An Hour Later:
I had been laying there, my feet next to her head and her feet next to my head, content with just circling my spiritual energy until she woke up.
Once I had gained about 3/4 of the spiritual energy that I had spent, back, Primrose finally opened her eyes.
"Yo, you up?"
Hearing my voice, I could tell from reading the skin around her eyes that she was in a state of shock for a second, before she relaxed, realizing who it was that had spoken.
'Hmm... I wonder what prompted that reaction.'
I mean, she was my favorite character in the novel, but that didn't mean that I knew everything about her. Obviously, like all authors, the author of this novel didn't explain the whole background of all their side characters in detail.
"No answer?" I prompted again, smiling wistfully.
This time, she pointed towards her throat, and then started rubbing her eyes.
Sitting up, I took a flask out of my watch, before waiting for her to be done.
After a minute or so, she also sat up, so I put the water in her hands while her eyes were still closed, knowing that she knew that her eyes were still red from the rubbing.
'At least I knew about this habit.'
Again, her brows wrinkled in suspicion, as it seemed like I was familiar with her habits, but then they became normal again, as she took greedy gulps of the water.
Finishing her drink with a loud and satisfied, "Ahhhhhhhh...", I waited for her explanation.
I guess she was still tired or something, as she leaned forward and buried her forehead in my right shoulder.
I reflexively started to move my shoulder, but she grabbed my right shoulder hard and held it there.
Getting her signal, I stayed still, moving my legs so that I was cross legged, and so that my knees were touching her legs, "Why?" cause I was childish.
Feeling my skin touch hers, I could see the upper right side of her mouth curve, from my position, as she smiled bitterly.
You see, this indicated that I was also a wimp, and she understood this.
"You can't even console a depressed girl properly... you really are a sad one, Teacher Ashen."
"How could I? I'm only 13 after all..." I tried making the atmosphere lighter, but I failed miserably, my tone dropping at the end as she put right hand on my left shoulder and gripped it tightly.
"Don't spew bullshit!... Just, please... hold me for a second."
Seeing that Primrose was actually unstable for some reason, I shifted my position a little bit, moving myself forward, so that it would be more comfortable for her, as, sitting like that with her legs straight out and bending forward was, well, at least in my opinion, a really uncomfortable position.
I enveloped her body with my arms as she lost her composure, breaking the barrier that had been her forehead, and burying the entirety of her face in my right chest.
She started weeping silently, her body shuddering periodically in my arms.
I knew that there was really nothing that I could do, so I just comforted her, rubbing her back slightly with my right hand whilst patting her head softly with my left.
Seeing her in this state, I could basically guess what had happened.
I dropped my head down onto her right shoulder and started whispering in her ear.
"It wasn't your fault, so stop punishing yourself over it."
"B-b-but, she could be dead because of me! Why?" She cried out.
Another one of her mental barriers broke, as she started fulling weeping on my shoulder, as if a dam had been broken.
"It's alright, it's alright, you can just let it all out..." I said gently, whilst rubbing her back and patting her head with more care.
"Why wasn't it me? Why did it have to be her?"
She continued wailing and venting it all out in my shoulder, as we sat there on top of the tallest mountain around, just there in an alternate dimension, as the dust blew around us and the time passed, the hoodoos looking like poor souls judging our pitiful existence.
...
So, from the bits and pieces that I heard, and from the conjectures I could make, this was what I thought the situation was.
Basically, somehow, Marabelle and Primrose had met up on their journeys to the place that we were currently sitting.
And then, some evil students or Anna's demonic humans had attacked, but, well, knowing the capabilities of the students versus that of Primrose's and Marabelle's, it was probably the latter option.
Then, due to their bad luck or whatever, the AI that ran this test probably made it so that Primrose had to administer the second dose of poison for her task.
Because it needed to be me that she poisoned, they both knew that they had to get Primrose to me as quickly as possible.
So, Marabelle had done a "noble sacrifice" and had told Primrose to "go on without me" or some B.S. like that.
Then, as she couldn't help it, Primrose started glancing back at the battles or something as she was running away.
Marabelle probably got super injured, as first off, only life threatening injuries would make the AI pull the student out, and the demonic humans had an artifact that interfered with that process anyways, so that they could kill the students of course.
Marabelle's bloodied and disfigured body was probably the last image that Primrose saw, before she turned around like a coward and ran as fast as she could towards me.
So yeah, that was what I thought had happened.
...
Finally, after hours of sobbing, Primrose removed her face from my chest.
Looking at the tears and snot all over her face, I guess it just broke my heart, seeing, not only my favorite character, but a person that I had gotten to know, like that, so I spent the time to use my handkerchief to clean her face properly, instead of just using a spell.
After finishing with that, I carried her to a boulder a little bit of a ways off the peak, before laying her against it as she was still too weak from all that crying to fully support herself, yet, whether it was physical weakness or a mental weakness, I couldn't tell.
Taking off my dress right in front of her, she gaped, before, well, gaping even more.
I guess she was just unprepared to see the sight of my body, as even though she knew that I was just a guy crossdressing, she still didn't know that my pecs and abs were well defined pieces of glorious art. (Yeah, I'm being narcissistic, but what can I say? This body is pre-tty sweet.)
She snapped out of her daze as I ignited the dress with a lighter, letting the wet, snot-filled piece of clothing burn away.
Taking out a regular shirt and hoodie out of my watch, I put them on and turned back to her.
Still looking like a girl with my baggy pants and hair style, I walked up to her, before sitting down beside her.
After a while, she let her neck relax and rested her head on my shoulder.
We just stayed like that, looking absently at the red landscape, as the clocked ticked by, feeling like we had all the time in the world, to just... do nothing.
A/N: So, you guys probably don't read any of that stuff that used to be below anymore, so I just deleted it. Sorry for the late upload and the sad chapter today, I was just feeling depressed today, so my writing was the same.
I'll probably be writing another chapter for this novel today, in a few hours, to make up for not uploading yesterday, and an extra chapter for OTR tomorrow, but, we'll see after I'm done with the daily OTR chapter, if I have more ideas over there, then I'll write the extra chapter for OTR today, and then the extra chapter for this novel tomorrow. (You see, on the synopsis of these novels, I just said 7 chapters a week, not 1 chapter each day.)
Well, see y'all in a few hours.