Chapter 89

"So you can't see this?"

"…"

"I see, guess I need a little more work, I only worked on this recently in an attempt to imitate that, but I guess it's not enough,"

"I…I see,"

She reached her hand to Yuji as he gave the luminous ball with shivering hands.

Gabriela giggled, "Is it that heavy? Your hands are shivering,"

"it is… the real question is how are you lifting it so lightly?"

"hehe! That's a secret," she said, putting both of the balls beside the wall in the corner of the room.

"Now then, let's wait for Yukina," going inside the tight door in the corner, she took out a small box.

"what's that?"

Putting the small box on the table, Gabriela opened the case, "tada! Snacks! While waiting for Yukina,"

"Y… Yukina is going here?"

"Yeah, I told a staff member to tell her once the match is over, she should be coming here shortly," she said, pulling out a sandwich from the box.

"Also, didn't we just eat? How come you still have room after that much?"

"Shut up…" looking dreadfully at Yuji.

"Yes, ma'am!" sending shivers down his spine.

Gabriela let out a sigh, "if you don't want to eat then I got some drinks here too, wait for a moment," she stood up.

"You have quite a lot of stuff… do you spend most of your time in here?"

"No… I rarely go here to ease some stress, but as you can already probably tell, I'm not the kind of person who gets stressed out a lot," putting the drinks she got from the door on the corner onto the table, "these were put in a freezer in there so this all should be good,"

"How long have these been here?"

"Just so you know, I refresh all these within a week, except for these sandwiches, I got them earlier this morning,"

"… but why go through all this?"

"So that I'm prepared…"

"prepared?"

"for when I and my sisters gather together once again,"

"Gather together once again? You make it sound like you don't see each other often,"

"We don't. if it were about a year ago, we hardly don't see each other, but now is different. I just met with one of my sisters recently, but before that, it was quite a while before we last saw each other. though she said that this time she will be busy, she'll still be able to visit more often,"

Gabriela looked down, hiding her expression, "maybe… just maybe, things will slowly go back to the way they were…" she whispered.

"But aren't you sisters? Why…"

"Oh, what do you know!?" Gabriela said, raising her voice. "Oh… sorry, I didn't mean to…"

"no… it's ok, I might have been overstepping myself," Yuji looked away, "what was that… why did I say that? It's as if some other emotion mixed with mine…" he thought.

"Anyway, it was your fault. Geez, why is it that you are so easy to be honest with!? I shouldn't even tell you these kinds of things…"

Yuji laughed awkwardly as he focuses on his thoughts.

Sometime later, as they waited for Yukina, continuous silence occurred as fresh gushes of wind came from the window, brushing past their skins as the room mood emits a relaxing atmosphere.

Chewing on her snacks, Gabriela glanced at Yuji, whose mind seemed to be far away as he locks his eyes out the window, "this feels weird…" she thought, "I think this is supposed to be the kind of mood you would call awkward, yet it feels as if this is just natural… it's uncomfortable how comforting this is…"

Meanwhile, in Yuji's head.

"I see so that's why…"

"Alright, though you can tell the difference, right? It might be complicated but keep watch whether or not the emotion you're having is mine or yours," Alicia said.

"Keeping track of my emotions… It's not like I didn't know how to do this before, it's just that I never had to keep track of two, though I think it's doable, it just needs a little of getting used to,"

"by the way, we've been talking in here for a while, I hope Gaby doesn't find this suspicious,"

"now that you mention it, Gabriela hasn't said a word since…" Glancing to his right, Yuji suppresses his shock as he sees Gabriela with fixated eyes towards him.

Not knowing what to do, Yuji stared back unconsciously with a regular expression.

"Ah, he's looking at me," she thought, locking eyes with each other, "looking at each other in silence like this also doesn't feel weird, it's really weird how normal this seems… Also, is he not going to talk??"

"she's staring straight at me… did she think of something suspicious again? Did I do something wrong? How long has she been staring? I'm looking straight at her! What should I say?" he thought in panic.

"Hmm, he's just staring at me with that normal expression, should I say something?"

As both of their mouths were about to open, aiming to talk, they suddenly heard an odd faint noise from a distance.

Both of them reacted and looked in the direction where they thought the sound came from.

"What was that? It was definitely not a natural sound coming from the things here in the forest… something mechanical? Though faint, it kind of sounded familiar," Yuji thought

"That was definitely Yukina's jet pack, she silenced it just before she got in my detection, is she trying to sneak around? If she is, then she was a second too late," Gabriela thought.

"Yukina should be coming here any second now," she said.

"huh?"

"You noticed too, right? Otherwise, you wouldn't have reacted the same as me. I can tell from even that faint sound that it was hers, I've heard it way too many times in my currently short life,"

"Currently short? I think she just revealed a hint about her age, though it should be quite obvious if based on her looks,"

After a short moment, Yukina glided towards the treehouse's terrace landing perfectly in front of the door. Looking inside, she saw Yuji and Gabriela sitting across from each other at a small table, looking directly at her.

Looking as if she went in a hurry, she smiled as sweat dripped from her forehead with a nervous expression, "am I interrupting something?"