Ryu's hair rustled in the wind, his gaze meeting Mordecai's without the slightest hint of wavering. He looked as though he could truly palm the entire skies in a hand at the moment, and looking at his back, Elena felt tears threatening to fall.
The Ryu she knew was obsessed with reaching the top of the world, but his thoughts were never about doing the same for everyone around him. It was a pursuit that could almost be called selfish under most lenses, and it was there only to satisfy his own vanity.
Those were thoughts she kept to herself because they never seemed to matter. For one, the Ryu she fell for couldn't cultivate to begin with. And second, well… it was easy for you to ignore the flaws of someone you deeply loved.
Another part of Elena, at least in recent years, felt that her evaluation of Ryu was unfair. Just because she didn't feel any ambition to do much, didn't mean that others had to be the same as her?
