There's No Love In the Deathzone (BL)
Chapter 94 - 91. (un)Found Family

Chapter 94: Chapter 91. (un)Found Family

Zein didn’t think he would get any information this fast--although, to be fair, it was already a month. Of course, he also knew it wasn’t the request that he made, just a side information about his mother, but...

Zein closed his eyes and felt the breeze to calm his mind. Perhaps this was why Radia brought him to this place.

After making a request for his purchase, Radia brought him to a restaurant on the north side of Althrea. The place consisted of many small private gardens, fully separated from one another, even equipped with a noise-canceling device.

Radia told him that each ’room’ was fashioned in different settings. This one had an open pavilion above a small pond where they could hear the sound of trickling water and felt the soft breeze upon their skin. Thickets of bamboo trees surrounded the pavilion like a fence, and the blue sky was bright without the sun being harsh.

A scenery filled with greens and water--just like the businessman that he was, Radia sure knew how to cater to his conversational partner.

"It’s quite hard tracking information from the red-zone. The only thing we managed to find is just a little bit of information on your mother, embarrassingly so," Radia poured the tea into his and Zein’s cup, prompting the guide to open his eyes and turned to face the man.

He kept his silence, staring at the steaming round cup with greenish liquid inside. A tiny stalk floated on the surface, swaying gently, and Zein looked at it while listening to Radia.

"Lucia was a guide stationed in Eiyuta more than thirty years ago, a yellow-zone city on the northern side of area-12, near the border with the Northern Alliance,"

Still watching the stalk bob on the water’s surface, Zein asked flatly. "Did she come from the north, then?"

It wasn’t something surprising though, considering Zein’s striking blue eyes.

"Yes," Radia answered with a smile. "Which is why we’ll try to move the investigation to the north, bearing in mind that the person in the shard’s memory is your ancestor."

Zein nodded, taking the cup that had cooled down enough, sniffing the tea with narrowed eyes.

"What I want to tell you today, however, is about your possible origin," Radia put down his tea and pushed a plate of flower-shaped sweet rice cake in front of Zein. "It’s unsweetened, drink that with this."

Zein sipped the warm tea--it was rather bitter, but not so much that he couldn’t swallow it. The fragrance was nice and calming, making it quite different from his usual intake nowadays, which was mainly filled with sweet things.

"Your mother was registered as a B-class, but she was quite timid, and had an inherent fear of men and esper, so it was quite hard for her to have a steady job,"

Zein bit into one of the flower-shaped sweet rice cake while thinking about a guide who was afraid of esper. There were actually a lot of guides who were afraid of espers, especially those in the red-zone, so he didn’t think much of it. But he did think about the root of that fear--was his mother experiencing some kind of trauma with espers?

"She mainly worked to guide female espers, and lived in a house with two other women; one female guide, and one civilian," Radia continued his story. "About thirty years ago, she disappeared."

Zein paused then, and put down the small rice cake in his hand. He stared wordlessly at the esper, but his slightly frowning eyes seemed to push Radia to hurry up and continue.

"The thing I’m about to tell you is strictly coming from the correspondence that the two women did with Lucia after her disappearance from Eiyuta," now, the esper put his arms on the table, fingers intertwining as he looked straight at Zein. "It seems that she followed a man, an esper that she met during one of her commission works,"

"A man and an esper, with her fear?" Zein looked down, staring at the wooden table for a bit, and suddenly grabbed his teacup and gulped it down. When he slammed the teacup down, he muttered with gritted teeth. "She got imprinted."

Zein remembered that particular information--the only information he knew about her mother, that the grandma next door told him in a slip of tongue.

"Yes, it seemed to be so," Radia gave a subtle smile, a bitter one. "Within the last letter that they exchange, Lucia mentioned something important; that she was pregnant,"

The blue eyes flickered, but Radia didn’t stop there.

"And that someone was after her partner’s life, maybe hers too."

Slowly, Radia took the empty cup in front of Zein and filled it with a fresh batch of tea. "The last letter came in the fall twenty-eight years ago."

And then Zein was born the following year, whichever month that was. If the last letter stated that she was still with the esper, then it was clear that Zein was the son of that esper, and not the man who sold him to Umbra, a scum called Marshall Tadros.

Zein didn’t even know whether he should be glad about it.

"We still don’t know how she could get involved with Marshall Tadros, but we couldn’t find any link between her and Tadros before the winter of that year," placing the cup in front of the guide again, Radia added. "From what we get, he suddenly appeared in Araka the following year along with your mother and a newborn baby--you, I presumed."

There was silence for a while after that, as Zein played with the steaming cup, turning it round and round until the floating leaf twirled on the surface.

Something was caught in his chest, stuffing him with uncomfortable feelings. "The...twins that live with me," he stared hard at the twirling leaf, as if trying to make it stop with his gaze alone, "...do you know..."

"They are that man’s children, as far as we know," Radia answered readily, as if already knowing that Zein would be asking him that.

"...I see,"

It was another silence then, and Radia did not bother Zein with any more words. He just enjoyed his tea, letting Zein take all the expensive snacks as the guide fell deep in his own thoughts. They stayed like that, even when the waiters came with their meals, eating in silence.

Radia only broke the silence inside the car that brought them back to the guild compound. "We’ll still try to find out more about your real father, since it might have something to do with your ancestor, who knows," Radia smiled at Zein’s raised brow, shrugging casually.

"Regarding the investigation in the Northern land...well, you’ll have to be a bit more patient about that. My influence in other territories isn’t as great as here," the esper typed something in his commlink, and Zein’s own link beeped in response.

Looking at his wrist, Zein saw an encrypted archive folder being sent through an unknown account. But it was clear who sent it to him.

"It’s the more thorough report on what I conveyed to you. You can access that with your badge and biometric recognition," while closing his interface, Radia suddenly snapped his fingers. "Ah, right--we weren’t allowed to bring Lucia’s letters over, so if you want to read it, you have to meet those women yourself. They’re still in Eiyuta, by the way, their address is enclosed in that report,"

Radia paused for a bit then, as if considering something, but then decided to add. "There’s a picture of Lucia when she was still active in Eiyuta too."

Zein hovered his fingers above his commlink, contemplating opening it right then while biting his cheek. In the end, though, he decided not to. Not now anyway. Not here.

"You can just give me the information on Monday," he muttered, looking at esper beside him, who casually leaned back on his seat with crossed arms.

Radia smiled and hummed in agreement. "I can," he replied easily.

"So why--"

"I’m bored," Radia shrugged, chuckling a little. "I want to--how does Shin call it--hang out?"

Zein raised his brow at that simple answer. Honestly, he couldn’t really imagine someone like Radia ’hanging out’ with anyone, with that exquisite and refine palate of his. Actually, he thought Radia would be too busy to do anything like that, what with his double role as Mortix’s Chairman and Trinity’s Guildmaster.

"Don’t you...hang out...with Shin or Bas?"

"With them, it’s babysitting," Radia sighed, which Zein could actually understand. "That reminds me; you shouldn’t consume too much sugar, Zein. Don’t be stubborn like Shin. Do it moderately, for your own health."

Zein flinched for a bit, more because of the sudden nagging tone rather than the actual advice. It also occurred to him that this man even knew what kind of things he consumed--was that why their drink and snack today were like that?

But more importantly; was this man concerned enough to start nagging at him like that? Rather...deliberately coming out with a pretense of hanging out to give him that information right away...

It was like he actually cared about Zein.

"...I’ll keep that in mind," Zein muttered a reply. Well, he’d try anyway--whether he succeed was another matter.

It was a good thing that he wore his mask, because he almost laughed hearing Radia taking care of him, nagging about his health and all. It reminded Zein of himself when he scolded the twins for sleeping late...

Ah.

Zein sat in a daze for a little bit, looking at the summoner through the reflection in the window as they went back into silence. Now that he thought about it, aside from talking about his mother, they mostly sat there wordlessly. Strangely though, it didn’t feel uncomfortable. The silence wasn’t awkward and felt...familiar.

It reminded him of Han Joon. The way the man just silently observed him and left him to his device, and only approached when Zein seemed to need him.

It reminded him of himself, when he just sat wordlessly with the twins in the living room while they did their homework.

A silence born of consideration and the simple comfort of a company.

As the car entered the guild compound and moved toward the dorm building, Zein looked at the driver. As usual, it was Radia’s summoned creature, someone loyal and a secret keeper.

"The price for that information, I’ll pay for it now,"

Radia turned to look at Zein, crimson eyes widened in genuine surprise. "Even though it’s not complete yet?"

Zein smiled behind his mask, but it was easy to see from the softened blue eyes. He gazed at the crimson eyes, and finally, slowly, spelled out the thing he never told anyone before.