The conversation should be over.
I have made myself clear—I am Ume, not the name he once carelessly assigned me, not the unfinished dream he abandoned. He has accepted it, spoken it, given it weight.
So why does it feel like something is still wrong?
The air between us shifts. Subtly, at first—so imperceptible that I might have ignored it had I not been standing so close.
Elias is uneasy.
Not in the way a lost traveller might feel in an unfamiliar land. Not in the way someone thrown into the unknown might struggle to grasp their reality.
No, this is deeper.
This is something else.
——
"You're quiet all of a sudden."
The words leave my lips before I fully register the way his entire posture has changed—the subtle tension in his shoulders, the way his fingers twitch slightly as if they are not entirely his to control.
Elias blinks, his gaze shifting toward me.
There is nothing outwardly wrong.
His face is the same. His voice is the same. His presence is the same.
But something inside him is different.
"Just thinking," he murmurs, his tone carefully neutral.
A lie.
I don't know how I know, but I do.
I frown, stepping closer, my eyes searching his face. "About?"
He hesitates. Just for a second.
And that second is enough.
Something dark flickers in his gaze, something unfamiliar.
A brief, fleeting shadow—gone too quickly to name, but long enough to leave behind a chill in its wake.
Then, his lips curve—a smirk.
It's small, almost imperceptible. But it is wrong.
"About a lot of things," he says, voice lighter now, almost amused.
Almost.
——
I stiffen.
There is something unsettling about the way he speaks, about the way he pauses before each sentence as if considering his words too carefully.
Elias does not hesitate like this.
The man I observed for days in his world—the one who furrowed his brows at his textbooks, who gritted his teeth at his failures, who carried himself with exhausting idealism—that Elias would have been too caught up in rationality to play games with his words.
But this Elias—this one standing before me now—is playing a game.
And I do not know the rules.
——
"You're acting strange."
The moment I say it, he tilts his head slightly, as if amused that I noticed.
"Am I?"
I take another step forward, ignoring the uneasy twist in my stomach. "Yes."
Elias exhales through his nose, a short, quiet sound that is neither agreement nor denial.
And then, so softly that I almost miss it—
"It's nothing."
A lie.
I scowl.
"You're bad at lying," I say flatly.
Something flickers across his face again—too fast, too subtle, but I catch it. A crack in the perfect mask, a moment where his own uncertainty leaks through.
He knows something is wrong.
But he won't say it.
——
The wind picks up, rustling the tall wheat fields, the golden stalks bending under its invisible weight. The sky remains a perfect, untouched blue.
Yet, the longer I stand here, the colder I feel.
"Elias," I say carefully, my voice lower now, more measured. "If something's wrong, you need to tell me."
Silence.
His fingers flex again.
And then, finally—
"…I feel strange."
He says it so simply, so casually, as if it is an afterthought. But I do not miss the way his shoulders tense.
I narrow my eyes. "Strange how?"
Elias exhales, his gaze dropping briefly to his hands. He turns them over, studying his own palms as if he expects them to not belong to him.
"As if…" He pauses, brows furrowing slightly. "As if I'm thinking things I shouldn't."
A chill skates down my spine.
My grip tightens around my arms. "What kind of things?"
His mouth twitches—another smirk, just barely there. "I don't know."
Another lie.
A flicker of irritation ignites in my chest, cutting through the unease curling around me.
"If you don't want to tell me, then say that," I snap. "Don't lie to me."
His smirk vanishes.
For a long moment, he just looks at me.
His gaze is steady. Studying. Assessing.
It makes my skin prickle, but I refuse to look away.
And then—
The mask cracks.
Only slightly.
Only enough for me to see the briefest glimpse of uncertainty beneath whatever this new Elias is trying to be.
Finally, he exhales.
"I'm thinking about how strange it is," he murmurs, voice quieter now, "that I don't feel… worse."
I blink. "Worse?"
Elias looks down again, flexing his fingers once more. "I should be panicking," he says simply. "I should be afraid, I should be—something. But I'm not. Not really."
He lifts his gaze, something unreadable lurking in the depths of his eyes.
"It's like…" He hesitates, searching for the words. Then, softly—
"Like there's a part of me that's okay with this."
My breath stills.
A beat of silence.
And then, in a voice barely above a whisper, I ask—
"Because of what you are now?"
Another pause.
A longer one.
And then—
Elias lifts his gaze fully, meeting mine without hesitation.
"Maybe," he admits.
——
A heavy weight settles between us, thick and suffocating.
I want to tell him that he's wrong. That it's just shock, just delayed fear, just his mind not fully grasping the enormity of what has happened.
But deep down, I know better.
Because I know what the Black Spirit was supposed to be.
A whisper of darkness.
A presence of greed.
A force that tempts, that manipulates, that influences.
And now, that presence is him.
The Elias that I knew—the one who idealized life, who demanded perfection, who burned with a desperate need to be more—
He is still here.
But something else is with him.
Something quiet.
Something waiting.
Something that isn't afraid of the dark anymore.
And for the first time since I met him,
I am.