serious guy.

A distant guy.

A guy who didn't waste time on pleasantries.

A guy who had gotten in, fucked three times, gotten out, and was now walking away with the quiet dignity of someone who considered anyone below a guild leader to be background decoration.

Cold as ice.

'No wonder the Guild Leader likes him,' the driver thought as a sudden revelation washed over her from head to toe. 'Of course. Of course. They're exactly alike. They're made for each other.'

The driver watched them walk toward the hotel entrance side by side, with the same calm pace, the same straight posture, the same reserved expression, and inside, she felt the fulfilled excitement of a successful matchmaker that she could barely contain.

What the driver obviously didn't know was that Lyon wasn't refusing to look at her because he was cold or distant.

He was, quite specifically, dying of embarrassment on the inside.

Dying of embarrassment to such an extreme degree that he was incapable of maintaining eye contact with anyone who had witnessed, heard, smelled, or somehow perceived what had happened in the back seat of that car during the last twenty minutes.

Lyon kept his eyes locked straight ahead with absolute determination.

And inside his head, he repeated a single mantra.

'She doesn't exist. She doesn't exist. She doesn't exist.'

'That car doesn't exist. That seat doesn't exist. That ride never happened.'

'I just magically appeared here.'

'I'm at the hotel because I teleported here.'

'The driver is a figment of my imagination.'

And so, armed with that admirable philosophy, Lyon walked through the hotel doors without even noticing that behind him, the driver was watching with both hands pressed against her chest and the touched expression of a mother watching her son get married.

◇◆◇

The elevator was big.

Big, quiet, with walls covered in pale marble polished until they gleamed, while soft instrumental music played through speakers hidden somewhere in the ceiling.

It was the private elevator for the wing where Cya was staying, one of those elevators that required a special key card to use and almost never had anyone else inside.

Right now, there were two people.

Cya, standing beside the control panel, her back straight and her eyes fixed forward.

And Lyon, standing about three feet away from her, trying to decide what the socially acceptable distance was between two people who had had sex ten times in a row ten minutes ago and were now sharing an enclosed space in complete silence.

'Is three feet too far? Too close? Should I stand closer? Would it be weird if I moved closer? Would it be weird if I moved farther away? Why am I even thinking about this?'

The voice inside his head didn't answer.

The voice hadn't spoken for several minutes.

A lot of minutes, actually.

Ever since Lyon had finished the third round inside the car, the voice had made exactly one sharp comment before disappearing into a silence that was starting to worry him.

'Are you still there?' Lyon tried asking inside his head.

Nothing.

'Well...'

Meanwhile, Cya raised a hand toward the elevator panel.

And with a calm movement, without hesitating, she pressed the highest button.

Beep.

The elevator started moving silently.

Lyon looked at the blinking number above the doors.

'Top floor. Of course.'

Lyon cleared his throat.

Once again, he felt obligated to speak for the same ridiculous reason he'd felt obligated to speak in the car: because silence, in this particular situation, was physically unbearable.

So he took the plunge.

"Looks like you enjoy high-up views," Lyon commented with a small smile as he watched the number climb on the display.

Cya didn't answer immediately.

In fact, Cya took several full seconds before replying, with that calmness Lyon was already beginning to recognize.

It wasn't an empty calm.

It was a processing calm.

"It's not because of the view," Cya finally answered in a flat voice. "It's because of work."

Lyon blinked.

"Work?"

"When a nearby rift or portal appears, the ground shakes for barely a second before it opens," Cya explained with the same calmness. "From a high floor, the vibration is easier to feel. I can wake up in time and start working."

Lyon stared at her for a second.

Then he slowly nodded.

"Wow... you're really dedicated to your job."

Cya let out a small, almost imperceptible sigh.

"You could say that."

There was a brief silence.

Without turning her head toward him, Cya spoke again.

"And you?" she asked.

Lyon blinked.

"Me what?"

"Why do you live on the floor you live on?"

Lyon let out a short laugh.

The question was so direct, so serious, so typically Cya that he couldn't help laughing a little.

"Because it was the cheapest apartment I could find to rent," Lyon answered honestly. "That's literally it."

Cya turned her head toward him.

Barely.

But she did.

"The cheapest?" she repeated, in a tone where Lyon detected, for the first time since meeting her, something resembling the concept of surprise.

"Yeah."

"Are you having financial problems?"

Lyon raised an eyebrow.

"Cya, I'm a college student."

"I know."

"College students don't usually live in expensive apartments because, generally speaking, we don't have money."

Cya slowly nodded, as if this were completely new information that she was now integrating into her database.

Then, with the absolute naturalness only possessed by people who had never once in their lives needed to worry about rent, she said:

"If you'd like, I can give you one of the rooms in this hotel."

Lyon froze.

'...What?'

"They're empty," Cya continued as if it were nothing. "This entire floor belongs to me. You can choose whichever one you prefer. The corner room has a better view, but the one in the middle hallway is quieter."

Lyon stared at her.

He stared at her for several seconds.

And one part of him, one very small and very tempted part, immediately started calculating whether he should accept the offer.

Then that part was swiftly executed by the more rational part of his brain.

"That's... way too much, Cya," Lyon said with a slightly nervous laugh. "Besides, look how long it took your car to get here. This place is really far from the university. Getting to my morning classes would be a pain."

Cya considered that for a second.

"I can lend you my driver."

Lyon laughed louder this time.

"You're going to lend me your personal driver so she can take me to college every day?"

"Yes."

"Seriously?"

"Yes."

Lyon looked at her, still smiling, feeling both disbelief and a strange bit of fondness at the same time.

Cya was completely serious.

No hesitation whatsoever.

As if lending her private driver—someone hired by a guild and trained for years—to a guy she'd barely known for two days was the most logical thing in the world.

And then Lyon did the thing that would define the entire conversation from that point onward.

He asked a question.

A small question.

An almost innocent one.

"Hey, Cya," Lyon said with a curious smile, "are you always this nice to everyone?"

And Cya didn't answer.

◇◆◇

Inside Cya Hogwarts's head, everything went dark.

Not literal darkness.

The kind of darkness that happens inside your mind when one simple question opens a door that should never have been opened.

Cya remained standing in front of the elevator panel, her eyes fixed on the number that continued climbing, her expression seemingly identical to what it had been one second earlier.

Seemingly.

Because inside her, something had stopped.

'...Nice to everyone?'

'Me?'

Cya closed her eyes for a second behind that blank expression.

And during that second, without intending to, she started making a list.

Cya started making a list of everything she'd done for Lyon since meeting him.

She had invited him out to eat.

She had bought him a phone worth more than a thousand dollars.

She had offered to move him from his apartment into a private hotel.

She had just offered, without thinking twice, to lend him her own driver.

She had opened the door of her car for him.

She had sat pressed against him.

She had hugged him.

She had kissed him.

She had climbed on top of him.

She had...

Cya pressed her fingers slightly into her palm.

'...No.'

'I'm not nice to everyone.'

'I'm being nice to him.'

'Only him.'

And there, in the silence of the elevator, Cya asked herself for the first time the question she'd been refusing to ask ever since Lyon entered her life.

'Why?'

The question dropped into her mind like a stone into a well, and the answers that began floating back up were not answers she liked.

Cya started going over everything.

She went over the first day.

She went over their first conversation.

She went over the first moment she'd crossed paths with him, when, for no concrete reason and with no logic she could identify, her attention had locked onto him with an intensity Cya normally reserved for threats to her guild.

'His scent.'

'Since the first day.'

'His scent caught my attention from the very first day.'

Then she went over everything she'd done for him.

And then, with a clinical coldness that made her stomach tighten, she went over the things she'd done to other people because of him.

The employee at the phone store.

That young employee with the trained smile who had approached Lyon intending to recommend a phone to him personally.

Nothing more than that.

Her job.

Something she did every day with every customer.

Cya had threatened her.

Cya couldn't remember the exact words, but she remembered the look.

She remembered the tone.

She remembered how the girl had backed away with trembling hands and wide eyes.

Most of all, Cya remembered that she hadn't felt even a drop of guilt at the time.

And then there was the driver.

Her personal driver.

Three years.

Impeccable.

Discreet.

Reliable.

Less than thirty minutes ago, Cya had offered to kill her for Lyon as casually as if she were talking about moving a piece of furniture.

Cya went completely still.

'I... am not like this.'

And yet, she had been.

With Lyon, she had been like this.

Only with Lyon.

Cya felt something unpleasant inside her chest.

Not quite panic.

But close.

A small, tight sensation, as though something inside her was operating on its own, without permission, without control, without her.

'Something isn't right.'

'Something isn't right with me.'

Cya, who above all else was a methodical and rational person, began constructing hypotheses.

Hypothesis one: a drug.

'Lyon could have some kind of substance in his body. Some drug. Some compound that alters the perception of people around him. That would explain the scent. That would explain why my attention has been locked onto him. That would explain why my body behaves so irrationally whenever he's nearby.'

Cya clung to that hypothesis for a second.

Then she noticed the problem.

'If it were a drug, it would affect everyone around him equally.'

'The employee at the phone store. His classmate from college. Any other girl who got close to him.'

'There would be more girls behaving like this around him.'

'And I haven't seen any.'

Cya's brow furrowed slightly beneath her otherwise blank expression.

'Unless...'

'Unless the drug doesn't affect everyone equally. Unless it only affects certain people. People with some kind of specific chemical compatibility with him. Me, for example.'

'The only way to rule that out with certainty would be...'

Cya stopped.

'The only way would be to have another girl smell him.'

'Up close.'

'The way I smell him.'

'And see if the same thing happens to her.'

And there, with that idea still barely forming inside her mind, Cya felt something that frightened her even more than everything else.

Anger.

Hot, sudden anger tightened her chest and made her clench her fists inside the pockets of her skirt.

Anger directed at a hypothetical girl who didn't even exist.

An imaginary girl who, in Cya's hypothesis, inside her own head, would be moving closer to Lyon, her nose just inches from his neck, all for the sake of a scientific test.

A girl whom, at that very moment, Cya realized she also wanted to kill.

'...No.'

'No.'

'There has to be another way.'

'Any other way.'

'Anything but that.'

Cya took a deep breath.

A very deep breath.

And somewhere very far away inside her head, something tried to force its way through the darkness.

Something that sounded suspiciously like Lyon's voice.

"...Cya."

"..."

"Cya, the doors are already open."

Cya blinked.

Beep.

At some point during that entire mental spiral, the elevator had indeed reached the top floor.

The doors were open. Lyon was looking at her with an expression that was equal parts confused and concerned, standing in the doorway with one hand against the edge of the elevator door to keep it from closing again.

Cya looked at him.

Lyon was standing there with his hand against the elevator door, waiting for her.

Wearing his new sports shirt.

His badly cut hair.

His eyes looking a little tired after everything they'd done in the car.

And a small smile on his face as he waited for her.

Cya felt her chest tighten again.

But in a completely different way.

'...Later. I'll think about this later. Not now.'

Cya calmly stepped forward, a little embarrassed that she'd spent so long standing in the same place without moving, and walked through the elevator doors, passing very close to Lyon.

Very close.

Close enough that her shoulder lightly brushed against his arm.

"...Sorry," Cya murmured as she passed him. "I got distracted."

"It's okay," Lyon replied.