Daemon locked the door and did his usual check of the place. Afterward, he didn't turn on his laptop. He instead went through the content of the box once again after opening it, despite having inspected it already yesterday.
Because he had had it sent to the rented apartment, he had been forced to leave the hotel earlier in the morning the previous day to receive it. And that was why Cynthia had had to wait for him for a few minutes.
He started bringing the pieces of the treadmill into the bedroom.
After he emptied the box, he started putting everything together in the center of the room where he had all the elastic cables reach to use their tension to train.
With his first suit that the elastic cables were harnessed on to provide resistance while exercising, he would only need to run on the treadmill now. And he might add the second suit he was working on underneath the first one later. He was looking forward to the result.
The rest of the day was spent installing the treadmill. Actually, just a few hours had been enough, as the pieces were components that just needed to be put together. The rest of the time was spent testing the contraption.
He tried different settings, and also made sure that the voice command was working correctly.
At the end of it, he was so tired that he could only continue with the true test tomorrow. With his stamina drained, he could not do the more difficult tests with his modified suit on anymore.
He went to take a shower after locking the bedroom. When he returned to the living room, ready to leave the apartment, he took his bag and his phone that had been on silent mode.
Checking the time, he saw that the afternoon was ending soon, but it was the missed calls that were displayed on the screen that retained his attention.
After some surprise, he displayed a small smile. They were from his soon to be fiancee.
He checked the details of the calls and found that they had had some intervals in-between. He purported that they had not been about anything urgent.
He called back, and it was soon picked up. However, the other side remained silent.
"Hello?"
"..."
"Cynthia?"
"..."
His expression went from smiling, to neutral, before turning serious. But that didn't last, as the next moment, he relaxed. He was not on the battlefield anymore. He was out of it, with all the implications left behind. So, the silence should not be because of a precarious situation.
He calmed down and adjusted his mentality. Thinking about it with a shift in perspective, it had always been Cynthia calling him, never the other way around. And even with their engagement not far into the future, he had spent the day not responding to her call. The silence now might be her informing him of her anger.
His expression turned a little helpless. At least she picked up the call.
He sighed:
"Cynthia, are you angry?"
"..."
"If you keep silent, I will hang up."
An answer finally came from the other side:
"Humph. So what if you hang up? It's not like I'm important anyway."
While his expression was more neutral than smiling, he tried to placate her:
"We will be getting engaged in two days, how can you not be important?"
"But you ignored my calls the whole day. And I am always the one to take the initiative to contact you, never the other way around."
The situation was not much different from what he thought, so he adopted the appropriate attitude:
"You are right, my bad. I will strive to improve myself."
Unfortunately, the tone on the other side still didn't soften:
"Humph, at least you didn't try to use your recent retirement as an excuse, or say something like you are not used to the situation yet."
Daemon said with a small laugh this time:
"I'm happy that I didn't worsen my situation."
After a moment of silence, Cynthia said:
"That doesn't mean I forgive you."
"Then, how about we spend the day of tomorrow together? Only you and I, with my project put aside."
"Humph, it's still not enough to appease me."
Daemon said in a helpless tone:
"Sigh, I get it. No date tomorrow then. I hope you will be able to forgive me after a good night of sleep."
Thinking he was about to hang up, Cynthia panicked:
"Daemon, wait!!!"
"Yes?"
From the dull tone, Cynthia could imagine the eyebrow raised in a questioning way. Fortunately, Daemon didn't voice the inquiry in a bright voice, or she would have thought that he was only acting to bait her.
"I accept your compensation. See you tomorrow."
Immediately after she said that, she cut off the call.
The behavior made Daemon smile. He shook his head, took his things, and left the apartment.
_ _ _
_ _ _
The next day, Cynthia, with a sulking face, stopped her car in front of Daemon. The latter was standing in front of his hotel. From her smooth stop, it seemed that she knew to separate her anger from her driving style. That way, at least she should not kill herself in a car accident.
Daemon nodded, and with a smile, opened the door to sit on the passenger seat.
Cynthia made an extra effort to not lose her sulking appearance. Nevertheless, she couldn't help but notice how Daemon was not keeping a default neutral expression anymore.
That slight smile he had almost made her show her happiness. Fortunately, she managed to suppress it. She couldn't give Daemon the impression to have forgiven him.
Daemon looked at her lips that had been forced back to a sulking position after almost forming a smile. He couldn't hide his amusement. He only avoided spilling it all over the place to not worsen the situation.
Nonetheless, what he tried to avoid happened.
"What are you laughing at?"
"I'm only wondering if you will keep that face the whole day."
"So what if I do? I need to show you that I have yet to forgive you."
Daemon's smile softened as he tried to placate her:
"Alright, I will be more considerate in the future. I was busy yesterday, and I put my phone on silent mode before leaving it aside the whole day."
Seeing him trying to deescalate the situation once again, along with his promise, she relented.
Her expression relaxed, and she spoke:
"I forgive you. I know you must have been busy with work. I just felt neglected, especially after what happened last time."