With his heart at ease, Zavier was ecstatic as he went on the way home. Everything had gone exactly as he had planned except that the timing of his big reveal was a bit earlier than he had expected. He had originally wanted to gradually reveal what he was capable of.
But owing to the circumstances, he had failed to reduce the impact and he was bound to be one of the most discussed topics in the school soon. That kind of attention was what he had wanted to avoid.
Nevertheless, he had exchanged this little bit of trouble for a wish from Aunt Valerie.
He could ask for anything from her. Depending on her means, this could turn out to be a pretty great deal on his end.
Zavier could not help but plan out his next course of action on the walk home.
Now that he had revealed himself and his strength, he needed to increase the level of his mage system since he could not reveal his illusionist status at the moment.
Everyone else including his aunt Valerie was of the opinion that he had extraordinary mage skills but no one was in the know about his illusionist skills except Dahila.
Therefore, he wanted to keep it that way, in order to avoid further complexities. Apparently, in this world no one was capable of following two paths at the same time; at least not according to his memories or what he himself had come across.
Before he could come out of his deep thoughts, he was already standing at the main porch of his home.
He knew that he would be facing some interrogation upon entering but what was going to happen would happen. There was no point fretting about it.
He entered the front door sneakily to avoid the questioning gazes and to rush to his room but he froze when he saw his Aunt Valerie standing in front of him as soon as he stepped in.
It was this moment that he knew that a bout of torturous questioning was headed his way.
What bothered him the most was that he had no way of telling the truth to his aunt and he could not just tell her falsities either.
His aunt might have been high on her ego, but she was a terribly perceptive person who was not easy to deceive or lie to.
Zavier had thought through the events of the day and was regretful of the way that he had done things.
The way that he had revealed his strength, his calm and unfazed demeanor, his bursting confidence and unbending attitude had made others think that he had been powerful all along and had only been keeping his strength under wraps due to some reason.
His Aunt Valerie was no different from the others, just even angrier and more shocked than the rest.
After all, he was her own nephew and even she had been kept in the dark which meant that he hadn't trusted her either.
Meanwhile, she was also remorseful of the way that she had been treating him all along.
She was thinking that it might have been because of her behavior with him in the first place that he had never even once tried to tell her about his problems. Or maybe he did try and was discouraged by her attitude towards him.
Valerie was feeling more agitated by the second and wanted to hear his reasons to calm herself.
She wanted to know if her own insensitivity had been one of the reasons he had hidden his bursting talent from her. That was why she had been waiting for him to come back home. Her anxiety had not let her move away from the door all this while.
Therefore, as soon as Zavier entered the front door, he had already encountered Valerie standing in front of him. From her smirking expression, he knew that there was no escape this time.
Since he had no way of explaining, he pretended as if nothing had changed and moved past her without even acknowledging her presence. He was trying to hurry back to his bedroom before he could be called back.
His hopes were dashed as soon as he took the first step on to the stairs leading up to his bedroom.
"Stop right there. Do you not put me in your eyes now that you have revealed your strength?"
The words were spoken in a piercing tone, trying to prod his insides, hoping to get some answers out of him.
Zavier acted nonchalant as if he hadn't heard her at all but he put down his raised foot, turned around and came back in front of her at a leisurely pace.
"Aunt Valerie, did you need something from me?"
Valerie felt as if a tsunami of anger and frustration was brewing in her body, turning her insides out.
On the surface Zavier was acting like an obedient nephew but she knew that this was a taunt intended to disrupt her questioning momentum.
She could easily judge that he didn't want to answer her questions at all and wanted to pretend that nothing had happened.
"Stop pretending. No need to act smart with me."
Zavier immediately adopted a dignified outlook and looked as serious as he could to reassure Valerie and then nodded as if asking her to continue with what she wanted.
"Tell me, how long have you been able to do magic? Is it really only recently that you have awakened to magic like you told us? Or have you always been able to do it and were hiding it from us?"
Aunt Valerie launched a barrage of questions at once. Even though she had already decided on what was the possible answer, she wanted to hear it from him.
"What does it matter if I only awakened to magic recently or had the ability since the very beginning?"
Aunt Valerie could not get more frustrated. The ambiguous answer had left her more angry then satisfied.
She knew that it did not matter anymore because the way that she had been treating him, like he was air, could not be changed anymore.
The more she tried to justify her past actions, the more guilty she felt especially once she knew that the nephew that was the most worthy of praise and endless resources of the family had been cast aside by herself.
This made her adamant on getting those answers from Zavier.
"It matters to me. Tell me why would you hide it from me for so long?"
Zavier stayed silent for a while and then gave her a piercing look as if saying: "Isn't it obvious enough?"
Valerie was crestfallen. She knew what he meant. Even if he had wanted to tell someone, that someone wouldn't have been her. She was the last person in the house who he would have wanted to approach.
Valerie was the only one in the house who had felt disgusted with his presence. And now she had the guts to openly ask him why he had not opened up to her. She felt like laughing at herself but this only made her more determined to find out his secrets so as to know more about him.
Zavier noticed the fleeting expressions of regret and sadness on her face and his heart softened.
He smiled at her softly, revealing a trace of gentleness before saying in an even softer tone that made him look even more mysterious while at the same time kindly reassuring Valerie that it wasn't her fault.
"Everyone has his own secrets that they don't want others to know. It's not that I didn't want to tell you but there are some things that are better left unsaid."
He gave her a crafty and mysterious smile and turned on his footsteps and headed back towards his room without looking back even once.
Valerie, who was still not willing to accept his answer, at least felt satisfied at this moment. At the same time, her interest in him increased manifold. She vowed that she would draw out all the answers out of him some day.