Intermission (Cossette)

It's been awhile since I felt this... What was this feeling called again? Was it regret, sadness...? No, I think I remember it clearly now.

It was called 'fear'... The fear of once again losing someone important because of me.

A few years ago, somewhere at the Satella territory, while me and my half brother, who was apparently three years older than me, was running around the forest, we came across a pack of tempest wolves.

"Broth-"

Before I could even call him out, my big brother, Ian, gestured his hands to stop me.

"Stay back!"

Taking a wooden stick from the ground, Ian lit the the tip on fire and began using it to scare the wolves away from the both of them.

As we were slowly backing away from the wolves, I suddenly felt a wall hit my back... It was a tree. My brother noticed this and clicked his tongue out of frustration, while his eyes never left the tempest wolves.

Then, after pondering for a couple of seconds, he decided to take the risk and summoned an fire wall behind them to take the chance to run.

[Flame Blitz]

"Cossette let's-!?"

Noticing that I was nowhere near him, Ian's eyes immediately moved to looked around.

"Brother!"

Ian felt relieved when he heard my voice. Though, this didn't last long when he saw one of the tempest wolves rushing towards me.

"Cossette!"

Ian's body began to move on it's own, as if it was trying to do anything it can to save the five-year-old me from the tempest wolves.

The wolf was about five-meter away from me when suddenly, a black light came out from the back of my right hand.

I waited for a couple of seconds before opening my eyes just to see a black spike appeared from the ground, stabbing every tempest wolves to their death.

I was lost at words from what I saw. So, as soon as my body recovered from it's shock, I turned my head towards where I heard my brother's voice last coming from.

But...

"Brother!"

He was no exception either. When I saw his chest get stab by the black spike, I immediately ran towards him.

Soon, he began spewing out tons of blood as the spike was slowly returning to the ground.

A couple of seconds later, his body fell to the ground. Crouching down to his side, I slowly raised his head to my arm.

"Cough! Cough! Cossette..."

Coughing out blood, he slowly raised his hands to wipe the tears away from my eyes.

"You should leave now... Don't worry about me. I'll come back for sure...I promise."

"Liar..."

I said in low voice, while holding back the tears forming once again from my eyes.

"When did I ever lied to you?"

"Almost everyday..."

Hearing what I said, he laughed. But as soon as he did this, blood immediately poured down from his mouth.

"Cos-"

Before he could even finish calling out my name, an earthquake suddenly cut him off.

Rumble! Rumble! Rumble!

Next, a huge crack appeared on the ground. It then begin to move forward, heading towards his injured body. Seeing this, he tried to remove my hands from his arm.

"Cossette, you need to get out of here immediately, now!"

Trying his best to shook me off, he failed. So, because of this, he then decided to use magic to blew me away.

[Hale Wind]

Shiii-

"Guah!" I let out a groan.

After I crashed onto one of the trees, I faintly saw my brother's body fell onto the cracks before I passed out.

"Brother..."

...

A couple of years after my brother's death, I ran away from home. Even though my whole family didn't blame his death to me, a huge part of myself was still having deep remorse from his death.

With that in mind, I can't erase this guilt I'm having so that's why I decided to ran away.

As I was walking towards one of the stands to buy some food, some guys began surrounding me.

"Hey, little girl... Are you perhaps lost? Why don't you come with us. We can help you find your parents."

With a stupid grin, the man placed his hands on my shoulder.

'These guys...'

Feeling annoyed by this, I slowly removed my hands from my pockets and decided to cut their throats off.

But...

"It's time we should go now... Sister."

Someone came and grabbed my wrist, stopping me from what I was about to do. My face turned frown, so, I decided to turn my head around to look at the boy who grabbed me.

'Brother...'

Seeing his face, I almost spoke my thoughts out loud, because the person who grabbed me was almost looked like the same face of my dead brother when he was five. Except my brother's hair is black whilst the boy in front of me has ashy-brown.

Pulling me away from the guys who surrounded me, we walked through the crowds silently.

After a couple of minutes of walking, he stopped and looked around to make sure if those guys followed us.

"This should be far enough, no?"

With soft and amiable smile, he said before turning his attention back to me.

"S-sorry."

Letting go of my wrist, he embarrassingly looked away to the side.

Seeing this, I couldn't hold myself any longer...

"Hmm... Aren't you cute~"

I gently said, while raising my hands to pat his head.

"Stop it will you?"

With an annoyed pout, he shoved my hands off away from his head.

Cute... Is what his expression was making.

From then on, I decided to follow this boy. Unexpectedly, he was fine with it with a certain conditions.

The first one was to train him on using dark magic. I was still a bit surprised when I found out that he has the same crest as me, because darkness crest users is quite rare even at the capital.

Even so, I'm not the type of person that would always pry on someone else business so I didn't continued to ask him more further.

There was still two more conditions but I quickly forgot about it, because I wasn't really listening except for the time he announced that his crest was darkness.

As he was explaining something about his family, he always made a gesture on his hands while he was talking. I don't know why he was doing this, but I found his actions a bit cute.

Throughout the journey back to his family's mansion, I tried to contain the urge to squeeze his cheeks. But, in the end, I failed to do so.

'I can't do this... His cute, and childish face was just simply too powerful for me to resist.'

***

"... Huh?"

Turning my head slightly to look around, I massaged the middle of my brows.

I see... I fell asleep while watching over Athan.

Biting my lower lips, I let out a long sigh in contempt.

I almost lost someone important to me again... Just by thinking about it, I wanted slam my head hard on the wall hard.

"Tsk!"

I clenched my hands into fist, while my other hand was holding my chest tightly.

"I guess--"

-Creak!

Cutting me off was a sound of creaking noice on the bed. Slightly raising my head to look to where the creaking sound came from, a small tears began forming to the side of my eyes.

Taking a look closer to his body, Athan let out a long sigh before muttering to himself.

"Guess that answer my question why my body hurt so much... Damn, I look like shit."

"Athan!"