"Uh, sure." Noah pushed Aiko's hands away before unbuttoning his shirt from top to bottom. He then threw it on the ground and raised his eyebrows. "What's next?"
"Sit down and close your eyes in concentration. You can talk with me but keep thinking about your past from time to time. It doesn't have to be anything specific." Aiko explained as she walked behind Noah.
She bent on her knees before settling down on the ground and sitting cross-legged. Aiko then traced Noah's spine with her right hand's index finger.
The latter felt an electric current pass through his body yet he remained still.
"Do you think there is any way to unlock my time powers?" Noah asked curiously as he felt Aiko's index finger steadily moving on his back.
"You can't unlock them now but if we succeed in sending you to the past, you will unlock them for sure."
"But wouldn't I still be a human?" Though Noah felt a bit stupid asking such questions, he decided to put such feelings away. Even after living for a long time, he didn't know the answers to everything out there.
"Your mother was forced into arrange marriage with a prince who abandoned her in a small city later on, right?"
"Yeah…" Noah recalled the moment when he had opened up about his only family to Aiko.
His father had died when he was sixteen years old. Noah had never gotten the chance to obtain revenge on him for making his mother suffer.
"But do you know why she was forced into that marriage?"
"Uh, no?…" Noah felt confused once again but he had expected this. After all, he had never asked his mother about her past because every time he brought it up, her eyes would turn cold and full of hate.
"It was because she had fallen in love with an Elven prince. I didn't find much on him except the fact that he was a big prince. It was due to their love that your mother was forced into an arranged marriage yet the details are still unknown."
"It's weird how you know something about my mother that even I don't know." Noah was amused as Aiko's finger suddenly stopped moving.
"That's because I researched your past, without telling you of course. I had been planning to do this since a long time ago." She confessed before moving to Noah's front.
He went silent after hearing her words and just saw her finger moving on his chest, directly above the area where his heart was beating.
Golden lines appeared on his skin and seemed to glow once in a while. All of them were woven in a pattern by Aiko yet there was something about them that made Noah feel uneasy.
'If she researched everything about me, then she also knows all those blunders and betrayals I have done…' Noah sighed mentally while remembering the things his earlier self had done.
He could just say that he had been naive or that he had done things under pressure but Noah knew that he would only be lying to himself by saying such things.
The truth was something he had faced directly but had still avoided in some manner.
"Phew, that took some time," Aiko sighed after a few minutes before she stood up and stretched her body. Sweat lined her forehead, surprising Noah who had thought that beings in the palace of time were free from mundane things such as sweating.
'Come to think of it, I haven't sweat ever since I became one of the top ten here but that's only because I don't do anything that can make me sweat.'
"You can stand up now," Aiko added while looking at Noah's chest with satisfaction.
The symbols she had drawn there felt cool and soothing to Noah and the uneasiness he had been feeling slightly decreased.
"What do I have to do now?" he asked eagerly while touching the symbol of his chest.
"You have to kiss me now~" She smiled teasingly which would have made half of the men in the world follow her like dogs.
"Yeah, yeah, I know you can't joke. Tell me what the next step is." Noah sighed, knowing well that Aiko was only teasing him like always.
He had gotten tired of it once and just to show Aiko that he could do something, Noah had tried to kiss her. Aiko had then confessed that she was just teasing him and wasn't actually asking him to kiss her.
Noah assumed that she was doing the same thing to lighten up the mood a bit. However, his assumption was wrong this time.
"You have to actually kiss me this time so that I can transfer all the energy inside me to you. Otherwise, how would you be able to go back in the past?" Aiko asked while raising an eyebrow as Noah froze.
Though the idea of kissing someone as beautiful as Aiko sounded nice on paper, Noah had a seventh sense called the woman sense.
His woman sense was currently telling him that something was not right about Aiko's offer.
"Before that, can I ask you something?" Noah suddenly interrupted, giving his brain time to figure out what was wrong or whether it had gotten a false alarm.
"Sure. Go ahead and clear any doubts you have right now since I won't be able to answer your queries once you are sent back." Aiko informed while cracking her knuckles, one finger at a time.
"Why me?"
"Why you?" Aiko raised an eyebrow.
"Yes, why me? There must be at least five more time magicians out there so why did you choose me out of all of them? And don't reply that you did it out of the goodwill of your heart since I had a bad past." Noah replied coldly while staring directly into Aiko's eyes.
"I am not doing this just cause I feel sympathy for you or anything like that. I am quite selfish, Noah and I am doing this for myself too." Aiko replied firmly, her gaze unwavering.
"Eh?" Noah had no idea how sending him back to the past could help Aiko so he waited for her to continue.
"If you can save all those you love, save me too. That's all you need to know right now." Aiko finished and before Noah could say anything, she flickered forward.
'So different when compared to the few women I spent time with…' Noah's eyes were fixated on Aiko's face which was right in front of his face.
Her red lips were pressed tightly against his as a pleasant fragrance entered his nose, making him remember the fragrance of lavender.
Noah then felt something pass into his body as Aiko transferred all of her stored energy to him. She broke the kiss after a minute and took a deep breath.
"Now for the final step, close your eyes and speak my name thrice." She ordered before bringing her hands closer to each other.
Two green magic circles, each six inches wide, appeared in front of her palms. Aiko slowly brought her hands closer until the two circles were touching together.
She then shot Noah an urgent look as he hurriedly closed his eyes.
"Take my real name!" Aiko suddenly shouted as Noah was left confused for a second.
"What is your…" He began asking her real name when it hit him. Aiko had told him her real name during their first meeting. "Ayame, Ayame, Ayame."
Noah then opened his eyes to see that the circles had become ten feet wide and were still expanding in Aiko's hands.
"I, Ayame, the guardian of time use the first form of time, past!" Aiko suddenly shouted as the magic circles expanded further before vanishing.
They reappeared the next second, one on top of Noah and the other below him. The symbols on his upper body suddenly ignited as he felt them burning through his skin.
Noah however didn't feel any pain as he was well beyond the stage to feel pain from things like that. His eyes were instead focusing on Aiko as he saw a strange green aura surrounding her.
"So you were the guardian of time huh. This means that you only guard this palace and the one at the top is someone else." Noah sighed loudly as he saw Aiko looking at him with a sad look.
"If I had told you about it, then both of us would've been severely punished. But now, you have a chance at living your life in a new way," Aiko then paused before finally smiling in happiness. "Make sure you save me too."
"How old are you?" Noah couldn't help but ask as Aiko kept smiling.
"Six hundred and ninety-six years old." She replied, the green aura around her slowly vanishing.
"Wait, you are three years younger than me?!" Noah exclaimed but before Aiko could answer, the room started rumbling.
Both of them noticed a bright green portal opening behind Noah, the misty object pulling him towards it. Noah stared at it for a few seconds before turning around to say goodbye to Aiko.
But in the few seconds he had spent staring at a portal, a disaster had stuck on Aiko. A black four feet spear was passing right through her heart and a pool of blood had formed right below her feet.
Aiko's dress was completely drenched and her life force was getting weaker. However, she didn't look terrified or in pain.
"Good luck, Noah. Maybe we will both meet soon in the past, or rather, the soon-to-be present." Aiko spoke happily before the portal glowed brightly.
With a blinding flash of light, it pulled Noah inside, taking him back to the past that would soon become the present.