What the Abyss says.

Hannah stopped her up-and-down march in her room as she looked out of the window. The sun was setting. She met quite a unique Lady today. It relieved her somehow that she wasn't the only one who believed that Lloyd was an incorrigible existence that needed to be erased.

Lucas told her how things were getting tensed up in Behmuth and how the capital had a heinous criminal going around calling himself the God. What happened to the lives of the people around her had little meaning to Jennifer. That was how she had lived her entire life. She had witnessed firsthand many times what happened to a witch who started caring.

Indifference. It wasn't a lack of emotions. It was more like a lack of freedom to act upon those emotions. The more the witch suppressed her heart the more powerful she was. As it was said, a witch's power comes from her indifference.

If a witch was very close to losing herself to her emotions, she could use oblivion to hide the very reason behind those emotions, erasing them all by themselves. Jennifer had lived one hundred and ten years. Out of those a century's worth of memories, she let just a few years seep through to her current consciousness. That was too for the only purpose of reminding her of herself.

What happened to her father after he fell in love and Lucas Murray. These two were the only memories of before her second metamorphosis that she still needed. Everything else was like a dark void filled with nothing but darkness. Like an abyss inside her.

But the past few weeks she had spent at the Shuzar estate were continuously forcing her to look into the memories she had hidden under her oblivion. And it was very clear that the Marquis had the goal to remove her oblivion. Why? She did not need to know as it didn't matter to her. Who Lloyd was to her before her oblivion? She did not need to know as it didn't matter to her. What he was trying to uncover in her mind? She did not need to know as it didn't matter to her.

However, another variable appeared in this cat and dog game between her and Lloyd. Frank. A child she had never before but found very familiar. She was convinced without removing her oblivion that she had seen something like that child before. It wasn't much of a pleasant memory as it occurred to her.

Frank's abilities and the uneasy feeling Jennifer was feeling about him were too much of a coincidence to just pass it as it was.

The abyss within her was telling her that this just wasn't a bad feeling. There was something more, something more she needed to know. And the answer was within the abyss itself. She just had to dive in and know. But the moment she dived in, the abyss would disappear and all it was holding would come to the surface. The oblivion would be destroyed.

She sighed and opened her eyes. She never noticed when she fell asleep on her bed. But this muffling and suffocating weight on her chest was making her choke. She flashed open her eyes and the orange light of the sun remainder hit her violet iris.

"Urgh," the man cuddling into her chest groaned and squeezed his way further in.

She stared at his face. A familiar and hated face it was, Lloyd. She held his brown locks and dangled up his head from her chest. It was quite a sight, she thought. Puffy eyes with visible signs of crying and a deranged face. He slowly opened his eyes and looked at Jennifer's face. Tears started rolling down his eyes as he wailed like a child continuously trying to snuggle his way into her chest.

"For God's sake, I'm paid for a single child but I handle three of you, this is exploitation, I say, exploitation," Jennifer said as she let him cuddle her. It was pointless to stop him anyway.

"Isn't he tiring? Marquis Shuzar, I mean. It isn't easy loving someone as demanding as him."

Constance's words flew through Jennifer's mind as she patted Lloyd's head.

'Except for the love part, yes, he's very demanding,' Jennifer thought.

"What happened to you, my lord?" she asked, with the dead voice of someone who was done with the shit she was going through.

"I... hic... I... hic...," Lloyd tried to talk but again snuggled his face into her chest wiping tears and snot off her shirt. "I... I fought with Raymond."

"Don't you two always pick on each other? What's the thing about it?" (Jennifer)

"Nooo!! This time... hic... urgh... this time we fought really bad."

"Is that so? Why don't you make up then?" (Jennifer)

"I... I told him to leave. He must hate me now, right? I'm such a bad person. I made my best friend look so hurt. He looked so sad when I told him to leave. It wasn't even his fault, to begin with. It was all me. I'm trash!"

"Yes, you're trash." (Jennifer)

"Why are you agreeing with me?! You should tell me it isn't my fault and console me!"

"It wasn't your fault, my lord. Get consoled." (Jennifer)

"I will cry again if you keep being cold to me, Jenny," Lloyd pouted as he said that. He had a bigger build in comparison to Jennifer. But as he crouched to cuddle with her, he seemed like a young child who was still the same as he had been all those years ago.

Jennifer felt a chill through her body. She had seen this childish face before. Long time before. Before her oblivion. Who was it? There were two people. Another one, there was another one. Where is the other one? Where did she go?

Jennifer stopped herself at the edge of the abyss. One step and she would've removed her oblivion.

"What must I do for you to not cry, my lord?" she asked Lloyd. She couldn't stand him like that. It was pushing her toward the abyss.

"Kiss it good," Lloyd said with a sad smile.

Within a split second, Jennifer kissed his lips and parted. It was a sweet little peck. But it was enough to disrupt the facial tones of Lloyd's face toward the warmer side. He was as red as a human face could get. He never in the world imagined that Jennifer would ever willingly kiss him. He got permission to be a little more greedy.

"It isn't enough," he said and took her into a deeper kiss. Mapping her mouth with his tongue, he pushed her further down into the pillow. Tracing her waist and wrists with his fingers, he could feel his blood boil in his veins as he became more and more turned on. Leaving her lips, he kissed a trail to her neck and behind her ear, nibbling and chewing on her skin. He rose up to take a look at her face and came to a sudden halt.

Her face was neither flushed nor showing any signs of excitement. It was an indifferent look as if it never mattered to her. Lloyd looked at her face with a sad smile and forced laugh.

"At least you're the same as ever if not...," he didn't finish his sentence and just sunk his face into her chest. That was the only warmth he could feel from her cold treatment of him. He hugged her tightly as he went into a deep slumber with a twisted and disturbed face.

They both knew it was just a mutual exchange of warmth that they both needed. Nothing more and nothing less.