Chapter 608: Chapter 608 - Taming Vulnerability

The word came out with more firmness than Larissa had expected. All eyes turned toward her.

Ren’s heart constricted for a moment, but in the next...

"You don’t have to apologize," she continued, her voice gaining strength as she spoke. "I’m the one who should apologize to you."

Ren looked up, confusion clear in his expression. The disorientation from just waking up made it difficult to process what he was hearing. "What? But I was the one who..."

"You did the right thing," Larissa interrupted, and now the words flowed more easily, as if a dam had finally broken inside her. "You did exactly what my father asked you to do, didn’t you? Following the King’s order and saving everyone is what any good person would have done. And I, without realizing it... I was so selfish making you believe you had done something wrong with my silence."

Luna and Liora exchanged glances, their own unresolved tensions momentarily forgotten. This wasn’t the conversation they had expected to witness. The raw honesty in Larissa’s voice was unexpected, almost uncomfortable.

"I was actually just weak," Larissa admitted, her voice dropping until it became almost a whisper. "Too weak to face what had happened. Too weak to thank you for saving us all. Too weak to face you again and..."

She stopped, the words catching in her throat like thorns.

Ren stared at her intently, processing what he had just heard. The emotional weight of her words hit him like physical blows, each admission rewriting years of guilt and self-recrimination. Slowly, without him realizing it, tears began forming in the corners of his eyes. His expression remained completely neutral, a perfect poker face, but the tears betrayed the intensity of what he was feeling.

The unexpected sight drew all the girls’ gazes back to him.

When he finally realized he was crying, his face flushed so intensely it looked like he might burst into flames. Without saying a word, he completely covered his face with the sheets, disappearing beneath white cotton like a turtle retreating into its shell.

"Ren, you don’t have to hide your feelings! It’s completely normal!" Liora exclaimed, torn between concern and amusement at his reaction. She found herself thinking about how "cute" it was to see him being sentimental, and how much she enjoyed drawing reactions from him... like the one she’d gotten when she’d kissed his cheek.

Though she also ended up blushing at that last memory...

From beneath the sheets came a muffled voice: "Don’t look at me."

The plaintive tone made several of the girls exchange fond, exasperated glances. Even in his emotional vulnerability...

Luna, who had been observing the entire interaction with growing discomfort, decided it was her moment to speak. She was completely red, but seeing Ren perhaps more embarrassed than she was made her feel a bit more comfortable.

Unable to see Ren’s face directly, she found the courage that had been eluding her.

"I should apologize too," she said, her voice higher than she had expected.

"Huh?" Ren peeked out, but his voice came muffled from behind the sheets that still covered half his face.

"For what I did to you during our... dat... our private meeting," Luna continued, feeling her own cheeks heating up. "I shouldn’t have... it was inappropriate and..."

"Love date?" Mayo murmured, but Matilda silenced her with a look.

Ren slowly lowered the sheets without realizing it as he remembered, looking directly at Luna. "No... it didn’t bother me at all and..."

He spoke without thinking.

The words came out softer than he had intended, and both Ren and Luna simultaneously realized what he had just said.

Both their eyes widened. Luna turned red as a tomato, while Ren immediately covered his face again.

"I didn’t mean to say...!" they both began at the same time, then stopped.

Liora watched them alternately, an annoyed smile growing on her face.

"It seems I’m in the lead, but not by much..." Larissa whispered to herself.

But when she tried to speak, her throat constricted. Larissa was the only one of the three who knew perfectly what she wanted. But she was still a teenager too...

Before, it had been easy for her to be bolder, because her interest had been more of a crush. She had seen him as a "good option". Now she saw him as the "only option".

It seemed that since what happened with her father, making heavy choices had become a bit difficult due to the trauma. The weight of these decisions... even potentially good decisions, felt paralyzing in a way they never had before.

Larissa sighed at her own immaturity before speaking about what she wanted indirectly. The only way she seemed capable of expressing it.

"Ren, I want to insist... I ask for your forgiveness."

Attention returned to Larissa.

"You don’t need to apologize... Although I don’t want to give you false hope, I won’t rest until I fully understand crystallization."

Ren told her, still blushing...

"I want to be capable of fixing everything," he declared forcefully, and his embarrassed face transformed into an intense one. "I don’t want to have any more regrets."

The resolve in his voice was powerful.

Ren had lowered the sheets again, this time with an even more serious expression. He reached toward his pocket.

"So Luna too," he said while searching inside, "there’s something I want to give you."

He extracted a wrinkled letter, burned in some parts by recent events. The paper was yellowed and fragile, bearing the marks of whatever battles he’d been through.

"Your father left me this. For some reason he didn’t take it from me before leaving. I thought about reading it with what seemed like his implicit permission... but it didn’t seem right in the end without you knowing..."

Luna became completely still, staring at the letter as if it were something toxic. Her entire body tensed, and her breathing became shallow.

"It’s from my father," she whispered, and there was something in her voice...

"You can read it if you want," she offered to Ren, extending her hand toward him. "As... atonement for what I put you through that day."

Both turned red again...

But this time Luna couldn’t bear the embarrassment anymore and escaped with a shadow leap, vanishing from the room in a swirl of darkness.

Larissa sighed.

In the back of the room, the maids and guards exchanged meaningful glances. Matilda had to cover a small smile with her hand, while Maria tried to maintain professional composure despite the emotional drama unfolding before her.

Liora observed the entire exchange with a complex mix of emotions. Part of her felt relieved that the conversation had moved toward Luna and Larissa, giving her time to process her own feelings. But another part, a part she didn’t want to examine too closely, felt something that might have been jealousy seeing the obvious chemistry between Ren, Larissa, and Luna.

The competitive streak that had always driven her felt threatened by the depth of connection she was witnessing, even as she genuinely cared for all three of them.

Mayo, for her part, seemed genuinely entertained by all the drama unfolding before her eyes. "You know what?" she announced, "I think you need to have much longer and more frequent conversations like this."

"Mayo!" all the girls protested in unison, which only made her laugh more.

The envelope remained in Ren’s extended hand, a physical reminder of all the complicated relationships and unresolved emotions that still needed to be addressed.